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Holding Our World Together: Ojibwe Women and the Survival of the Community
A groundbreaking exploration of the remarkable women in Native American communities
In this well-researched and deeply felt account, Brenda J. Child, a professor and a member of the Red Lake Ojibwe tribe, gives Native American women their due, detailing the many ways in which they have shaped Native American life. She illuminates the lives of women such as Madeleine Cadotte, who became a powerful mediator between her people and European fur traders, and Gertrude Buckanaga, whose postwar community activism in Minneapolis helped bring many Indian families out of poverty. Moving from the early days of trade with Europeans through the reservation era and beyond, Child offers a powerful tribute to the courageous women who sustained Native American communities through the darkest challenges of the past three centuries.
In this well-researched and deeply felt account, Brenda J. Child, a professor and a member of the Red Lake Ojibwe tribe, gives Native American women their due, detailing the many ways in which they have shaped Native American life. She illuminates the lives of women such as Madeleine Cadotte, who became a powerful mediator between her people and European fur traders, and Gertrude Buckanaga, whose postwar community activism in Minneapolis helped bring many Indian families out of poverty. Moving from the early days of trade with Europeans through the reservation era and beyond, Child offers a powerful tribute to the courageous women who sustained Native American communities through the darkest challenges of the past three centuries.
240 pages, Hardcover
First published February 16, 2012
37 people are currently reading
950 people want to read
About the author
Brenda J. Child
20 books29 followersBrenda J. Child is Northrop Professor and Chair of the Department of American Studies
at the University of Minnesota, and former Chair of the Department of American Indian
Studies. She is the author of several books in American Indian history including
Boarding School Seasons: American Indian Families, 1900-1940 (1998), which won the North American Indian Prose Award; Holding Our World Together: Ojibwe Women and the Survival of Community (2012); Indian Subjects: Hemispheric Perspectives on the History of Indigenous Education (with Brian Klopotek, 2014). Her 2014 book My Grandfather’s Knocking Sticks: Ojibwe Family Life and Labor on the Reservation won the American Indian Book Award and the Best Book in Midwestern History Award.
She is a member of the Board of Trustees of the National Museum of the American Indian-Smithsonian and past-president of the Native American & Indigenous Studies
Association. Child was born on the Red Lake Ojibwe Reservation in northern Minnesota
where she is a member of a committee writing a new constitution for the 12,000-member nation.
at the University of Minnesota, and former Chair of the Department of American Indian
Studies. She is the author of several books in American Indian history including
Boarding School Seasons: American Indian Families, 1900-1940 (1998), which won the North American Indian Prose Award; Holding Our World Together: Ojibwe Women and the Survival of Community (2012); Indian Subjects: Hemispheric Perspectives on the History of Indigenous Education (with Brian Klopotek, 2014). Her 2014 book My Grandfather’s Knocking Sticks: Ojibwe Family Life and Labor on the Reservation won the American Indian Book Award and the Best Book in Midwestern History Award.
She is a member of the Board of Trustees of the National Museum of the American Indian-Smithsonian and past-president of the Native American & Indigenous Studies
Association. Child was born on the Red Lake Ojibwe Reservation in northern Minnesota
where she is a member of a committee writing a new constitution for the 12,000-member nation.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 46 reviews
October 11, 2023
A bit stiff, but that happens when you have facts and figures to explain.
I loved hearing about the community based living and the nature based order of things. Having the women being so important without being forced behind the men was Wonderful.
I loved hearing about the community based living and the nature based order of things. Having the women being so important without being forced behind the men was Wonderful.
October 6, 2019
I chose this book when I was looking for Native American history written by a Native American. I wanted something readable but academic, with a close focus on one region or one tribe. Dr. Child’s book was a good answer.
It offers a nuanced, in-depth history that shows how the Ojibwe —and particularly Ojibwe women—survived, adapted, and continued to be a cohesive people from the fur trade era through almost to the present day, even as Americans took land from them, disrupted their livelihoods for our own profit, and actively tried to erase their culture. Child cites journals and letters and interviews with Ojibwe women throughout the book, and they sound SO ALIVE that it makes me want to seek out oral histories and correspondence and read them myself.
