The McDaniel College Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa presents “Lakota Winter Counts and the Cultural Interpretation of Time,” a lecture by Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar Ray DeMallie, at 8 p.m. Sept. 18 in McDaniel Lounge.

The event is free and open to the public. For more information, call (410) 857-2294.

The Lakota kept pictorial records that designated each passing winter with a mnemonic representing a memorable event from the previous year. These served as calendars to name the years and also formed the basis for a native history. One of those who counted the winters also created a history of the world from the beginning, represented by a series of tipi circles that represented not years, but generations. Anthropological study of winter counts began in the 1870s. This presentation will introduce winter counts as a genre, discuss the nature of the events they commemorate, and offer some interpretation of what they reveal about native Lakota concepts of time and history.

DeMallie is Chancellor’s Professor of Anthropology at Indiana University, where he began teaching in 1973.  In 1986 he was appointed director of the university’s American Indian Studies Research Institute.  The emphasis of his research is on the Plains Indians of North America; he has done fieldwork on reservations in the Dakotas, Montana, and Saskatchewan.  His writing and teaching focus on kinship and social organization, ritual and belief systems, oral traditions, and material culture.  Most recently, he has become involved in projects designed to create materials to teach the Sioux and Assiniboine languages.

He is the editor of “Handbook of North American Indians, Vol. 13,” “Plains and The Sixth Grandfather:  Black Elk’s Teachings Given to John G. Neihardt,” and co-editor of “Documents of American Indian Diplomacy, Sioux Indian Religion, and Lakota Belief and Ritual,” as well as of the following monograph series: Studies in the Anthropology of North American Indians; Sources of American Indian Oral Literature; and Studies in the Native Languages of the Americas.  He is past president of the American Society for Ethnohistory.

McDaniel is one of 270 U.S. institutions with a chapter of the Phi Beta Kappa honor society. The Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar Program makes available each year twelve or more distinguished scholars who visit 100 colleges and universities with chapters of Phi Beta Kappa. They spend two days on each campus, meeting informally with students and faculty members, taking part in classroom discussions, and giving a public lecture open to the entire academic community. The purpose of the program is to contribute to the intellectual life of the institution by making possible an exchange of ideas between the Visiting Scholars and the resident faculty and students. Founded in 1775, Phi Beta Kappa is the nation’s oldest academic honor society.

For more information about wintercount calendars, view this site: http://wintercounts.si.edu/index.html