Enduring Nations: Native Americans in the Midwest by R. David Edmunds

Enduring Nations: Native Americans in the Midwest Reviews

• 
  Diana

  Read for my Native American History class.
  
  I learned quite a bit about the Native American tribes that once lived in my area as well as the tribes that are still living here. I recommend this it's short academic articles on the tribes from the Midwest. I enjoyed reading this.
• 
  Stephen Case

  In Native American studies there is apparently no book-length treatment that examines the history of Indians in the Midwest up to the present day. (Though one of the strengths of this book—like any good doorway into a new subject—was the huge number of resources it offered for exploring further.) This collection of articles answers this need a patchwork way. There are articles on the pre-history of peoples in the Midwest and information on how the first tribes migrated to this region and who was here before them (notably the mound builders responsible for Cahokia Mound outside St. Louis). There are a few articles that explore the culture of the métis (individuals of mixed French-Indian heritage) that flourished in the area before the War of 1812, a largely Catholic culture that arose from contacts and exchange with French fur traders and that was mainly ignored by American settlers who poured into the region and recognized only the binary racial categories of red and white. It includes examinations of the lives of specific individuals and their role in the narrative of forced departure—what happened to the Miami of Ohio, for instance, and even down to modern times with discussion of Indian communities in Chicago and Obijwe (Anishinaabe) communities around the Great Lakes through the Great Depression. There is even a modern analysis of the role of gaming (gambling) in the Menominee reservation of Wisconsin.
  
  It’s a collection of narratives by different scholars of different aspects of Indian life in the Midwest during different periods. Perhaps that’s its greatest strength, because the narratives of such peoples could not be unified—or at least not naturally and not easily. A single narrative is the danger of so much of our own history: progress, westward expansion, civilization. Such grand unified narratives efface complexities that this book helps unearth.