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The Cultural Toolbox: Traditional Ojibwe Living in the Modern World
Variations in Ojibwe cultural practices are as diverse as the territory they have called home. But throughout Ojibwe country, the people have—against all odds—maintained a dazzling array of deep, beautiful, adaptive ways of connecting and relating to the spiritual, natural, and human beings of these places. Like every other culture, Ojibwe culture has changed over time. These changes have always followed a distinct path, reflecting an identifiably Ojibwe worldview. While the world around, in, and connected to Ojibwe spaces continues to envelop a myriad of cultures and peoples, the Ojibwe have found a way to stay recognizable to their ancestors.
Anton Treuer provides the personal stories of one Ojibwe family's hunting, gathering, harvesting, and cultural practices and beliefs—without violating protected secrets. This insider's view of the Ojibwe world reflects a relatable, modern, richly experienced connection to the rest of the planet. It also opens up a new way of understanding these living traditions, which carry thousands of years of cultural knowledge still in the making.
Anton Treuer provides the personal stories of one Ojibwe family's hunting, gathering, harvesting, and cultural practices and beliefs—without violating protected secrets. This insider's view of the Ojibwe world reflects a relatable, modern, richly experienced connection to the rest of the planet. It also opens up a new way of understanding these living traditions, which carry thousands of years of cultural knowledge still in the making.
- GenresNonfictionIndigenous
224 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 18, 2021
22 people are currently reading
261 people want to read
About the author
Anton Treuer
35 books284 followersDr. Anton Treuer (pronounced troy-er) is Professor of Ojibwe at Bemidji State University and author of many books. His professional work in education, history, and Indigenous studies and long service as an officiant at Ojibwe tribal ceremonies have made him a consummate storyteller in the Ojibwe cultural tradition and a well-known public speaker. In 2018, he was named Guardian of Culture and Lifeways by the Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries, and Museums. Anton's first book for young adults, Everything You Wanted to Know About Indians But Were Afraid to Ask (Young Readers Edition), won the SCBWI Golden Kite. Where Wolves Don’t Die is his first novel.
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
December 28, 2022
5 stars not just because Anton is so charismatic in person, although that helps.
I learned a lot about Ojibwe culture in this book, and it was easy to read. A balanced blend of personal story and authentic general knowledge. All of that, I was expecting. What tipped it into 5 stars was his inclusive yet boundaried approach. All readers, Native or not, are welcome. Extra tips and resources are extended to Natives, as it should be. But his spiritual focus was infectious, and I found myself examining my own cultural and spiritual ways. This has led to an introspection I was not expecting. Also, the line "You are the one your ancestors were praying for and waiting for through the generations." is just beautiful.
I learned a lot about Ojibwe culture in this book, and it was easy to read. A balanced blend of personal story and authentic general knowledge. All of that, I was expecting. What tipped it into 5 stars was his inclusive yet boundaried approach. All readers, Native or not, are welcome. Extra tips and resources are extended to Natives, as it should be. But his spiritual focus was infectious, and I found myself examining my own cultural and spiritual ways. This has led to an introspection I was not expecting. Also, the line "You are the one your ancestors were praying for and waiting for through the generations." is just beautiful.
July 9, 2022
When Europeans arrived in North America there were an estimated 100 million people here, compared to about 90 million in Europe. As Americans we are steeped in European traditions yet many of us know virtually nothing about the diverse and vibrant Native American nations that are a critical part of our country. This book describes the author's Ojibwe path and is full of wisdom for anyone willing to learn and reflect on their own path in this modern world.
June 8, 2022
I learned to know this author's three sons at Camp Chippewa. Robert, Elias, and Evan are self-assured, confident, compassionate, and thoughtful. Their Ojibwe heritage is a major part of their family life. This book was an interesting window into the Ojibwe culture, tradition, and religion. Elias recommended this book to me just yesterday as the best of his dad's 18 books. Anton is a professor at the local university and a respected cultural leader in the Ojibwe community.
