Dr. Anton Treuer, a professor of Ojibwe and prolific author, joins Joe Williams on 5 Plain Questions to share his insights on language revitalization, cultural identity, and the importance of community engagement. With a rich background rooted in his mother's experiences on the Leech Lake Reservation and his father's immigrant journey, Dr. Treuer highlights the influences that shaped his path towards advocating for Indigenous rights and education. He discusses the significance of balancing personal aspirations with the collective needs of the community, emphasizing that true success is defined not by individual accolades but by fostering cultural continuity for future generations. Throughout the conversation, Dr. Treuer also reflects on his diverse roles as an educator, ceremonial leader, and author, revealing how each facet of his work intertwines to serve a greater purpose. This episode offers a profound exploration of identity, purpose, and the ongoing journey of Indigenous revitalization in contemporary society.

Dr. Anton Treuer’s narrative is a compelling exploration of identity, culture, and the transformative power of education. As a professor of Ojibwe language and culture at Bemidji State University, he embodies the intersection of academic rigor and community engagement. His upbringing on the Leech Lake Reservation, coupled with the influences of his mother—a pioneering Native attorney—and his father—a Holocaust survivor—shapes his worldview and professional ethos. Dr. Treuer provides listeners with a rich context of his life experiences, emphasizing the importance of cultural heritage and the role it plays in shaping personal identity. He shares poignant stories from his childhood that reflect the realities of growing up in a community deeply affected by systemic oppression and the lack of representation in professional fields.

Throughout the episode, Dr. Treuer articulates his commitment to cultural revitalization through education and community service. He discusses his involvement in officiating traditional ceremonies and his work in diversity and inclusion, which aims to create equitable spaces for Indigenous peoples. His latest literary endeavor, 'Where Wolves Don't Die,' encapsulates his belief in the significance of storytelling as a means of preserving culture and fostering understanding. The conversation delves into the challenges and rewards of balancing multiple roles—educator, community leader, and author—while maintaining a strong connection to his roots. Dr. Treuer’s reflections serve as a reminder of the resilience and strength found within Indigenous communities, urging younger generations to embrace their heritage and take initiative in their personal and communal journeys.

The episode resonates with themes of hope and empowerment, culminating in Dr. Treuer’s call for collective action and responsibility. He emphasizes that meaningful change is not just an individual endeavor but a communal one, where each person’s contributions are vital to the larger narrative of Indigenous resurgence. As listeners engage with Dr. Treuer’s insights, they are encouraged to reflect on their own roles within their communities and consider how they can actively participate in fostering a more equitable future. This rich dialogue serves as both a celebration of Indigenous culture and a call to action for all individuals to engage in their respective journeys with purpose and passion.

Takeaways:

• Dr. Anton Treuer's diverse background influences his work in language, culture, and education.
• He emphasizes the importance of community engagement and cultural revitalization in his projects.
• Trueur believes in the significance of showing up for both personal and professional commitments.
• His experiences with family shaped his view on justice and the power of education.
• He advocates for understanding and navigating colonial systems while promoting Indigenous culture.
• Treuer encourages young listeners to believe in themselves and take initiative in their pursuits.

Links referenced in this episode:

• elevenwarriorarts.com
• https://antontreuer.com/
• https://www.amazon.com/stores/Anton-Treuer/author/B003TUIJPG?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1&qid=1731520480&sr=8-1&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

Hello and welcome again to another episode of Five Plain Questions, a podcast that proposes five questions to Indigenous artists, creators, musicians, writers, movers and shakers, and culture bearers, people in the community that are doing great things for their communities. I'm Joe Williams, your host for this conversation.

My goal is to showcase these amazing people in our Indigenous communities from around the region and country. I want to introduce you to Dr. Anton Treuer.

Anton is a professor of Ojibwe at Bemidji State University and is the author of many books, including Everything You Wanted to Know About Indians But Were Too Afraid to Ask, the Assassination of Hole in the Day, Warrior Nation, the Cultural Toolbox, Traditional Ojibwe Living in the Modern World, and his newest book, Where Wolves Don't Die, a novel. His equity, education and cultural work has put him on the path of service around the nation and the world.

So let's jump into this conversation with Dr. Anton Treuer.

Dr. Anton Treuer, thank you so much for joining me here on Five Plain Questions. It's great to have you.

