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While the Locust Slept: A Memoir (Native Voices)

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My father as well was in the Owatonna "orphanage" which he termed as an "intournment camp/prison"! Babies and children were treated more tragically at this place than you could even imagine. Babies died for lack of "touch" and nurturing! Children were beaten, mauled, and oftentimes died as a result of such treatment. Peter Razor cites an insightfully true story of just SOME of the horific experiences of babies and children in this most insightful book on our country's past (AND EVEN PRESENT) ways of "Social Services" treating our "lost" children!! A MUST TO READ!

I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Razor while on a trip to Cochiti Lake, New Mexico. After talking for a while he passed me a copy of his book and asked me to read it and then share it with others. I read the book cover-to-cover on the trip home and was amazed that the man I had talked to had once been the little boy in the book. Mr. Razor was a kind and gentle man that never revealed the scars from his childhood in any part of our conversations. America's inhumane treatment of the Indian people is well documented. This book offers graphic descriptions of individual cruelty that was fueled by ignorance and prejudice. I don't know if many human beings could have endured this sort of trauma and survived to be so kind. Peter is a truly incredible person and I would recommend his book to anyone.

This is a chilling, true-life account of a childhood that should have never been, and 17 years of life that would forever haunt the author, Peter Razor. Peter, an intelligent boy that was raised in an orphanage as a ward of the state, then placed in an abusive indentured farm home had a childhood that is reprehensible, and sadly true. Supposedly protected by the state, Peter became a boy who flinched from physical contact, and had no understanding of what a normal happy home should be like. Unlike Peter Razor, not all children were lucky enough to survive the abuse that could be found in state orphanages when Peter was growing up. Corporal punishment went unchecked, and Peter, an American Indian, also had the added disadvantage of prejudice thrown in. Eventually placed on a farm, his placement was not carefully monitored, and the abusive treatment with this family was never noted by the social worker who was suppose to be monitoring Peter's placement. While the Locust Slept, a Minnesota Book Award Winner, is a compelling, well written tale that reads like a novel, yet is sadly a true tale of a horrific childhood that was unchecked by the state that was suppose to be protecting him

While the Locust Slept
by Peter Razor

Book Review by Jay Gilbertson

This memoir will take your breath away. Not because the writing is filled with color and nuance, but the sheer brutality of the story is simply devastating. As with most books, this one chose me. Now it haunts me. At first I ran from the thought of even trying to give this story a voice and yet I feel it's powerful and very pertinent.

Peter Razor was born with a grey cloud over his life that would follow him like an invisible chain-and-ball for a long time. He was from the Fond du Lac band of Minnesota Chippewas, his father served in the First World War and never worked again; he drank. When the state social services ruled that his mother suffered from confusion, they sent her to an asylum at St. Peter. Razor's father abandoned him and he eventually became a ward of the state; he was seventeen months old.

One of the main reasons that I didn't give up on his compelling account is because there is very little written about this. We have very few accounts of this particular stage in our history and especially the local tribes in particular. Razor's work deserves to be read, it needs to be.

"I walked through weeds on the playground to see grasshoppers of all sizes leap and fly. When they settled, I watched them watching me. One, I learned, the one the boys called locust, slept seventeen years in darkness before soaring into the summer light."

A great deal of Razor's historical information is filled in with bits and pieces of actual verbiage from case files he was able to locate after a great deal of searching. It was part of the healing process as well as a way for him to fill in many of the gaps in his first seventeen years due to a common coping skill found in survivors of abuse; traumatic memory loss. Comments from various doctors, social workers and psychologists as well as teachers provided personal glimpses into this period. Though they were often bleak, most of them held a shred of hope, a possibility that maybe he could make it. To what lofty goal, he was never told.

When Razor turned fourteen he became an indentured servant but his file read that he was "ready for farm placement." The next three years of his life were sheer survival in some of the worst situations imaginable. Through all his harsh treatment, never having had any sort of mentor or counselor or even a close friend to confide in; Razor found peace.

Ultimately, what Razor's memoir brings to light is the incredible strength of the human spirit and how no matter what some of us are thrown; we endure. And more importantly for me, this was a powerful reminder that no matter how we try to deny Native American's their freedom--they will remind us--you cannot contain the wind...

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The book was in great shape and it was shipped very fast! The book looks brand new. I love it!

Like Peter I lived and went through total hell from a matron while I was in the same orphanage. After reading Peters book while the locust slept,I relived the same anger, as Peter indured.This book should be a must read by anyone,who plans on going into the socialwork field and know that this is truly a non fiction tragedy which happened.This is a story that took place a long time ago,but could still and does happen today.