Rez Life: An Indian’s Journey Through Reservation Life

At the start of the 20th century, there were only 200,000 living Indigenous people. During the 2000 census, two million Indigenous people were living in the United States. Aside from immigrant populations, Indigenous Americans “are the fastest-growing segment of the U.S. population” (185). Despite this growth in numbers, their culture is dying, writes Treuer. This is particularly prevalent in the disappearance of tribal languages. There are few living speakers of Indigenous languages, and most of them are elderly.

Linguists believe that when the first Europeans arrived in North America during the Age of Exploration, over 300 Indigenous languages were spoken. That number has been halved. Only three have a vibrant and proliferating community of speakers: the Dakota, Dene, and Ojibwe.

The Waadookodaading Ojibwe Language Immersion School at Lac Courte Oreilles (LCO) Reservation in Wisconsin was opened in 2000. By the time the book was published, the school had around 20 students in the language program, ranging from kindergarten to fourth grade. Keller Paap is one of the activists who has worked to preserve the Ojibwe language. Paap was finishing his bachelor’s degree at the University of Minnesota when Treuer met him. Through the university’s department of American Indian Studies, Paap took an Ojibwe-language class. He was drawn to “the complexity and music of the language and the feeling of belonging to something” (190). He took a job as a teaching assistant for the Ojibwe-language program. After taking this job, he met his wife, Lisa LaRonge, who is from the LCO Reservation. Paap moved with his wife to her reservation in 1998 and, with several others, opened the language-immersion school.

Language is a key aspect of cultural preservation. Although Indigenous people “are the fastest-growing segment of the U.S. population, official Indians in some tribes are declining” (201). Tribes such as the Mdewakanton resist enrolling new members to avoid losing the enormous per capita payments they earn from gaming.

The Cherokee tribe have also excluded some eligible members. The division within the Cherokee Nation began during the Civil War. Some Cherokee aligned with the Union while others, particularly those who owned slaves, sided with the Confederacy. The federal government forced the tribe to sign a treaty in 1866. One key stipulation was that those who had been enslaved “be given full citizenship in the Cherokee Nation” (203). This citizenship would have given newly freed Black people “all the rights and benefits of Cherokee citizens, such as allotments, the right to vote in tribal elections, the right to stand for office, and receipt of annuities” (203). About a century later, the Cherokee Nation wanted to remove members who were descended from formerly enslaved Black people. However, these members regarded themselves as culturally Cherokee, even if they had little racial connection to the tribe. They worked and lived on Cherokee lands and shared Cherokee values. If they left the tribe, they would no longer be able to vote, hold office, earn casino profits, or receive federal housing stipends.

The Cherokee Nation proves if enrollees have a Cherokee lineage by using the “Dawes rolls,” which is “a list of Cherokee and other Civilized Tribe members compiled in 1893 and closed in 1907 for the purpose of allotment” (203). The list determined membership by marriage, by blood, or by being a descendant of the Freedmen or the “Delaware Indians adopted into the Cherokee Nation” (203). Originally, the list, drawn up by white bureaucrats, was based on who looked Cherokee. The Cherokee Nation currently has over 250,000 members in every state from different racial groups. These numbers give them great power and a more flexible understanding of what it means to be Indigenous, but it also threatens “cultural dissolution through acculturation” because so many can claim to be Cherokee (203).

In the 1980s, the Cherokee Nation went to federal court to try to disenroll the Black descendants of Freedmen. The case, Nero v. Cherokee Nation, decreed that tribes could “determine the criteria of their own tribal membership” (203). The nation held a referendum vote on the issue, leading to a constitutional amendment that was passed in 2007, declaring that only those who were Cherokee, Delaware, or Shawnee by blood could belong to the Cherokee Nation. Then, the Black Congressional Caucus got involved and protested this exclusion based on race. California representative Diane Watson introduced a bill “that would block $300 million in federal funding and annul all gaming compacts between the Cherokee and the state of Oklahoma” until the tribe reinstated the descendants of Freedmen (204).

The same year that the Cherokee Nation passed a referendum on blood quantum, Leech Lake Reservation signed an agreement with the Minnesota Department of Human Services that allowed the reservation to maintain sole jurisdiction over children within the tribe, both on and off the reservation. However, counties would still be responsible for “funding court orders regarding child welfare” (205). In exchange for one million dollars per year, Leech Lake would release both the state and county from providing social services to its young people, much to the delight of state and county governments. Currently, only around one quarter of Leech Lake members live on the reservation. Therefore, many of them do not receive their treaty rights and other benefits.