Review of The White Earth Tragedy: Ethnicity and Dispossession at a Minnesota Anishinaabe Reservation, 1889-1920 by Melissa L. Meyer

Authors

Jerry A. Schultz, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS

Date of this Version

August 1994

Comments

Published in Great Plains Research 4:2 (August 1994). Copyright © 1994 The Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln. Used by permission. http://www.unl.edu/plains/publications/GPR/gpr.shtml

Abstract

In this work Meyer draws primarily upon the substantial resources available from the colonial U.S. bureaucracy and other written and unwritten materials. The focus of this study is the incorporation of the Anishinaabe land and resources by Euro-Americans and the concomitant marginalization of the Anishinaabe people in Minnesota.

Migration and cultural reordering were key adaptive strategies of the Anishinaabe. Amalgamation, splintering, intermarriage, and ethnogenesis accompanied all the Anishinaabe migrations. Each migration, whether seasonal migrations before contact with Euro-Americans or the more recent migration to Minnesota, was prompted by different circumstances and led to new cultural adaptations. Meyer undermines the myth that traditional Anishinaabe society was static and unchanging.