Book Review: “Red Earth Nation,” by Eric Zimmerman

I first became curious about the Meskwaki people, the Red Earth Nation, when I learned about my connection to their history via my German grandparents and great-grandparents. These ancestors arrived in Walcott, Iowa from northern Germany in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The land they settled had been where the Meskwaki people and their Sauk allies had lived and hunted until they were forced to cede over 6 million acres by treaty after the Black Hawk War of 1832. My grandparents benefited from this, and thus, so did I. Many of the Meskwaki and Sauk resisted the US government efforts to push them out of Iowa altogether. Their resistance led to the creation of the Meskwaki Settlement, located near Tama, Iowa, about an hour west of Walcott, land communally owned by the Meskwaki people since 1857.

Red Earth Nation, is a recounting of the little known and less common story of Indigenous land reclamation. I had anticipated the release of this book for several years after email correspondence with its author, Eric Zimmer, while investigating the history of the land where my German ancestors had settled. He graciously shared with me his (award-winning) dissertation on the Meskwaki Settlement which is core of this book. The book exceeded my expectations; it is good storytelling, it is well-written, and it inspires in readers a desire for social justice.

Zimmer states two goals for the book. The first is to update the history of the Meskwaki people whose own creation story begins on the northeast coast of what is now called America, perhaps millennia ago.

As European settlers invaded their original homelands, they brought violence and disease to the Meskwaki ancestors compelling them to migrate steadily westward toward the Great Lakes region. After surviving almost complete annihilation by French colonial forces attempting to exterminate them along the St. Lawrence River in the 18th century, they found stability further south in woodland and prairie areas now known as Illinois and Iowa. That is, until the U.S. government gained control of all their land and attempted to remove them all the way to Kansas.

Zimmer’s second goal is to “explore the Meskwaki Settlement as one of the best available case studies of direct-purchase Indigenous land reclamation in the United States.” The Meskwaki people who did not follow the orders of the government, eventually found a way, under a trust with the Iowa state government, to purchase land from white Iowa farmers willing to sell to them.

The creation of and survival on this settlement was by no means operationally straightforward or easy. Always in a legal gray area of ownership and sovereignty, their relationship to the state and federal government was up for re-interpretation every decade or so whenever new political actors joined the stage. Even having purchased their land and paying taxes on it, they felt the roller coaster ride of frequently shifting federal Indian policies as the US government attempted over and over to gain control over their land.

I found myself on the edge of my seat waiting for everything to finally work itself out for the Red Earth Nation. As one problem was resolved, another calamity was waiting around the bend. Famine, small pox epidemics, coercive measures to send children to boarding schools, internal leadership conflicts.

Spoiler alert: Things did work out. The settlement survived its many existential threats. With the influx of resources from a Bingo casino, the settlement now with over 1400 enrolled members has its own school, a health center, a farm, and a number of other programs that benefit the people in the settlement. There continue to be challenges from within and without , but the Settlement membership continues to grow and thrive.

Zimmer is an academic historian, and is careful in his research, but this book is not written only as an academic history. He brings a social justice perspective to his work, and branches out beyond politics to weave social, cultural, and ecological history into this narrative. Zimmer cares about the Meskwaki people he writes about, and he wants you to care about them and the other Indigenous people who have lost land and heart. And this is what I love most about this book, that he cares about what happens to these people.

Zimmer makes the case that though the Meskwaki continued to face hardships because of America’s racist policies, the land they were able to hold onto provided more leverage to maintain their sovereignty than they would have had otherwise. As they coalesced around this land and its specific ecology, a cohesive culture was maintained, enabling their survival. The persistence of the Red Earth Nation on the Meskwaki Settlement signals strength and resilience in the midst of never-ending attempts at erasure.

Zimmer is white, as am I, and usually wary of the unconscious bias in a white scholar writing the history of an Indigenous people. The authenticity of his work is validated for me, however, by the Settlement’s museum director and historian, Johnathan Buffalo, and tribal member Dawn Suzanne Wanatee Buffalo. In the book’s “Foreward,” they write, “Eric did excellent scholarly work…but he also talked to many tribal members to learn what they knew of the events he researched and what impressions, thoughts, or memories they had. Eric collaborated with the Meskwaki and gave us valuable insight into our own tribal history.” Throughout the narrative, Zimmer recounts conversations with members of the Red Earth Nation during his research and decisions he made in collaboration with them about interpretation of certain events. It is evident that he believed himself to be accountable to the truth of the Meskwaki people in telling their story.

— o —

You can find out more about the Meskwaki Settlement here. Books written by Indigenous historians that I recommend include: An Indigenous People’s History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz; Our History Is the Future by Nick Estes; The Heartbeat of Wound Knee, by David Truer; and Custer Died for Your Sins by Vine DeLoria. Two books on my future reading list are The Rediscovery of America by Ned Blackhawk and The Fire We Carry by Rachel Eagle. The Red Nation Podcast is an excellent source of information if you like getting information that way. A panel discussion in a recent episode considered the significance of Indigenous-led social science and historical research.