NONFICTION: Rez Life #NDN

NONFICTION: "Rez Life," by David Treuer StarTribune.com
At the book's heart is the reservation, "the paradoxically least and most American place in the 21st century," the land and communities that endure as places of Indian control and identity. "Most often rez life is associated with tragedy," he writes, yet "what one finds on reservations is more than scars, tears, blood, and noble sentiment. There is beauty in Indian life. ... We love our reservations."
Treuer embeds these ideas within stories about modern Indians. Among those he portrays: Dan and Dennis Jones -- forced to go to a Canadian boarding school where they were raped by an Indian man hired as a "role model" -- now strong, healed men who are helping others rise above trauma. Helen Bryan Johnson, whose refusal to pay $147 in taxes on her reservation trailer home led to a landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling that allowed casinos to flourish. Brooke Mosay Amman, an Ojibwe educator cut out of tribal membership by "blood quantum" rules that Treuer sees as the worst way to define an Indian. And, most personally and painfully, his 83-year-old grandfather, Eugene Seelye, a D-day veteran who killed himself in 2007.
"Rez Life" is not just about Indians, but about America. "You can tell a lot about America, about its sins and ideals, by looking at ... a kind of American who was supposed to have died out a long time ago," Treuer writes.In the end, he concludes: "We might just make it." This impassioned, important book may well help make it so.
Pamela Miller is a Star Tribune night metro editor.