Timothy J. Kloberdanz, professor emeritus of anthropology, and Troy A. Geist, an NDSU alumnus, recently compiled and edited a new book. The large format volume is titled “Sundogs and Sunflowers: Folklore and Folk Art of the Northern Great Plains.”
Focus of the 340-page study is the folk heritage of people living in North Dakota, South Dakota, western Minnesota, eastern Montana, northeastern Wyoming and the prairie portions of Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan in Canada. The book covers different kinds of folklore: ghost tales, legends, blizzard stories, folk expressions, folk beliefs, folk medicine, holiday customs, weather lore, hunting/fishing/trapping traditions, nicknames, traditional foodways, tall tales and folk humor. More than 1,000 examples of folklore are included in the book, as well as, approximately 300 color photographs.
Assisting Kloberdanz and Geist in compiling the book were Maureen E. McDonald-Hins and NDSU alumni Paul Emch and Loren Yellowbird Sr. with Mary Louise Defender Wilson, Deborah Gourneau and Amy Schmidt also lending their expertise.
Kloberdanz and his NDSU students collected much of the folklore in the book during more than three decades of field research. There is folklore in the book from all of North Dakota’s 53 counties. Geist, who works as a folklorist for the North Dakota Council on the Arts, also shared years of original research and photographic documentation from extensive folklore files.
“This book represents more than just a successful collaboration between NDSU and the NDCA,” writes Kloberdanz. “This book represents a huge team effort since more than a thousand people were involved at one point or another. The participants included approximately 400 storytellers and folk artists, 300 folklore collectors, as well as, numerous photographers, archivists, scholars, translators, advisers and many others. We have all heard that ‘It takes a village to raise a child.’ Well, in this case, it took more than 1,000 people to do a big book like this one.”
A portion of the proceeds from the sale of the book will go toward a special scholarship fund for NDSU students that is being set up by Kloberdanz and his wife, Rosalinda.
“Sundogs and Sunflowers” is published by the North Dakota Council on the Arts, which is based in Bismarck, N.D. Copies of the hardbound volume are available at the NDSU Bookstore and other area bookstores.