Buried
Indians
Digging Up the Past in
a Midwestern Town
Laurie Hovell McMillin
Wisconsin Land and Life
Arnold Alanen, Series Editor
A powerful narrative about the shared
past connecting a Midwestern town
In Buried Indians, Laurie Hovell
McMillin presents the struggle of her hometown, Trempealeau,
Wisconsin, to determine whether platform mounds atop Trempealeau
Mountain constitute authentic Indian mounds. This dispute, as
McMillin subtly demonstrates, reveals much about the attitude
and interaction–past and present–between the white
and Indian inhabitants of this Midwestern town.
McMillin's account, rich in detail and sensitive to current political
issues of American Indian interactions with the dominant European
American culture, locates two opposing views: one that denies
a Native American presence outright and one that asserts its
long history and ruthless destruction. The highly reflective
oral histories McMillin includes turn Buried Indians into
an accessible, readable portrait of a uniquely American culture
clash and a dramatic narrative grounded in people's genuine perceptions
of what the platform mounds mean.
"A very interesting and well-written book about what happens
in a small river community when its sense of identity is challenged
by its ancient Indian past."—Robert Birmingham, coauthor
of Indian Mounds of Wisconsin
"In this evocative book–at once
history, investigative journalism, and richly textured memoir–Laurie
McMillin renarrates the good stories good people tell themselves
about the past and present of their homes."—Philip
Deloria, author of Playing Indian
"Laurie McMillin's account of unrecognized racism in
a small Wisconsin village is wonderful and insightful yet painful." —Chloris
Lowe Jr., former president of the Ho-Chunk Nation
 Laurie
Hovell McMillin is associate professor
of rhetoric, composition, and religion at Oberlin College, Ohio.
She is the author of English in Tibet, Tibet in English: Self-Presentation
in Tibet and the Diaspora.
Media & bookseller inquiries regarding review copies, events, and interviews can be directed to the publicity department at publicity@uwpress.wisc.edu or (608) 263-0734. (If you want to examine a book for possible course use, please see our Course Books page. If you want to examine a book for possible rights licensing, please see Rights & Permissions.)
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May 2006
264 pp. 6 x 9
19 b/w photos, 6 drawings, 1 map
The cloth edition, ISBN 978-0-299-21680-1, is out of print.
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