Disclaimer: This is transcribed using AI. Expect (funny) errors.
Mindy Peterson: [00:00:00] I’m Mindy Peterson, and this is Enhance Life with Music, where we explore the ways music makes our lives better and spotlight the resources you can use to enhance your life with music. I am delighted to have a fellow Minnesotan as my guest today. Doctor Anton Treuer is professor of Ojibwe at Bemidji State University. He has presented internationally on topics related to tribal sovereignty, history, language, and culture. Doctor Treuer has won numerous awards and written many books, including Everything You Wanted to Know About Indians but Were Afraid to Ask. That particular book is also available in a young reader’s edition. I am thrilled to have him join us today to talk about the role of music in Native American culture. Welcome to Enhance Life with Music, Anton.
Anton Treuer: [00:00:52] Thank you so much for having me on.
Mindy Peterson: [00:00:54] It’s great to have you. I loved your book. Very well done. Highly recommend that. And I know we’ll be talking about that in the context of our conversation today. I know that there are many Native American tribes over vast areas of North America, Central America, South America. But recognizing this, what can you tell us historically about the role that music has played in traditional Native American life? And I’d love to know, too, how that has changed or remained the same today. If you want to address that separately or in the context of your answer to the first question.
Anton Treuer: [00:01:31] Sure. So, you know, first of all, something that’ll be important for your listeners to know is that native people are internally diverse. So just like you wouldn’t say, tell me about white music. Well, what part of white music and when and where, because there’s so much variation within white music. And it’s the same for native music. So, you know, we have here in the United States, 574 federally recognized tribes, and you have many hundreds of First Nations in Canada. And then as you go south, you know, into Mexico, Central and South America, you have so many different tribes with many very different musical traditions. I happen to be Ojibwe. My family comes from Leech Lake in northern Minnesota, and I’m very familiar with the musical traditions of our people because I sing and officiate at ceremonies and things like that. And we have many different kinds of music, even in Ojibwe space. So there’s love music, so traditional Ojibwe flute and vocal songs with drums and rattles just for courtship and fun and entertainment. We have ceremonial music, many different kinds, and I’m happy to share a little more about some of what that landscape looks like. There are active ceremonial drums in many of the communities across the entire region, and sometimes those ceremonies have many hundreds of people who attend. So I’m I have positions on for ceremonial drums where I help as what they call the big stick.
Anton Treuer: [00:03:23] I’m kind of in charge of all the singers on one of them. I’m a singer on another, and I actually do a lot of talking on another one. So, you know, it’s it’s different for me in different places. But those musical and artistic traditions are very much alive. It’s sometimes hard for people outside of an indigenous culture to understand what’s happening inside of that culture. And so maybe a couple of things that’ll be helpful for folks listening today is number one. All cultures change over time and there’s no stopping that from happening. If you ever try to read Geoffrey Chaucer. He’s known as one of the first guys who tried to write down stories in the English language. I had to read him in high school. I don’t know if they assign him anymore, but I could barely read that stuff the way it’s spelled, the way it’s pronounced. And he was writing only 600 years ago. And English is a commonly spoken language and lots of publications and movies and music and, you know, it changes that much that fast. So that happens for everybody. I think even the Amish struggle to go Amish or stay Amish. They lose people every year. It’s hard to wall off a culture, a musical tradition, and freeze it in time. I mean, you can have recordings and you can have scores of Mozart and look at 600 different pieces of music he created, you know, and it does show you something.
Anton Treuer: [00:04:59] But even how we would record it or play it today is different from how it was done in his time. And you almost have to imagine the environment for chamber music, for example, because we don’t have the same political, musical and social environments. So for Ojibwe people, much the same. For example, you know, as happens, I think with every culture on planet Earth, there is a percussion, right? So the use of drums and it’s interesting in the Ojibwe language, our word for drum is de weijun and de means heart and Wei means sound. So the word de Wei a gun describes a heartbeat. And so for there are different types of beats in Ojibwe music, but one is the syncopated beat for, you know, Ojibwe social dances. And people will get up and dance and move around the drums. So it’s like symbolically, the heartbeat of the people and ceremonial drums would be placed in the middle and people move around those. Um, and all of that’s kind of reflected in the language and the customs around, you know, that music. There are many different types of, you know, even beats and types of singing that you’ll hear even at a ceremonial drum. And all of this informed, like what you might see at a modern day powwow. So the modern day powwow has kind of elements from a number of different tribes, including Ojibwe ceremonial culture around this, but it’s more of a secular event.
