Always a People: Oral Histories of Contemporary Woodland Indians

by Rita T. Kohn (editor), R. David Edmunds (introduction, editor), William Lynwood Montell (editor)

Forty-one individuals, from seventeen different tribes, representing eleven nations, tell their stories in Always a People. As descendants of people who shaped the history of the North American continent from the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes, the narrators herein continue to feel closely bound to the land from which most of them have been forcibly removed. The eleven nations represented in this volume are the Miami, Potawatomi, Delaware, Shawnee, Peoria, Oneida, Ottawa, Winnebago, Sac and Fox, Chippewa, and Kickapoo. All of the people interviewed here have a very deep and abiding commitment to their families and speak of great-great grandparents as intimately as they do of their parents. All see themselves as real people who do not fit the stereotypes often associated with "native Americans." All speak of the urgency for making room for multiple voices drawn from many traditions.

Genres: Nonfiction, Native American, History

Hardcover

First published October 1, 1997

Reviews

[Wealhtheow · Rating 2 out of 5]

Accompanied by kinda-crappy oil paintings, leaders of Woodland Nations talk about their personal histories and views on their tribes, and what they hope the future holds. The interviews took place in 1994-5, so the leaders are born between 1902 and 1950. They are able to speak from their own experience of forcible removal to Indian boarding schools (designed to speed assimilation with English-speaking, American culture), living through the Depression, and the later resurgence of interest in native languages, beliefs, and practices. This could have been absolutely fascinating, but this book is terribly put together. It isn't organized in any way--the interviews jump from one tribe to the next, from one generation to the next, without rhyme or reason. The editors wanted to preserve the People's exact words and phrasing, but unfortunately this means the interviews come across as rambling and poorly phrased. Oral interviews just don't translate directly to the page. (For example: "In the summer we would always pick strawberries in the strawberry patch, and we would go barefoot. The snake would wind itself around my ankle. It was just a garden snake. The river that runs through the Reserve is a fishing river." What? How do these sentences connect?) It also frustrated me that the interviewers never asked for clarification or further details: many times a subject vaguely mentions something totally fascinating or unexpected, and that's the last we hear about it.

A number of the people interviewed died before the book was even published, so clearly the editors were wise to start this project when they did; just think of how much more would have been lost if they'd waited even another year! There are hints of information here, but so much is vague, or doesn't make sense without context, or isn't expanded upon, that this book is not as useful as it could have been. Still, I was glad to learn a little bit more about the descendents of people who lived from the Atlantic to the Great Lakes. A tidbit I found particularly interesting: following the War of 1812, the Shawnee were removed from Ohio and split into three bands: the Eastern Shawnees, the Absentee Shawnees (so called because they took no part in the allotment of lands in Kansas) and the Loyal Shawnees (because they supported the Union cause during the Civil War).