Review by New York Times Review
American Indian reservations account for 2.3 percent of the country's land. Indian gambling revenues are $14 billion annually, and male life expectancy among Indians is 64 years. Acoma Pueblo has been continuously occupied since the 12th century. The Cherokee owned black slaves until Emancipation. And in 1780, Frederick the Great released "a great number of sturgeons in Lake Gardno in Pomerania." These are among the varied and variously relevant facts strewn throughout Treuer's survey of life on American reservations. The details about sturgeon aren't entirely random - they relate, however tangentially, to Treuer's discussion of treaty rights and the battle to control the waterways of the upper Midwest. But it's an example of the kind of fat that slows this otherwise admirable amalgam of history, memoir and polemic, and that heightens the frustration when Treuer gives short shrift to his most interesting subject - his family. The book's most riveting and pertinent scenes show Treuer cleaning up after his grandfather's suicide by gunshot; his Ojibwe mother, who rose from penniless rez girl to judge, presiding in court; his Jewish father marching a delegation, unannounced, into Vice President Hubert Humphrey's office to demand a share of War on Poverty funds (Humphrey granted the request). Treuer offers a kaleidoscopic view of reservation life but loses his way in pursuit of Everymen who illustrate points in his thematic outline. One hopes for a sequel that fulfills the promise extended here - a more vivid book that sticks closer to home.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [July 8, 2012]
Review by Booklist Review
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 issues as well as Indian housing, mandatory Indian boarding schools, Indian activism, and the multiple effects of casinos with 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.--Donovan, Deborah Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
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. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Treuer's story is more a history of broken promises by the U.S. government in their dealings with Native Americans than a recounting of his early years growing up on an Ojibwe Indian reservation in Leech Lake, MN. Legal battles over jurisdiction rights regarding property use, gaming licenses, tribal justice, casino management, and other issues continue to challenge Indian autonomy on reservations today. Controversial blood quantum laws, particularly as applied to the Cherokee Freedmen, are fully explained and argued by the author. Actor Peter Berkrot does a fine job carrying the author's voice, though at times he hits the last word of a sentence a la William Shatner. VERDICT Recommended for listeners interested in Native American history and seeking a clarification of how contemporary problems were forged by past events. ["A look into Native life from a Native perspective...for anyone interested in how history has shaped Native people and the ways in which Native peoples are shaping their future," read the review of the Atlantic Monthly hc, LJ 2/1/12.-Ed.]-Deb West, Gannon Univ. Lib., Erie, PA (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
