By: David Treuer
Libby eBook 6 chapters and lots of extras
Published: 2012
Genre: Memoir, history, non-fiction First People
This was amazing and took me a long time to read. Along with One Thousand White Women (fiction) and another book I recently started, I feel as though I'm gaining some understanding outside of my (privileged) white life.
Introduction: Reservations and the Indians on them are not simply victims of the white juggernaut. And what one finds on reservations is more than scars, tears, blood, and noble sentiment. There is beauty in Indian life, as well as meaning and a long history of interaction.
I liked how he wrote - straightforward and honest. As a white person, I didn't feel judged but reading this was hard at times.
Introduction: After breakfast we drove back up to my grandmother's trailer and I asked her if there was anything I could do. There's always something to do. That's one nice thing about Indian funerals whether Catholic, traditional, or a mixture of both. There's always something - gathering sage, cooking, digging the grave, getting tar paper to cover the mound of dirt until a gravehouse can be built, building the rough box, carving and shaping the clan marker, getting drunk. I actually like digging the grave. It's mindless and communal.
It's so true that there's always something to do when someone has died. I like that the author and his family all made themselves available to grandmother when grandfather died.
Chapter 1: "Could it not be contrived to send the small pox among the disaffected tribes of Indians? We must on this occasion use every stratagem in our power to reduce them." Colonel Bouquet agreed heartily: " I will try to inoculate the bastards with some blankets that may fall into their hands, and take care not to get the disease myself."
General Amherst and Colonel Bouquet (British) wrote letters during the siege of Fort Pitt in 1763. The attempt at biological warfare is well documented. Sometimes I'd prefer to be ignorant of this evil, but I know it's important to understand history so we don't repeat the horrors.
Chapter 1: A local militia, later known as Paxton's Boys, grabbed weapons and attacked a peaceful village of Christian Susquehannock farmers, killing six of them. The rest fled to Philadelphia . . . "
I'm sure the men who formed this group said they were just defending themselves, but they were clearly attacking. There are people nowadays who spew violent rhetoric and claim they're just protecting themselves and their families. Against what?
Chapter 1: The Delaware were betrayed almost immediately. White Eyes, one of the Delaware chiefs who signed the treaty and who was one of the staunchest supporters of the United States, was murdered by his allies within a month; his death was covered up and officially attributed to smallpox.
All of the broken treaties broke my heart. It makes me think of scammers committing elder abuse but on a much larger scale. It's horrific to think about how much land and natural resources were stolen from First Nation people over the centuries. Greed is ugly.
Chapter 1: . . . the U.S. government made treaties with Indians for two main reasons. First, the United States had to make treaties, because Indian tribes were powerful. They had command of routes of travel, many warriors, and plenty of resources when the United States had very little of any of these. The second reason was cynical: paper was cheaper than bullets. Despite the power of Indian tribes, it was often the case that the United States had no intention of honoring the treaties it made. Treaties were a way to reduce the power of tribes.
Sigh. Again, greed is powerful and nasty.
Chapter 1: The early to mid-nineteenth century was dark for Indian tribes. White encroachment continued.
Reading this made me wonder how this era in history is taught nowadays. Do kids ever hear the Native population's perspective on what was happening?
Chapter 1: As of today, on Leech Lake, like many other reservations, the tribe owns roughly 4 percent of the land within the reservation boundaries. The rest of the land is divided among county, state, federal, corporate, and private owners.
Chapter 2: Its primary architects were John Collier and Felix Cohen. When the borderline socialist Collier was appointed commissioner of Indian Affairs by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1933, things began to change, if only temporarily, for Indians.
<Later in the chapter:>
"We find the Indians, in all the basic forces and forms of life, human beings like ourselves. . . . Just as we yearn to live out our own lives in our own ways, so, too, do the Indians, in their ways."
Treuer was writing about the Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) of 1934. It was also known as the Wheeler-Howard Act. There was a lot more to this section, but I wanted to note it here. I'm trying to get caught up on all my reading and blogging, but I'm curious to know more about Collier.
Chapter 2: "Save a Walleye . . . Spear an Indian" became the rallying cry for the many non-Indians who gathered at boat landings to protest against Indians' fishing rights. Indians in Wisconsin were subjected to almost continuous harassment.
Wow. I understand being passionate about your stance, but there's no excuse to abuse others. I could picture the adults who screamed epithets at little Ruby Bridges as she went to school. People can be pretty awful.
Chapter 2: The Mille Lacs - enduring, patient, and stubborn - sued the state of Minnesota.
I'm glad they won in 1990, but I wish it didn't take lawsuits to respect people's legal rights to hunt and fish. I wonder if some of the people fighting the band's rights were jealous.
Chapter 3: "It was a powerful thing. That's how it happened: that's how the reservations broke the BIA, not the other way around. It happened in bits and pieces. Some of it was the civil rights movement. Some of it was a side effect of boarding schools. All those Indians who got sent to boarding schools were supposed to be whitewashed there, but it didn't always happen like that. A lot of them went back to their reservations and they had skills - as carpenters and accountants and farmers. And a lot of the vets from World War II came back. They knew how to operate heavy machinery. They knew how to organize. And all of this combined with Native grit. It changed things."
My father hastened to add: "It sure as shit wasn't AIM that did it. AIM was too polarized and too explosive to build anything. They couldn't build power lines or consensus or community. They just used people. They were all a bunch of Al Sharptons. And you can quote me on that. Make sure that gets in there."
