The Receiving Is In the Giving
If hope “is the belief that the future will be better than the present, and I have the power to make it so” then Dr. Anton Treuer is the personification of it. Anton is a professor of Ojibwe at Bemidji State University, and along with many others, is working to preserve Ojibwe language and culture. The day we spoke, he was making a six-hour drive to North Dakota to work with a tribal school. A Star Tribune profile from April 2020, described him as “perpetually in motion.” So it wasn’t surprising that he was literally in motion during our conversation.
Photo Credit: Dr. Anton Treuer
Anton grew up in and around the Leech Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota. He has an Ivy League education, has published several books and received numerous awards and fellowships. But it is his family (he is the father of nine), his role as an Ojibwe Spiritual Leader and a keeper of the culture that matter most. The Cultural Toolbox: Traditional Living in the Modern World, is an informative, engaging and intimate look at living a traditional Ojibwe life in today’s world. In the book, Anton describes his mother, Margaret Treuer, the first Native woman attorney in Minnesota, as his “cultural anchor.
Anton stumbled into becoming a Spiritual Leader and language and culture preservationist. Going away to college made him realize what a blessing his culture was and made him want to learn more. After college, he spent six years as “the gopher” for Archie Mosey, an Ojibwe first- speaker, respected elder and Spiritual Leader living in Balsam, Wisconsin. Tracking Archie Mosey down was an act of hope on Anton’s part. It involved a lot of quarters and him calling people with the last name Mosey listed in a phone book inside a phone booth. When they finally met, Archie Mosey was in his 90s, and he told Anton he’d been waiting for him.
Anton spent a lot of time driving Archie Mosey to ceremonies and anywhere else he needed to go. This allowed Anton to learn Ojibwe and deepen his understanding and practice of the culture, which connected him to his true self and his path forward. Anton knew he was fluent in Ojibwe once he started dreaming in it. It was also around this time that Anton became a parent for the first time, which meant he would be the “cultural anchor” for his child.
Anton is part of a robust and growing community of people working to preserve Ojibwe language and culture. Recently, the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe announced the Ojibwe Rosetta Stone Project. Anton was a consultant on the project. Fond du Lac Tribal College launched Grandmother’s House, an Ojibwe immersion childcare program for children up to age 5. And students at Waadookodaading Ojibwe Language Immersion School in Hayward, Wisconsin continue to have some of the highest test scores on state-mandated tests.
Despite all of the good that is happening, the language is under a lot of pressure as more Ojibwe speakers pass away. But Anton said it is important to look at the state of the Ojibwe language in the larger context of the world’s growing population. A lot of the world’s languages are at risk of extinction as English becomes more commonly spoken around the globe. Even a language like Swedish isn’t safe from possible extinction.
Anton understands deeply that connecting to Ojibwe language and culture provides a path for people to heal, navigate life’s challenges and thrive. It provides a deeper connection to a community that at its heart is about caring for and helping one another. Anton says he could be replaced 100 times over in this work and that is a good thing. In a hundred years, he doesn’t care if people remember him. He just hopes the Ojibwe language and culture are alive and well. For him, the receiving is in the giving.
When the U.S. government couldn’t exterminate the Ojibwe and other First Peoples, they assimilated them through residential boarding schools, relocation programs using false promises and a whole lot of other chicanery. But enough first-speakers survived and gave hope that what was taken could be reclaimed. Archie Mosey was proof of that. Anton and so many others are tirelessly and selflessly working to pass that hope on by taking back their language and culture. In his book, Everything You Wanted to Know About Indians But Were Afraid to Ask, Anton dedicated it to his son, Isaac, saying “With high hopes that the world in which you raise your children will be kinder and more understanding than this one.” May that hope be made real
Photo Credit: Dr. Anton Treuer
Hope Happening: Developing Ojibwe language books with speakers from the Mille Lacs Band in Hinckley 2019
Learn More
I highly recommend Everything You Wanted To Know About Indians But Were Afraid to Ask and The Cultural Toolbox: Traditional Ojibwe Living in the Modern World. Both are beautifully written, engaging and very informative. You can learn more about those and Anton’s other books, upcoming appearances and how you can help support his work at Antontreuer.com. You can also subscribe to his YouTube channel.
