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The Assassination of Hole in the Day

The Assassination of Hole in the Day. by Anton Treuer. Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2011

This past year I was invited to work with a middle school where the students were studying Wisconsin American Indian history and culture. I met with a group of fifty students whose most pressing questions to their teachers were "Why did American Indians give up their land? Why didn't they fight back?"

It is not surprising to find schoolchildren and teachers today who are unaware of indigenous people's historic and contemporary resistance to colonization. The field of American Indian history continues to be plagued and defined by scholarship based solely on Western sources and the omission of indigenous knowledge. Some indigenous historians challenge the production of history with works based entirely on the oral accounts of tribal people, making a critical contribution to the field by centering indigenous knowledge. In these works, we hear the voices of opposition and acts of resistance as lived by indigenous people.

The Assassination of Hole in the Day by the Ojibwe author Anton Treuer offers readers an examination of nineteenth-century Ojibwe resistance, land loss, and intertribal conflict through the life, leadership, and death of Bagone-ghiizhig (Hole in the Day). Treuer explores the complexities of Ojibwe politics, survival, removal, warfare, and cultural erosion at the time when the nation ceded thousands of territorial acres to the federal government.

In Ojibwe worldview, balance is a key cultural value. As an Ojibwe scholar, Treuer provides an important balance between written and oral history. He incorporates accounts from more than fifty prominent oral traditional scholars and pairs it with a rigorous examination of Western primary sources, demonstrating that the two are often the same. The oral traditional scholars that Treuer worked with were not simply interviewees. The oral histories were shared as teachings and conversations provided by the oral scholars in the context of their ongoing relationships with Treuer. Here, Treuer writes truly as an Ojibwe whose scholarship reflects the larger cultural values of balance and relationship to community. Treuer provides critical insights into Ojibwe history and culture based on his understanding, use, and study of the language. It is a difficult research endeavor to listen to the oral scholars, put their words into written form, and integrate indigenous language. But Treuer does this well and provides a model for indigenous historical research and scholarship.

The Assassination of Hole in the Day is extraordinarily descriptive in its account of 1800s Ojibwe history. At times, however, the reader may [End Page 135] want further explanation or insight. For example, Bagone-ghiizhig strikes out as a self-appointed Ojibwe leader defying traditional determinants based on inheritance, experience, or spirituality. Here, Treuer does not address at length why Bagone-ghiizhig was widely accepted among his people.

However, Treuer's descriptive approach, one with less analysis, in many ways also reflects traditional Ojibwe worldview and practice, whereby oral scholars and oral historians teach indirectly without providing listeners overt answers. Instead, our oral scholars leave it up to the individual to derive meaning through his or her own personal analysis, insight, and further exploration. Thus Treuer's descriptive writing style may further reflect Ojibwe culture.

If Treuer's book falls short, it is in the recording of Ojibwe precontact history, although there is a strong but brief discussion of precontact leadership in chapter 1. More important, Treuer does not provide readers with a context for understanding the conflict between Dakota and Ojibwe people. While there are numerous accounts of Ojibwe/Dakota violence, including warfare, scalping, and blood revenge, there is no explanation for why the violence started and no comprehensive discussion for why it occurred. There is a real danger here, as readers are left with an incomplete understanding of the historical relationship between the two nations.

The Ojibwe and Dakota sacred creation sites are within five hundred miles of each other, and since the beginning of time, Dakota and Ojibwe people lived side by side. The relationships between the two nations are ancient. The Ojibwe language speaker and elder Gary Robson of Garden Hill Manitoba shares oral teachings about thirty-eight precolonial Ojibwe land treaties and peace accords with other nations, including the Dakota, Cree, Mohawk, and others. Oral traditional elder scholars like Gary Robson and Henry Skywater (Dakota) remind us that the Dakota are not the traditional enemies of the Ojibwe people. Instead, we are traditional allies and neighbors. Dakota and Ojibwe people shared original teachings and stories. Treaties, peace accords, and intertribal diplomatic behaviors defined the precontact relationships between the Dakota and Ojibwe. Traditional Ojibwe customs like nikatowin and nisotowah refer to the practice of asking permission to enter the territory of another nation and the duties of the host nation to care for its visitors. Members of a Nation wising to enter to cross the territory of another nation stopped at the territorial border and waited for acknowledgment and permission to enter. When Ojibwe granted access to visitors, we were responsible for their wellness during their stay within the territory. Thus the violent warfare and land conflict between the Dakota and Ojibwe that erupted with colonial invasion is relatively recent, considering the ancient histories of the two nations. Yet this information is absent from the book. [End Page 136]

The Assassination of Hole in the Day does provide readers with a complex and comprehensive understanding of Ojibwe leadership in the 1800s. It is makes a critical contribution to the fields of history and American Indian studies given its content, use of Ojibwe language, and the integration of written and oral research. I have already used the book as a required reading in my undergraduate class on indigenous leadership. It led to a wonderful discussion about the extent to which the students would act as Bagone-ghiizhig and break with traditional culture in order to broker land and resources for their people. The book raises key questions that indigenous people are faced with today, two hundred years later, in an increasingly globalized society. Still, I wanted more from The Assassination of Hole in the Day. I wanted Treuer to include Dakota and Ojibwe oral accounts of the precontact alliance between the two nations in order to illustrate all that was lost by the nineteenth century. Schoolchildren and K-16 classroom teachers need complex and comprehensive accounts of American Indian resistance and survival. Perhaps, more importantly, Dakota and Ojibwe people need accounts of these peace accords to teach our children that we are not "traditional enemies." We need these accounts to further problematize the written word. [End Page 137]

Lisa M. Poupart

Lisa M. Poupart is an enrolled member of the Lac Du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Anishinaabeg. She is chair of the First Nations Studies Program at the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay. She also co-directs the Education Center for First Nations Studies, an educational resource center for students, teachers, and faculty. She is involved in a number of state and national initiatives to standardize the First Nations studies curriculum in PK-12 schools.

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