by Patty Krawec
I listened to the audiobook edition of this book by this Anishinaabe-Canadian author who was raised by her mother (of European heritage) and then reconnected with her father’s indigineous family as an adult. I appreciated her thorough survey of the history of the North American continent, especially from her perspective as a Canadian, as well as her accounts of her own family history.
At the end of each chapter Krawec provides ideas to further one’s own learning about Native life, history, and culture, and from that I had a really good idea about how to combine that with what I know of my own family’s history. Krawec was unsparing in her description of the historical forces and results of “settler colonialism,” which is pretty much the history of each and every ancestor I come from. They all flocked from the British Isles to the eastern seaboard, pushed through the Cumberland Gap, and fanned out all over the South. I would like to learn more about the specific tribal nations my ancestors would have encountered, and (let’s face it) driven out from the places where they settled. Who were the Native peoples of Virginia when my mother’s ancestor Robert Gamble landed there from Northern Ireland in the early 1700s? Who were the Native peoples near Preachersville, Kentucky where my paternal grandmother was born, or in Houston, where her husband, my grandfather, came from? What are the surviving Native communities like in those places now? Who is left of the tribes that lived in the Diablo Valley of northern California where I was born?
I am creating my own curriculum for a lifelong learning project of the Native history that none of us got from our formal education, and it feels only proper to find out what part my ancestors played in the larger story.