North Dakota Books

My Autistic son enjoyed hearing a chapter read out of this every night and could easily remember what had happened before. It's a great way to learn about the history of our United States.

An excellent overview of South Dakota rock art by a noted expert in the field. I had particular interest in the Cave Hills area, just south of where I live in North Dakota.

Book review by Dr. Roland M. Wagner, San Jose State University, San Jose, California

Ruth Weil Kusler's life-long journey in the healing arts began with her mother, Katharina Fischer, who was a midwife and healer in Neu Glückstal, Odessa district. Sensing that her daughter Ruth also had the gift of "tender hands," the instinctive ability to seek out aches and pains and to soothe them away with her fingers, Katharina passed on the ancient healing methods of prayer, massage, and herbal remedies to her daughter. As I write these words Ruth is approaching her 90th year, and she has spent most of her life carrying on her mother's practice, caring for the sick near Beulah, North Dakota. Her well-earned reputation continues to draw people seeking her advice and treatment.

A lifetime's worth of experience in the healing arts has been condensed into this small booklet (69 pages). The many remedies for the aches and pains of daily life are valuable in and of themselves, but the book also has special interest because of its information on the German folk-healing tradition known as "Braucherei." Ruth's practice is an intriguing case study of how these old traditions have continued to evolve and to adapt to changing circumstances by assimilating other alternative healing traditions.

Ruth's story may strike a note of familiarity to many people who are aware of folk healing traditions around the world. Many are aware, for example, that Mexican-Americans have a similar form of healing known as "curanderismo," which involves the use prayers, blessed candles and oils, holy water, and herbal remedies. Likewise, "santeria," a healing religion born of African traditions, still flourishes throughout the Caribbean. It is less commonly recognized that similar beliefs and practices exist in European folk cultures as well. In modern technological medicine the spiritual and physical worlds are rigidly separated, but in folk medicine these dimensions of experience are inextricably linked.

Braucherei is an ancient tradition of folk-healing practiced by German speaking peoples, with roots extending back into pre-Christian times. It builds upon a bedrock of beliefs and practices that are similar in folk societies throughout most of the world (note, for example, the etymological similarity to the word "brujeria" in Spanish). During the Middle Ages the ancient Germanic healing lore combined with Christianity, an uneasy amalgamation that was always subject to suspicion and scrutiny by Christian clergy. As Ruth notes, the Braucherei chants "worried the local ministers," and some believed that the healing procedures were "witchcraft."

Folk healing traditions, such as Braucherei, should not be dismissed as mere superstition, or as a static body of folklore that has been passed down unchanged from one generation to the next. Certainly there are elements of "sympathetic magic" involved in the ritualism, as commonly described by anthropologists, but the practices also build upon wisdom about holistic medicine accumulated by generations of sharp-eyed pragmatic observers. Braucherei has been a living tradition, and the practice has continued to evolve over time, adopting and absorbing methods and remedies and adjusting to current belief systems.

Ruth's practice of Braucherei, as described in her book, demonstrates this pragmatic openness to the adoption of new healing methods. She cites specific prayers for certain ailments, which recalls the more traditional aspects of Braucherei, but these prayers are not emphasized as a major aspect of her practice as described in this book. Most of her remedies involve the use of well-known healing herbs, such as garlic or chamomile. It is also notable that many non-traditional products are utilized, such as "Knorr's Genuine Hein Fong Essence (green drops)," "Dr. Forni's Alpen-Kreuter," "Smith's Rosebud Salve,"Aspirin tablets," "Clorox bleach," "Epsom salts," "Niacin," and "Vitamin C." Fruits juices are a prominent ingredient in the remedies, but whiskey and Schnapps as well. Ruth's practice of massage has been expanded over the years by the study of bone-setting and reflexology (derived from Oriental folk-medicine, a practice more commonly known as accupressure, described by Ruth as "massaging points on the palms of hands and soles of feet to strengthen and stimulate glands and organ systems"). Interestingly, Ruth notes that a family member, a grand-nephew, is studying at the Palmer School of Chiropractic, which she regards as a continuation of the family healing tradition. At a broader level, Ruth's story is not just of her own practice, but also of the adaptations and modifications in folk healing traditions throughout the world.

Book review by by Edna Boardman, Bismarck, North Dakota

This book is unusual in its setting--the German Russian villages of the Beresan District (Rastatt, Waterloo, Speyer, Laudau, Katherinental, Karlsruhe, Sulz, Johannistal, Rohrbach, and Worms) in the Ukraine. It is a collection of short stories, more anecdotes, that reveal the personalities and lives of the people of these villages in the late 1920s, when communism had taken over but had loosed its grip a bit for the period when the New Economic Policy held sway.

In the first part, Through the German Colonies of the Beresan District, Bachmann, a teacher and cultural researcher, tells of making a tour via assorted horse carts through these villages to collect the texts and melodies of folk songs. Bachmann is accompanied by Victor Schirmunki, a professor interested in recording differences in German dialect. The men choose a most inopportune season, harvest time, but learn what they can. They stay with the teachers in each village, then contact whoever has information about songs and language. The most intriguing thing about the songs is the popularity, even competitiveness, of singing among teenage males.

