Description

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In 1894 Wisconsin game wardens Horace Martin and Josiah Hicks were dispatched to arrest Joe White, an Ojibwe ogimaa (chief), for hunting deer out of season and off-reservation. Martin and Hicks found White and made an effort to arrest him. When White showed reluctance to go with the wardens, they started beating him; he attempted to flee, and the wardens shot him in the back, fatally wounding him. Both Martin and Hicks were charged with manslaughter in local county court, and they were tried by an all-white jury. A gripping historical study, The Murder of Joe White contextualizes this event within decades of struggle of White’s community at Rice Lake to resist removal to the Lac Courte Oreilles Reservation, created in 1854 at the Treaty of La Pointe. While many studies portray American colonialism as defined by federal policy, The Murder of Joe White seeks a much broader understanding of colonialism, including the complex role of state and local governments as well as corporations. All of these facets of American colonialism shaped the events that led to the death of Joe White and the struggle of the Ojibwe to resist removal to the reservation.

About the Author

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Erik M. Redix (Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe) is Assistant Professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota–Duluth.

Praise For…

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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