Notice: this is an Indian reserve;

by Frederik Stevenson (Photography), Sheila Erickson, Kent Gooderham (Editor)

"On an Indian reserve everything converges - life, death, birth - the spectrum is always changing. There is a constant pull between the white man's way and the Indian way. Each must find his own."

ISBN# 0887600328

83 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1972

Reviews

[raccoon reader · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book captures the images of reservations in Ottowa. They are stirring and true. The words are just as important. Sparse, and sprinkled only where needed (the pictures say everything you really need to know... the poetry is just icing on the cake) they strike a cord with me. My family was split by the trail of tears- with half removing to Oklahoma and half staying here. My half stayed here. I have never visited my far flung cousins but was told by my mother that up until she was a teen they came down "by the truckload" to visit. I imagine we became as distant and unfathomable to them (as by my mothers generation we had intermarried to the point of blonde hair and blue eyes) as they must have been to us and they stopped coming. I wish they hadn't. As my husband I try to reclaim some of our lost heritage (both of us are descendent of Creek and Cherokee) and imbed it into family values (starting with our wedding ceremony based on traditional wedding ceremonies from those two cultures) I find there are huge gaps. Once someone knew these things. How to be. How to do. How to without incident hand down the culture of our ancestors. But it is lost to us now. Reading books like this stirs something in me to continue to reconnect. The pictures of this book are undeniably poverty stricken and saddening. I am familiar with the plight of those on indian reservations in the US. But there is also something inspiring in the sad pictures. Hope, joy, charity, love, happiness also emerge from the photographs even in dusty, dirty, houses that have more in common with depression era photos I have seen than with what most white houses were like in the 70s.