You Better Go See Geri: An Odawa Elder’s Life of Recovery and Resilience

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In the introduction to You Better Go See Geri, Andrea Riley Mukavetz asserts: “This book is about relationships: the kind of relationships one has with family, with community, across generations, with trauma and recovery, with ancestral land, with writing and research, and so on. As Shawn Wilson reflects, ‘Relationships do not merely shape reality, they are reality’” (11). Though Frances “Geri” Roossien1 walked on in 2019, Riley Mukavetz’s beautifully theorized and presented oral history of Geri’s life and work resonates throughout with this network of relationships. In doing so, the book makes multiple contributions.First and foremost, it is Geri’s story, an oral history of an Odawa elder who tells her stories of childhood, boarding school, substance abuse, sobriety, and transformation and who advocates for more tribally centered programs to support Native families. Riley Mukavetz provides a crucial introduction to guide readers, and, while she emphasizes that this is Geri’s story, teaching readers how to listen to what Geri offers as an Odawa woman is an essential part of the book. It is important both to hear Geri’s individual accounts and then to place them in the wider network of generational, historical, and land-based relationships, and, in this way, those stories and Riley Mukavetz’s framing work together seamlessly.As a result, You Better Go See Geri stands as an exemplary model of what it means to do place-based, community-oriented historical and rhetorical work. In her introduction, Riley Mukavetz explains: “[Geri] approached her storytelling through deep truth and critical reflection. When I came to listen to her stories, she had a clear story in mind. It was my responsibility as an oral historian and youngster to listen for the teachings and to make connections” (15). From this perspective, the book operates simultaneously as a record of Geri’s life as she wished it to be told and as a model of what responsible oral history work can look like in Indigenous communities and beyond.While one can read this book as an oral history, it is also much more than that. As Riley Mukavetz observes: “Visiting with Geri gave me countless opportunities to critically reflect and understand how tribal nations women use the stories of their lived experiences to theorize their roles and responsibilities” (13). Those readers already familiar with Native American and Indigenous rhetorics will recognize the point here about how storytelling is theorizing, but a book-length account like this one allows readers to see Geri doing that critical reflection over her life’s experiences as an Odawa woman in order to offer it to a wider audience.Finally, You Better Go See Geri prompts us to ask ourselves what it means to do historical rhetorical work, to think about our own positionalities and relationships to land and Indigenous peoples, to listen more rather than position ourselves as experts. We, too, are part of this network of relationships, and, just as Riley Mukavetz acknowledges her own responsibilities having heard and given us Geri’s stories, readers are challenged to imagine what their role may be, too.