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David TreuerA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Stories about life on reservations in the 1950s and 1960s are often tales of hardship. In 1938, anthropologist M. Inez Hilger did a survey on White Earth Reservation and found that about half of the nearly 250 homes she visited “were merely tar paper shacks” (122). Few had wooden shingles. Only one had a foundation. The shacks were damp, cold, and made of highly flammable materials. Some had toilets, but without any walls for privacy.
Larger, better-connected tribes got money from Housing and Urban Development (HUD), while smaller tribes were frequently overlooked. However, HUD initiated a program to build housing tracts on reservations across the country in the 1960s. The homes looked like those in white suburbs. Instead of streets and alleys, there were cul-de-sacs. This planning model, it was believed, would discourage crime from presumed outsiders. Families signed up for housing as soon as they could, which they received in order of application, through a lottery system, and through nepotism. Some paid a small rental free, while others had free housing. The houses had heating, running water, a bathroom, electricity, and a sturdy roof. What HUD ignored was that they placed families from different tribes, some of whom had rivalries, beside each other as neighbors.
By David Treuer