Great to be on. Thank you.

Yeah. Would you be able to introduce yourself, tell us a little bit about your background, where you're from, and what it is that you do?

Sure. So my name is Anton Treuer. I'm a professor of Ojibwe at Bemidji State University.

Ojibwe is one of the Indigenous languages to both the United States and Canada, throughout the Great Lakes and. And much of the Plains. And I kind of sit on a three legged stool. So one of those is the job I just mentioned.

I teach Ojibwe language, history and culture at Bemidji State University. Another leg is that I do community work, so I officiated naming ceremonies, traditional Ojibwe funerals, and kind of everything in between.

That's about a third of my time, although it's all uncompensated and just in the traditions of our people. And then another big chunk of my time is doing diversity, equity and inclusion work.

So do trainings, facilitations, public speaking, and then I write lots of books that intersect with all of those things.

I definitely want to jump into a book question later on in the interview because you do have a new book coming out or that's come out already this year. Yes, very exciting. So let's talk about influences. Early on in our lives, we have a certain set of influences that impact us.

And as we move through time and through our careers, maybe other things impact us as well. Can you talk about those influences?

Oh, sure. I'm a product of many, many things. I have a big, interesting family.

My mother grew up in a little village called Bina on the heart of the Leech lake Reservation, population 400. Half of them are my cousins. That's not an exaggeration. She had a pretty visceral experience with poverty.

They'd pull her from school for two weeks at a time for wild rice harvesting, hunting, fishing, maple syrup production. All the kids had to help put food on the table. She was born in the Cass Lake Indian Hospital on the Leech Lake Reservation.

Lived her first 18 years on the res. And during her entire childhood, only met one professional Native person ever. And that person was the school nurse.

We have 10,000 tribal members at Leech Lake. So it also says something that they couldn't find one for any of the other jobs for a social worker, banker, school teacher.

And it wasn't because nobody wanted the jobs, and it wasn't because no one was capable of doing the jobs. But we've been navigating systems that have been highly oppressive for a long time. She.

The one person she met was a school nurse, and she thought, maybe I can do that. So she ended up going to nursing school, and one of her first jobs was working for our tribe's health program.

And she thought, even here, Native people are getting pushed around. Enough of that, she ended up going back to school and getting a law degree and became the first female Native attorney in the state of Minnesota.

So for influences on me when I was a kid, she'd bring me with her to court, and she'd say, you just sit there and don't say a word. And I would sit there and not say a word. And I couldn't remember her court cases very well, but I. I remember things.

I remember that she was the only woman in court. I remember that she and her law partner, Paul Day, were the only natives in court. And I just came walking out of there thinking, you know what?

We can do stuff. That was the D in the dei. And it really had quite an impact. We just had the retirement celebration for Paul Day, my mom's law partner.

And when we did, I had to tell him. I said, you were the first Native man I ever saw doing anything professional.

And we were in a room full of Native lawyers, judges, social workers and educators. I said, look how far we've come and think how much further we still have to go.

So that certainly was one person and thing that had a big impact on me. My father, in a very different way, had a very big impact on Me too. My father's not native.

He was an Austrian Jewish immigrant and survivor of the Nazi Holocaust. He had 300 family members killed and kind of, you know, to make a long story short, made his way to Minnesota, met my mom, and, you know, here I am.

But I, you know, I own all the parts of me and love all the parts of me. And, you know, I think my father could tolerate no oppression and, you know, worked at times as a labor union organizer and educator.

And I think he had a profound sense of justice. And that certainly had a big impact on me, too. I could see, you know, the power from both of my parents stories of education.

I think what a lot of us hear about the American dream, so to speak, Work hard, good morals. You two get a piece of sweet apple pie.

That it's maybe half true what I saw both my parents do, but only half because there are barriers out there and they are not equitably distributed. So those things impacted me. I think I finished high school wanting to get out of town and never come back.

Like a lot of high schoolers, I thought there was a way to escape the brambled racial borderland of my youth. And that was very naive of me. I think the first I got into Princeton University, and the first person I met there said, oh, dude, are you native?

Where's your tomahawk? And I remember thinking, oh, no. The bramble racial borderland follows me everywhere I go. And these are the dumbest smart people I ever met.