Anton Treuer: [00:06:42] It is ancient, but it is modern too. And by that I mean there was, for example, in the an ancient custom amongst many of the plains tribes and amongst the Great Lakes, where people had to earn their eagle feathers through acts of service to the people, and the pow wow regalia, which often displays many eagle feathers, all had to be earned and often earned through military deeds and things like that. So the traditional pow wow regalia and the music that goes with it really comes from ancient warrior societies of the plains, and it kind of became stylized. But if you took somebody from, you know, the year 1800 and transported them through time to watch a modern day pow wow, and they were looking at a 12 year old kid displaying a bunch of eagle feathers. They would say, that is the toughest kid I have ever seen. You know, he must have killed so many people. But, you know, today the earning of eagle feathers is done through other kinds of acts of service. They’re still considered sacred and important. We’re still dancing to some of the same songs and some of the same rituals, but the meaning ascribed to them has shifted and changed, and it would be common that somebody would use some modern technologies in the construction of musical instruments or, you know, dance regalia.
Anton Treuer: [00:08:08] So Europeans had glass beads, and native people in our area used porcupine quills and moose hair to do embroidery. But when they got trade beads, they automatically adapted the traditional Ojibwe floral patterns to the use of beadwork. And at a modern powwow, you see lots of beads. So it is ancient. It is our ancient custom and tradition. But some of the materials are modern, you know, and so it’s probably like that with so many different traditions and other things that have happened, we still sing songs that, you know, have the Ojibwe words in there. We still have Ojibwe as a living language, but you will find for what they call 49 songs people are singing in English, uh, for those songs, too. So you’ll see some hybrid uses of language. And then, of course, there are lots of native hip hop artists that are all kinds of things. Native people have made the modern music that you know and love in many different ways, you know. And it’s not just an all native band, you know, singing Come and Get Your Love. Although that wasn’t all native band that came up with that song and native musicians right out of native communities. You know, even Link Wray, who is a famous guitarist, he was actually the first modern musician who had his music band but had no lyrics in the music.
Mindy Peterson: [00:09:40] Where was it banned?
Anton Treuer: [00:09:41] It was banned in the United States.
Mindy Peterson: [00:09:43] Because.
Anton Treuer: [00:09:44] It’s too radical and firing up young people and causing a revolution. So with.
Mindy Peterson: [00:09:48] The the beat.
Anton Treuer: [00:09:50] With his guitar playing. Yeah.
Mindy Peterson: [00:09:52] Okay. Interesting.
Anton Treuer: [00:09:53] And if you’re if anyone who’s listening is curious to know more about like native influence in modern music that everybody’s listening to, you might check out the documentary Rumble. Okay, who rocked the World? And it it does a great job of showing how native people have influenced modern music. And sometimes they’re surprises. You know, like the native population actually has the highest rate of marriage to people from outside groups. So the native population is especially multiracial. You know, even Jimi Hendrix was native, okay. He was native and black, you know, and, uh, and so a lot of people don’t know that stuff, right? Because one of the things that happens in the native experience, sometimes we experience hypervisibility, you know, racial profiling or something, but a lot of times we experience invisibility and marginalization. So the contributions or even presence of native peoples not always on the radar screen. And I think part of that is because most Americans are so conditioned to think that natives are something that happened in the past, you know, like 87% of the educational standards that mention native people are stories from before 1900. Yeah. And so, like, I’ve had people say things to me, especially when I travel in the American South or the East, where a lot of the native population got moved to Oklahoma.
