Anishinaabe Syndicated : A View from the Rez

Preface: Fond du Lac Follies and a Writer’s Life

xv Preface Fond du Lac Follies and a Writer’s Life I write how it is on the reservation. The usual term for this place is the rez—specifically, the Fond du Lac Reservation in what is now called Minnesota. In the Ojibwe language, Nagaajiwanaang. I rely on the oral tradition to tell my stories, so I move from one topic to another. This approach lets me include many different stories , from beginning businesses to failed businesses, from personal travels to seasonal traditional activities. I was born at a very early age in the government hospital on the reservation. I am one of twelve children because it’s cold during those long Minnesota winter nights. I began my writing career as a lonely six-year-old boy in a federal boarding school. Writing letters was the only way to stay connected with my family back at Nagaajiwanaang . I knew from the family stories that my grandfather Joseph Northrup wrote stories back in the 1920s and 1930s. His pen name was Nodin. It was as if he broke the trail for me, and anyone who has walked in knee-deep snow understands what breaking trail means. I am also one of the Anishinaabe who survived Agwaajing (they call it Ah-Gwah-Ching), the tuberculosis sanitarium at Walker, Minnesota , when I was age three, then the federal boarding school in Pipestone, Minnesota, when I was six to ten years old. From grades sixtoeightIwenttoBrainerdIndianTrainingSchoolinHotSprings, South Dakota, which was run by the Wesleyan Methodists. I’ve survived years of attempted assimilation. I finally left the American Indian boarding-school system when Alvin Broken Rope and I went along with some Onadaga girls who were trying to escape. We eventually convinced them to return to the school and wait for a bus ticket home. Since we were the only xvi Anishinaabe Syndicated boys in the group, we were arrested and locked up in the county jail. After jail they cut my hair and demanded an apology to the entire school. I refused, thinking I had done nothing wrong. I called home and told them to send me a bus ticket or I was walking home. Once I got home it wasn’t long before I was sent to reform school in Red Wing, Minnesota. I usually say it was because I stole a pig and it squealed, but the real reason was because I was in a high-speed chase involving a stolen car. It was at the reform school that I began asking questions and publishing them for others. Some of the questions I asked in a journalism class were: How tall isthe bluff behind the school? How deep is the Mississippi in front of the school? Which building hasthe lowest ceiling? I published these imaginative questions on the front page of the newspaper and wrote “Answers on page nine” on the bottom of the list. It was an eight-page newspaper. For months people were asking me, “Where is page nine?” I learned from this that my imagination could make people laugh. The last school I attended was the public high school in Carlton, Minnesota, just twelve miles from home. In 1961, according to the principal, I became the first Indian to graduate from that school. I joined the marines right out of high school. I traveled around the Gulf of Mexico, stopping at a few different countries. I next traveled to the Far East, visiting six different countries there, and finished my military service with a tour in Vietnam in a rifle company. Once again I used letters to stay in touch with my family. I returned to the reservation, as I always knew I would, in the late 1970s. There was a shortage of housing on the Fond du Lac Reservation , so I lived in a tipi on a remote reservation lake. It was a long hike from the tar road to my house deep in the woods. It was primitive living but rewarding. After meeting the basic requirements of food, water, and shelter, I had it easy. Clocks didn’t exist in the woods. xvii Fond du Lac Follies I used to entertain my visitors with stories while sitting around the fire or watching the sun go down across the lake. One day I was making notes about a story I wanted to tell the next time I had company. Then I realized they didn’t look too...