Sugar Bush Babies: Stories of My Ojibwe Grandmother

Why, her mother asked, did Janis keep running away from kindergarten? She wanted to go home. But not to the house they had just moved to in Duluth, with its gravel yard and traffic noise. She was a country girl, and home was the log cabin among the wildflowers on the Leech Lake Indian Reservation in Bena, Minnesota. Knowing they were now going to stay in the city, Janis’s parents offered her a compromise: during the summer, Janis could leave the bustle of Duluth and live with her grandmother on the Fond du Lac Reservation, listening to stories, learning Ojibwe, and finding her place in the world. In Sugar Bush Babies, Janis A. Fairbanks returns to that time of Relocation, dislocation, and discovery, taking us home with her through stories of childhood and lessons learned at her grandmother’s knee, enveloped in love and tradition.

Through the eyes of a child and the teachings of an elder, Fairbanks revisits her life during Indian Relocation from reservations to urban areas, from Ojibwe villages to white communities whose ideas about Indians came from Hollywood Westerns. Recalling her early childhood at Leech Lake, her school days in Duluth, and her summers in Fond du Lac, Janis brings the gifts of living history full circle, continuing the traditions of carrying family lore, women’s wisdom, and Indigenous culture from generation to generation.

There are tales told at nighttime or during thunderstorms; lessons in Native medicine; stories of Grandma’s recollections of boarding school, Daddy’s days as a lumberjack, and Mother’s special powers; memories of wash days and dancing, of powwows and Girl Scout camp, of snaring rabbits, selling lilacs, and attending the circus. A lyrical memoir, Sugar Bush Babies conveys the eloquence of women speaking and sharing through generations and the lasting power of tradition.