In the early 1940s Dakota anthropologist Ella Deloria began talking to her mentor, feminist anthropologist Ruth Benedict, about the possibility of transforming her ethnographic research into a novel that would bring Plains Indian culture to life for the American reading public. In writing Waterlily, a historical novel that documented early nineteenth century Dakota life through the experiences of two generations of Dakota women, Ella Deloria clearly hoped to humanize anthropological discourse on Plains Indian culture and refocus the ethnographic lens on the lives of women in Dakota culture. Because it is a novel that moves beyond the strictly ethnographic to speak to audiences and issues outside of the academy, critical evaluations of Waterlily must likewise move beyond an exploration of its relationship to ethnographic meaning making and examine the ways in which the novel offers an alternative (and even utopian) mode of imagining history, agency, and consciousness.