Remembering Elizabeth Cook-Lynn

As Eastern honors National Native American Heritage Month this November, we hope you might join us in celebrating the memory of the late Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, an EWU scholar who gained national prominence for her role in advancing academic interest in — and attention to — Native American scholarship.

Cook-Lynn, 92, professor emeritus of English and Native American studies, died on July 5, 2023. A novelist, short-story writer and poet, Cook-Lynn, a member of the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe, was also a tireless advocate in support of research and instruction centered on tribal histories and cultures. Among her many important contributions was a lengthy catalog of scholarly publications and a prominent role in establishing Eastern’s first Indian Education Program, where she introduced hundreds of Eastern students to the emerging field of Native American studies.

Margo Hill-Ferguson, director of EWU’s American Indian Studies Program and associate professor of urban and regional planning, says Cook-Lynn’s work inspired a lasting legacy that extends throughout the EWU campus and nation.

“Elizabeth Cook-Lynn was a true Native woman, visionary, and scholar,” said Hill-Ferguson. She built the American Indian Studies program at EWU and supported Native American students for decades. We are forever grateful for her work, dedication to student education, and the advancement of American Indian Issues and Tribal Sovereignty.”

Working to establish Native studies wasn’t easy. Back in the early 1970s, even as Eastern Athletics finally moved on from its “Savages” nickname, tension with administrators over the nature and scope of the new program were rife.  “It is my opinion,” Cook-Lynn wrote in 1973 to Emerson Shuck, then Eastern’s president, “that we must no longer do just what is expedient in Indian Education—we must define our basic philosophy, come to a reasonable agreement on that and get about working within the realities of that definition. There is a difference between the supportive services for Native American students, and Native American Education/Studies as an academic venture. The former is likely to be clutched quickly to the bosoms of all of us, the latter is less instantaneously gratifying and much more hard work.” In the end, it was Cook-Lynn’s vision that prevailed, and her “hard work” that moved it forward.

Another notable milestone in Cook-Lynn’s career was her service as founder and editor of the nationally prominent Wicazo Sa Review, “an interdisciplinary journal devoted to the mission of assisting Indigenous peoples of the Americas in taking possession of their own intellectual and creative pursuits.” The Wicazo Sa Review remains in print, now published by the University of Minnesota Press.

Cook-Lynn retired from EWU on July 1, 1990 after 19 years of service. “It is difficult to imagine what Eastern would be like,” wrote a colleague after Cook-Lynn stepped down, “if it were not for her enormous contributions of intelligence and care.”