Anton Treuer: [00:11:21] And people have said things to me like, it’s a shame they killed all the Indians. And I’m saying, hold on a minute. I’m feeling pretty good today, you know. And they’re like, oh yeah, that’s a good point. I didn’t really think about that. And it’s because they’re conditioned to look for the beads and feathers and like, you stepped off the set from Dances With Wolves, I happen to be pretty brown, you know, and have long hair. And I think I’m identifiably native, you know, but at the same time, it just didn’t occur to people. People would assume I was something else. Anything else, you know? Yeah. Hispanic, Latino, Filipino, Arab, anything. Unless I’m really showing beads and feathers, you know, or singing a powwow song or something like that. And then like, oh, maybe that’s a native person, you know. And so, uh, so, you know, there’s more out there and more impact and influence than a lot of people know.
Mindy Peterson: [00:12:17] You mentioned drums, flute, voice. Are those sort of like the primary instruments that traditionally have been most used in Native American music, or are there other instruments that were real common historically?
Anton Treuer: [00:12:32] Oh, there are quite a few others too. You know, rattles, drums, uh, flute and voice, I would say, are the most common and in prolific across Native America. But like the Ojibwe, did not have a stringed instrument. Some other indigenous groups did. And yeah, there are many, many different types of music. Some have, you know, large groups of singers, what you might think of a little more like chanting or something like that. And even in Ojibwe culture, like when we’re singing at a ceremonial drum or at a powwow, you might have, you know, up to a dozen or sometimes as many as 20 people huddled together around one drum singing together. And there’s a structure to the music where there’s a lead, where one person sings solo, there’s a second where everybody follows the lead together, and then there’s a first half where usually it’s just vocables without words. And then there’s a second, you know, verse that’s got the words built in there together, lead second, you know, first and second verse that is often called a push up. And a song might be singing through for push ups or six push ups of that particular song. So there’s a definitive structure and many people participating, but you might notice that points there’s a solo singer, but it’s not really considered a solo. They’re leading that particular push up of the song, and it might shift around from person to person throughout the song.
Anton Treuer: [00:14:05] There’s a style to, you know, the percussion too, with the use of accented beats they often call honor beats. But when you step out from that, there are many other kinds of music. So both ceremonial and secular music, where one person is singing by themselves, or where you might have a smaller group of people singing, or one person is singing the song and others will join in something else pretty common in music across the Great Lakes and the plains is called a Jabo, where the singers are singing a song and someone will sing an octave above accompanying the song, so it’s not quite a harmony the way that you would think of it in, you know, modern music, but they’re actually singing the same notes but an octave above. Uh, and so, yeah, it just has a different sound. And there’s sometimes even almost like a call and response in the music. So the, the lead, the second, the first verse, and then on the second verse, the singers around the drum drop their voices out and the singers moving and dancing around them. Sing or Jabo above, and then they’ll go back and forth. And so it’s kind of like a call and respond between the singers and dancers. So you’ll, you’ll find many different types of music and structures to the to the music.
Mindy Peterson: [00:15:25] Interesting. Well, I know with pretty much all cultures, music is used in different ways for funerals, for holidays, cultural celebrations. You mentioned ceremonies, courtship or love songs. Religious practice. Battle. Storytelling and history. I mean, there’s so many different ways that music is used within all cultures. Are there any ways either that I mentioned or other ways, maybe education or diplomacy or other, you know, healing ways that music just is really sort of a distinguishing factor within native culture that you want to mention.
Anton Treuer: [00:16:03] Oh, yeah. I would say music in, you know, our tribe is used in all of the ways that you described, you know. So like even a traditional funeral song, you know, like the instructions for the at well, at the funeral, there’s a lot of talking and a lot of singing. And so people eat with the departing soul. They give legends to the departing soul, they sing to the departing soul. So it’s not just in memory of, but they’re giving them something to take with them on their journey. And, you know, we use them for all kinds of ceremonial rites and healing. Like, actually the first person who had been seated as a chief on the ceremonial drums, his son had died. And he said, see, I it’s bad luck. I don’t want anything to do with this. I quit this ceremony. I’m going to leave. You know, I don’t want anything to do with it. And the people stopped him from leaving and they grabbed him by the hand, almost like you would a little child. And they walked him around the drum, and they brought him back to his chair. And the ancient custom at the time was when people were grieving or in mourning. They would take charcoal and rub some charcoal on their face, and they wouldn’t show excessive vanity, like tightly braided hair. And so then they sat him down and they carefully washed all the charcoal off of his face, and they combed and braided his hair. And then they piled up gifts, asking him to go on with life. And then they started to sing songs and there were four songs they sang first, where each one, one of the warriors got up and danced around the drum and then danced around him.
