Each day as we count down to the April 18 announcement of the Minnesota Book Awards, we highlight one of the thirty-two finalists. Today we feature 2015 General Nonfiction finalist Brenda J. Child.
A Look at Ojibwe Life and Labor on the Reservation
My Grandfather’s Knocking Sticks: Ojibwe Family Life and Labor on the Reservation by Brenda J. Child
Published by Minnesota Historical Society Press
Category Sponsor Minnesota AFL-CIO
Brenda Child uses her own family history, as well as stories of Ojibwe people from around the Great Lakes region, to examine the challenges in daily work, family life, and culture faced by the Ojibwe people of her grandparents’ generation. There were few opportunities for work during this time and government programs controlled reservation economies and opposed traditional practices. Nevertheless, Ojibwe men and women—fully modern workers who carried with them rich traditions of culture and work—patched together sources of income and took on new roles as labor demands changed through World War I and the Depression.
Child writes of men knocking rice at wild rice camps, work customarily done by women; a woman who turns to fishing and bootlegging when her husband is unable to work; and women who carry out traditional healing ceremonies. All of them, faced with dispossession and pressure to adopt new ways, managed to retain and pass on their Ojibwe identity and culture to their children.
About the author:
BrendaJ. Child is associate professor of American Studies at the University of Minnesota and author of Boarding School Seasons: American Indian Families, 1900-1940 and Holding Our World Together: Ojibwe Women and the Survival of Community.
Links:
Brenda Child discusses My Grandfather’s Knocking Sticks with MPR’s Tom Weber
The reviews are in:
“Professor Child lovingly shows the spirit, creativity, and work that went into earning a living and into reproducing family and community even as she captures the costs of dispossession.” – David R. Roediger, author of Working Toward Whiteness: How America’s Immigrants Became White.
“My Grandfather’s Knocking Sticks is an original and perceptive history of labor and economic survival on the Red Lake Reservation. Brenda Child considers hard work and communal enterprises, men and women in fisheries, rice harvests, and jingle dance healers in generous, heartfelt, and documented stories.” – Gerald Vizenor, author of Blue Ravens.
Join us at the Awards Gala!
Award winners will be announced at the 27th Annual Minnesota Book Awards Gala on Saturday, April 18 at the historic St. Paul Union Depot. The opening reception begins at 7 p.m., followed by the awards ceremony at 8 p.m. Tickets are $50 and are available by visiting www.thefriends.org/gala.
Have you read My Grandfather’s Knocking Sticks? What are your thoughts? We welcome your comments!