The Life of Emily Peake

The lives of the native residents of Minnesota and the surrounding region have been the subject of both historical drama and ethnographic research, but seldom have they been given the human dimension that Jane Pejsa brings to her biography of Emily Peake. Pejsa follows the path of Emily's development from a conventional upbringing in South Minneapolis, to adolescent work with the WPA, the Coast Guard, and General Mills, and on to study in Paris following the war, and even a stint in Vienna as an employee of the Secretariat of the four-power council.

But Emily Peake's background was far from conventional: a member of the Crane clan of White Earth Reservation, her grandmother was raised in the household of Bishop Whipple. Her father may well have been the first Native American lawyer to practice in Minnesota, handling complex land-claim cases for his people on the reservation.

In the course of relating these early chapters of the Peake family history, Pejsa fleshes out the early history of the Ojibwe in Minnesota as well, with its many controversial treaties and issues. She also explores the other strands of the Peake heritage—Choctaw, French, and Yankee—and the result is a rich multi-ethnic tapestry of pioneer life in the Upper Midwest.

The final chapters of the book relate Emily's contributions to the urban scene in Minneapolis following her return from Vienna, including her struggles to establish a Native American Center. But at the same time, Pejsa devotes considerable time to the domestic side of Emily's accomplishment, and gives us a vivid rendering of urban Ojibwe neighborhood life in the process.

In the end, the portrait that emerges from these delicate strokes is of a modern woman, both doggedly courageous and delightfully down-to-earth. But it is Pejsa's triumph to have given us, through painstaking research and countless interviews, not merely the biography of one talented individual, but the flavor and the history of a larger community that is too often reduced to generalizations and stereotypes.