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July 11, 2024A treasure of knowledge and thought-provoking ideas. Dr. Treuer’s voice really comes through in this book and I can imagine him sharing some of these stories in person. Definitely recommend to help increase understanding and appreciation for our Aninshinaabe neighbors, students, and friends.
September 4, 2025
This was exactly what I was looking for when I wanted to learn about the Ojibwe culture! Reading this book helped me realize a greater appreciation for nature’s gifts, even though I am not of Ojibwe descent.
November 26, 2021
Aimed at an Indigenous audience but worth reading by anyone, this book is about exactly what it says, using traditional Ojibwe culture and values in the modern world, in an intentional and reflective way. I'd definitely recommend it to white readers as a gentle introduction to how to respect Indigenous cultures without appropriation, since some things are off-limits to people outside a particular community, which is calmly and logically presented. As with his other books, Treuer's clearly thought a lot about what he's saying, and is able to explain cultural issues in a way that's inviting, but with healthy boundaries. Also, reading this gave me hope for the future, and that's no small thing!
December 12, 2021
Really appreciated this. I think it's a good way to share some of our ways in a respectful manner. The book follows the four seasons of the year/four seasons of life, with a lot of personal stories sprinkled in. I appreciated the personal anecdotes - and it shows that the teachings and traditions are still relevant today. You don't have to pick one "world" to live in. A lot of this was familiar to me, but I still learned some new things and some different ways of doing things - but there's no one correct way. Everyone should find their own path. I hope everyone - Ojibwe or not - can take something from this and we'd all be in a better way.
July 9, 2024
I am not Ojibwe. That is, I'm not one of the readers this book explicitly addresses. Still, I never felt excluded from Treuer's frame of reference at any point. If anything, I read it as a intimation that any reader, whatever her cultural inheritance, might be well advised to do what he has done, namely go to the effort to fully "inhabit" his own tradition: to learn, speak and hear its language, its underlying rhythms, its defining features, and to find his own, unique way into them.
The book rests on some significant contradictions. Most fundamentally, it sets out to honour and preserve an oral tradition in writing. There is an unmistakeable irony in sharing the beauty and wisdom of Ojibwe culture in English. My admiration of the book rests in part on just these contradictions, though, for as Treuer knew well enough, they had to be accepted in order for the book to achieve its clarity, accessibility and authority. At one level, they outline a set of principles, a guide to readers who are drawn, by birth or conviction, to traditional Ojibwe culture, but who no longer know the language, no longer speak and listen to the words that preserve the culture, the stories that animate it. The kind of connective tissue that binds an oral society together has become so fragile as to need the support of writing.
Treuer is keenly aware of the ironies of writing such a book, and open about making his readers aware of them as well. There is, in particular, the question of the author's authority: a book is written by one person; a culture is not. The challenge is not new -- in fact writers have faced it from the time writing began, and Treuer resolves it in a time-honoured way, namely by writing from his own experience, his own location within the language and a community of speakers. He names and thanks them. "Here's what happened to me," he seems to say, "and here are the conclusions I drew from it. I invite you to retrace my steps, and come to your own conclusions." And although there is no explicit claim that language makes, remakes, shapes, expands or shatters reality (as the Kiowa writer and scholar N. Scott Momaday said of native people in "The Man Made of Words") neither is there any implication of a reality beyond words.
The text is informative on many levels. There are memorable accounts of Ojibwe history, of a great, slow, eventful migration and dispersal from Eastern seaboard of the US to "the land where food grows in water," (a reference to wild rice in the Great Lakes region), stories about a supernatural being who is powerful and immortal, but also human -- a bit muddled and clumsy at times, loveable and approachable. There's a lot about values, perhaps most critically the unambiguous message that the Creator did not give human beings dominion over the earth, but rather exactly the other way around.