And, you know, but I had a great experience at college. I truly did. So still great friends with all the folks I met there. But I finished college with a plan to come home and never leave.

And when I met him, he was in a little modern house watching WWF Smackdown on a TV and laughing really loud. But he shut off the TV and he said, hey, I. I've been waiting for you. I said, waiting for me? How could you be waiting for me? You don't know who I am.

But he had a dream about someone, and I looked like this person in his dream, and for him, that was enough. He said, well, sleep on the couch. So I slept on the couch. About five in the morning, he's leaning over the couch. Hey, get up.

You got to drive me to a funeral. Funeral. Oh, my goodness. Okay, just a minute. You know, it's a. I Kind of became his gopher. Go for this, go for that. Drive me here, drive me there.

But what was cool is, you know, he had never finished second grade, but he was one of the best educated people I'd ever met. And I kind of had an immersive experience around our language and culture in a. In a way, kind of like Forrest Gump.

Once he realized he could run after that, every time he went somewhere, he was running, and he never thought it would take him anywhere, but it did. I kind of felt like that with language and culture stuff. I. I wasn't trying to leverage that for something or, you know, I just was.

Wanted to be in the room and. But it took me somewhere.

Eventually, I did go to grad school and, you know, pursue higher education, and I work at a university now and write books and things like that. But I think my spiritual leaders and my parents were among the really powerful influences in shaping who I am.

Of course, I've had many elders that I've worked with and, you know, many important friends and colleagues and experiences that have continued to shape and refine me. But I. I think my sense of a work ethic, my sense of justice, I can contribute, you know, attribute those things to my parents.

My love of our language and culture, I can really attribute to Archie, and those things are all still centered in my life.

So let's. Let's talk a little bit about your. Your career and how that has developed with college and post college.

Yeah, you know, my path was maybe a little irregular in a few different ways, so I didn't, like, finish college and do a gap year. I, you know, I was like, that's it. I'm gonna go home and walk the earth and hang out with my elders. And my parents are like, that sounds beautiful.

Good luck paying for that, because we're done. You know. And so for me, it was. Was a, you know, burn the bridges kind of moment. I would.

I'd actually even been, at that time, offered a job to work with Senator Paul Wellstone, and I'd been thinking about going into law or politics or things like that. And so that was a tough thing to decline. But I just said, I need my ceremonies, and I'm going to hang out with Archie, and this is my path.

So I turned down all the money and everything else and just stayed on that route. No regrets at all. I still live in my home community. I think a lot of Native people in academics don't do that.

They, you know, go to where the school is, and they go to where the job Is I intentionally, when I did go to grad school, went to University of Minnesota, so I'd be close to home. I never even had a residence or dorm room or something like that.

I just went back and forth and spent the minimum amount of time in the Twin Cities metro that I had to. And I was active already on like our ceremonial drums and things like that.

And so in some ways I was an outsider, you know, with academia, even though, you know, I embrace the tools and I love learning and reading and, you know, things like that. Also my formal training in my graduate work was actually in history and trained as a historian. So I was.

My first projects were really around history and I used a lot of oral history and was recording elders and things like that. But today, my career, I still do history books and that includes archival history.

Right now I'm doing expert testimony for the Fond du Lac tribe in a treaty case. So that work is still in my wheelhouse and still part of what I do. But I also just kind of morphed into doing a lot of language work.

And language revitalization has been really big part of my calling.

And, you know, it's kind of like, I think some people, there's different kinds of advice like laser focus, just do your one thing, you know, and I've never really operated that way. I found myself very interested in our history and also very interested in our language, very interested in our culture.

Those things segued into doing, you know, kind of cultural competency work around Native stuff and then into diversity, equity and inclusion work more broadly. And I found that to be very rewarding and sometimes very challenging for a variety of reasons.

So I feel like the scope of things that I do and can apply, you know, has broadened as I've gotten older and, and stayed with things. Yeah. And I think a lot of people don't do that. They'll be a little more siloed, ivory tower academic or community based cultural person, you know.

But I. I don't see how we need, why we would need to be limited.

You, you definitely have a full plate and you have probably multiple plates. What, what is it that keeps you going and keeps you showing up for the work?

Because I'm sure there are days where it's pretty heavy and you have to push through that. But what, what does that look like for you?

I mean, yeah, I am, you know, whatever, trying to save the world, I suppose. But I have to say, like, even like doing ceremony work. Sure.

