Boozhoo Anishinaabeg.

My name is Trevor Swoverland. I grew up in northern Wisconsin and I currently live in northeastern Minnesota. My people arrived here from the Highlands of Scotland, the southwestern part of Ireland, and near the Black Forest in Germany. I have written this to you because I am in your debt, and I need to acknowledge that.

Many of my ancestors fled home to escape efforts by colonizers in Europe to destroy their culture. Several others actually arrived here against their will after being captured fighting the English colonizers who then shipped them to “the colonies,” or ethnically cleansed them from the only land they’d ever known. Eventually, my ancestors found their way to lands that were not too far from the traditional area of the Odaawaa-Zaaga’iganiing/Lac Courte Oreilles tribe. There my ancestors were -unaware or otherwise – links in the chain of colonization that was carried out by a representative government that broke promises made to you in their name. They worked hard and farmed land that prior to their arrival was land where you hunted and gathered and lived. You were displaced and they bore the benefit of your displacement. I would not be here if that had not happened. I am indebted.

I grew up in a place where many lessons shared by the Anishinaabeg with their European neighbors were enthusiastically put to use but without awareness of the origin of those lessons or any awareness that they allowed our own ancestors to survive. I grew up making ziinzibaakwad/maple sugar every spring and catching the namebin/white sucker, the ginoozhe/northern pike, the ogaa/walleye, and the agwadaashi/sunfish for food. We harvested the miin/blueberry, miskomin/raspberry, and the odatagaagomin/blackberry each summer. We hunted the waawaashkeshi/white-tailed deer and at times its flesh was what kept my grandfather’s family alive during very lean times. We made mittens and hats from the hide of the amik/beaver because my ancestors had learned that these kept us warm when we had to be out in the cold. My ancestors learned lessons from you about how to feed themselves and clothe themselves in this place, how to survive here. I am indebted.

My own life has been directly affected by you and the collective wisdom of your people. I was taken underwing by many of your scholars and elders when I was a student. They were patient with me in teaching me about the real history of what happened when my own ancestors came here and how their arrival affected life for the Anishinaabeg; these lessons were never taught in our schools and as a result too few of us are aware. They taught me about the gross violations of treaties by the federal and state governments. They helped me understand what was at stake for the Anishinaabeg during the “Walleye Wars” of the 1980s and showed me the rancidness of the racism directed at Anishinaabe people by people from my community, for the sole reason that you were practicing your ancestral harvests and exercising rights enshrined in treaties. They opened my eyes to a history that is filled with efforts to eradicate your culture, steal your children, outlaw your language, and your spiritual practices, even regulate your bodies. They taught me how the child welfare system today continues to wreak the same havoc on your communities and culture that colonizers have for hundreds of years. And they gave me an opportunity to support your communities’ efforts to retain and reclaim your sovereignty through my work as an ally, work that felt to me like it gave me back a part of my soul. I am indebted.

In the course of learning at the feet and from the words of your elders, I heard for the first time that my own people were tribal once too and that an important piece of the solution for all of the pain that colonizers have caused the Anishinaabeg and countless other indigenous nations here and for the destruction of the land, water, forests, and the climate crisis itself, is for colonizers to understand who they really are: who we were before we were colonized ourselves. Colonization is a sickness and I was taught that it is critical for people like me to look back in our own history and understand how we related to the earth and to other peoples before we ourselves were Christianized and stripped of our own ancestral cultures. Your elders taught me that there is healing for us in making those discoveries and living the lessons inherent in understanding who we really are, who our people were before their own identities were destroyed by colonizing forces long ago. The colonized make the best colonizers, but rather than treating me like part of the problem the Anishinaabeg have faced for several hundred years your elders taught me how I could begin to really be myself, to heal and be better. I am indebted.

This past summer I had another experience that I can only describe as life-changing to the degree that I will always remember it as a time I became someone I had never been before. I learned how to harvest and process manoomin/wild rice. For a couple of weekends, I was close to the land and the water, myself, and my brother, as we glided gently through the stalks and harvested rice that will feed our families for the next year. I carved my bawa’iganaakoon/knockers out of cedar the grows near my home and we put down asemaa/tobacco and thanked the land and the water and the spirits for the gift spread out for miles ahead of us on the water. For the first time, the immense gravity of the need to protect the land and the water hit me, and my connection to the land and water that freely gave this beautiful and plentiful gift to sustain my family was clearer than I have ever experienced. This made it imperative for me to do what I can to support you as you fight those who would pollute or destroy this precious resource for financial gain. Lessons learned from you and your teachers who have been in my life once again changed my life forever. I am indebted.

I fear that I owe you a debt that would be impossible to repay in many lifetimes. Things learned from the Anishinaabeg kept my persecuted ancestors alive here, and things I have learned from you have changed my mind and my heart and made me a person who values living softly on and in harmony with the land. They’ve awoken in me an awareness that my own ancestors also lived close to the earth and understood other peoples as different but also accepted their differences. They’ve inspired me to learn about my own peoples’ traditions and practices for relating to the land and others, and to work with other European Americans living on the land here to peel back the layers of the destruction of our own earth-based worldviews and learn to live them again. In many ways, I think the lessons I have learned from your scholars and elders and from your communities have saved my soul. I am indebted; I will do what I can to try to repay at least some of that debt.

Thank you. Miigwech. Chi-miigwech.