Birchbark Books & Martinez's Book on Eastman

Yesterday I visited Louise Erdrich's lovely family-community bookstore, Birchbark Books in Minneapolis. It's a sunny yet breezy day, and the door is wide open, letting in the wind with all its good spirits and allowing the good spirits that reside inside to welcome you at the door. Many do.

Susan White greets visitors like the perfect hostess at a party, delighted and warm with each new guest, but instead of offering each a drink, she presents something better, the perfect book with stories to accompany it. Complementing her at the counter is the more reserved Prudence Johnson, with an equally welcoming demeanor and gentle jazz-singer tones. Incredible harmonies they orchestrate together.

After drawing out my interest in Ohiyesa, Susan led me to my must-read, the just released Dakota Philosopher: Charles Eastman and American Indian Thought. (Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2009) by David Martinez, an enrolled member of the Gila River Indian Community and assistant professor in American Indian Studies at the Arizona State University, Tempe.

Delighted but also slightly apprehensive, I opened the pages. Would this new research send me off in different directions just as I am ready to send my book to a publisher?

No -- instead this fine, groundbreaking work resonated with the same tones. He, too, had found in Eastman not a boxed-in assimilationist but a man of education, philosophy and subversion, transforming old paradigms to fit his Dakota values and ideals -- a cultural warrior of peace and respect, always advocating for a better place for all Indians and indigenous people in a new world of limited choices. The book jacket states "While Eastman's contemporaries viewed him as 'a great American and true philosopher,' Indian scholars have long dismissed Eastman's work as assimilationist. Now, for the first time, his philosophy as manifested in his writing is examined in detail.....claiming for him a long overdue place in America's intellectual pantheon."

Amen!!!
And thanks to Birchbark Books -- where such invigorating connections are made daily, weaving communities and the world together more closely and creatively -- always leaving openings to let good spirits flow in and out.

For more on Martinez's book: http://www.americantaino.blogspot.com/2009/03/dakota-philosopher-charles-eastman-and.html

And for Birchbark Books: http://birchbarkbooks.com/
http://birchbarkbooks.com/_blog/Birchbark_Blog