Anton Treuer: [00:17:45] And then they wiped his tears. And then the second one did. And the third and the fourth. And then after that they sung a fifth song, and they grabbed him by the arms, and they lifted him up, and they held him as they danced him around the drum, kind of like symbolically back into the circle of life to carry on with his duties and with life. And so today, now people usually don’t rub charcoal on their faces or leave their hair unbraided if they’re in in mourning. But we do replicate the ceremony. So, you know, I’d lost actually in recent years, both of my parents. And each time they grabbed me by the hand like a little kid, they walked me around, seated me down at the drum. They washed my hair and, you know, combed my hair and washed my face and piled up gifts and asked me to carry on with life. And they had the warriors wipe my tears and lift me up and bring me back into the circle. And so I officiated at that ceremony for other people, and I’ve had it done for me when I’ve had losses and be kind of, you know, the music is how we tie people to the tradition and provide the healing. Right? And lift them up to carry on with life. And I found that very healing for me, and I found healing in it, helping other people do it too.
Mindy Peterson: [00:19:04] I can imagine that being really touching. I was just hearing somebody talk yesterday about the power of just sitting on the same side of the table as somebody, and that action going along with their words of, we’re on the same team here, we’re in this together, and the words are great. But when you actually physically sit on the same side of the table, it can just further emphasize that and what you’re describing seems like it would have that same effect. I mean, you could hear people saying those words to you, but to have them physically take your hand and lead you back into the circle, I would think would be really powerful, especially at that time of grief and loss.
Anton Treuer: [00:19:48] Oh, yeah. And and it’s with everything, you know, at the funerals, too. The officiating crew doesn’t, like, preach to a captive audience. They sit with the family and they talk to the departing soul, you know. So it’s just much like you describe sitting on the same side of the table kind of thing. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, music’s infused into absolutely everything that we do. And so it’s used for, you know, in that case, a healing ceremony helping people deal with grief and loss or with a funeral. But it’s, you know, with all kinds of life ceremonies, initiations into sacred rites, secular and social music. I’ve been really impressed with something that’s been happening in some of our communities, like Mille Lacs, for example, in central Minnesota, has built a beautiful ceremonial dance hall in each of their communities for their ceremonial drums. And on any given Saturday night, when a lot of people maybe are looking for some fun or entertainment or a party, those ceremonial dance halls are full of people, hundreds of them eating healthy food, moving around the drum, dancing to music, being in community, babies, adults, elders, everything in between, and the functions of like pulling community together and doing something healthy with regard to food and physical movement are, and, you know, honoring our ancestors and traditions and just laughing and having a wonderful time. And it’s all tied together by the music.
Mindy Peterson: [00:21:26] Love that. Well, like I said, I loved your book. Your book didn’t specifically talk a lot about music, but when I was reading chapter six, it’s on tribal languages. There were so many times as I was reading that I thought you could just substitute the word music for language in this situation. One of those sections of the chapter, it was talking about the benefits of tribal languages. You talk about how knowing more than one language enhances cognitive development, which music does the same thing and is, you know, many people think of music as a language. You also talk about how tribal languages are cornerstones of identity. And in your book you say their use keeps us recognizable to our ancestors. They are defining features of nationhood. They are the only customary languages for many ceremonies. A gateway to spiritual understanding and tribal languages encapsulate unique tribal worldviews. They define us as distinct peoples. End quote. So I thought that as I was reading that, I was just thinking, wow, I just feel like music could be substituted in there. Do you have any thoughts or comments on that?