At the same time, however, we are reading a memoir, an account of the author's life. Chapter titles do follow a chronological, or cyclical order, a succession of seasons from spring to winter. But threaded through the chronology of seasons, we get a succession of surprises, as in a mystery story that is not chronological, but a gradual disclosure: the scope of the issues broaden, drawing a reader back from a close focus on Ojibwe to a longer, wider perspective. At the end of the book, Ojibwe culture appears in close proximity to other, very different ways of living, all contemporary, all accessible. One wonders whether there was, or is a choice, or whether a choice is apparent only, and someone who faces himself in honesty, integrity, self-awareness is drawn to his own, the right path. A reader, now aware of multiple claims that other languages, religions, philosophies might have made and might still make on the author, appreciates the "Red Path" -- the commitment to living an authentically Ojibwe life -- as a commitment to a whole moral and aesthetic reality, coherent and complete in itself, and distinct from all others.
The book rests on some significant contradictions. Most fundamentally, it sets out to honour and preserve an oral tradition in writing. There is an unmistakeable irony in sharing the beauty and wisdom of Ojibwe culture in English. My admiration of the book rests in part on just these contradictions, though, for as Treuer knew well enough, they had to be accepted in order for the book to achieve its clarity, accessibility and authority. At one level, they outline a set of principles, a guide to readers who are drawn, by birth or conviction, to traditional Ojibwe culture, but who no longer know the language, no longer speak and listen to the words that preserve the culture, the stories that animate it. The kind of connective tissue that binds an oral society together has become so fragile as to need the support of writing.
Treuer is keenly aware of the ironies of writing such a book, and open about making his readers aware of them as well. There is, in particular, the question of the author's authority: a book is written by one person; a culture is not. The challenge is not new -- in fact writers have faced it from the time writing began, and Treuer resolves it in a time-honoured way, namely by writing from his own experience, his own location within the language and a community of speakers. He names and thanks them. "Here's what happened to me," he seems to say, "and here are the conclusions I drew from it. I invite you to retrace my steps, and come to your own conclusions." And although there is no explicit claim that language makes, remakes, shapes, expands or shatters reality (as the Kiowa writer and scholar N. Scott Momaday said of native people in "The Man Made of Words") neither is there any implication of a reality beyond words.
The text is informative on many levels. There are memorable accounts of Ojibwe history, of a great, slow, eventful migration and dispersal from Eastern seaboard of the US to "the land where food grows in water," (a reference to wild rice in the Great Lakes region), stories about a supernatural being who is powerful and immortal, but also human -- a bit muddled and clumsy at times, loveable and approachable. There's a lot about values, perhaps most critically the unambiguous message that the Creator did not give human beings dominion over the earth, but rather exactly the other way around.
At the same time, however, we are reading a memoir, an account of the author's life. Chapter titles do follow a chronological, or cyclical order, a succession of seasons from spring to winter. But threaded through the chronology of seasons, we get a succession of surprises, as in a mystery story that is not chronological, but a gradual disclosure: the scope of the issues broaden, drawing a reader back from a close focus on Ojibwe to a longer, wider perspective. At the end of the book, Ojibwe culture appears in close proximity to other, very different ways of living, all contemporary, all accessible. One wonders whether there was, or is a choice, or whether a choice is apparent only, and someone who faces himself in honesty, integrity, self-awareness is drawn to his own, the right path. A reader, now aware of multiple claims that other languages, religions, philosophies might have made and might still make on the author, appreciates the "Red Path" -- the commitment to living an authentically Ojibwe life -- as a commitment to a whole moral and aesthetic reality, coherent and complete in itself, and distinct from all others.
April 4, 2023
Published 2021–The author is an Ojibwe cultural teacher, ceremonial leader, and a professor of Ojibwe language in Minnesota. He writes thoroughly about the Ojibwe world view and how he and his family live using Ojibwe lifeways, customs and practices. He explains the reasoning or thinking or orientation behind each practice
The book covers just about every aspect of daily life—pregnancy, birth, death, seasonal traditions such as wild rice harvesting, sweat lodges, and more. One such tradition is the giving of tobacco to one to whom you are making a request, as or before you make the request. Tobacco may be sacrificed to the spirits when one is trying to make an important decision.
