David Treuer on Reservation Life - Q&A Dan Koeck for The New York Times David Treuer checked a beaver trap at the Leech Lake reservation in Minnesota with his nephews, from left, Evan, Isaac and Elias Treuer. When David Treuer was offered a teaching job at the University of Southern California last year, he made a promise to himself before accepting and moving his family from Minneapolis to the West Coast: He would keep a home - "an anchor," as he put it - on the Leech Lake Indian Reservation in northern Minnesota, where he grew up. "Both who I am and my work are largely about this place," said Mr. Treuer, who was born to a Jewish father and an Ojibwe mother. I needed to keep my feet in that ground. Otherwise the rest of my life wouldn't make any sense. Mr. Treuer, 41, who has written three novels dealing with Indian lives and a new nonfiction book, "Rez Life" (Atlantic Monthly Press), bought a cabin on the reservation and intends to return regularly. He was back in Leech Lake for a few weeks this month with his wife, who belongs to the Seneca tribe in upstate New York, and their three children, ages 2 to 6. He planned to visit friends and family and to trap beaver, a tradition he took up in his early 20s. Mr. Treuer spoke to a reporter about life on the reservation and his new home there. You may be the only modern-day writer moonlighting as a fur trapper. I'm a professor, so I can make do without the meager trapping income I make. But it's about keeping a way of life alive. I had a friend in Canada, from a different reservation. He invited me up to trap with him. He said, "Enough book learning - why don't you learn something real?" It was astounding. I've never studied anything as hard, with as much pleasure or profit. What's your house on the reservation like? We have a little cabin. Two bedrooms. It's not fancy. But it's on a really pretty part of the rez, on a lake. This was someone's summer cabin, I think. This piece of land was owned by white people since 1901. I feel some satisfaction that it's back in the tribe. Did you make updates? When we moved in, there was a western theme to the kitchen - wagon wheels and things. It might strike most people as tacky; it struck us as ironic. We painted it white and took out the western theme. In the book, you're critical of the cheaply built government housing found on many reservations - an architectural style you call the HUD house. Any movie about Indians in the past 20 years, they all begin with what has become a reliable trope, which is the HUD house, this broken-down rectangle. That's become the most obvious visual signifier of reservation-ness. In that one image are the stock ideas: hopelessness and despair and poverty and alcoholism. But that's a very recent thing, and it's only one part of a much larger existence. I didn't grow up in a house like that. A lot of people didn't. Over half of all Leech Lakers don't live on the reservation. Some live nearby, and some live as far away as Los Angeles. Some have virtually no connection to the reservation or the community; some do. What do you think of "On the Rez," Ian Frazier's book about the modern Indian experience? I would give an organ to write as well as Ian Frazier writes. But I don't know what you could learn about reservations by reading "On the Rez." If I thought you could, I wouldn't have written this book. He's a visitor. He's only there for a short time. I'm not writing as a visitor. What's your favorite place around Leech Lake? The reservation is 40 miles by 40 miles. There are swamps, pine forests, lakes - it's big. If it's March and you ask me, I'd say about a mile away from our cabin, where we make maple syrup. In December, I'd say Rainy Lake, which is 70 miles due north of Leech Lake Reservation and where I learned to trap. In summer, my favorite place is right out in front of my house where we catch fish. Your life in California must be very different. We live in this little town called Claremont. It's got a heart. I don't know if it has a pulse. I feel, in some ways, very comfortable in Claremont, and in some ways not. Ditto for here. There's terrible Vietnamese food up here at Leech Lake, but great Vietnamese food in Claremont. But people here ask me, "Why would you go to California?" They can't understand it. To my tribe mates, this is where it's at. Do you agree? When I was a teenager, I wanted to be anyplace that was not here. I don't think that's unique to me. But shortly after leaving, I came to really love this place and miss it. Being Indian in the 21st century is complicated. I wanted to show my kids that in this wide, complicated world there is a place for them. Not as tourists, but as members of the community.