Anton Treuer: [00:22:39] Oh for sure. You know, it’s really interesting and this might be a weird way to come at it, but there’s a book called sapiens, Yuval Harari. He’s an anthropologist, and he’s trying to answer the question like, why did sapiens win out? There were actually several different types of humans on planet Earth at the same time. You know, sapiens, Neanderthals and others. And it’s really interesting. But he said, throughout most of history, all the different types of humans, we lived kind of like apes, like groups of a at most 150. And if it got any bigger than that, there’d be a fight and it would break into two different groups. And we never got bigger until the invention of fiction. And when we invented fiction, we could imagine community with the next group. Ha! And then we could go team up and commit genocide on the Neanderthals or do whatever. And there’s actually a debate. Did we interbreed and just sapient DNA won out or was there a genocide? And it might have been a little bit of both, but we’re not 100% sure. Ha. But in any event, the things that unite us as humans and the things that divide us as humans are all imagined. Mm. The differences between races, you know, instead of seeing the oneness, but the oneness in spite of our differences, it is something that happens in our mind. And music and art are things that transcend the divisions and make it easier to see and feel the oneness.
Mindy Peterson: [00:24:25] Beautiful. Mic drop. Love that. Well, this next question sort of goes along with that a little bit in that chapter six on tribal languages, you say supporting tribal language and culture also involves taking a good hard look at one’s self and community. This dynamic is especially challenging because it is language and culture revitalization that offer our greatest opportunities for strengthening political, economic, educational, and community health. So can you unpack that for us? I’d love to have you elaborate on the value that you see in culture revitalization, especially related to music, and your perspective on the importance that music holds for tribal vibrancy and prosperity?
Anton Treuer: [00:25:13] Yeah. So first of all, you know, in my own life, it has taken me a while to get to the point where I’m like, you know what? I love all of me. I think a lot of us have things that we have to work through, and our stories are unique unto ourselves. But there are threads in the human experience that are pretty common in our modern educational system. Like we are so deeply impacted by colonization, colonization like humans. Sure, we’ve been mean to each other on every part of planet Earth throughout time. There’s plenty of evidence of that. But colonization was a different kind of violence. It was one that said, you have to speak the language that I speak. You have to listen to the music that I listen to. You have to worship God the way that I worship God, and you have to speak the language that I speak. And if you don’t do those things, you don’t have a right to exist. So colonization instead of fighting over resources or territory or whatever it was about erasure and erasure of identity. Erasure of identity and so forth. And every dimension of a colonial society was engineered that way. There are a couple of takeaways, like one is for those of us steeped in the culture of erasure, one of the greatest fears is fear of our own erasure, and it helps understand some of the things happening in American politics, for example. But it’s it’s more than that. Like our educational systems are run in one language.
Anton Treuer: [00:27:02] It doesn’t matter if it’s wrapped up with kindness and postulated as opportunity. It’s not holding up and validating everybody’s language and everybody’s culture but one and depend, you know, there’s some regional variability to this, but I think nationwide, about 74% of America’s teachers are white women. There’s nothing wrong with being white. Nothing wrong with being a woman. But the majority of the K-12 students in America are students of color. And I know that when I was going to school, even though I love education and I believe in education, I went all the way with my education. It took me a long time to come to terms with things, because I never once had a teacher from my own racial group, K-12 college Masters, up to my PhD. And I think most white Americans have at least some teachers from their racial group. They might have all of their teachers be from their racial group. They’re going to get almost all of their education in a colonial language, usually English. And I never had any of that. So education felt like an assault on my very identity and way of being. And often it wasn’t the overt acts of meanness, although some of those happen to. It was the Absent narratives and the absent narratives were screaming at me. You and yours aren’t important, aren’t relevant, don’t matter. Because if we were important, relevant or mattered, somebody would have said something in 13 years of a K-12 education. And so it does things to people. I felt like it was the continuation of an age old assault, so I reacted with a big chip on my shoulder.
