During the Allotment & Assimilation Era (1887-1930) the U.S. government moved to assimilate Native peoples into American society and the economy. Private land ownership was forced onto Indigenous peoples by breaking apart communal lands into family parcels, effectively altering relationships to land and food. In many cases, Native peoples were forced to shift from subsistence lifestyles and traditional forms of trade to growing food as a commodity. This commodity-based approach to food was and continues to be in conflict with traditional relationships, knowledge, and practices related to growing food.

In this episode of Spirit Plate, Shiloh chats with:

• Eric Hemenway, the Director of Repatriation, Archives, and Records for the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians 

Episode highlights:

An Introduction the Allotment & Assimilation Era 

• Eric introduces himself as the director of Repatriation, Archives, and Records for the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians, a federally recognized tribe in northern Michigan. He has done extensive work with the repatriation of Native American remains under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act by working with museums and universities and has brought roughly 300 people back to their homelands, according to his website.

• He prefaces that he believes the process of assimilation began in 1492 before talking more specifically about the Allotment & Assimilation Era of 1887-1930. This was a time period during which the U.S. federal government aimed to assimilate Native Americans into the mainstream American economy and society. 

• A key part of this process has to do with land: the American idea of owning land in stark contrast with the Anishinaabe idea of cultivating a relationship with the land.

• Throughout the mid-1800s, all the tribes in what is now Michigan signed treaties with the U.S. government that allotted them land—although the nature of the treaty negotiations was unique to each tribe. However, the government’s view of whether these tribes were “civilized’ or “uncivilized’ was very much tied to what tribes did with the land.

The Burt Lake Burnout

• Shiloh tells a harrowing story from this time period: that of the Burt Lake Burnout. This event is also the origin story behind how scorched corn came to be one of the cultural foods of Natives in this area.

• In 1836, the Burt Lake Band of Chippewa and Ottawa ceded their land in return for annuity payments. They then purchased the land and placed it in trust with the Governor of Michigan. However, inconsistent enforcement by local officials led to confusion over taxation. Speculators began to purchase land with “overdue” property taxes, which is how John Walter McGinn came to hold title to 400 acres of Native land by 1899. The next year, McGinn and the local sheriff’s deputies forced Native inhabitants from their homes and set the homes on fire. Faced with the difficulty of choosing which belongings they could carry with them, a few Native families managed to recover remnants of their food reserves, including now-scorched corn.

Scorched Corn and Shiloh’s Fish Cakes

• Scorched corn, sometimes known as parched corn, is sweet corn that has been slowly roasted or blackened over a fire for preservation. To make it at home, Shiloh places a metal grate over a small wood fire. She puts husked corn on the grate and turns each ear of corn every few minutes until the entire cob is brown and the kernels wrinkled. Then she cuts the kernels off the cob and dehydrates them.

• Shiloh also narrates her recipe for fish cakes using scorched corn flour (see below).

Allotment in Northern Michigan

• Eric shares the complicated, convoluted allotment process for the Odawa in northern Michigan, beginning with the Washington D.C. Treaty of 1836.

• Originally, the Odawa of northern Michigan used a lot of land to carry out their way of life—they moved with the seasons and with the resources. They would go south for the winter and come back in the spring to fish and plant their crops. In the summer they would hunt and gather, and in the fall, harvest and get ready for winter again.

• But the Europeans viewed this way of life as “savage” and “roaming.” They believed people should stay in one place and manage a small parcel of land. Allotment was, hence, a method of assimilation, encouraging Native peoples to cultivate land like a white settler farmer would.

• What was different about the experience of the Odawa in northern Michigan compared to other tribes, however, was that they were able to pick their allotment of land with a treaty signed in 1855. In fact, that treaty is a living document and is still being used and  interpreted today.

Debunking Stereotypes

• Eric emphasizes that Natives didn’t fade away in the 1880s, despite numerous stereotypical depictions in pop culture that perpetuate this idea.

• He also points out that while a lot of imagery from this time period is of the western Indian, there were still populations of Natives east of the Mississippi.