Anton Treuer

"Based on interviews Treuer conducted with ten elders, this anthology presents the elders' stories transcribed in Ojibwe with English translation on facing pages. Treuer introduces each speaker, offering a brief biography and noting important details concerning dialect or themes; he then allows the stories to speak for themselves. And from them we learn about the distant past."--BOOK JACKET.

"These original stories, written in Anishinaabemowin, delight readers and language learners with the antics of animals who playfully deal with situations familiar to children in all cultures: sharing, picking playmates, ducking out of duties, dancing, and dodging dangers in the big world that surrounds their small lives. Interwoven in the stories are threads of Ojibwe culture, including characters derived from traditional clans."--Page of cover.

For the Ojibwe language to live it must be used for everything every day. In a modern world, dominated by computers, motors, science, mathematics and global issues, the language that has grown to discuss these things is not often taught or thought about by most teachers and students of the language. A group of nine fluent elders representing several different dialects of Ojibwe gathered with teachers from Ojibwe immersion schools and university language programs to document less-well-known modern Ojibwe terminology. Topics discussed include science, medicine, social studies, geography, mathematics, and punctuation. This book is the result of their labors.

Treuer, an Ojibwe scholar and cultural preservationist, answers the most commonly asked questions about American Indians, both historical and modern. He gives a frank, funny, and personal tour of what's up with Indians, anyway.

The Red Lake Nation has a unique and deeply important history. Unlike every other reservation in Minnesota, Red Lake holds its land in common--and, consequently, the tribe retains its entire reservation land base. The people of Red Lake developed the first modern indigenous democratic governance system in the United States, decades before any other tribe, but they also maintained their system of hereditary chiefs. The tribe never surrendered to state jurisdiction over crimes committed on its reservation. The reservation is also home to the highest number of Ojibwe-speaking people in the state. Warrior Nation covers four centuries of the Red Lake Nation’s forceful and assertive tenure on its land. Ojibwe historian and linguist Anton Treuer conducted oral histories with elders across the Red Lake reservation, learning the stories carried by the people. And the Red Lake band has, for the first time, made available its archival collections, including the personal papers of Peter Graves, the brilliant political strategist and tribal leader of the first half of the twentieth century, which tell a startling story about the negotiations over reservation boundaries. This fascinating history offers not only a chronicle of the Red Lake Nation but also a compelling perspective on a difficult piece of U.S. history.

Categorized into eight geographical regions, this encyclopedic reference examines the history, beliefs, traditions, languages, and lifestyles of indigenous peoples of North America.