Celebrated novelist David Treuer has gained a reputation for writing fiction that expands the horizons of Native American literature. In Rez Life, his first full-length work of nonfiction, Treuer brings a novelist’s storytelling skill and an eye for detail to a complex and subtle examination of Native American reservation life, past and present.
With authoritative research and reportage, Treuer illuminates misunderstood contemporary issues of sovereignty, treaty rights, and natural-resource conservation. He traces the waves of public policy that have disenfranchised and exploited Native Americans, exposing the tension that has marked the historical relationship between the United States government and the Native American population. Through the eyes of students, teachers, government administrators, lawyers, and tribal court judges, he shows how casinos, tribal government, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs have transformed the landscape of Native American life.
A member of the Ojibwe of northern Minnesota, Treuer grew up on Leech Lake Reservation, but was educated in mainstream America. Exploring crime and poverty, casinos and wealth, and the preservation of native language and culture, Rez Life is a strikingly original work of history and reportage, a must read for anyone interested in the Native American story.
About David Treuer
David Treuer is Ojibwe from the Leech Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota. He grew up on Leech Lake and left to attend Princeton University where he worked with Paul Muldoon, Joanna Scott, and Toni Morrison. He published his first novel, LITTLE, when he was twenty-four. Treuer is the recipient of the Pushcart Prize, and his work has been named an editor’s pick by the Washington Post, Time Out, and City Pages. His essays and reviews have appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Esquire, Slate.com, and The Washington Post.
He also earned his PhD in anthropology and teaches literature and creative writing at The University of Southern California. He divides his time between LA and The Leech Lake Reservation.
Editorial Reviews
“Smartly, this book blends journalism, history and memoir… to provide both anecdotes of present-day reservation life and history… Treuer’s message – the picture he gives of Indian reservation life today – is not one of defeat or demise but of miraculous survival.”—Greg Sarris, San Francisco Chronicle
“Dismantles many of the preconceptions—and misconceptions—the general public has about Native Americans… A unique blend of memoir, history, and journalistic account… lends a human touch to a story that is not often presented in such terms… Rez Life is a bracing, eye-opening, often moving read. Highly recommended.”—Andrea Appleton, Washington City Paper
“As novelist David Treuer wryly observes in this sobering yet quietly redemptive book, in spite of how involved Indians have been in America’s business, most people will go a lifetime without ever knowing an Indian or spending time on an Indian reservation… Treuer’s elegant chronicle of the lives and stories of individuals on his own reservation… chips away at the stony structures that embed [negative] views of the reservation in the American consciousness.” —Henry L. Carrigan Jr., BookPage
Ojibwe Writer Celebrates The Beauty Of ‘Rez Life’
NPR Book Review – February 20.2012 (Excerpt)
Stories about life on Native American reservations often focus on the hardships — alcoholism, drugs, violence and poverty. In Rez Life: An Indian’s Journey Through Reservation Life, Ojibwe writer David Treuer strives to capture stories about the beauty of life on reservations.
“We have such fierce attachments to these places,” he tells NPR’s Neal Conan. “That’s what the book is about to some degree — the depth of affection and feeling we have for these places and to have a homeland.”
The son of an Ojibwe mother and an Austrian Holocaust survivor, Treuer grew up on the Leech Lake Reservation in Minnesota. Though he acknowledges that reservation life is challenging, he says most treatments of Native American history don’t report the good parts of the experience.
“There’s this great disconnect between … how we feel and how we seem,” says Treuer.
Treuer, who has written several novels about Native American life, talks about the discoveries in his first work of nonfiction. [Read the interview highlights...]
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