Rez Life: An Indian's Journey Through Reservation Life by David Treuer Page B
Authors: David Treuer
Ads: Link
Minnesota lord of all he surveyed. Today, in a squalid settlement near Isle, Minn., near Lake Mille Lacs, 60 members of that once famed tribe attempt to eke out an existence on a rocky, 40-acre hillside unfit for cultivation. Their settlement consists of 11 tarpaper shacks, many of them floorless. Most of them cook, eat and sleep in the same room. Their total income is about $414 a month, or around $7 apiece.” Within two years twenty-five Mille Lacs Indians would be serving in every theater of World War II—Guam, Iwo Jima, North Africa, Italy, and later Normandy and Belgium—while at home their families were starving. By contrast, though life was hardly easy for them, the Indians who agreed to move to White Earth Reservation (from reservations in Minnesota, North Dakota, and Wisconsin) had schools, businesses, homesteads, and their own newspaper. But that door closed in the 1920s—even if they’d wanted to, those from Mille Lacs and elsewhere couldn’t have moved to White Earth any longer and received any kind of allotments or assistance. Even so, fifty years later the move to White Earth seemed to many to be not that bad an idea.
Sean’s family bears the mark of each and every one of the cataclysmic shifts that make up the story of Mille Lacs Reservation. In the 1880s, during the allotment period when Mille Lacs Indians were encouraged to move to the newly established White Earth Reservation, many left. There were promises of homesteads, farming equipment, seeds, blacksmith shops, schools, and churches. All of these were fine incentives. White Earth also provided a fresh start. Sean’s great-grandfather John Shingobee (southern Ojibwe for spruce) didn’t leave Mille Lacs, but John’s brother Tom did. “Some say there was an argument about a trapline,” explained Sean. “They say Tom might have killed a man. Others say it was over a woman. Maybe you should just say ‘There were reasons to leave’ and leave it at that.” Tom’s daughter Josephine was Sean’s grandmother. Tom Hill was the first chief at Mille Lacs elected under the Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) government in 1934. He was hit by a train on the way to a ceremony at Lake Lena. By the time Sean’s mother, Bonnie, was born to Frank Shingobee and Josephine Hill, times were tough. Josephine was left to raise her children on her own. She drank a lot. The county nurse and missionaries interceded, took Bonnie away from her, and moved to White Earth to start a mission. So even though that branch of the family didn’t relocate, Bonnie ended up at White Earth anyway. And it was there at White Earth, and Minneapolis and Duluth, that she raised her eight children—John, Dawn, Denise, Dana, Jay, Marc, Sean, and Mike. Bonnie didn’t live at Mille Lacs until she came there to work at the casino in the late 1990s. Her children grew up mostly at White Earth.
2
It’s fair to say that most Indians didn’t know about the treaty rights they had for the first half of the twentieth century. Until 1934 most reservations were still controlled by the Bureau of Indian Affairs ( BIA), Indian agents, and missions. Tribal government was often a matter of coping with unilateral federal policy—gradual, democratic change was a luxury that most tribal governments didn’t have. On many reservations that had been allotted and fractured by the Nelson Act and the Dawes Act and opened up to white business interests, such as logging and mining, Indians struggled to survive. With Indian boarding schools in place, Indian parents didn’t even have control over the destiny of their children, much less an understanding of or energy to fight for their treaty rights. Nor did Indians even have their own lawyers. The county nurse, social workers, missionaries, and Indian agents occupied their attention, as did the constant search for food on a dwindling land base. Life was largely an issue of mean survival until 1934.
With the passage of the Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) in
Sean’s family bears the mark of each and every one of the cataclysmic shifts that make up the story of Mille Lacs Reservation. In the 1880s, during the allotment period when Mille Lacs Indians were encouraged to move to the newly established White Earth Reservation, many left. There were promises of homesteads, farming equipment, seeds, blacksmith shops, schools, and churches. All of these were fine incentives. White Earth also provided a fresh start. Sean’s great-grandfather John Shingobee (southern Ojibwe for spruce) didn’t leave Mille Lacs, but John’s brother Tom did. “Some say there was an argument about a trapline,” explained Sean. “They say Tom might have killed a man. Others say it was over a woman. Maybe you should just say ‘There were reasons to leave’ and leave it at that.” Tom’s daughter Josephine was Sean’s grandmother. Tom Hill was the first chief at Mille Lacs elected under the Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) government in 1934. He was hit by a train on the way to a ceremony at Lake Lena. By the time Sean’s mother, Bonnie, was born to Frank Shingobee and Josephine Hill, times were tough. Josephine was left to raise her children on her own. She drank a lot. The county nurse and missionaries interceded, took Bonnie away from her, and moved to White Earth to start a mission. So even though that branch of the family didn’t relocate, Bonnie ended up at White Earth anyway. And it was there at White Earth, and Minneapolis and Duluth, that she raised her eight children—John, Dawn, Denise, Dana, Jay, Marc, Sean, and Mike. Bonnie didn’t live at Mille Lacs until she came there to work at the casino in the late 1990s. Her children grew up mostly at White Earth.
2
It’s fair to say that most Indians didn’t know about the treaty rights they had for the first half of the twentieth century. Until 1934 most reservations were still controlled by the Bureau of Indian Affairs ( BIA), Indian agents, and missions. Tribal government was often a matter of coping with unilateral federal policy—gradual, democratic change was a luxury that most tribal governments didn’t have. On many reservations that had been allotted and fractured by the Nelson Act and the Dawes Act and opened up to white business interests, such as logging and mining, Indians struggled to survive. With Indian boarding schools in place, Indian parents didn’t even have control over the destiny of their children, much less an understanding of or energy to fight for their treaty rights. Nor did Indians even have their own lawyers. The county nurse, social workers, missionaries, and Indian agents occupied their attention, as did the constant search for food on a dwindling land base. Life was largely an issue of mean survival until 1934.
With the passage of the Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) in
Similar Books