It offers a nuanced, in-depth history that shows how the Ojibwe —and particularly Ojibwe women—survived, adapted, and continued to be a cohesive people from the fur trade era through almost to the present day, even as Americans took land from them, disrupted their livelihoods for our own profit, and actively tried to erase their culture. Child cites journals and letters and interviews with Ojibwe women throughout the book, and they sound SO ALIVE that it makes me want to seek out oral histories and correspondence and read them myself.
February 13, 2014
Very interesting book. I am so thoroughly disgusted with the treatment of the Indians. We stole everything they had. Well, with the advent of the casinos they are getting their revenge - taking the white man's money - lol! Seriously tho, the Indians were extremely industrious and lived very well with their distribution of labor and providing for their families and tribes. It's really quite amazing - until the white man came and forced them to change and do things in the "white" way. Men and women had shared the responsibilities of providing; each with their own duties and it had always worked from their time beginning. Then their world fell apart.
My daughter in law's family is of the Red Hill tribe of Ojibwe near the tip of Lake Superior. In about 1950 her grandmother's children (Alissa's mother, aunts and uncles) were taken away to be "raised Catholic". It was only a few years ago that the whole story came out and the family was reunited. This was not an uncommon story and it's so heartbreaking.
The only reason I rated it 4 stars is I would have liked a little more detailed map and pictures would have been wonderful.
My daughter in law's family is of the Red Hill tribe of Ojibwe near the tip of Lake Superior. In about 1950 her grandmother's children (Alissa's mother, aunts and uncles) were taken away to be "raised Catholic". It was only a few years ago that the whole story came out and the family was reunited. This was not an uncommon story and it's so heartbreaking.
The only reason I rated it 4 stars is I would have liked a little more detailed map and pictures would have been wonderful.
April 14, 2024
Read this book for class.
February 16, 2012
Note: Advance Reader Copy provided by Netgalley.
Holding Our Worlds Together is less of a microhistory than I was expecting. Although there is a tight focus on the history of the Ojibwe tribe, Child also covers a large period of time in relatively few pages. This might have made it impossible to understand who the Ojibwe were as people (as opposed to historical figures), except that Child has an excellent grasp of when and what kinds of personal accounts to include in an otherwise fact-to-fact kind of narrative.
The personal accounts do more than just add spice to a historical narrative, they allow the author to include opinions and feelings that people had at the time they occurred. Child has done an excellent job of realistically representing the Ojibwe and their trials within a compact narrative. Perhaps my only complaint is that it is a bit too short, as I would have enjoyed spending more time with the subject.
Holding Our Worlds Together is less of a microhistory than I was expecting. Although there is a tight focus on the history of the Ojibwe tribe, Child also covers a large period of time in relatively few pages. This might have made it impossible to understand who the Ojibwe were as people (as opposed to historical figures), except that Child has an excellent grasp of when and what kinds of personal accounts to include in an otherwise fact-to-fact kind of narrative.
The personal accounts do more than just add spice to a historical narrative, they allow the author to include opinions and feelings that people had at the time they occurred. Child has done an excellent job of realistically representing the Ojibwe and their trials within a compact narrative. Perhaps my only complaint is that it is a bit too short, as I would have enjoyed spending more time with the subject.
October 7, 2011
I got an early copy of this book - and have personal interest in it as I have Ojibwe background...but have rather mixed feelings about the book. There is a lot of good and interesting information in the book, but it is not lain out very well, and the theme of Ojibwe women holding everything together is rather thinly supported. This should have just been a book about this time in history about the Ojibwe and fur trading and such - with a chapter or section on the role of women, because trying to make the whole book about it doesn't fly. That said - I found most of the book well researched and enlightening and enjoyable, but not a complete success.
December 7, 2024
In somewhat less than 200 pages of narrative text Child provides the reader with two things. The first is an explanation of the cultural, social, and spiritual context in which Ojibwe women played a significant role in their nation’s efforts to adapt to the intrusion of Euroamericans into their world. The second is a wide array of engaging, at times even heroic personal stories of individual women ‘holding our world together’ in the face of enormous pressures.
She accomplishes this by integrating an impressive number of primary and secondary sources into a readable, largely direct prose. Timely quotations nicely underscore the points she makes. There are also 2 detailed maps at the beginning of the book which help a reader put the information she subsequently provides into a geographical context.
As with any scholarly book the author gives references in the narrative with 18 pages of notes at the end. There is an 18 page bibliography which is nicely organized according to topical areas. Additionally, there is an index for readers who might wish to review particular topics or individuals after they have completed the book.
