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Communication Associate: Public Relations | Lori Melton | lmelton@d.umn.edu | (218) 726-8830
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October 23, 2014
Erik Redix | Assistant Professor | American Indian Studies | 218 726-8478 | redix@d.umn.edu
Kathleen McQuillan-Hofmann | Communication Associate | External Affairs | 218 726-7111 | kmcquill@d.umn.edu


UMD Faculty Releases Book

Cover of the book "The Murder of Joe White: Ojibwe Leadership and Colonialism in Wisconsin"

DULUTH, MN — Erik Redix, assistant professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD), recently had his book, The Murder of Joe White: Ojibwe Leadership and Colonialism in Wisconsin, published by Michigan State University Press. Redix is a member of Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe. His work has received early praise.

A poignant tale of sacrifice, betrayal, and redemption, The Murder of Joe White challenges us all to reexamine America’s treatment of native people and our role in shaping the environment and human landscape in years to come. Anton Treuer, author of Everything You Wanted to Know About Indians, But Were Afraid to Ask and The Assassination of Hole in the Day
The Murder of Joe White presents a compelling history of the Ojibwe peoples as they fight to preserve their sovereignty and their place in the social as political landscape of modern North America. This is a book that forces you to think deeply about the ways in which the history of the United States is inseparable from the histories of the Native peoples of North America. Michael Witgen, Director of Native Studies, Associate Professor, Department of History and the Department of American Culture, The University of Michigan

About the book

The book examines the little-known 1894 murder of Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe chief Giishkitawag, also known as Joe White, by state game wardens executing an arrest warrant for hunting out of season and off the reservation. At a time when federal policies of the allotment era threatened to break up the reservation and remove children into off-reservation boarding schools, the state of Wisconsin aggressively pursued its own agenda to curb the sovereignty of the Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe people.

Disregarding the legal privileges guaranteed to the Ojibwe through federal treaties, which included rights to hunt, fish, and gather off-reservation, the state of Wisconsin intruded by establishing and enforcing its own game laws. Game Warden Horace Martin and assistant Josiah Hicks found White working in an off-reservation logging camp and made an effort to arrest him. As White took a single step back, the game officers proceeded to beat him with handcuffs and a shotgun. When White attempted to flee, he was shot and killed.

Both Martin and Hicks were charged with manslaughter. During the trial, the defense did not deny the men had beaten and shot White. The all-white jury returned with a verdict of not guilty. This episode of violence illustrates how U.S. legal institutions at the federal, state, and local levels created and spread conflict that resulted in an atmosphere of violence for the Ojibwe, which was foundational to the formation of the Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe Reservation.


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