It's a lot like being at the beck and call of People every time there's a funeral, you know, like, it's very disruptive for a person like me who's so scheduled and things like that. But it's not just a chore. I, you know, like every ceremony, I love our people, and I love the people that I run ceremonies with.

And so it's not like I'm either gonna have my charge up my friendship time or be in ceremonial service. I'm charging up my friendships and myself while I'm in ceremonial service. And that kind of works for me. I have a large family. We have nine children.

And so they come with me to a lot of the places I go.

I spend probably six weeks officiating at ceremonies in the summer months, and they're with me all the time, and they're camped out, you know, at our ceremony spaces and part of what we do, and they love that space too. And so it becomes something that brings us together rather than separates us out. And so that's part of how I get things done.

I, you know, I think it's good to have self awareness and it. Each person is wired very differently. I would classify myself as an outgoing introvert.

So by that, I mean I get my battery charged when I'm away from humans, but once I'm charged up, then I like people. And so I need my. My me time too.

So doing a workout, going for a run, you know, whatever it happens to be spending time in the woods, I like to hunt and things like that, so I need that too. And if I don't tend to those things, then, you know, I start getting out of balance and feeling wonky and stressed. I think there's stress.

With any choice we make in life, there's a crap sandwich that goes with every choice. Every relationship, every career, every job. So you kind of have to embrace the parts that you, you know, are less savory.

But of course, some are going to be a better fit for you than others.

What you're describing reminds me of growing up with my father, who was a traditional spiritual man here in Sisseton.

And, yeah, I remember in the spring of the summer, preparing for Sundance and all the ceremony and going with him early in the morning to different places and working with people and doing sweat and preparing night after night for. For weeks up into the ceremony. So what you were saying, resonance with me.

It's.

It's interesting to go back there. So how have opportunities presented themselves to you early on? Maybe they come in one form, and as. As we get older, they arrive in different.

In different.

Well, I kind of view, and this is a little more philosophical approach to your question, but I feel like we are affected by many things in our life. We are partially affected by our good and bad choices.

If somebody's driving 90 miles in an hour and crashes the car and something horrible happens, that's not like the will of the spirits, you know, or just blind luck. That is our good or bad choices, right? So that's one thing that affects us. I think there is also good and bad luck.

I mean, today there are a million people starving to death, and it's not because of their bad choices. They were just born into a part of the world where they could not access food.

And then I do think at the same time that both of those things are true, that the Great Spirit does have a plan for us, that we can get a glimpse of it through dreams and visions and things like that. I don't pretend that everything in my life, you know, is only that, but it is something that affects things.

I was kind of thinking of the Snoop Dogg comment, you know, like, most people are like, I want to thank God for all my successes. I want to thank me. I want to thank myself for all my hard work, all my perseverance, you know, but to me, they're like three strands of a braid.

You weave them together and, you know, it can become quite strong. I try to listen spiritually for when there are inflection points, when I can be and do feel guided in my work. That's one of the things I do.

I try to make the best choices I can. Don't always succeed. And, you know, I try to position myself in ways to create opportunity.

There's even some decent podcasts or YouTube, you know, presentations about what you can do to make yourself luckier. So hiding out at home and wishing things were better isn't going to do it. You have to put yourself out there and bump into people.

Bumping into people isn't as comfortable. And this would apply to luck, you know, to, like, relationships, to jobs, to opportunities. You just have to do the things.

It takes a certain degree of bravery, you know, to do that, but it is certainly worth the effort. So, for example, on my language journey, like, Archie Mose actually lives a couple hundred miles away from me.

When I went to go see him, it would have been easiest not to see him or to try to find somebody or something a little closer. But, you know, he had such a peerless reputation for what I wanted and needed. I just. This was before smartphones or anything like that.

I literally got In a car, drove to Balsam Lake, Wisconsin. Went to a phone booth. We still had those in those days. And looked in a phone book. We had those, too. And started looking up Moses.

Until I tracked him down and found him, you know, and then walked in the door, and he's like, I've been waiting for you. So sometimes you just have to, like, do the things and ask the questions.

I remember one time I went to see Scott Hedberg, who's another elder who lived quite close to me, you know, just down the road a little ways. And I went to see him, and I. I've been practicing, you know, how am I going to ask for help?