There are two modest flaws with Holding. First, her introductory chapter places the Ojibwe in the context of the trends in Native American history. Readers unfamiliar with these more general patterns may find this information to be so succinct as to be on the superficial side. Second, the chapter on boarding schools fails to describe in sufficient depth the extent to which these were destructive of Native American culture and harmful, far too often deadly at times to the children living there. A few more sentences at various points in these two parts of the book would have added more relevant substance to it while still keeping it at around 200 pages in length.
Overall anyone wanting to learn about the important role women have played in this Native American nation will find it worth reading. Additionally, I came away with a few more books to read.
Another informative book about NA women is this one:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
She accomplishes this by integrating an impressive number of primary and secondary sources into a readable, largely direct prose. Timely quotations nicely underscore the points she makes. There are also 2 detailed maps at the beginning of the book which help a reader put the information she subsequently provides into a geographical context.
As with any scholarly book the author gives references in the narrative with 18 pages of notes at the end. There is an 18 page bibliography which is nicely organized according to topical areas. Additionally, there is an index for readers who might wish to review particular topics or individuals after they have completed the book.
There are two modest flaws with Holding. First, her introductory chapter places the Ojibwe in the context of the trends in Native American history. Readers unfamiliar with these more general patterns may find this information to be so succinct as to be on the superficial side. Second, the chapter on boarding schools fails to describe in sufficient depth the extent to which these were destructive of Native American culture and harmful, far too often deadly at times to the children living there. A few more sentences at various points in these two parts of the book would have added more relevant substance to it while still keeping it at around 200 pages in length.
Overall anyone wanting to learn about the important role women have played in this Native American nation will find it worth reading. Additionally, I came away with a few more books to read.
Another informative book about NA women is this one:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
January 5, 2018
Brenda Child's history of Ojibwe women is enlightening and informative. She starts with a history of Anishinaabe people immigrating from the St. Lawrence region of Quebec to the Great Lakes around the mid 1600s and follows the gender dynamics of the Ojibwe peoples in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan until about 1970. She is a talented historian illuminating helpful points from primary sources and interviews conducted by herself. She breaks her history into 6 chapters, each roughly focused on a different location. I especially enjoyed her writing on more recent history. That being said, her writing on the 1700 and 1800s was concise despite wading through dates and treaties. Child's chapters on the Ojibwe during the Great Depression were a perfect mix of personal interviews and government documents--producing a history of high level government decisions strengthened by first accounts of Ojibwe living their lives throughout the difficulty. I highly recommend this neat tome to anyone looking to bulk up on their history of Native peoples especially in the northern Midwest!
Read
November 19, 2021An important read. This helped me better understand the Ojibwe history in the Great Lakes Region (where I live) in an informative way. Public school education in the 90's did a poor job of teaching me actual history and I am trying to play catch up now as an adult.
This book:
-Gave me a better understanding of the significance of Madeline Island during the fur trade and other periods in history (I live very close to this area)
-Wild rice harvesting has historically been the responsibility of women
Now, for the awful parts:
-Approximately 400 Ojibwe, or 12% of the Ojibwe population were wiped out during the Sandy Lake Tragedy.
-I put two and two together to realize Ramsey County, MN was named after Governor Ramsey. He was the one who signed The Removal Order of 1850. The U.S. govt. has so much blood on their hands. The fact that this county is named after this man feels... heavy.
This book:
-Gave me a better understanding of the significance of Madeline Island during the fur trade and other periods in history (I live very close to this area)
-Wild rice harvesting has historically been the responsibility of women
Now, for the awful parts:
-Approximately 400 Ojibwe, or 12% of the Ojibwe population were wiped out during the Sandy Lake Tragedy.
-I put two and two together to realize Ramsey County, MN was named after Governor Ramsey. He was the one who signed The Removal Order of 1850. The U.S. govt. has so much blood on their hands. The fact that this county is named after this man feels... heavy.
May 10, 2024
Brenda Child is a professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota. Previously, I had read her book on Native American Boarding Schools, BOARDING SCHOOL SEASONS, and found it quite enlightening. This short book takes a look at the role of Ojibwe women took from before the French came to North America to becoming a more urbanized people in the late 20th Century. She picks six key places and times and explores through the lives of individual women how they dealt with the transitions in their lives as they moved from being their own people to one that was intertwined with European Americans. For most women, there were changes in how they had to negotiate and start up new roles in keeping their communities together. It is a clearly written, sympathetic history of Ojibwe women, of which she is one. A book worth reading for a good overview of Ojibwe history, a nation that spans from North Dakota in the west to the northern shores of Lake Huron in the east.
