This is a beautiful deep dive with the great Lakota wisdom keeper Joseph M. Marshall III. I truly feel honored to share space with this glorious soul and to bring his words to all of you. We cover a lot of sacred ground here and I hope you will take the journey with us.

Joseph M. Marshall III is a historian, writer, teacher, craftsman, administrator, actor, and public speaker. He was a founding board member in 1971 of Sinte Gleska University, the tribal college at the Rosebud Indian Reservation.

He has published numerous non-fiction books based on Lakota oral history and culture. His book, The Day the World Ended at Little Bighorn, won the 2008 PEN/Beyond Margins Award.

Joseph Marshall III was born and raised on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota, and is an enrolled member of the federally recognized Sicangu Oyate (Rosebud Sioux, Lakota) tribe. He was raised in a traditional Lakota household by his maternal grandparents, where his first language was Lakota. He grew up in the Horse Creek Community near White River (Maka Izita Wakpa, meaning “Smoking Earth River”). He learned English as a second language, and writes and publishes in English.

After college, Marshall worked primarily as an English teacher at Todd County High School in Mission, South Dakota. In 1971, Marshall was a founding board member of Sinte Gleska University, the Sicangu Lakota’s tribal college located at the reservation. He later taught at the college, helping develop a Native American studies curriculum.

Marshall helped form a non-profit advocacy group for Native American students and parents. He has also worked as an educational and health programs administrator for the Rosebud Sioux Tribe. Along the way, he became a craftsman of traditional Lakota bows and arrows.

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