Anton Treuer: [00:28:43] A lot of times we’re scratching our heads going, how come we have more truancy issues with minority folks? And to me it’s like exercising the flight response. How come we have more discipline issues? Flight response. And when you look at other data sets, like the states that tend to do well in state mandated tests are North Dakota and Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan. Do we see a pattern here? And the states with the worst racially predictable disparities in and education are the same states. It’s like the wider the state, the wider the curriculum, the wider the body of teachers, the better the white students do and the worse everybody else does. But we can’t afford to have an education system that’s like a white empowerment program. We have to educate everybody and we are so diverse. The majority of the K-12 students in America are students of color. The racial predictability to graduation rates. When you consider that there is a racial predictability to graduation rates, and that there is a strong correlation between educational attainment and financial prosperity, if we had perfect equity today, of course we don’t. But pretend we did. For a second, the educational system alone would engineer racially predictable financial disparity. And so something totally different happens when you center opportunity for people to learn about themselves as well as the rest of the world. So, for example, in Hawaii, they started Hawaiian medium education using the tribal language as the language of instruction.
Anton Treuer: [00:30:27] The kids have to sing every day at the start of the school day outside of the school, asking for permission to come in to school, and then the staff sings back, and then everyone gets a hug from everybody who works there. Aloha. And I think in a mainstream school we’d be thinking, are you serious? Like 45 minutes on cultural enrichment and music. Every day at the start of school, every day the kids are awake in the morning. Make them do math until you realize that at Navahi, which is the flagship Hawaiian medium school, they have a 100% graduation rate, not just 100% of the kids who are in high school finish high school. 100% of the kindergarteners make it all the way to the finish line. Wow. So if anyone else has data like that, they can give all the lectures. But until then, you know, I think if somebody is figuring something out, we should just pay a little more attention to that. And what they do is they teach Hawaiian kids how to be Hawaiian and get curious about and explore the rest of the world. Mm. And a Hawaiian kid or a native kid going to school in a mainstream school is going to learn all about the wonderful things white folk did to make the world a beautiful place, and very little about native people, and how they help make the world a wonderful place, even though they also help make the world a wonderful place.
Mindy Peterson: [00:31:47] Kind of going along with that, you ask a question in your book and then answer, why should tribal languages be important to everyone else? And one of the answers that you give, and this is a quote, tribal languages are the first languages of this land and the first languages of the first Americans. These facts alone should make their retention especially important. End quote. And again, I’m kind of thinking of music as one of those languages. But then you go on to talk about how there are proven links, which you just were talking about, between academic achievement and cultural and linguistic competency for native youth. And the the benefit to all of us is that if we have successful educational programs and successful, academically successful native youth, they are going to be the best possible neighbors and need fewer external resources. And so that’s another reason that this matters to all of us. And then you say, but even more important, the survival of tribal languages and cultures is a test for the morality of our nation and its ability to provide for the needs of all of its citizens.
Anton Treuer: [00:33:03] Right. Yeah. To me, you know, I mean, obviously our country is having a hard time right now. It’s the election. But it’s not just the election. It’s can the system actually deliver the public goods that we expect for everybody? And as people are losing faith in the system itself, I think it causes some major structural and social stress. And for everybody in America, we’re already at a time when the majority of the K-12 students are students of color. Right? So it kind of doesn’t matter. Democrats or Republicans build a wall or don’t build a wall. This is who is here. They’re citizens. And not only are they going to be busy marrying each other and making babies and things like that over the years to come, but there’s no way to, like, undo all of the humans moving around planet Earth. All of the colonization attempts, all of the things like 30% of the German population is born somewhere other than In Germany, diversity is everywhere, so we do have to figure out how to get along. But as this demographic change settles in America, everybody will have a minority experience. Everybody will have a minority racial experience. It might not feel like it right now, and it’s going to take a few generations, but everybody will have a minority religious experience eventually. I was in Switzerland recently, and, uh, you know, I was amazed to learn that I think it was 74% of the funerals are completely secular. Wow. No religious affiliation. I thought it would all be Catholic or Protestant, you know. And, you know, that trend is starting to envelop America. We’re becoming less religious. We’re having fewer babies later in life. You know, a lot of these demographic trends, they’re they will only continue. And so if you care about your race only or your religion only, then you should definitely care about the protection of minority rights and cultures and music because that is yours. Mhm.
