While the Locust Slept. Peter Razor
More Praise for While the Locust Slept
“A septuagenarian member of the Fond du Lac Band of Ojibwa tells a harrowing tale of mistreatment and racial prejudice as he movingly recalls his years as a ward of the state and indentured laborer in Minnesota during the 1930s…. Though he exposes the reality of a system that essentially legalized child abuse, Razor somehow manages to control his justifiable anger. A perfectly pitched memoir.”
Kirkus Reviews
“[A] stirring bittersweet memoir of growing up…. Written with great emotion and without self-pity.”
PAUL INGRAM,
Prairie Lights Books
“Razor speaks in the achingly honest voice of a young man grown old beyond his years…. [He] is the locust who slept before finally flying and, like the locust, his story teaches much about the cycle of destruction and endurance.”
The Circle
“Peter Razor’s coming-of-age story is a shocking revelation and succeeds where most other Native American autobiographies have failed. While the Locust Slept never confuses honesty with the truth, never descends into racial blaming, and refuses to use Ojibwe culture as a mirror in which the travesties of modern times are reflected. Instead, in a voice as simple and innocent as our childhood should be, he lets his experiences as an orphan at the State Public School in Owatonna and, later, those as a farm placement worker in Houston, Minnesota, tell the harrowing story of a lost generation of Indian children. While the Locust Slept is a treasure.”
DAVID TREUER,
author of Little and The Hiawatha
“Peter Razor spins an intense and endearing tale of an American Indian youth abandoned to the cruel mercy of the state. As memoir, his voice is amazingly unique—giving us a cultural story of human survival. As history, his work informs us of an almost hidden, dark time in our past.”
MARK ANTHONY ROLO (Bad River Ojibwe),
former editor, The Circle
Photo: Lewis Koch
About the Author
PETER RAZOR is an enrolled member of the Fond du Lac Band of Ojibwa and great-grandson of Mrs. Frank Razer of the White Earth Reservation, whose famous beadwork was studied by Frances Densmore in Chippewa Customs (Minnesota Historical Society Press). As an adult, Razor researched his past and his culture and began dancing in powwows and learning to make traditional garments. In recent years he has received acclaim for his instrument-making, including hand drums, rattles, and jingles, thus returning to the ways of his grandmother. While the Locust Slept is his first book.
N A T I V E
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While the Locust
Slept
Peter Razor
MINNESOTA HISTORICAL SOCIETY PRESS
Native Voices
To embody the principles set forth by the series, all Native Voices books are emblazoned with a bird glyph adapted from the Jeffers Petroglyphs site in southern Minnesota. The rock art there represents one of the first recorded voices of Native Americans in the Upper Midwest. This symbol stands as a reminder of the enduring presence of Native Voices on the American landscape.
Publication of Natives Voices
is supported in part by a grant
from The St. Paul Companies.
© 2001 by the Minnesota Historical Society. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, write to the Minnesota Historical Society Press, 345 Kellogg Blvd. W.,
St. Paul, MN 55102-1906.
www.mhspress.org
Manufactured in Canada
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
International Standard Book Number
ISBN 13 978-0-87351-439-2 (paper)
ISBN 10 0-87351-439-4 (paper)
Library of Congress
Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Razor, J. Peter.
While the locust slept : a memoir /
J. Peter Razor.
p. cm.—(Native Voices)
ISBN 0-87351-401-7 (cloth ed. : alk. paper)
ISBN 0-87351-439-4 (paper ed. : alk. paper)
Ebook ISBN: 978-0-87351-707-2
1. Razor, J. Peter.
2. Minnesota. State Public School.
3. Child abuse—Minnesota.
4. Abused children—Minnesota—Biography.
5. Ojibwa children—Abuse of—Minnesota.
6. Ojibwa Indians—Biography.
I. Title.
II. Series
HV6626.53.M6 R39 2001
362.768092 B 21 00-69719
For all the children in the cemetery at the Owatonna State School and for all those who survived but in silence.
From the Records of the State of Minnesota, County