From Dog to Wolf is the story of an Oglala Lakhota (aka Sioux People) family struggling to survive on the troubled Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in southwestern South Dakota. The story depicts everyday life for Sally Graywolf, known to all as Grandmother, and her two grandsons growing up and living on an Indian reservation. Anyone who has ever visited Pine Ridge would describe it as a third-world country located right in the middle of the United States of America.

I started out reading a few lines of the book and was drawn into the story because it began to take me on a journey back into my own childhood. I was fortunate to have known both of my grandparents on my mother’s side. They took care of me, my older sister, and my two younger brothers for a time when we were children. I say fortunate because they had strong traditional Oglala Lakhota values and taught us the Lakhota language of our ancestors. My grandparents didn’t drink alcohol and practiced the ancient Lakhota ceremonies. To be raised by your grandparents is becoming more common in our present day Lakhota society, with a vast majority of parents caught up in alcoholism and drugs.

The social ills of living life in third world conditions are still prevalent in 2020. Not much has changed since my childhood days and I have seen the world take sixty-one revolutions around the sun so far. This book, From Dog to Wolf, is an accurate depiction of reservation life and it demonstrates that opportunities in life occur that can change the world for the good.

Warren “Guss” Yellow Hair