Mindy Peterson: [00:35:26] Good point. Well, as I figured, I have way more questions for you than what we’ll have time to go through. Um. All right. I’ll definitely include a link to your website in the show notes and a link to your book, everything you wanted to know about Indians but were afraid to ask. Like I mentioned, it’s also available in a young reader’s edition, which is great because there’s definitely historical information in there that’s hard to read. And you may not want your young kids reading it, but, you know, really necessary to understand that historical background of atrocities that happened and the forming of our country. Readers can read straight through the book. They can jump around and just use the table of contents to answer. Find answers to specific questions that they’re most interested. So a really great resource. You also have a list of resources at the end of the book of recommended books, movies, things like that is the The Rumble movie that you mentioned. Is that on that list?
Anton Treuer: [00:36:26] I’m not sure, but it should be.
Mindy Peterson: [00:36:28] Okay, okay. Well, I’ll put a I’ll put a I.
Anton Treuer: [00:36:30] May have put it on there. Um, definitely relevant for this podcast. And you know, for those listening in, I’m just I’m happy to stay in touch and in conversation with all of you. Feel free to click on the website. I’ve got a YouTube channel. There’s hundreds of videos on all kinds of topics. It’s an easy, free way to, you know, get more information whether you’re interested in land acknowledgements or the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday or whatever you know you happen to be curious about. I’m very active with lots of public events, and some of those are virtual, and some of those may be in a community near you. I travel extensively. Lots of books out. If you’re an educator, you know we have free educator guides for the everything you wanted to know about Indians but were afraid to ask book posted on the website. Free educator guides for the new novel Where Wolves Don’t Die. They actually just sent out 20,000 copies of the Everything Book to Minnesota educators, and 10,000 copies of Where Wolves Don’t Die. There are lots of ways to get the work in front of people, and I’m certainly happy to do my part to stay in touch with all of you.
Mindy Peterson: [00:37:36] Thank you. Yes. Well, you do have tons of those resources that events tab on your website, so I’ll definitely put those links in the show notes. Any other resources that are separate from your website that you want people to be aware of?
Anton Treuer: [00:37:48] Oh, you know, there are so many native people raising their voices, writing, singing, traveling. I would say, just like you wouldn’t want to get all your information about white folk from one white person, you’d want a variety of voices and perspectives and people of different ages, genders and gender identities and all the things you know certainly take the same approach to native stuff. We Louise Erdrich just won a Pulitzer Prize. She’s an amazing writer. You know, Angeline Boulley just had a New York Times bestseller. If you want a native authored thriller, there’s, you know, so many there’s so many people producing music and movies and shows. Reservation dogs did really well, but there are lots of other ones, too. So there’s so many ways to get involved. And I think, honestly, if all we know is that we know enough to know there’s a lot of stuff we don’t know, that’s just time to lean in. Let’s read a book. Let’s listen to some new music. Let’s engage with our neighbors and, you know, ask the questions.
Mindy Peterson: [00:38:49] Love it. One last question before I have you close things out with our coda or ending here in the United States. The Thanksgiving holiday is coming up soon. Can you share your perspective with us and how we can honor Native Americans and our observance of this holiday. If there are certain maybe traditions or elements of the holiday celebration that tend to be problematic or offensive, and we may not be aware of it, let us know about that. Or if there’s I’m sure we could have a whole episode on this next portion. Myths that are embedded in the holiday that you want to dispel for listeners, but any thoughts that you want to share with us before we wrap up on that topic?
