The birchbark house
[In this] story of a young Ojibwa girl, Omakayas, living on an island in Lake Superior around 1847, Louise Erdrich is reversing the narrative perspective used in most children's stories about nineteenth-century Native Americans. Instead of looking out at 'them' as dangers or curiosities, Erdrich, drawing on her family's history, wants to tell about 'us', from the inside. The Birchbark House establishes its own ground, in the vicinity of Laura Ingalls Wilder's 'Little House' books. --The New York Times Book Review
Stats for nerds
2recommend
4mentions
2people
2023–2025years
75% recommend25% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Although I'm only interested in a few books on the list I find it a nicely done list: a good theme and a good amount of detail per book. I can't do as well but these are my favorites this year(ish):
* Fur Trade Nation by Carl Gawboy - a graphical history of the Ojibway nation between 1650 and 1850. Not a hard history with detailed discussion of evidence and possibilities but more of a grade school style overview of the history and really well done as that. I do better with text than most but I still think this style communication has a lot of advantages and should be used more.
* The Birchbark House series by Louise Erdrich (historical fiction, starting at the end of the period Fur Trade Nation covers) - I've read the first three books and while they are aimed at children they have complex characters and themes (and also some cute animals and a focus on the kids). I read her book Tracks a couple of decades ago and liked it well enough to remember her name when I saw a few years ago that she has a bookstore in Minneapolis called Birchbark Books. Their online store has a great selection of books by indigenous authors.
* The Gift is in the Making Anishinaabeg stories retold by Leanne Simpson - Traditional stories retold with a few recent references. This one has a few ojibway terms but is in english while I also read Plums or Nuts by Larry Amik Smallwood and Michael Migizi Sullivan Sr. which is fully in ojibway as well as english and the stories there are more personal by the first author. They are chosen primarily for language learning reasons but they are also nice "slice of life" stories and I recommend it even if you aren't trying to learn ojibway.
* Heart Berries by Terese Marie Mailhot - The author has a breakdown and writes about it. A really rough read but well writen and has a lot of love for such a tramatic story.
* Bringing Joy: A Local Literary Welcome - I heard about Fur Trade Nation when it was first published and not widely available so I got it from the publisher at Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College and found this poetry collection and decided to try it even though I'm not usually into poetry. There were a couple that I will hopefully never forget and more that I enjoyed reading. I picked up What Book!? later thinking I'd try a bit more poetry but haven't enjoyed that one as much so far.
* A Space for the Unbound - Technically a game not a book but very story focused and in my opinion the best game story (by quite a bit) of any game I've played. Again some severe abuse depicted and also a lot of love.
- Another argument for trimming the extra layers and doing more things for ourselves, depending on ability.
If you have children and read to them, consider The Birchbark House by Louise Erdrich for its example of seasonal living and adjusting to new settlers from overseas.
The land I'm on now (pacific northwest, west of the Cascade range) is generally so modified to the point where it would be difficult to live off the land without importing petroleum-derived fertilizer.
- Would a wolf pack stop hunting elk if they could all just sit down and talk with each other?
We're not wolves, of course, but meat can reasonably be some percentage of our diet. I prefer a few meals a month that include meat.
I've read and thoroughly enjoyed Charlotte's Web. I love watching animals of all shapes and sizes and abilities. I sat in a stand for hours, days, and ultimately shot a deer for food. I also accept that I will eat meat and enjoy it as a delicious luxury, even if they have something interesting to say. We've killed so many wolves that it is now on us to either give more land back to wolves, removing our fences and livestock, or kill the deer ourselves.
There are already animals I will not eat unless it's necessary for survival. Whales. Wolves. Bears. Raptors. Chimpanzees. The list is fairly long.
Consider reading The Birchbark House by Louise Erdrich[0], about Omakayas and her family (Anishinaabe, 1847) living through the seasons of a year.
- As an adult with a history of addiction to videogames, formed during childhood where I used games to escape family stress (and because, c'mon, they're fun!), I would only introduce digital games as a thing I do together with my child, and without the loot boxes or other microtransactions. Videogames are some of the low-hanging fruit of pass-time options. As someone who promotes rewilding (the land, water, and ourselves- changing our habits towards a pre-agricultural existence, like in The Birchbark House, by Louise Erdrich; I'm reading this series to my child), is recommend minimizing the time spent indoctrinating children into the wonderful world of computers, and maximizing the time you spend together gathering food and making meals (it's okay to spend hours a day doing this, especially as a social activity), moving through the world outside together, playing games that aren't on flat screens (myopia is a problem), and facilitating your child's time with peers.
I struggle with the latter, as we're in a rural area with few young children, and those that do live around here are habituated to spending hours a day on their computers.
On addiction: when I was hooked on WoW I remember trying to get my longtime friends involved. They gamely tried, too, but were well-enough adjusted that the hooks didn't catch. That did not compute for me; how could you not be devoted to this experience? I saw myself as a lifer. Now, after reading about addiction, and in talking with therapists, I understand not everyone gets hooked on the same thing, if anything at all. The design of games can make it really easy to get hooked, though, and hard to crawl out. That's where I think they go wrong; nothing should be so easy, except actions like breathing and using our bodies (much of which requires training, which goes back to how we spend our time).
