Iron Lake

Iron Lake features the complicated cultural mix of northern Minnesota in its fictional community around the small town of Aurora and the Iron Lake reservation, located inland from Duluth, just south of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, and surrounded by the Superior National Forest. Krueger’s novels are known for their knowledgeable portrayal of the Anishinaabe communities of Minnesota. Krueger centers the Anishinaabe people and traditions in Minnesota culture and also highlights their continuing struggles with historical racism and ongoing prejudice.

There are seven sovereign Anishinaabe tribal nations in Minnesota: the White Earth Nation, the Leech Lake Band, the Red Lake Nation, the Grand Portage Band, the Mille Lacs Band, the Fond du Lac Band, and the Bois Forte Band. According to the US census, in 2018 there were nearly 60,000 Anishinaabe people in Minnesota; the traditions and culture of this community resonate throughout the state. Krueger includes traditional Anishinaabe knowledge and practices throughout Iron Lake, in which protagonist Cork O’Connor reconnects with his Anishinaabe heritage. The Windigo—a mythical creature from Anishinaabe folklore—is a constant motif in the novel. Cork’s mentor and confidante, Henry Meloux, is an Anishinaabe elder and part of Midewiwin, the Grand Medicine Society. Cork’s Anishinaabe knowledge often helps him, as even a robin becomes a source of information and a warning of danger.

The novel also touches on the historical racism and disenfranchisement faced by the Anishinaabe people. Without delving too specifically into the history, Krueger shows the toll that broken treaties, institutional abuse, and political marginalization have taken on these communities. Like some other US states, as well as Canada, in the 21st century, Minnesota is grappling with this history. In particular, government-funded boarding schools intended to fully assimilate Indigenous peoples through cultural genocide, of which there were 16 in Minnesota, have come under scrutiny. These schools operated from the late 1800s until the 1970s, and were most often run by religious communities. The Anishinaabe children who lived at the boarding schools were forcibly taken from their families and punished for using their language or practicing their traditions, resulting in a catastrophic loss of cultural knowledge. In 2021, the St. Benedict order of nuns that ran the White Earth reservation’s boarding school apologized for their role in the disenfranchisement and erasure of the Anishinaabe culture in a letter that acknowledged “The ripple effect of that wound lingers in the memory, the culture, and the documented history of your people for all time” (Gunderson, Dan. “A reckoning: St. Benedict nuns apologize for Native boarding school.” MPR News, 26 Oct. 2021). Ongoing efforts toward restorative social justice in the state include returning land and sacred sites to the Anishinaabe nations and reverting the names of lakes, local landmarks, and regions to their original Anishinaabe names. Although these gestures cannot undo the effects of generational trauma, they show a changing relationship between the Anishinaabe nations and state and federal governments.