Anton Treuer


Anton Treuer is an American academic and author specializing in the Ojibwe language and American Indian studies. He is professor of Ojibwe at Bemidji State University, Minnesota and a 2008 Guggenheim Fellow.

Early life and education

Anton Treuer was born in Washington, D.C. in 1969 to Robert and Margaret Treuer. Robert Treuer is an Austrian Jew and Holocaust survivor. Margaret Treuer is an enrolled member of the White Earth Ojibwe Nation and a lifelong resident of the Leech Lake Ojibwe Reservation. She is a retired tribal judge and was the first female Indian attorney in the State of Minnesota. Anton Treuer grew up in and around the Leech Lake Reservation in Minnesota and went to high school in Bemidji. He was awarded a BA from Princeton in 1991 and an MA in 1994 and PhD in 1996 from the University of Minnesota.

Academic career and work

Anton Treuer has authored or edited 18 books. He also edits the only academic journal about the Ojibwe language, the Oshkaabewis Native Journal. After serving as Assistant Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee from 1996-2000, Treuer returned to his home town of Bemidji as Professor of Ojibwe, a position he still holds today. Treuer's publications and academic work have remained very broad. The Assassination of Hole in the Day was a major historical research project. Everything You Wanted to Know About Indians But Were Afraid to Ask is designed as a broadly accessible general reader book on American Indians. He has also published extensively in linguistics and Ojibwe language. He is widely recognized as one of the most prolific scholars of Ojibwe, and at the forefront of a movement to textualize this formerly oral language in hopes of preserving and revitalizing it. Treuer has also worked extensively with the Ojibwe language immersion efforts underway in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Ontario. He is part of a team of scholars developing Rosetta Stone for Ojibwe with the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe.

Ceremonial life

Anton Treuer is also widely known for his volunteer work at Ojibwe ceremonies, where he helps officiate at medicine dance and ceremonial drums in Minnesota and Wisconsin. The Ojibwe maintain a vibrant musical and religious tradition, and Treuer is often acknowledged to be one of the youngest knowledgeable teachers and leaders of such ceremonies. His service in this area was recently detailed in an article by Mary Pember that appeared in Al Jazeera.

Publications