Minnesota man beats the boarding school blues

Page 12

While the Locust Slept

-a memoir

By Peter Razor

Minnesoa Historical

Society Press

200 pages hc

$19.95 U.S.

It's not just another boarding school story, this book by Peter Razor. As a ward of the state of Minnesota, Razor truly lived it. He tells his survival story authentically, movingly, without any trace of self-pity. It is honest and it flows.

While the Locust Slept is a fine addition to the Native Voices series published by Minnesota Historical Society Press. They describe this series as "Native peoples telling their stories, writing their history."

When I picked up Razor's book, I thought it would be another one of those heartfelt and intensely personal stories written by someone intent on publishing what was essentially his diary, a milestone on his healing road. I asked myself whether his writing the book was designed to distance himself further from a horrendous residential school experience.

Sometimes the act of writing accomplishes this for those who have suffered a lot, but from the point of view of an editor, sometimes personal stories are better left to the oral tradition, they are so badly written. Not to diminish the value of anyone's life experience, but when you put a personal account of your life out there for public consumption, how you deliver your message often becomes as important as the message itself. It's about marketing.

But Razor, a first-time author in the wisdom of his years, amazingly makes his story as interesting as fiction. He has no need in his 70s to launch into a tirade of anger and blame. Readers will see the injustices committed against him for themselves. The language is plain. You think you know how the story will turn out, yet you still don't want to put the book down until you reach the end.

Razor's tale is the old but never worn out story about exceptional courage in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds, and about a man's determination to do more with his life than just survive.

Razor was born in Minnesota in 1930 and was abandoned as a baby at the State Public School at Owatonna.

Not surprisingly, given his start in life, Razor saw his share of trouble as a youth. The state placed him as an indentured farm hand at the age of 16. He was abused, barely provided the necessities of life and had to deal with bullies at school and on the farm. Razor persisted in going to high school, even so, in his old worn clothes and often dirty, to achieve a goal his employer persistently tried to thwart.

The strength of this book is that it is a story of triumph, whereas many of these kinds of stories have sad endings.

Razor makes it clear that he did not leave all his troubles behind when he became an adult. To reclaim his identity, he has walked a hard road since leaving the old life.

In that walk, the member of the Fond du Lac Band of Ojibwa picked up his medicine a long time ago and embraced traditional values. He learned to craft hand drums, rattles, jingles and traditional clothing on the powwow trail.

He says he will never forget his painful childhood. Yet the reader is going to know that Razor has not only survived, he has become a model of hope for others who are struggling on their own to get past hard times.

The locust referred to in the book's title harks back to the sound of cicadas that Razor heard outside his boarding house window as a young boy. He learned that one locust species hibernated for 17 years before emerging into the world. It is facile to make obvious comparisons, but the book is well-named. The story is about Razor's own emergence as a confident human being, after a similarly long sleep.

Non-Native people who are trying to understand what the Native boarding school experience was really like and how it contributed to the loss of self-esteem among Indian peoples should read this book. There's no way they can miss the point.