Rez Life

October 10, 2011
Novelist Treuer (Little) offers an ambitious, impressionistic study of life on Native American reservations. His blending in of the history of his Ojibwe tribe and his own family results in a nuanced view of personal and tribal identity. It’s neither definitive nor a work of full personal disclosure, but it is “the story of the paradoxically least and most American place in the twenty-first century. Welcome to the Rez.” Whether he’s describing the central role of fishing walleye, the region’s signature fish; the Ojibwe’s treaty right fights; or the timeless method for harvesting wild rice, Treuer paints a picture of a vital if economically strained tribal life, deftly supplying historical context to explain how the Mille Lacs, Red Lake, and White Earth reservations came to be and survive. If the stand-alone chapters don’t always flow smoothly into one another, the vignettes—of treaty rights fishing activists; of how casinos have changed economic life on the rez; how his mother, a tribal judge, dispensed justice; how an Ojibwe language teacher ensured the viability of the tribal language for another generation; and most powerfully, how Treuer’s grandfather’s suicide left the family reeling—bring the world and personalities of the rez to vivid, heartrending life.

September 1, 2011

Noted for his fiction about Native American life (e.g., The Hiawatha) and himself a member of the Ojibwe, Pushcart Prize winner Treuer here details life on the reservation, explaining sovereignty, treaty rights, and natural-resource conservation while also assessing charged issues from casinos to preservation of Native American culture. An important resource well worth investigating.

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 1, 2012

Treuer (The Translation of Dr. Apelles), a prize-winning writer of fiction and member of Minnesota's Ojibwe tribe, has fashioned a compelling work of nonfiction, knitting together his own personal narrative, the perspectives of friends and family, and the complex history of reservations and Native and non-Native relations. The result is at once sweeping in its historical and political scope and deeply personal and engaging. Treuer's prose can be both thoughtful and sardonic, occasionally at the same time, and his treatment of the history and policy that have shaped contemporary reservation life is never academic. Instead, he uses history to illustrate how decisions made decades, even centuries, ago still have an impact on the lives of individuals and families. He introduces individuals who defy the traditional stereotypes of Native people and is at his best when focusing on personal narratives. The book is affectionate, but unsparing, and exposes the beauty and devastation of reservation life while exploring those areas where the personal and the political converge--in treaty rights, hunting and fishing rights, law enforcement, tribal justice systems, among others. VERDICT A look into Native life from a Native perspective, this is recommended for anyone interested in how history has shaped Native people and the ways in which Native peoples are shaping their future.--Julie Edwards, Univ. of Montana Libs., Missoula

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 15, 2011
In a book that is part memoir, part journalistic exposé and part cultural history, novelist Treuer (The Translation of Dr. Apelles, 2008, etc.) offers a movingly plainspoken account of reservation life. The author intertwines stories of growing up on the shores of the Lake Leech Ojibwe reservation in Minnesota with those of the Ojibwe people and other Native American tribes. Treuer writes that "[m]ost often rez life is associated with tragedy"; at the same time, he notes that it is also shot through with pride and a profound love of tradition. Alternating between personal recollections of unforgettable "rez" personalities—e.g., tribal police officers, rice-gatherers and fishermen—and sharp-eyed historical analyses of events in Native American history, the author sheds light on aspects of Indian culture closed to most non-Natives. He speaks candidly about the "comforting trouble" he finds at the heart of his own mixed-race family and the perennial problems of alcoholism, poverty and crime facing reservation dwellers everywhere. Treuer also delves into the issues surrounding Native American sovereignty and treaty rights, examining the inhumane—and sometimes genocidal—government policies that have led to the systematic abuse, exploitation and disenfranchisement of Native Americans. The author soundly critiques tribal governments as well, focusing in particular on the corruption and cronyism that characterizes so many of them. For most of these entities, "there is no balance of power; on the contrary power is very much out of balance." That Treuer is one of a few Native Americans to have made it out of the "rez" only adds to the book's poignancy. He examines a culture that is in crisis, but persists, even thrives, with enduring grit and courage. Powerful, important reading.

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December 1, 2011
Treuer (The Translation of Dr. Apelles, 2006), an Ojibwa who grew up on the Leech Lake Reservation in Minnesota, has written eloquently about the contemporary Native American experience in his three novels. In this brilliant amalgam of historical research and personal memoir, he presents a compelling and elucidating discourse on how reservations began, and what he sees for their future. The modern reservation was born, he says, with the Indian Appropriation Act of 1851, when government policy involved containment and removal. Even so, contained tribes still held rights from earlier treaties to hunt, fish, and harvest timber on their ceded territory, leading to multiple court rulings over the years. Treuer enlivens his historical discussions of these issuesas well as Indian housing, mandatory Indian boarding schools, Indian activism, and the multiple effects of casinoswith present-day interviews with friends, family, teachers, BIA officials, lawyers, and tribal-court judges. No mere litany of Native American achievements and losses over the past 150 years, Treuer's account reads like a novel, brimming with characters, living and dead, who bring his tribe's history to life.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)