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Rez Life

Published by USC Bedrosian Center on

Featuring Caroline BhallaRaphael BosticPeter Mancall, and Lisa Schweitzer

To participate in Native American History Month, we read Rez Life: An Indian’s Journey Through Reservation Life by USC Professor David Treuer. Novelist David Treuer’s book “blends memoir and history” to render the uniquely beautiful story of the uniquely American places known as reservations. Treuer spirals in and out of personal story, interviews, and historical narrative to paint a full picture of life as an Ojibwe from Leech Lake Reservation. An important book about the power of individual and collective action, the power of place, and how history lives on in our (collective) lives today.

“None of the people are dead, none of the sense they made of their lives is dead, and on the reservation at least, none of the whims, acts, and actions of presidents, Indian agents, congressional reformers, tribal leaders, and tribal citizens are dead. Or if any of this is dead, it is certainly not buried: nowhere more than in reservation life can we see, can we feel, the past shaping the present. On the reservation the past is hardly past at all.”

To listen to the Bedrosian Book Club Podcast discussion of Rez Life, click the orange arrow in the Soundcloud player at the top of this post. Or you can download it and subscribe through Soundcloud or iTunes!

Follow (some of) us on Twitter:  follow Raphael @RaphaelBostic and Lisa @drschweitzer

Next Month …

Tune in next time for a discussion of The Great Inversion by Alan Ehrenhalt. The book is a look at the changes in the American urban/suburban landscape. In addition to the podcast, which will go live on December 21st, we’ll also have a live book club meeting on January 8th at USC.

 

 

Links to things we talk about:

Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin
Margaret Crawford – keynote address at Contesting the Streets II
Deadly Medicine: Indians and Alcohol in Early America by Peter Mancall
The Hiawatha (do or don’t do your homework first, its up to you) by David Treuer

Of Further Interest:

This podcast was produced by Aubrey Hicks and Jonathan Schwartz, recorded and mixed by Corey Hedden.

Bedrosian Center