His brother, David Treuer, is also a writer and academic.
Academic career and work
Treuer has authored or edited more than 20 books. He also edits the only academic journal about the Ojibwe language, the Oshkaabewis Native Journal.[1] After serving as Assistant Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee from 1996-2000, Treuer returned to his home town of Bemidji as professor of Ojibwe, a position he still holds today.
Treuer's publications and academic work have remained very broad. The Assassination of Hole in the Day was a major historical research project. Everything You Wanted to Know About Indians But Were Afraid to Ask is designed as a broadly accessible general reader book on American Indians. He has also published extensively in linguistics and Ojibwe language. His first work of fiction, Where Wolves Don't Die was released in 2024. He is widely recognized[by whom?] as one of the most prolific scholars of Ojibwe, and at the forefront of a movement to textualize this formerly oral language in hopes of preserving and revitalizing it. Treuer has also worked extensively with the Ojibwe language immersion efforts underway in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Ontario. He is part of a team of scholars developing Rosetta Stone for Ojibwe with the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe. In 2024, the Waadookodaading Ojibwe Language Institute where Treuer serves at Vice President of the Board received a $1.5 million dollar grant from MacKenzie Scott. Treuer is actively building an Ojibwe teacher training program at Bemidji State University and has presented all over the United States, Canada, and in several other countries on his publications, cultural competence and equity, tribal sovereignty and history, Ojibwe language and culture, and strategies for addressing the "achievement gap".[4][5]
Publications
Living Our Language: Ojibwe Tales and Oral Histories (ed.), Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2001[6]
Ojibwe in Minnesota, Minnesota Historical Society, 2010.
The Assassination of Hole in the Day, Borealis, 2012[7][8][9][10][11]
Everything You Wanted to Know About Indians But Were Afraid to Ask, Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2012.[3][12][13]
Atlas of Indian Nations, National Geographic Society, 2014
Warrior Nation: A History of the Red Lake Ojibwe, Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2015.
The Indian Wars: Battles, Bloodshed, and the Fight for Freedom on the American Frontier, National Geographic, 2017.
The Language Warrior's Manifesto: How to Keep Our Languages Alive No Matter the Odds, Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2020 (finalist for the 2021 Minnesota Book Awards.)[14]
The Cultural Toolbox: Traditional Ojibwe Living in the Modern World, Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2021.