While the Locust Slept

Peter Razor’s memoir, While the Locust Slept (2001), is the unflinching true story of the horrors Razor experienced as a child as a ward of the State of Minnesota and in the years afterward. Razor, who is Ojibwe, supplements his shattered memories of this time with the details of the records kept by the state to produce a comprehensive narrative that is as painful as it is triumphant. While the Locust Slept specifically underscores the ways state-run systems fail Native communities, destroying young lives before they even have a chance to begin.

The book opens in 1944, as a teenaged Peter is being removed from the state orphanage where he has lived nearly his entire life. Miss Borsch introduces him to John and Emma Schauls, explaining to them that Peter "is ready to try farming." Little does Peter know that he has become an indentured servant of the Schauls; he will not be their adopted child or even their hired hand. He will toil in their fields doing backbreaking labor in exchange for room and board.

As Peter stands before the Schauls in the main building of the orphanage, he stares down at the floor, and his past comes rushing back through his mind. His family, he says, "fell apart" just after he was born. A charity organization in St. Paul houses Peter, his Chippewa father, Wilbur, his mentally ill mother, Mary, and his two older brothers. After serving in the First World War, Wilbur had become an alcoholic and was unable to hold down a job. Prone to breakdowns, Mary was in and out of institutions. At ten months old, with his mother institutionalized, Wilbur abandons Peter. Two months later, Peter is officially declared a ward of the state. By the time he is seventeen months old, Peter lives full-time at the state orphanage.



The orphanage operates like "a penal institution" for unwanted children. Children are routinely isolated, neglected, and physically and emotionally tortured by the staff. The biological parents who have had their children removed by the state lose all rights to reclaim them, outside of rare visitations. Being Native American, Peter is subjected to additional prejudice and bigotry from those charged with his care.

As Peter grows up, he learns that it is difficult to place any orphaned child in a loving, stable, permanent home, but it is almost impossible to place a Native child. He is put into a few foster homes with "parents" just as unfit as his biological ones. Peter must bear the brunt of their anger and physical abuse. With every foster care replacement, he is ultimately returned to the state orphanage, more battered and bruised—both physically and psychologically—than he was before.

The Schauls arrive at the orphanage when Peter is fifteen years old. They take him to their farm near Rushford, Minnesota. It does not take long for Peter to realize that John Schaul is nothing short of sadistic. He works Peter beyond the point of exhaustion; provides only enough food to keep the boy alive; and forces him to wear torn and tattered secondhand clothing. John regularly beats Peter, and though the state conducts twice-yearly welfare checks, they are not legally obligated to actually talk to the child. The abuse and the indentured servitude continue.



Meanwhile, the state requires the Schauls to send Peter to high school. However, school life is anything but a respite from the nightmare of life on the farm. After a member of the school's staff attacks him with a hammer, Peter can't attend work or classes for weeks. When he finally does return to school, he is able, perhaps for the first time in his life, to make friends and have traditional school experiences.

Then, John beats Peter so savagely that he gives him a near-fatal concussion. Shortly afterward, Dr. Yager from the state visits the farm to check on Peter and asks to speak to him alone. After learning of the abuse, Yager removes Peter from the Schaul home. Peter goes to live temporarily with Mrs. Murray, a retired nurse and here he is shown some of the first kindness and gentleness he has ever known. Mrs. Murray gives him clean pajamas, dresses his wounds, and provides a safe place for him to land after the brutality of the Schaul farm. Peter tentatively begins to think of the future with a new sense of hope.

In the book's epilogue, Peter tells what happened after he came of age and left the state system. He becomes a journeyman electrician and creating a stable career for himself and his family. He delves into his Native heritage, making peace with this aspect of his identity, which caused so much trouble and turmoil in his young life. He also speaks of his three children and how important they are to him.



In the end, While the Locust Slept is a story of survival. It doesn't take place in some remote stretch of jungle, or high on a mountaintop, or in the aftermath of a disaster. It unfolds in the life-shattering inequities and failures of the social welfare system, a system meant to protect the youngest and most vulnerable among us. Peter Razor lived to tell his tale, only after years of waiting patiently to awaken and break free—much like the locust of the book's title.