In the second part, Colonist Tales, Bachmann¹s good humor and insights into the lives of the people (he came from among them) bring into focus a time most American and Canadian German Russians know little about. The terrible wars and destruction of the Bolshevik revolution and the famine of the early 1920s are over, and kulaks live in huts on their former estates.

Education has been secularized, and communists demand constant attendance at meetings. But the harvest is coming in, a measure of normalcy has returned and life goes on.

Introductory material by Joseph Schnurr and an epilogue by Roland Wagner put Bachmann¹s life and the stories themselves into context. The stories, which were originally written in German, appear to have had at least some intent to show communist leaders that the communist ideology was taking root satisfactorily and people were starting to cooperate with the new system. The introduction and epilogue also tell about the years that followed, when Stalin, determined to enforce collectivization, again terribly disrupted the lives of these people. Extensive footnotes document sources and explain words and matters within the stories that may be confusing to readers. The stories are entertaining, but the scholarly material is not easy reading. Scholars and publishers within the German Russian community need to be congratulated and supported as they discover and make available this material. Readers will be well informed about an important but little-understood period whether they read all of the book or just the stories.

Dakota Winters are known all over the world as a real test of man hood.
Hammer's admiration of Mark Twain is evident in this novel about coming of age in the roaring twenties. This book captured my thoughts and I know that it is an autobiography of our area and that is the magic of an author. There is none of the usual references to literature nor an abundance of adjectives and adverbs. He says his daughter challenged him to write this book and my thoughts are that anyone who reads this story of Buck Farley owes her a debt of grattitude.

This book describes in detail 57 of North Dakota's historic sites. Forts, Indian villages, and natural areas are included; each site is well illustrated with historic and/or contemporary photos, and all locations show a map, making finding them easy. The information given is pertinent and interesting. Anyone planning on traveling in North Dakota to visit any of its historic sites would find it wise to bring this handsome book along.

I am a great-granddaughter of Lorenz Gustin and am so sorry I didn't purchase this book when I had the chance. It is a great history of how hopeful immigrants from Russia formed a variety of communities within the plains of North Dakota. I am hoping to purchase this book if it ever comes up for sale.

My 8 year old daughter was wide-eyed as she followed these two American Indian brothers on their quest to seek out the monstrous Uncegila. Jill Rubalcaba's language is rhythmic and poetic, and children will enjoy the starkly colorful paintings. A good choice for read-aloud

Book review by Richard Kisling, editor, California District Council Report, Number 20, Fall, 2001, page 9

Originally published in Frankfurt in 1993, Georg Hildebrandt's Wieso lebst du noch? ein Deutscher im Gulag is the book about the German Russians most widely read by the German public. Since August of this year, it has been available in this new English translation.

Mr. Hildebrandt turned 90 in July, 2001, and from the birthday tribute to him printed in the July issue of Volk auf dem Weg ("Georg Hildebrandt Survived Hell"), we can gain some sense of his life experience. He was born in 1911 in Kondratyevka, Don Region, into a well-off Mennonite family. After completing junior high school, he worked on his parents' farm, until 1929 when they were dispossessed during collectivization and banished. Between 1937 and 1945, twenty-five of his family members fell victim to Stalin's terrors, among them his father Isaac and his brother Heinrich. He found himself either in prison or in exile between 1930 and 1953: in Ukraine, in the Urals, in Siberia, and even in the Far East/Pacific region. In addition, he survived a series of 17 forced labor camps, including Kolyma and Magadan. In 1953 he was admitted to a tuberculosis hospital, having contracted the highly communicable disease in one of the prisons, and in 1955 he underwent lung surgery. In 1961 he moved to Alma-Ata, where he worked until he retired in 1971. He emigrated with his family to the Federal Republic of Germany in 1974.

The NDSU Library web page says: "He documents what happened with an amazing memory and precision. His biography is a shocking document of the Germans in the former USSR. Dr. Erich Franz Sommer writes in the preface: 'Testimonies were only rarely given by German camp inmates; more rarely yet, by those German colonists who themselves experienced forced collectivization and who have survived decades of resettlement in Siberia and Central Asia. That is why this biography and the report of suffering by the Ukrainian-German, George Hildebrandt, are of documentary value. He speaks not only for himself, he speaks also vicariously for those whose cries and prayers in prisons and in detention camps fell silent without finding an ear.'"

The title, "Why are you still alive?" was the cynical question once posed to Hildebrandt by a KGB officer. And, indeed, it is a miracle he survived to write this compelling account of his experience. The review of this book on the NDSU Libraries web page ends with this quote from the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper: "Imaginative, sympathetic readers should have strong nerves for this book. Hildebrandt's book is for everyone."

This beautiful work reminds me of one of my favorite books of all time, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. Like Anne Fadiman, Eileen Pollack has an amazing sense of structure and of the important, risky, daring questions to ask. She confronts what others might shy away from, and she makes sense of it all for us. I loved learning about the brave and almost-forgotten Catherine Weldon.

Some of the key questions raised for me by this book are: what does it mean to be an insider, or an outsider, in a particular group or in a country? Does the outsider have any possibility of understanding/aiding/participating in another culture? How do we help or harm each other? Which tragedies are preventable, and which inevitable, and why? Pollack seems to show the same courage and dedication as her subject -- Sitting Bull's great-great-granddaughter invited her to participate in ceremonies not usually open to outsiders. Her trust is well repaid by this remarkable book.