An Anishinaabe Education Reading List (alpha by title)

As of March 2020

Anton Treuer
ASSASSINATION OF HOLE IN THE DAY, THE
Minnesota Historical Society Press (Borealis) 2011
The story of this death and the background, of the killing of Bagone-giizhig the Elder with reference to the Conflict of 1862 and with an epilogue about the leadership vacuum left after his death. Appendices about Ojibwe history and language.

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
AS WE HAVE ALWAYS DONE: INDIGENOUS FREEDOM THROUGH RADICAL RESISTANCE
University of MN Press (2017)  Good quote: “In Nishnaabeg thought, the opposite of dispossession is not possession, but consensual attachment– reestablishing reciprocal recognition, reconnecting to networks of relationships to the land, and reenacting Indigenous relationally and thought.” Book is 320 pp.

Robin Wall Kimmerer
BRAIDING SWEETGRASS: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants.
Milkweed Editions (2013)
Kimmerer teaches us from her knowledge as a botanist as well as her Indigenous wisdom as a Potawatomie woman. She introduces broad ideas such as “animation” and “reciprocity,” and she describes in detail the “honorable harvest” and other very specific ways that humankind could change its behaviors to respect the plant world and the planet in general.

Indian and Northern Affairs, Canada
FIRST NATIONS IN CANADA
Ministry of Indian Affairs, Ottawa, 1997
Details about the fur trade, the Iroquoian First Nations and the First nations of all sections of Canada, first encounters with Europeans, French or English, resurgance and progress into the 1990s. [I have not yet read this title.]

Carolyn Gilman
GRAND PORTAGE STORY, THE
Minnesota Historical Society Press 1992
“A vivid history of 300 years of trade and tradition on Lake Superior’s North Shore.”

Maria Campbell
HALFBREED
(1973) by Maria Campbell, paperback published by the University of Nebraska Press in 1982.
Autobiography of a Metis (“halfbreed”) born in Canada in 1940 telling of her “brutal realities” and how here great grandmother’s “indomitable spirit sustained (her) through her most desperate times.”

David Treuer
HEARTBEAT OF WOUNDED KNEE, THE: Native America from 1890 to the Present, Riverhead Books, NY (2019)
In this comprehensive historical and sociological telling, Treuer melds history with reportage and memoir to explore how the depredations of each era spawned new modes of survival. Again and again the same pattern of seizure of land, again and again legal and political maneuvering. This is a long and essential and still intimate story of resilient people, and it brings us all the way to the current day.

Richard Wagamese
INDIAN HORSE
Douglas and Mcintyre (2012)
Saul Indian Horse has hit bottom. His last binge almost killed him, and now he’s a reluctant resident in a treatment centre for alcoholics, surrounded by people he’s sure will never understand him. But Saul wants peace, and he grudgingly comes to see that he’ll find it only through telling his story.
With compassion and insight, author Richard Wagamese traces through his fictional characters the decline of a culture and a cultural way. For Saul, taken forcibly from the land and his family when he’s sent to residential school, salvation comes for a while through his incredible gifts as a hockey player. But in the harsh realities of 1960s Canada, he battles obdurate racism and the spirit-destroying effects of cultural alienation and displace-ment. Indian Horse unfolds against the bleak loveliness of northern Ontario, all rock, marsh, bog and cedar. Wagamese writes with a spare beauty, penetrating the heart of a remarkable Ojibway man.

Richard Wagamese
EMBERS – a collection of short ideas and essays.  Excellent.  Recommendation by Peggy Anne Smith.

Anton Treuer
LANGUAGE WARRIOR’S MANIFESTO, THE
Minnesota Historical Society Press (2020)
“With candor and humor,” this book “shares excellent tips for language reclamation work—and the deeply personal story of Anton Treuer’s journey in quest of the most precious goal of language. The message is straightforward: the quest requires diligence, commitment, and perseverance. This book will help many who are on the Language Journey.” Review by Inee Slaughter, Executive Director, Indigenous Language Institute, Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Seven Generations
LIFE IS NOT EASY: LAUGHTER MEANS SURVIVAL
(http://www7generations.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/life-is-not-easy1.pdf)
Book is in English and Anishinaabemowin. Features valuable reference to the Jones family—lineage of Billy Magee or Tay-tah-pah-swe-wi-tang in Oberholtzer stories.

