Elizabeth Cook-Lynn

Elizabeth Cook-Lynn (born Elizabeth Irving, November 17, 1930 – July 5, 2023) was a Native American editor, essayist, poet, and novelist. She was considered to be outspoken in her views about Native American politics, particularly in regards to tribal sovereignty.

Cook-Lynn criticized those who make tenuous claims to Native/Indigenous ancestry with the purpose of advancing their own careers, and described such claimants with no community connections as "tribeless". She believed they damage the development of economic and social life of Native nations.

Biography Cook-Lynn was born in Fort Thompson, South Dakota on the Crow Creek Reservation. She was a Dakota and member of the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe. She was raised in a family of scholars and politicians, with both her father and grandfather serving on the Crow Creek Sioux Tribal Council. Her grandmother wrote in English and Dakota for Christian newspapers. Her great-grandfather, Gabriel Renville, was a Native linguist and pioneer of early Dakota-language dictionaries.

Cook-Lynn attended South Dakota State College (which later became South Dakota State University) where she earned a BA in English and Journalism. In college, she took a history class about westward expansion and was surprised that it ignored the Native American presence in the region. This sparked her interest in advocating for Native Americans. Cook-Lynn states that she began to write out of anger, as an "act of defiance born of the need to survive ... as Simon Ortiz says, it is an act that defies oppression."

Cook-Lynn did graduate studies at New Mexico State University in 1966, Black Hills State College in 1968, and finished her doctorate program at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln in 1978. Prior to receiving her doctorate, Cook-Lynn was selected as a National Endowment for the Humanities fellow and studied in 1976 at Stanford University.

Awards Source: 1978 National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship 1995 Oyate Igluwitaya by the Native American Club at South Dakota State University Why I Can't Read Wallace Stegner and Other Essays : A Tribal Voice, cited for a Gustavus Myers Award South Dakota Living Indian Treasure Award Distinguished Native American Alumnus Award 2002 Literary Contribution Award from the Mountain Plains Library Association 2007 Lifetime Achievement Award by the Native Writers' Circle of the Americas