So I told him, I said, like, I come to you today in a respectful way to ask you something, and I'd like to give you tobacco. And we're sitting in his kitchen. So he got up and left. And I was like, oh, my God, I must have really offended this guy.

You know, could hear him rummaging around in his bedroom. I was like, oh, my God, he's gonna get a gun and chase me out of here. You know, like, what's going on?

Finally, he comes out, and he's got a pouch of tobacco. And he said, like, he. You know, he took. Was finding his own tobacco, and he said, I want to give you tobacco. Thank you for coming to learn.

I'll be honored to help you. Let's get started, you know? And, like, that kind of floored me, that I was just a young whippersnapper just getting started, you know?

And here's this person I really respected trying to give me tobacco and asked me to do something, you know? And it was.

It was a reminder that it might not feel comfortable to put yourself out there or to ask for help or guidance or mentorship or an opportunity, but it's worth it to ask. It's worth it to apply for the job, you know, it's worth it to ask her out or whatever the things are.

And that doesn't mean that everything you ask for will automatically happen, you know, Sometimes we thank the money doog for unanswered prayers, too, But I do think that that is one thing that makes a difference. I think also, we're all wired a little differently, you know, My wife, for example, she's a starter.

She has a thousand brilliant ideas, and then she gets started, and then it's hard for her to sustain them, you know, other people, I'm a little more of the plodding workhorse, you know? And so it's a good compliment to one another.

And I think also when you want to do something really great, you know, just thinking about how you can serve yourself or advance yourself or your career is less successful. I think when you have a purpose that is a higher calling, then that will resonate with other people.

And really, almost everything I do is not about me. I, you know, officiate at ceremonies where I'm just nameless officiant, you know, happy to help people.

I, you know, I work in big groups of people, sometimes on projects, you know, but anyone who wants to do great things shouldn't try to do them alone.

I think about, we have a word in Ojibwe on a Kobijigan which means my great grand child and also means my great grandparent that spans seven generations. And so if you think about it, seven generations ago, our people were having a hard time dealing with treaties and all kinds of stuff.

And they were thinking, what are our people going to need seven generations from now? And they thought we'd need some land and some clean water and we would need our language and our culture and each other.

Now, today, against all odds, we actually have those things. It might feel like we're hanging on to some of them by thin threads, but they're still here.

And I think seven generations from now, what are our people going to need? They won't remember my name, doesn't matter how many books I write.

But if our language lives in their hearts and minds, if our ceremonies thrive in their spaces, if they're connected to one another and have community and culture and clean water and land, all our strivings will have been worth the effort. And so rather than, you know, what can I do for myself and what have you done for me lately?

You know, and I'm going to ghost the people who aren't doing something for me, you know, like it's a very self serving, very western way of approaching it, looking at relationships as transactions, you know, so I'm going to give some time or some effort or go to this event and I expect to receive X, Y and Z. It's very self serving, you know, and self promoting.

And I don't, I think people can smell when somebody is insincere and they can also just feel authenticity and that is going to be much more effective.

And so I've been introduced to a lot of really fantastic people this year and I wanted to ask you about that experience. I Know, like, my own experience with this fellowship, the plan I kind of put out at the beginning isn't exactly how it's panning out.

And so I'm allowing myself to be creative and move forward in a way. I was curious about your experience with that fellowship and if you're still involved with that community today.

Yeah. First of all, the Bush foundation has done a tremendous amount of work in our region.

You know, 27 tribes in Minnesota and North and South Dakota in the immediate service region. And sometimes they do work with people from other tribal communities, you know, geoproximate to that space.

And so, you know, the leadership program has been foundational, I think, for a lot of people who are pursuing, whether it's either a formal education or a self directed program or, you know, an innovative idea that might help change the world. And I think affording people the opportunity to do that is really welcome.

Some people have truly dynamic ideas, projects and programs, and we have seen remarkable results from the efforts of individual people. But I think it also generates community in a way that's really powerful.

And they, of course, they have all the other grant programs where they have supported nonprofits and language revitalization and all kinds of things, and sometimes in really huge ways. So all the imprint of the organization is quite robust within the Bush program.

Some of the Bush fellows, you know, from my cohort, we do stay in touch with one another, especially as our projects have intersected with one another. I'm also, you know, I was in one of the early cohorts, so the money was a little bit smaller and it was an emerging effort. But, you know, now I.

