To Be the Main Leaders of Our People

• By: Rebecca Kugel
• Format: Paperback, 227 pages, 6 in. x 9 in.
• Publisher: Michigan State University Press
• Usually ships in: 1 to 3 business days
• ISBN: 0870134310

In the spring of 1868, people from several Ojibwe villages located along the upper Mississipi River were relocated to a vew reservation at White Earth, more than 100 miles to the west. In many public declarations that accompanied their forced migration, these people appeared to embrace the move, as well as their conversion to Christianity and the new agrarian lifestyle imposed on them. Beneath this surface piety and apparent acceptance of change, however, lay deep and bitter political divisions that were to define fundamental struggles that shaped Ojibwe society for several generations.

In this volume, the Ojibwe "speak for themselves," as their words were recorded by government officials, Christian missionaries, fur traders, soldiers, lumbermen, homesteaders, and journalists. While they were nearly always recorded in English translation, Ojibwe thoughts, perceptions, concerns, and even humor clearly emerge. This book expands the parameters of how oral traditions cn be used in historical writing and sheds new light on a complex, but critical, series of events in ongoing relations between Native and non-Native people.