Quotes from the book:
Tobacco is considered spiritual currency for prayer requests and harvest offerings
(Paraphrase) Parents pass tobacco to all namesakes (an adult chosen to give a child a special Ojibwe name). It opens a spiritual connection with the name giver.
In Ojibwe culture, empowerment of both women and men happens, not through equality, but through balance… It’s more empowering to have women redefine their sources of empowerment on their own terms, rather than in response to patriarchy.
Women are born with water power which naturally flows and grows as they age. Men are born with a spark, but fires don’t grow naturally without fuel. Untended fires go out so men…have to take their natural spark, kindle a fire, and keep adding fuel to it throughout their lives. This is why men are usually pressured to fast—to see what kind of fire they should build.
Hair… is private and intimate…people took care not to leave their hair lying around. It’s leaving your spiritual energy scattered all over the place for people to disregard any poor spiritual hygiene.
In the Ojibwe language, we don’t really have a word for “medicine man“ “medicine woman“ or “shaman“. We have several kinds of healers, each with a name.
The funeral rite is one of those areas of sacred knowledge that is somewhat guarded in the Ojibwe world. We give instructions to the souls of the departing at funerals and don’t share them outside of that context.
We don’t have souls. We are souls….We are not humans looking for a spiritual experience. We are spirits having a temporary human experience.
Our culture is not a place we go or a ceremony we do; it’s a toolbox that we carry with us everywhere we go.
We live in one world. We don’t have to code switch to make it out there. We don’t have to maintain a dual consciousness. People from other cultures don’t have to sacrifice theirs to enter our world and Natives don’t have to sacrifice their cultures to navigate the modern world. We can be exactly who we are and exactly who the creator wants us to be and thrive.
This book is a wonderful doorway into a way of looking at the world and of organizing life that is so different from my own. It was a bit too long in some parts but on the whole it was fascinating and I learned so much.
The book covers just about every aspect of daily life—pregnancy, birth, death, seasonal traditions such as wild rice harvesting, sweat lodges, and more. One such tradition is the giving of tobacco to one to whom you are making a request, as or before you make the request. Tobacco may be sacrificed to the spirits when one is trying to make an important decision.
Quotes from the book:
Tobacco is considered spiritual currency for prayer requests and harvest offerings
(Paraphrase) Parents pass tobacco to all namesakes (an adult chosen to give a child a special Ojibwe name). It opens a spiritual connection with the name giver.
In Ojibwe culture, empowerment of both women and men happens, not through equality, but through balance… It’s more empowering to have women redefine their sources of empowerment on their own terms, rather than in response to patriarchy.
Women are born with water power which naturally flows and grows as they age. Men are born with a spark, but fires don’t grow naturally without fuel. Untended fires go out so men…have to take their natural spark, kindle a fire, and keep adding fuel to it throughout their lives. This is why men are usually pressured to fast—to see what kind of fire they should build.
Hair… is private and intimate…people took care not to leave their hair lying around. It’s leaving your spiritual energy scattered all over the place for people to disregard any poor spiritual hygiene.
In the Ojibwe language, we don’t really have a word for “medicine man“ “medicine woman“ or “shaman“. We have several kinds of healers, each with a name.
The funeral rite is one of those areas of sacred knowledge that is somewhat guarded in the Ojibwe world. We give instructions to the souls of the departing at funerals and don’t share them outside of that context.
We don’t have souls. We are souls….We are not humans looking for a spiritual experience. We are spirits having a temporary human experience.
Our culture is not a place we go or a ceremony we do; it’s a toolbox that we carry with us everywhere we go.
We live in one world. We don’t have to code switch to make it out there. We don’t have to maintain a dual consciousness. People from other cultures don’t have to sacrifice theirs to enter our world and Natives don’t have to sacrifice their cultures to navigate the modern world. We can be exactly who we are and exactly who the creator wants us to be and thrive.
This book is a wonderful doorway into a way of looking at the world and of organizing life that is so different from my own. It was a bit too long in some parts but on the whole it was fascinating and I learned so much.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 28, 2023
"The Language Warrior's Manifesto: How to Keep Our Languages Alive No Matter the Odds":
Anton Treuer's "The Language Warrior's Manifesto" is a must-read for anyone interested in preserving and revitalizing endangered Indigenous languages. Treuer's passion for language revitalization shines through in every chapter, and his personal experiences as a Ojibwe language teacher and advocate make this book a powerful and inspiring call to action.
