Based on memory, court testimony, and other sources, this narrative recounts the experiences of the Chippewa as they met missionaries, capitalists, bureaucrats, and anthropologists

The People Named The Chippewa: Narrative Histories

History

Vizenor, Gerald Vizenor

Americas

Univ. of Minnesota Press

Griever de Hocus, an American, reservation-born tribal trickster, becomes a teacher at Zhou Enlai University in China, but is soon flouting the state bureaucracy like the cosmic trickster common to both Chinese and Native American mythology

Griever: An American Monkey King in China

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

Tells the story of a group of tribal pilgrims who journey south toward freedom after the government invades their reservation to claim their sacred trees for fuel

Bearheart: The Heirship Chronicles

Literature & Fiction

United States

Drawing on the traditional ways of Anishinaabe storytelling, acclaimed poet Gerald Vizenor illuminates the 1898 battle at Sugar Point in Minnesota in this epic poem. Fought between the Pillagers of the Leech Lake Reservation (one of the original five clans of the Anishinaabe tribe) and U.S. soldiers, the battle marked a turning point in relations between the government and Native Americans. Although out-numbered by more than three to one, the Pillager fighters won convincingly. Weaving together strands of myth, memory, legend, and history, Bear Island lyrically conveys a historical event that has been forgotten not only by the majority culture but also by some Anishinaabe people—bringing back to light a key moment in Minnesota’s history with clarity of vision and emotional resonance. Gerald Vizenor is professor of American studies at the University of New Mexico. He is a member of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, White Earth Reservation. His previous books include The People Named the Chippewa and Griever, for which he won an American Book Award. Jace Weaver is professor and director of the Institute of Native American Studies at the University of Georgia.

Bear Island: The War at Sugar Point (Indigenous Americas)

Poetry

In traditional tribal creation myths, the earthdiver brings up dirt from the primal water to form the earth. The contemporary earthdivers in this collection of stories are mixed bloods, in the author's words "the mournful and whimsical heirs and survivors from that premier union between the daughters of the woodland shamans and white fur traders." Now they dive in un-known urban areas connecting dreams to earth in the same way that these stories connect metaphor to realities.Scholars have defined Indian identities that are meaningful to outsiders but they are unable to explain the intuitive oral tradition of tribal consciousness. These stories attempt to convey a sense of that tradition.

Earthdivers: Tribal Narratives on Mixed Descent