Throughout much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Ojibway people of Michigan's Bay Mills Indian reservation endured hopeless poverty, cultural repression, and deep racial prejudice. Despite such odds, they have survived as a people and a community through reliance on the bond of kin, the ability to reap and share the abundance of nature, and a strong belief in their identity as a native people.
Drawn from oral accounts of tribal elders, The Place of the Pike tells the history of the Bay Mills community from the perspective of the people themselves, whose own view of the past is not cast in terms of federal Indian policy, academic theories, national economic trends, or the personages of American political life. Instead, the Indians of Bay Mills see their history in the life struggles of their own tribal heroes.
In order to recapture the past, oral storytellers frequently employ visual imagery. These stories, combined with dozens of photographs from the tribe's photographic archives, make the text of The Place of the Pike come alive. This unique history will inform and fascinate a broad readership in Native American and Great Lakes history, community studies, and anthropology.
Charles E. Cleland is Professor of Anthropology, Michigan State University.