I have been like a formal mentor for some of the other more recent Bush fellows, and I found that to be a rewarding experience, too. There are lots of people trying to make things happen.

And I think, honestly, like, for Native people, we've had so much damage done to us, you know, throughout history, and there's so many kinds of skill sets that need to be built up within our own people. Like, one of the best predictors of who's going to college is who has parents who've gone to college.

So, like, even if you took, like, Native people, got all the land back, you know, and all the resources back, and plus interest, like, it wouldn't solve the fact that we have the epigenetic imprint of all this trauma and the skill sets that it takes to do something like be successful as, you know, a student in higher ed, from work study skills to writing skills, to navigating colonial systems to whatever, like that's all new. That's part of what makes it so tough. Plus, people just have lives and kids and other things going on that often make it difficult.

So I think, you know, in addition to the strategy for a really cool plan and intervention, we also just need to build our people up, money skills, networking skills, to understand colonial systems and how to navigate them to understand colonial systems even better. So we can totally change them so that we're not just learning how to be really good at the whiteness, you know, but we're good at our stuff.

And I think we get a lot of pressure as native people to kind of do the colonial stuff, and we get more what everyone else calls success, accolades. The better we are at it. And, you know, here's my office, you know, but at the same time, I think we need to redefine those things.

Like, we have to do two things. We have to navigate the systems that are there successfully and at the same time, work to change those systems.

If we only are rebelling against the systems and there's every reason to, then we still have to build what comes next. Right? Like the Russian Revolution, the idea was each according to their ability to each according to their need.

And they still got hierarchy and oppression because they had to build what was next. And they built it out of the foundation stones of the previous hierarchy. So it's not enough to just dismantle the systems.

We have to build the next system, the new one. And whether you're using reform or revolution tactics, it's same answer. We. We need to build what's next.

So that's why I've devoted a lot of my energy to things like, you know, building immersion schools and new programs and, you know, sharing and disseminating ideas and stuff like that. But I do feel like we need a more holistic approach to, you know, the toolbox for success.

That's so well said. You know, I truly believe that we need to understand the system if we want to change it, you know, and we. We do need those skill sets.

I want to shift over to your. Your writing career. Being an author, you know, you. You have the amazing book, everything you wanted to know about Indians but was afraid to ask.

And now you have your newest one that's coming out where wolves don't Die. As. As active as you are, as engaged as you are with the community to be an author.

A lot of times, you know, what's the phrase, what they say about authors is that sometimes you have to stop living to start writing and reflecting. And so I'm just curious on what that process is like for you and what, what's led you to, to sit down and put these works to paper.

Yeah, again, I, I really kind of favor a strengths based approach because different people are wired in different ways. I mean there's some people who get up and you know, write for two hours before the rest of the world starts. I've never done that.

I have a little more, you know, it's probably more accurately called an ADHD approach to my projects where you know, I am highly distracted and super busy and very scheduled and you know, lots of kids and you know, someone was even asking me in an interview one time, tell me about the place of quiet tranquility where you do all this work. And I was just laughing because there is none. There's no such thing.

But I also have periods of hyper focus where I'm really drilling into something and it's less that I would push everyone and everything out of the way and clear my calendar for a month and sit down and you know, intensively write. I don't think I've ever had that luxury. But I, you know, try to block and I write a little more opportunistically.

I often do a lot of my thinking when I'm on a drive or on a run or things like that so that when it's time to write, it's moves a little bit faster maybe.

And I've done many different kinds of writing projects, so some really do invoke a lot of reflection and introspective work, especially if it's more personal or memoir based. But honestly, doing fiction too, it's a totally different type of writing.

Like you cannot just be rambling around in a pensive full of thoughts and experiences that's totally boring for the rest of the world. Know your, your stuff's not, you know, my stuff's not nearly as interesting to everybody else.

So you have to have an arc and it has to take people somewhere and it has to be thoughtfully orchestrated and there is a art to that and those who neglect it usually don't do as well. So. So anyways, I, you know, my approach is less systemic, but I found ways to make it work.

I have worked under deadlines a lot, but I kind of prefer to have my creative space a little bit less pressured. But you know, once you're in the conversation or certainly once you're contracted, then the publishers are all after you.

