The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee (pt. 3)
I'm slowly, slowwlllyyyy making my way through this book still. For part three, I thought I thought I'd talk about a nation that I didn't know much about and some war facts. I lived in the Midwest for two years, but am completely unfamiliar with native life in the area. Splitting time between New England and the Southeastern United States growing up, I was pretty familiar with indigenous tribes of those areas and their impact to the culture. The author, David Treuer, is Ojibwe from the Leech Lake Reservation in Northern Minnesota. Many of the tribes in The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee he discusses are from the Midwest and Great Plains. Here's an excerpt that was entirely new to me.
The Menominee, who had arguably lived in the western Great Lakes longer than any other Algonquian tribe, resisted the predations of the U.S. government in their own unique ways. Their tenure in northwestern Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan likely goes back to prehistoric times, unlike the Odawa and Ojibwe, who expanded west and overran them. The name "Menominee," which was given to them by the Ojibwe, means "People of the Wild Rice," which suggests that the Menominee understood the significance of the crop and harvested it extensively long before anyone else did. (170)
So much of our "understanding" about indigenous culture in the Americas is rooted in nothingness at worst and Eurocentrism at best. I can't say that I knew that some tribes were named by other tribes, but it also wasn't surprising. I mean, people still pat themselves on the back for land acknowledgements. These days, I mostly try not to get too overwhelmed in everything that I don't know and try to focus on just learning more.