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""This is conquered land." The Dakota woman's words, spoken at a community meeting in St. Paul, struck Nora Murphy forcefully. Her own Irish great-great grandparents, fleeing the potato famine, had laid claim to 160 acres in a virgin maple grove in Minnesota. That her dispossessed ancestors' homestead, The Maples, was built upon another, far more brutal dispossession is the hard truth underlying White Birch, Red Hawthorn, a memoir of Murphy's search for the deeper connections between this contested land and the communities who call it home. In twelve essays, each dedicated to a tree significant to Minnesota, Murphy tells the story of the grove that, long before the Irish arrived, was home to three Native tribes: the Dakota, Ojibwe, and Ho-Chunk. She notes devastating strategies employed by the U.S. government to wrest the land from the tribes, but also revisits iconic American tales that subtly continue to promote this displacement--the Thanksgiving story, the Paul Bunyan myth, and Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House books. Murphy travels to Ireland to search out another narrative long hidden--that of her great-great-grandmother's transformative journey from North Tipperary to The Maples. In retrieving these stories, White Birch, Red Hawthorn uncovers lingering wounds of the past--and the possibility that, through connection to this suffering, healing can follow. The next step is simple, Murphy tells us: listen"--… (meer)
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Murphy considers issues of social justice, cultural elitism, and reparations through the lens of examining her own life and seeking to understand her own ancestors. She also identifies each chapter with a specific tree, but those analogies seem forced, although well-meant effort to depict her sensitivity to the natural world. A white woman raised in Minnesota, she realizes her family homestead was built on Native American land not relinquished willingly. The maple grove there would have been a valued sugaring site, but her great-granparents cut the trees down to build a home and farm. Searching for her roots, she realizes her Irish immigrant ancestors were forced from their leased homes during the potato famine, and prior to that, the Irish lost control of their own culture and traditional land uses by dominant English. At what point do we take on the attitudes of those who control us? What does it take for us to remain respectful of whatever land or peoples we find ourselves among? Murphy is challenged by some Dakota and Ojibway elders she interviews to determine what steps she will take, now that she has learned this history. That short section, and it's accompanying mention of specific non-profit groups working for restoration of Native American lands and cultures, gave me the spark to find a way to return thanks and avoid profiting from the land I myself have "owned". Although I learned something from this book,the writing was pretty staid, controlled, methodical, tho not quite boring enough to put me to sleep. ( )
""This is conquered land." The Dakota woman's words, spoken at a community meeting in St. Paul, struck Nora Murphy forcefully. Her own Irish great-great grandparents, fleeing the potato famine, had laid claim to 160 acres in a virgin maple grove in Minnesota. That her dispossessed ancestors' homestead, The Maples, was built upon another, far more brutal dispossession is the hard truth underlying White Birch, Red Hawthorn, a memoir of Murphy's search for the deeper connections between this contested land and the communities who call it home. In twelve essays, each dedicated to a tree significant to Minnesota, Murphy tells the story of the grove that, long before the Irish arrived, was home to three Native tribes: the Dakota, Ojibwe, and Ho-Chunk. She notes devastating strategies employed by the U.S. government to wrest the land from the tribes, but also revisits iconic American tales that subtly continue to promote this displacement--the Thanksgiving story, the Paul Bunyan myth, and Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House books. Murphy travels to Ireland to search out another narrative long hidden--that of her great-great-grandmother's transformative journey from North Tipperary to The Maples. In retrieving these stories, White Birch, Red Hawthorn uncovers lingering wounds of the past--and the possibility that, through connection to this suffering, healing can follow. The next step is simple, Murphy tells us: listen"--
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Murphy is challenged by some Dakota and Ojibway elders she interviews to determine what steps she will take, now that she has learned this history. That short section, and it's accompanying mention of specific non-profit groups working for restoration of Native American lands and cultures, gave me the spark to find a way to return thanks and avoid profiting from the land I myself have "owned".
Although I learned something from this book,the writing was pretty staid, controlled, methodical, tho not quite boring enough to put me to sleep. (