So what would you want to say to the 18 to 22 year old that's listening to this conversation?

Well, I would say first of all that the world is full of all kinds of negative messaging that will encourage you not to believe in yourself and not think it's possible to be jaded or leaning out or waiting for things to happen. And I would say I believe in you and I hope you can believe in yourself that taking initiative is such an incredible value.

Just showing up for whatever the things are or the people are that you believe in. Showing up for your kid, oh man, it's everything, even for the little things.

And showing up for what you believe in, whether it's your language or your culture or your community, you know, or the project or the nonprofit or the for profit effort, whatever it happens to be and apply yourself. And oftentimes, you know, it's like this equation. If you take, you know, easy choices, you're going downhill.

And then trying to climb that cliff later is so much harder. And making some of the harder choices earlier, it's just a lot of, you know, sweat and toil. But then you get to that plateau and it becomes easier.

And so, you know, that doesn't mean that just because something's hard, it is the right thing to do. But a lot of times you have to pay, you know, time and investment early before the dividends really come in.

And, you know, that doesn't mean there isn't a pleasure in doing that, you know, even in a relationship like, you know, there's an early honeymoon phase and that that high will only last for so long.

But when you take the time to really get to know somebody and to have good discernment about who you're going to partner with and to feed the relationship, you know, it will pay dividends rather than, you know, put a ring on it and then get back to my own job and expect everything to be nourished, you know, And I think it's like that with our friendships, with the relationships with our family and parents. I think it's with it with our professional work where we have to maintain. And that doesn't mean that it's only a chore. You know, there's.

I've always found that the receiving is in the giving with all the things I do.

So what's, what's on the horizon for you? What are you working on right now?

Oh, man, I got all kinds of stuff cooking. So, you know, the new book where Wolves Don't Die is out. It's off to a good start. And so I'm in full on promotion mode.

I'm also teaching classes on a regular basis. So the schedule's pretty full, but I've got many more projects cooking in my brain.

I usually don't give them too much oxygen outside of the creative space until I got them, you know, cooked. Both because the projects can change and I just want the energy to go into them. But there's more stuff happening.

I, I will have more fiction and more non fiction coming to the world at some point in time. And you know, we're also at a point where my kids are getting a little older and aging out, so we're launching kids. I've only got.

We got our seventh launch this spring from high school.

Okay.

And two more to go. So trying to enjoy that sweetness while it's still with me.

Right on, right on. Where can our listener find. Find your work to be able to connect with you?

Oh, it's pretty easy to find me. A simple Google search will get you most of what you need to know. I have a website, all the books are linked up.

There's, you know, free educator guides for the books and all kinds of other stuff on the website. Lots of tools and resources. And then, you know, I have a YouTube channel, so, you know, building both short form and long form content.

We've got no jibway word of the day. I've got a lot of presentations, you know, on a sorted into a whole variety of playlists and things like that.

So it's pretty easy to get the free stuff that way. And I have a heavy events calendar, so if you want to catch me in person or virtually, there are lots of ways to do that too.

Right on. We'll put links in the show notes with this episode.

Awesome. Appreciate you.

Dr. Treuer, thank you so much for taking time out of your schedule to be on this podcast. This was really great to have you here.

Thank you so much for having me. Look forward to seeing the episode when it comes out. And.

And that does it for this episode of Five Plain Questions. I want to thank Anton again for his time and sharing his story with us. This is. Anton is an individual with a lot happening, a lot of spinning plates.

I'm just very excited that he was able to squeeze us in on a very busy semester and to share his story with us. This was a really great time. So, Anton, thank you so much.

I also want to thank you for joining us and spending your time listening to what I feel is a very important story and perspective from our community. So please join us next time as we speak with another incredible person. I'm Joe Williams.

You can find me and this podcast on Instagram, on X, formerly known as Twitter, and on Facebook meta whatever it's called. Now, the Five Playing Questions podcast is also on elevenwarriorarts.com the official website for the podcast. So go check it out.

Listen to this interview there. See old podcasts, and with the new merch coming, it'll be a place for you to check out where that is.

Also, if you have someone that you want me to interview, click contact me and send me a message. I want to know who you think should be on this podcast next. All right, that's it. You take care and we will see you next time.

This has been an eleven Warrior Arts production.