Anton Treuer (Editor)
LIVING OUR LANGUAGE; OJIBWE TALES & ORAL HISTORIES
Minnesota Historical Society Press 2001
Collected stories from ten Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) elders, in both the Ojibwe language and English language.

Brenda Childs
MY GRANDFATHER’S KNOCKING STICKS
Minnesota Historical Society Press (2014)
“Ojibwe Family Life and Labor on the Reservation” especially Big Sandy Lake.
While telling her own family’s stories from Red Lake, as well as stories of others, Child examines the disruptions and continuities in daily work, family life, and culture faced by Ojibwe people of her grandparents’ generation—raised in traditional lifeways. Faced with such pressure to adopt new ways, they managed to retain and pass on their Ojibwe identity and culture to their children.

Heid Erdrich
NEW POETS OF NATIVE NATIONS
Gray Wolf Press (2018)
Erdrich has selected poets who published their first poetry books after the year 2000, so this collection highlights contemporary Indigenous writers who are here NOW and not (as some folks assume about Indigenous writers) in the distant or historical past. The book highlights a variety of voices.

Anton Treuer
OJIBWE IN MINNESOTA
Minnesota Historical Society Press 2010
From the MHS Series “The People of Minnesota”.  The author “traces thousands of years of the complicated history of the Ojibwe people”, and includes a personal account from his mother, the state’s first female Indian lawyer.

Thomas Peacock and Marlene Wisuri
OJIBWE WAASA INAABIDAA; WE LOOK IN ALL DIRECTIONS
Afton Historical Society Press 2002
Winona LaDuke calls this book “a story of land-based cultures in Indian Country” and “also an amazing and wondrous set of stories told by those who dearly love their history and peoples – a great gift to us all: the scattered and dispersed leaves of our stories brought together with this generation’s faces and living words.”

(This is a companion book to a 6-part television series with the same title, available from WDSE-TV, PBS-Eight (Duluth, Minnesota) by phone (888-563-9373) or at www.wdse.org .  The program’s educational website can be found at www.ojibwe.org .

Martin Case
RELENTLESS BUSINESS OF TREATIES, THE: How Indigenous Land Became U.S. Property. Minnesota Historical Society Press (2018)

David Treuer
REZ LIFE
Atlantic Monthly Press, NY 2012
“An Indian’s Journey Through Reservation Life” — a history told from the inside out, combining authoritative research along with moving accounts of Treuer’s boyhood and ancestry.

Carl Gawboy and Ron Morton

TALKING SKY, TALKING ROCKS, SHOOTING THE WINTER-MAKER.  Many books by this pair of teacher/writers.  Recommendations by Pebaamibines.

Bob Joseph, Jr.
TWENTY-ONE THINGS YOU MAY NOT KNOW ABOUT THE INDIAN ACT
CBC Books, 2019
Since its creation in 1876, the Indian Act has shaped, controlled, and constrained the lives and opportunities of Indigenous Peoples, and is at the root of many enduring stereotypes. Bob Joseph’s book comes at a key time in the reconciliation process, when awareness from both Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities is at a crescendo. Joseph explains how Indigenous Peoples can step out from under the Indian Act and return to self-government, self-determination, and self-reliance and why doing so would result in a better country for every Canadian.

Kent Nerburn
VOICES IN THE STONES: LIFE LESSONS FROM THE NATIVE WAY
New World Library, Novato, CA (2016)
Starts with a quote from a Shoshone Elder—“Do not begrudge the white man his presence on this land. Though he doesn’t know it yet, he has come here to learn from us.” … “In… deeply touching stories, Nerburn reveals the spiritual awareness that animates all of Native American life, and shows us how we have much to learn from one another if only we have the heart to listen.”

Rick Whaley with Water Bresette
WALLEYE WARRIORS
New Society Publishers, 1994
Foreward by Winona LaDuke
“An Effective Alliance against Racism and for the Earth.” Much about Wisconsin and MN treaty rights in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Bresette writes about coming to leadership as an activist. Resource list, photo illustrations.

Anton Treuer
WARRIOR NATION
Minnesota Historical Society Press 2015
Especially about the Red Lake Ojibwe, includes stories of White Thunderbird, Peter Graves, Roger Jourdain, and stories by Anna Gibbs. Anton calls this a “political history of Red Lake,” organized as chapters that are biographies of leaders at different times.

Vine DeLoria, Jr.

THE WORLD WE USED TO LIVE IN. (Recommendation by Pebaamibines)

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