Rainy River lives
Subtitle: stories told by Maggie Wilson
By: Maggie Wilson compiled, edited, and with an introduction by Sally Cole.
Contributors: Cole, Sally J.
Publisher: University of Nebraska
Published: 2009
Place of publication: Lincoln
Language: eng
Number of pages: 232
ISBN-13: 9780803220621
Subjects: Ojibwa Indians -- Anecdotes; Ojibwa Indians -- Social life and customs -- Anecdotes; Ojibwa Indians -- Folklore; Tales -- North America
Genres: Anecdotes.; Folklore.
Description: "Rainy River Lives is the long-lost collection of stories of Ojibwe men and women as told by a hitherto unpublished, traditional Ojibwe storyteller, Maggie Wilson (1879-1940). Wilson lived on the Manitou Rapids Reserve on the Rainy River, which flows along the Ontario-Minnesota border. When anthropologist Ruth Landes arrived at Rainy River to conduct her doctoral research in 1932, Wilson often worked with the young scholar, telling her many stories. Their relationship continued after Landes returned to Columbia University. During the following decades, however, the letters and stories Wilson had sent Landes, which Landes had carefully collected, were lost. Only recently were they discovered in the basement of the Smithsonian Institution, where they had been misfiled with papers of another anthropologist." "This rich set of narratives takes us inside the intimate world of Ojibwe families at the turn of the twentieth century, a time of great upheaval when the Ojibwes were being relocated onto reserves and required by the government to abandon their seasonal migrations and subsistence activities. These remarkably detailed stories of ordinary Native people, precisely through their everyday character, reveal much about Ojibwe cultural beliefs and paint a nuanced ethnographic portrait of Ojibwe life. In the distinctive voice of an exceptional and highly creative individual, the stories address both the culturally specific world of the Ojibwes and universal human themes of love, loss, and perseverance."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.