Raymond DeMallie

Raymond J. DeMallie was Chancellor's Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at Indiana University Bloomington. He received his B.A. with honors in 1968, M.A. in 1970, and Ph.D. in 1971, all in anthropology from the University of Chicago, where his graduate work under Fred Eggan focused on Sioux kinship and social organization. Following a brief position in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Wyoming from 1972 to 1973, DeMallie joined Indiana University in 1973, serving until his retirement in 2017. He co-founded and directed the American Indian Studies Research Institute (now the Institute for Indigenous Knowledge) in 1984, chaired the American Indian Studies Committee in 1975, and held affiliate faculty status in the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology. Named Chancellor's Professor in 2004, he also served as president of the American Society for Ethnohistory from 1991 to 1992 and held the French-American Foundation Chair in American Civilization at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris during 2002–2003.

DeMallie's research centered on the ethnohistory of Northern Plains Indians, with particular emphasis on the Sioux (Lakota and Dakota) and Assiniboine peoples. Since 1970, he conducted fieldwork on reservations in the Dakotas, Montana, and Saskatchewan, recording linguistic texts of historical traditions, myths, and tales, complemented by archival, library, and museum studies. He employed a symbolic anthropological approach to analyze kinship, social organization, ritual, belief systems, oral traditions, and material culture, using ethnohistorical methods to reconstruct historical ethnographies and contextualize contemporary changes from buffalo-hunting societies to reservation life. DeMallie contributed to applied anthropology through studies for legal cases supporting treaty rights, often in collaboration with Vine Deloria, Jr. His major publications include editing The Sixth Grandfather: Black Elk's Teachings Given to John G. Neihardt (1984); co-editing with Elaine Jahner Lakota Belief and Ritual (1980, new ed. 1991) and with Douglas R. Parks Sioux Indian Religion: Tradition and Innovation (1987); editing Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 13: Plains (2001, 2 vols.); and co-editing with Vine Deloria, Jr. Documents of American Indian Diplomacy (1999, 2 vols.). He co-edited book series such as Studies in the Anthropology of North American Indians and Sources of American Indian Oral Literature. DeMallie taught undergraduate and graduate courses on North American Indians, ethnohistory, kinship, symbolic anthropology, and Lakota language, mentoring students through institute projects. He received the Plains Anthropological Society Distinguished Service Award in 2019 for his contributions to Plains anthropology.