Rez Life: An Indian’s Journey Through Reservation Life

At the start of the 20th century, there were only 200,000 living Indigenous people. During the 2000 census, two million Indigenous people were living in the United States. Aside from immigrant populations, Indigenous Americans “are the fastest-growing segment of the U.S. population” (185). Despite this growth in numbers, their culture is dying, writes Treuer. This is particularly prevalent in the disappearance of tribal languages. There are few living speakers of Indigenous languages, and most of them are elderly.

Linguists believe that when the first Europeans arrived in North America during the Age of Exploration, over 300 Indigenous languages were spoken. That number has been halved. Only three have a vibrant and proliferating community of speakers: the Dakota, Dene, and Ojibwe.

The Waadookodaading Ojibwe Language Immersion School at Lac Courte Oreilles (LCO) Reservation in Wisconsin was opened in 2000. By the time the book was published, the school had around 20 students in the language program, ranging from kindergarten to fourth grade. Keller Paap is one of the activists who has worked to preserve the Ojibwe language. Paap was finishing his bachelor’s degree at the University of Minnesota when Treuer met him. Through the university’s department of American Indian Studies, Paap took an Ojibwe-language class.