White Birch, Red Hawthorn: A Memoir

Synopsis

This Is Conquered Land. The Dakota Woman's Words, Spoken At A Community Meeting In St. Paul, Struck Nora Murphy Forcefully. Her Own Irish Great-great Grandparents, Fleeing The Potato Famine, Had Laid Claim To 160 Acres In A Virgin Maple Grove In Minnesota. That Her Dispossessed Ancestors' Homestead, The Maples, Was Built Upon Another, Far More Brutal Dispossession Is The Hard Truth Underlying White Birch, Red Hawthorn, A Memoir Of Murphy's Search For The Deeper Connections Between This Contested Land And The Communities Who Call It Home. In Twelve Essays, Each Dedicated To A Tree Significant To Minnesota, Murphy Tells The Story Of The Grove That, Long Before The Irish Arrived, Was Home To Three Native Tribes: The Dakota, Ojibwe, And Ho-chunk. She Notes Devastating Strategies Employed By The U.s. Government To Wrest The Land From The Tribes, But Also Revisits Iconic American Tales That Subtly Continue To Promote This Displacement--the Thanksgiving Story, The Paul Bunyan Myth, And Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House Books. Murphy Travels To Ireland To Search Out Another Narrative Long Hidden--that Of Her Great-great-grandmother's Transformative Journey From North Tipperary To The Maples. In Retrieving These Stories, White Birch, Red Hawthorn Uncovers Lingering Wounds Of The Past--and The Possibility That, Through Connection To This Suffering, Healing Can Follow. The Next Step Is Simple, Murphy Tells Us: Listen-- Machine Generated Contents Note: -- Contents -- Stranded -- Old Stories -- The Cedars -- The Crab Apple -- The Pines -- American Chestnut -- The Elm -- Conquest In The Maples -- The Maples -- Wild Rice -- White Birch -- Potato -- Coming Home -- Red Hawthorn -- The Chokecherry -- The Crab Apple -- Acknowledgments -- Resources And Further Reading. Nora Murphy. Includes Bibliographical References.