You likely knew that last year, Minnesota joined fifteen other states in officially recognizing the second Monday of every October as Indigenous Peoples Day. You probably had a pretty good idea of what that meant, too: that rather than celebrating Christopher Columbus (who, in fact, had a history of committing atrocities against Indigenous People), our state would honor Native Americans instead.
Indigenous Peoples Day honors a group of people comprised of many communities, each with its own unique cultures, languages, and histories, and recognizes their contributions to this country and the world. It would be impossible to do that without some knowledge of Native American history and how it continues to shape the current day. That takes more than one Monday in October.
Minnesota is rich with gifted Native American writers, historical experts, and language preservation warriors. This year, we invite you to join us in a longer, more rewarding effort to fully grasp and appreciate Indigenous Peoples Day. Start reading the works of some of Minnesota’s most gifted writers. The literature included in the short list we’ve pulled together below is sure to inform, inspire, and even entertain you.
Nonfiction
Dr. Treuer, raised on the Leech Lake Reservation in Minnesota, is a professor at Bemidji State University in their Department of Languages and Indigenous Studies and the editor of Oshkaabewis Native Journal, “the only academic journal of the Objibwe language.” He has authored nearly two dozen books, including “Everything You Wanted to Know About Indians But Were Afraid to Ask” (which is also available in a Young Adult version) and “Ojibwe in Minnesota,” which was named Minnesota’s Best Read by the Center for the book at the Library of Congress in 2010. His book, “The Language Warrior’s Manifesto: How to Keep Our Languages Alive No Matter the Odds,” was named a 2021 Minnesota Book Award Finalist.
Novel
Minnesota’s Louise Erdrich’s novel, “Love Medicine,” was the only debut novel ever to win the National Book Award. Since then, she has published many works, including “The Night Watchman,” which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. She has also been awarded the Library of Congress Prize in American Fiction, the PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. She was born in Minnesota and owns Birchbark Books in Minneapolis.
Memoir
In this Minnesota Book Award winning memoir, While the Locust Slept, first time author Peter Razor, recounts his early childhood in a state orphanage in the 1930s and life in farm indenture, where he was cut off from his family and culture. Razor also wrote, Wiijiwaaganag: More Than Brothers, a work of historical fiction about life in a northern Minnesota U.S. Government boarding school for Native American children.
Poetry
Westerman, Minnesota’s poet laureate is a professor in the English Department at Minnesota State University, Mankato. “Follow the Blackbirds,” her first book of poetry, was written in Dakota and in English and won a Minnesota Book Award. Throughout its poems, she “reflects on history and family from a unique perspective… to celebrate the long journey along sunflower-lined highways of the tallgrass prairies of the Great Plains…” She also won a second Minnesota Book Award for “Mni Sota Makoce: The Land of the Dakota,” a nonfiction work about the history of the Dakota in Minnesota.
Nonfiction
David Treuer (yes, he and Anton Treuer are brothers) initially gained fame for his works of fiction, including the novels Prudence and The Hiawatha. In Rez Life, he “illuminates misunderstood contemporary issues like sovereignty, treaty rights, and natural-resource conservation” by connecting the dots between years of public policy and the effects on Native American communities. “Through the eyes of students, teachers, government administrators, lawyers, and tribal court judges, he shows how casinos, tribal government, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs have transformed the landscape of Native American life.”