What sets "The Language Warrior's Manifesto" apart is Treuer's practical advice and strategies for language revitalization. From language immersion programs to intergenerational language transmission, Treuer offers concrete steps that communities and individuals can take to preserve their languages. He also emphasizes the importance of technology in language learning and preservation, and makes a compelling case for increased government support and funding for language revitalization efforts.
But what really makes this book special is Treuer's unwavering belief in the power of language to connect people, strengthen communities, and preserve cultural identity. His passion and enthusiasm are infectious, and his writing is both engaging and informative. "The Language Warrior's Manifesto" is a book that will leave you feeling inspired and empowered to make a difference in your own community.
In short, "The Language Warrior's Manifesto" is a powerful and important book that should be required reading for anyone interested in preserving and revitalizing endangered languages. Anton Treuer's passion, expertise, and practical advice make this book an invaluable resource for language advocates and activists everywhere.
Anton Treuer's "The Language Warrior's Manifesto" is a must-read for anyone interested in preserving and revitalizing endangered Indigenous languages. Treuer's passion for language revitalization shines through in every chapter, and his personal experiences as a Ojibwe language teacher and advocate make this book a powerful and inspiring call to action.
What sets "The Language Warrior's Manifesto" apart is Treuer's practical advice and strategies for language revitalization. From language immersion programs to intergenerational language transmission, Treuer offers concrete steps that communities and individuals can take to preserve their languages. He also emphasizes the importance of technology in language learning and preservation, and makes a compelling case for increased government support and funding for language revitalization efforts.
But what really makes this book special is Treuer's unwavering belief in the power of language to connect people, strengthen communities, and preserve cultural identity. His passion and enthusiasm are infectious, and his writing is both engaging and informative. "The Language Warrior's Manifesto" is a book that will leave you feeling inspired and empowered to make a difference in your own community.
In short, "The Language Warrior's Manifesto" is a powerful and important book that should be required reading for anyone interested in preserving and revitalizing endangered languages. Anton Treuer's passion, expertise, and practical advice make this book an invaluable resource for language advocates and activists everywhere.
March 15, 2025
3.5 stars. Easy to read book that sheds light on both past and present Ojibwe traditions. I like the way the book is structured around the seasons of nature and life. The author tells some personal family history and there are some pretty profound stuff about relationships within families and between all people. If you get a chance to hear the author speak, he is a very good storyteller as well.
May 17, 2025
That was enjoyable. It was less memoir than I was fearing. And it wasn't a guide on how to incorporate Ojibwe culture into your life -- he constantly reminds you only to incorporate it if it's appropriate. Speak to Ojibwe community members to find out if it's appropriate for you. It was just a broad description of Ojibwe life and culture.
November 24, 2022
This is a personal and extremely enjoyable education in Native Culture. I can say enough and will recommend this to many.
December 1, 2022
A great read if you want to understand more about indigenous culture. I learned a lot.
April 14, 2023
Written by a professor of Ojbwe studies at Bemidgi State University in Minnesota, this book looks under the microscope at Native American culture.
April 19, 2024
Not as helpful in understanding the culture as id hoped
July 21, 2024
A must read for anyone living in Minnesota!
May 20, 2025
I have always been so disconnected from my indigenous heritage and this book has taught me so much! i learned so many different things and i’m excited to delve deeper into my own indigeneity.
May 23, 2025
Incredible book for anyone to read. Insightful, educational, interesting, informative. Just beautiful of Anton to share his knowledge he worked so hard to learn with everyone.
April 14, 2023
This book deserves 5 stars not because of the quality of the writing, although the author is a fine essayist, but because of the importance of what is recorded here. It is essential that the cultural practices and tradition of the Ojibwe nation be set down in print so that they can be better understood and honored.
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews