American Indian Culture and Research Journal

On 27 August 1994, Lakota elder Nellie Zelda Star Boy Menard was honored by her family and friends in a special ceremony at the Rosebud fair. The list of her extensive accomplishments in the arts was recited by relative Noah Broken Leg. Menard was honored once before, but this time as a young girl. Her family venerated her in a special ceremony. At the age of fifteen, Menard underwent a traditional girl’s puberty ceremony. Born on 3 June 1910 in Belvidere, South Dakota on the Lakota (Sioux) Rosebud Reservation, Menard is one of very few living tribal members to experience this honorary ceremony. As Nellie says, “They don’t do that [puberty ceremony] anymore. That’s a thing of the past.... So very few people go through that .... I was the only girl [in my family] for a long time, so that’s how come I went through that.” No firsthand Lakota accounts of this ceremony have been published to our knowledge and only a handful of eyewitness accounts exist. In the early 1980s, Menard transcribed her memories of the iinati awicalowanpi and tapa wankayeyapi ceremonies. She did this in response to a request by a Swiss gentleman who purchased her beaded ball, which was used in her ceremony: This is the ceremony they [my family] had for me when I first had my period going on 15 years old. First they put up a tent away from the house-I would say about 50 yards or hearing distance. I am to stay in this tent with my grandmother, my mother’s mother [Helen Long Warrior Leads the Horse].