December 10, 2018
Learned a ton, which will be boringly unsurprising as a person who attended K-12 public schools in the US and ought to have gotten at least a tiny glimpse of this history prior to now. I enjoyed the blending of oral history accounts, photographic evidence, primary sources from co-ops of inter-tribal economic groups, and treaty documents. The gendered water rights of the Ojibwe women were particularly interesting to learn about. And I was left deeply disappointed by the government's skill and will to choke off a thriving indigenous practice (such as wild rice grain harvesting) just to pick it up through regulatory frameworks, licensing, and corporatization totally divorced from the historic and sustainable practices that used to define it.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 23, 2024
Overall, this was an excellent and concise history of the Ojibwe people. As a non-Indian transplant to Minneapolis, this book gave me much needed historical, geographical, and political context for the Ojibwe community. In regards to its focus on Ojibwe women, I wanted just a little more; either more information or more acknowledgment of the lack of available source material. Outside of the final chapter, the focus on Ojibwe women felt sparsely thrown in and less intentional than the title lead on (so Penguin Books, my beef is with you).
October 30, 2023
4.5 stars I learned a lot from this book about Ojibwe life in and around the Great Lakes region and especially Minnesota.
It was good to read from the Native perspective. After reading Killers of the Flower Moon and this book, it is heartbreaking to see how individual people and systems have taken advantage of Native Americans over a very long period of time.
It was good to read from the Native perspective. After reading Killers of the Flower Moon and this book, it is heartbreaking to see how individual people and systems have taken advantage of Native Americans over a very long period of time.
May 28, 2022
Great overview and research of Ojibwe women's history, from Ojibwe heritage stories to wild rice economy and customs, to women's roles in the fur trade, to their role in urban indigenous communities in Minneapolis in the 60s and 70s.
November 30, 2022
A well written book by an Ojibwe woman about the way Ojibwe people lived, specifically women, and the impact that policies enacted by the United States had on them. Great true story about the resilience and success of the Ojibwe community.
February 22, 2023
A highly engaging read that approaches Ojibwe history from a human perspective that combines ethnography, oral history, and historical sources in an understandable way.
A must read for anyone living in Minnesota.
A must read for anyone living in Minnesota.
November 14, 2024
🎧 Audiobook 🎧
A short and very informative study of the role Ojibwe women played within their tribe during different historical time periods. It was academic but still very readable! A stronger conclusion would have been nice.
A short and very informative study of the role Ojibwe women played within their tribe during different historical time periods. It was academic but still very readable! A stronger conclusion would have been nice.
March 18, 2019
An important chance to read about Ojibwa women as written by an Ojibwa woman.
May 16, 2021
A great introduction to Ojibwe history over the last 300 years with an important focus on women’s essential contributions that are often invisible.
November 17, 2021
Required reading for a class, but I highly recommend this book for anyone in Michigan. Chapter 5 was especially important.
to-read-find
March 9, 2023Who recommended this book to me: Interest in reading entire series curated by Calloway, first discovered at Smithsonian
May 6, 2023
this book was v dense but v good - learned a lot
October 15, 2023
Great comprehensive history of Native studies in the Great lakes region
November 22, 2023
Fantastic narrative of Ojibwe women and how the generations formed us, I love it!
March 4, 2024
Rather dry and sad. But I did like the way women were portrayed, how strong, adaptable and hardworking they are.
July 29, 2024
as someone who is interested in Leech Lake and Ojibwe history and grew up going to leech lake 4 times yearly to visit family, this book was amazing and so so impactful
November 11, 2024
A fantastic book! It's powerful to read about the Ojibwe peoples respect for women's unique skills and knowledge.
May 3, 2021
Very well-written and a great source to learn about the contribution of Ojibwe women in their own communities development!!
Doing academic research on Louise Erdrich (who happens to be an Ojibwe member) books and this was an important read and an eye-opener!
Doing academic research on Louise Erdrich (who happens to be an Ojibwe member) books and this was an important read and an eye-opener!