I love when he interviews people and they tell it the way they see it.
Chapter 3: The White Earth Land Settlement Act (WELSA) was passed in 1986 extinguishing the White Earth land claims by retroactively approving the illegal land transfers. In exchange, WELSA provided that the allottees or their heirs would be compensated financially.
Another topic for me to research more thoroughly at a later date.
Chapter 3: He looked at us and looked at his assistant and said to him, "Do something about this, will you?"
I love this! Some men from the tribe approached Hubert Humphrey and told him they applied for CAP money but were told they were too poor to qualify. After this scene in his office, their application was approved. I liked that Humphrey!
Chapter 3: He wrote hundreds of letters to local, regional, and national political figures. Each letter contained a statement about the radio broadcasts and a transcript of Kohl's editorial. And each and every envelope was hand-addressed by Jourdain himself in his neat boarding-school script.
This whole section is so good! I loved the outcome.
Chapter 3: And though to an outsider it might matter little or seem like one small click of the wheel of social justice, it was the first time anyone could remember white people publicly apologizing to Indians not because they wanted to (well-meaning liberals have been apologizing to Indians for close to 500 years) but because they had to.
When people work together, they can make their collective voice heard.
Chapter 3: A cynic might say that after doing away with the corruption, mismanagement, and paternalism of the BIA and government agents, tribes took on the job themselves. . . . despite the design flaws of tribal governmental power on the part of federal and tribal leaders, tribes have managed to grow. With them, tribal courts have also grown.
The author doesn't shy away from writing about the times and ways Indian leadership has been corrupt or ineffective. But he shines a light on the struggle and the positives as well as what hasn't gone right over the last five hundred years.
Chapter 3: We're keeping politics out of government. We're striving for fairness for our own people.
I hope that this continues!
Chapter 4: Then a new Indian counselor showed up at the school: Sean Fahrlander.
The stories and language in this chapter were intense! But I love that the author and some of his peers were powerfully impacted by an Indian man in a leadership position at school. Kids can benefit so much by having adults with whom they can identify.
Chapter 4: George Copway, another earlier chronicler of Indian history, wrote about his own parenting.
This is another person I'd like to learn more about.
Chapter 4: In Beltrami County one in four children lives in poverty; this is the highest rate in the state. At Red Lake, 47 percent of children live in poverty.
As Treuer went on with some of these statistics, I was overwhelmed on behalf of these young people growing up poor and struggling in school. Actually, I think I tagged this initially because one in four is 25%. He says that's the lowest in the state and then goes on to say that 47% in Red Lake are in poverty. I kind of want to ask him to explain himself. The math doesn't make sense. Also, what's the solution for these children?
Chapter 5: . . . the U.S. government all came into conflict with one other over the pleached issues of control and power.
Again, reading the entire sentence aloud almost made my head hurt. What? Do you mean "with one another" or . . . ? And yes, I love learning new words. What is "pleached" ? . . . "Pleaching or plashing is a technique of interweaving living and dead branches through a hedge creating a fence, hedge or lattices." (from Wikipedia)
Chapter 5: In my opinion, everyone should. Send your dollars to Helen (Bryan) Johnson, 60876 County Road 149, Squaw Lake, MN, 56681.
The story of Helen Bryan standing up for herself and the ruling in her case benefiting so many people made me smile. She reportedly said, "if we did so much maybe if every Indian in Minnesota sent us a dollar, we'd be rich!" I'm not an Indian, but I'm tempted to send her money.
Chapter 5: Some say this isn't fair - some Indians get rich while others still don't have a pot to piss in. But in this, Indian country mirrors America nicely: a shrinking middle class, a large underclass, and an elite that controls most of the wealth. So while they may be eating Kobe beef in Mdewakanton and Palm Springs, on most Indian reservations, even those with casinos, they are not. Some reservations have made just enough to provide some employment, pave some roads, build new government offices and new schools - enough to edge toward the middle class. This in itself is a huge accomplishment.
Fairness isn't the point, but I like the comparison between Indians and the rest of the country - a few rich, a shrinking middle class, and a large group of people. We're all in this together.
Chapter 6: But governments really aren't spiteful just to be spiteful. They are like animals - they do what they do out of self-interest. And for many years, Indians were a threat - a constant, powerful, very real, very physical threat - to American imperial expansion.
Interesting perspective. Government as an animal.
Chapter 6: But as bad as the U.S. government has been in its treatment of Indians, sometimes Indians are as bad or even worse to one another. . . . Indians have rules, based on genetics and "blood quantum," that determine whether or not someone is officially an Indian.
Again, I appreciate that the author identifies that sometimes Indians themselves cause difficulties for their community.
Chapter 6: The stunning fact of life for many reservations is that there are more white people living there than Indian people.
Again, I learned a lot reading this book.
Eulogies: Finally, in anger and spite, he picked up every single dog he could coax into the convertible, took down the top, and drove slow circles around the village, singing Johnny Cash so loudly the dogs howled along with him.
The "eulogies" section was filled with stories of people Treuer knew and loved. This story is about "Bumsy," who got drunk and drove around Bena. These stories made me feel as though I knew these people.
Author's Note: Like reservations themselves, this book is a hybrid. It has elements of journalism, history, and memoir. As such it is meant to be suggestive rather than exhaustive.
I like the way Treuer communicates. This was an interesting and thought provoking book.
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