Anton Treuer: [00:39:29] Yeah, I mean, it’s complicated. And, you know, here too, I, I feel like I have a house full of natives and I don’t even know what they’re thinking half the time. I’m one person, and I represent one person’s view and perspective on things. So, you know, with Thanksgiving, you may find different divergent perspectives from native people. Uh, and it’s good to engage with those multiple perspectives. But having said all of that, I do think most Americans get a very sugarcoated version of the first Thanksgiving. First of all, there are some elements of truth in the stories that you’ve heard. You know, native people, you know, were quite abundant and living throughout the northeast. But the first boatload of pilgrims who showed up showed up not in a vacant wilderness, but at an existing native village site. And the natives ran away and the pilgrims stole their food. Then they built a pilgrim village where the native village was and started to displace the native population. There’s no evidence of a shared native pilgrim harvest celebration until many years after pilgrim habitation in the northeast. So that piece is a bit of mythology, but it is true that native people shared knowledge of indigenous culinary practices and farming practices, and it did make a difference in the survival of early pilgrim settlements. But there was an active genocide by the Puritans against the native population. It was rough and brutal, and there are many details that are kind of beyond the scope of today’s conversation. At the end of what they sometimes called King Philip’s War. The head Wampanoag chief, and this was the tribe that had at first befriended and assisted the pilgrims. He was killed and decapitated, and his head was placed on a pike at the village of Plymouth for 20 years by.
Mindy Peterson: [00:41:20] The pilgrims or.
Anton Treuer: [00:41:21] The by the pilgrims and his wife and children, sold into slavery and sent to the Caribbean to work on a sugarcane plantation until they were dead, like it was not always pretty, and passed the figgy puddings and stuff like that. But at the same time, you know, you think about what native people did share corn. It’s in everything we eat, drink and drive now potatoes and tomatoes and corn and squash and, you know, so many things that transformed and brought us the uniquely American diet. It also transformed and brought us the Mediterranean diet and so many others. And so there’s lots to learn about. I think it’s interesting. At the village of Plymouth today, there is still a meeting between the native community and the descendants of the pilgrim community on Thanksgiving. Oh, really? And they don’t call it a Thanksgiving. They call it a day of remembrance. Mhm. And it’s not just a day of mourning, although some people will say we should frame it that way. It’s not just a day of celebration or Thanksgiving, it’s a day of remembrance. And I think that’s a healthy tone for it. I get a time off from work, so I’m home with my family, we eat a bunch of food, we hang out and enjoy each other’s company. I think it is good to practice gratitude, so we do do that, but we also reflect upon the history, which is not only the ugly chapters, but it does include those ugly chapters. And I, I think we have to unpack the previous chapter so we can write the next healthy, happy, positive chapter. And that’s what we’re all about.
Mindy Peterson: [00:42:55] Thanks for that. And I’ll throw in there too. When my kids were young, it didn’t matter what what holiday we were celebrating. I always, much to my kids chagrin, always wanted to bring in the historical background of that holiday. So whether it was Halloween or Thanksgiving or Christmas or 4th of July, you know, whatever the holiday was, I would try to bring in some sort of educational, historical information that I would go through with the kids so they knew, why are we coloring Easter eggs at Easter time? Or why are we? Where did this this tradition of trick or treating come from? So I would encourage people, if you have young kids, get the young readers edition and just read with your kids, um, through the the sections on Thanksgiving. They’re really easy to find in the table of contents. So just jump to those just to give your kids some some more of that non-sugar coated historical background on the holiday. If your kids are older, or if you just want to read some more of this for yourself as an adult. Get the regular version and read that so that you can go into our holiday Thanksgiving holiday celebration more well informed about the true history of that. Well, thank you so much, Doctor Troyer, for being our guest. I ask all my guests to close out our conversation with a musical ending, a coda by sharing a song or story about a moment that music enhanced your life. Is there a song or story you can share with us today in closing?
Anton Treuer: [00:44:24] You know, there are so many ones that I could share. I did a collaboration with an artist named Thomas X, and I actually worked up kind of the intro Ojibwe language piece to frame his part resolution, which was kind of about kind of a call to action, saying our reservation needs a revolution. And I thought it was a really well done piece to get us all thinking. So feel free to cue that up and share it with the team.
Transcribed by Sonix.ai