Ojibwe Ethnogenesis, 1640-1740 - by Theresa M Schenck (Hardcover)

About the Book

Ojibwe Ethnogenesis, 1640-1740 explores the origin, rise, and spread of Ojibwe identity from the mid-seventeenth to mid-eighteenth centuries, as well as the emergence of Ojibwe identity in the early years of French imperial incursions into the Upper Midwest.

Book Synopsis

Winner of the 2026 Wisconsin Historical Society Book of Merit Award

In Ojibwe Ethnogenesis, 1640-1740 Theresa M. Schenck (Ojibwe, Huron, and Blackfeet) presents the first scholarly work to untangle the origin, rise, and spread of Ojibwe identity and culture from the mid-seventeenth to mid-eighteenth centuries, as well as the emergence of Ojibwe identity in the early years of French imperial incursions into the Upper Midwest. Schenck traces the names ascribed to the Ojibwe by French officials, traders, missionaries, and settlers in the earliest European records to their presences in French America. Schenck then follows the people themselves and their complex relationships through the centuries.

Schenck's proficiency in French and her close reading of the sources, many in French, have facilitated a more accurate, traceable, and comprehensive documentary study than achieved by previous generations of scholars. Ojibwe Ethnogenesis, 1640-1740 has thus achieved our fullest understanding to date of Ojibwe roots and culture going back four hundred years.

Review Quotes

"By making ethnogenesis her central framework and deprioritizing the question of imperial power, Schenck has successfully crafted a new guidebook for the history of the Great Lakes Region in perhaps its most inconstant era."--Rachael Schnurr, Western Historical Quarterly

"Theresa Schenck is an extraordinary scholar and writer and demonstrates in every paragraph a respect for the reader, a presentation of critical academic discourse, and at the same time a direct explanation of the subject. Ojibwe Ethnogenesis, 1640-1740 is a learned, original, and inclusive history of the Outchibouec, Ojibwe, Chippewa, and Sauteurs."--Gerald Vizenor, author of Native Provenance: The Betrayal of Cultural Creativity

"Theresa Schenck's interest in early Ojibwe history is grounded in her ancestral ties to the people and a concern to achieve a fuller understanding of Ojibwe roots and culture. Tracing a deep past in records going back four hundred years, Ojibwe Ethnogenesis, 1640-1740 is unique in its content and attention to its subject. It fills an important niche in the literature."--Jennifer S. H. Brown, editor of Ojibwe Stories from the Upper Berens River: A. Irving Hallowell and Adam Bigmouth in Conversation

About the Author

Theresa M. Schenck (Ojibwe, Huron, and Blackfeet) is professor emerita of life sciences communications and American Indian studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is the editor of William W. Warren's History of the Ojibway People and the author of William W. Warren: The Life, Letters and Times of an Ojibwe Leader (Nebraska, 2009) and All Our Relations: Chippewa Mixed Bloods and the Treaty of 1837.