May 1, 2012
A captivating historical look at the Ojibwes who settled around the Mississippi and Lake Superior regions of the United States. Ms. Child presents a view of women's roles over time, chronicling physical changes in geography from early settlements, to reservations, and on to urban areas, as well as familial changes over time. An important view for women's studies, this collection of research demonstrates how the Ojibwe women, with children in tow, took charge of the wild rice economy, became interpreters and wives of fur traders, and entered into industrial occupations as tribal life diminished. "Even the earliest Ojibwe women who married fur traders worked to maintain the relationships that took place on the middle ground and 'remain consonant with indigenous behavioral standards,' because their children, extended family, and community depended on the ability of traders to procure goods and services and affirm alliances with indigenous people of the Great Lakes region." (p.49) Tribal and religious practices too, remained constant up to a point and then melded with , or became disrupted by, Christianity over time.
Soon, the cultivation of wild rice within the waters of the Great Lakes became a political issue requiring licensing. During the Great Depression, a "steady stream of whites" was noted entering the wild rice beds. "They have been greedy and paid no attention to the natural laws regarding the plants reproduction. As a result, many of the better wild rice beds have been ruined by whites gathering the crop in an immature state." (p.115)
The clash of cultures is something Ms. Child notes carefully, calling upon research and notes by various professionals and people living in the areas.
I was struck by the Ojibwe's perseverance and struggle for cultural survival throughout the 1800's, 1900's(reservation time), to the present day of urban migration. This tribal community, like many others, found itself victimized by treaties never honored, pushed onto reservations of dwindling sizes, and taxed unfairly as other "predators" wished them gone.
Ms. Child does an excellent job of presenting the necessary research for her historical presentation here. She remains objective, even as the truths of change and mistreatment emerge clearly for the reader. Her mission is well accomplished through it all; she beautifully illustrates the importance of Ojibwe women in the economic and social survival of the tribe, many of whose members continue to live in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan today.
Soon, the cultivation of wild rice within the waters of the Great Lakes became a political issue requiring licensing. During the Great Depression, a "steady stream of whites" was noted entering the wild rice beds. "They have been greedy and paid no attention to the natural laws regarding the plants reproduction. As a result, many of the better wild rice beds have been ruined by whites gathering the crop in an immature state." (p.115)
The clash of cultures is something Ms. Child notes carefully, calling upon research and notes by various professionals and people living in the areas.
I was struck by the Ojibwe's perseverance and struggle for cultural survival throughout the 1800's, 1900's(reservation time), to the present day of urban migration. This tribal community, like many others, found itself victimized by treaties never honored, pushed onto reservations of dwindling sizes, and taxed unfairly as other "predators" wished them gone.
Ms. Child does an excellent job of presenting the necessary research for her historical presentation here. She remains objective, even as the truths of change and mistreatment emerge clearly for the reader. Her mission is well accomplished through it all; she beautifully illustrates the importance of Ojibwe women in the economic and social survival of the tribe, many of whose members continue to live in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan today.
June 14, 2012
I’ve been listening to the audio version of this book, and although it has something of an academic bent, I can recommend it for general consumption because it’s essentially a social history and easy to follow. The narration is pleasant and unobtrusive. There is something additionally interesting about hearing Ojibwe names for things spoken, and not just written. After a while I knew what some of the words meant without translation, and that was kind of cool. Some of the history recounted will sound familiar, because it happened to all North American Indian nations: broken treaties, forced relocation, attempted genocide, allotment, extreme poverty. Child gives many anecdotes (I wished there were more statistics; maybe the printed version has tables I missed in the audio) that flesh out these aspects of Ojibwe experience. And she does it without political vitriol or rhetoric. The facts speak for themselves. And there were a few surprises: the cooperative nature of early relations with settlers; what really went on with the push to send Ojibwe children to boarding schools; and the ways gender roles changed after the Federal government got involved in Ojibwe wild rice collection. Speaking of which, all I learned about wild rice and maple sugar collection got me interested enough that I contacted the Ojibwe (http://www.lldrm.org/fisheries/foodsa...) to find out if I could buy some of their rice and syrup. The book is repetitive in places, and sometimes tries too hard to frame the information within an academic argument. But the book inspired me to reach out beyond it’s paper walls. I’d say that’s a compliment to the author and the eye-opening experience she helps the reader live.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 46 reviews