This is the third project I have had the pleasure of doing with Patty Gift, the first two when she was executive editor at Sterling Publishers. Returning to the Lakota Way is the first with her at Hay House, and hopefully not the last. I appreciate, to say the very least, her faith in me, and her willingness to do this particular project after only one inquiry from my agent.
Thank you to the editors at Hay House who worked with Patty to provide order and cohesiveness to a manuscript that had substance but not much else in first draft.
To my friend, Donald Montileaux, a fellow Lakota and an extraordinary artist who created a dazzling cover. This is the third he has done for me.
As ever, and always, I am grateful for all the Lakota elders who graced my life as a child and young man. Many of them were family, but all of them were certainly part of the “village” that nurtured Lakota children and young people in the communities of Swift Bear and Horse Creek on the Rosebud Reservation and Kyle on the Pine Ridge Reservation. Their influence was considerable and it was gifted through advice, stories, and the examples they set simply by living their lives.
Those elders (as I have said more than once) were a direct connection to the past, where we all come from. They brought that past alive through their knowledge, a priceless gift that I’ve tried to share—because they wanted the world to know who we Lakota were and are. But of that group of unforgettable people I must mention my maternal and paternal grandparents: Albert and Annie (Good Voice Eagle) Two Hawk, and Reverend Charles and M. Blanche (Roubideaux) Marshall. Without a doubt they were the four people most influential on my life. Not a day goes by that I do not think of them.
Finally, to my late wife, Connie West Marshall—a farm girl, a child of the western North Dakota prairies, a beauty queen, an adventurer, an entrepreneur, and a devoted and fierce mother. She was my agent, best friend, the love of my life, and my soul mate. She took my breath away the moment I first met her, and again at the moment she left our daughters and me for the Spirit World. In between she blessed our lives with grace, style, and unconditional love. As the saying goes, “Death leaves a wound no one can heal. Love leaves a memory no one can steal.”
Connie, I will always love you.