​BOOKS & LITERATURE

Below are some selections from the many talented Ojibwe and Metis authors from the Turtle Mountain Chippewa community. Books include narratives, histories, poems, explorations in cuisine, and novels of unique complexity.  There's something for everyone seeking to know more about the rich culture and interesting people of the Turtle Mountains.

Thunderbird

Denise Lajimodiere

​At the heart of Thunderbird is a poetic treatise on the historical, cultural, medicinal, and spiritual properties of the birch tree, which Denise Lajimodiere employs in her renowned birch bark biting art.
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Assembled and printed at the Braddock Letterpress Print Museum by publishing interns, each numbered, limited edition copy of Thunderbird bears an original piece of birch bark biting art. Each copy is a unique work of art.

Stringing Rosaries

​DENISE LAJIMODIERE

Denise Lajimodiere's interest in American Indian boarding school survivors stories evolved from recording her father and other family members speaking of their experiences.

​Her research helped her to gain insight, a deeper understanding of her parents, and how and why she and her siblings were parented in the way they were. That insight led her to an emotional ceremony of forgiveness, described in the last chapter of Stringing Rosaries.

The Falcon

John Tanner / Kade Ferris (Ed)

Edited with historical annotations and translations, John Tanner's seminal autobiography tells the story of a man who, over the course of 30 years, became assimilated into Anishinaabe - coming to view the world through an indigenous lens.

​The rich narrative includes fascinating stories of survival, starvation, sickness, and coming home to the white world only to return to the only life he had become accustomed to: that of an Indigenous person.

Tawn Kaayaash

Kade Ferris

Featuring the essential history of the Ojibwe and Metis people of the northern prairies of the United States and Canada. This unique book includes numerous short histories, fascinating stories, lists of names from petitions, treaties, and grand councils, and more.

An essential guide to a unique period in time, the book offers seldom seen information that has been collected in one easy to read collection that will keep you riveted for hours.

Bush Dances & Buffalo Hunts

Kade Ferris

A collection of twenty-three “Little Histories” related to the Metis and Plains Ojibwe people. These are vivid, short historical excerpts that are presented in digest form, like the old Harper’s Weekly or Readers Digest, where they can be easily read and easily remembered, like a storybook.

​Stories include tales about old time bush dances, battles, buffalo hunts, chiefs and leaders, and more. While small, these histories are inspiring and entertaining. 

New poets of Native Nations

Heid E. Erdrich (Ed)

Editor Heid E. Erdrich's New Poets of Native Nations gathers a diverse range of poets of various ages, styles, languages, and tribal affiliations to present the extraordinary range and power of new Native poetry.

Collected here are poems of great breadth―long narratives, political outcries, experimental works, and traditional lyrics―and the result is an essential anthology of some of the best poets writing now across the entirety of Indian country.

The Mother's Tongue

Heid E. Erdrich

Acclaimed author Heid E Erdrich created a wonderful series of poems that consider and figure the women's varied experiences of work, sex, pregnancy, childbirth, and mothering within the particular contexts of the prairie landscape, American Indian cultures and Ojibwe language recovery.

A great book that offers a new focus on the women who are the mothers and daughters of the Anishinaabe nation.

Bear Makes Rock Soup

Lise Erdrich

​In Bears Make Rock Soup, writer Lise Erdrich and painter Lisa Fifield honor their Native American ancestral traditions.

​As winter falls, women fill the bellies of hungry bears with sweet stories so they will sleep till spring. Crows warn of enemies in pursuit so that a tribe may escape to safety. Children care for an abandoned moose they find crying for its mother. And animals of all stripes and feathers gather to pay respects to a beloved chief who has fallen while defending his people.

Night Train

Lise Erdrich

​What does it mean to be a “fully processed” Indian in America today? In Night Train, Lise Erdrich offers a sharp-humored and powerful primer. Largely set in the small towns and reservations of northwestern Minnesota and western North Dakota, her literary snapshots capture the characters’ lives playing out against a backdrop of emergency rooms, supermarket aisles, backwoods parties, family breakfast tables, booze-soaked taverns, and sterile, but emotionally fraught offices.

Antelope Woman

Louise ErdricH

This updated edition of National Book Award-winning and New York Times bestselling author Louise Erdrich’s 1998 novel now features fascinating new content, a new title, new cover art, and a new foreword by the author—a riveting story that explores tensions between Native American and white cultures.

A must read novel from the most celebrated author in the history of the Turtle Mountain Ojibwe.

Love Medicine

Louise Erdrich

Set on and around a North Dakota Ojibwe reservation, Love Medicine—the first novel by bestselling, National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich—is the epic story about the intertwined fates of two families: the Kashpaws and the Lamartines.

​With astonishing virtuosity, each chapter draws on a range of voices to limn its tales. Black humor mingles with magic, injustice bleeds into betrayal, and through it all, bonds of love and family marry the elements into a tightly woven whole that pulses with the drama of life.

The ROund House

Louise Erdrich

One of the most revered novelists of our time—a brilliant chronicler of Native American life, Louise Erdrich returns to the territory of her bestselling, Pulitzer Prize finalist The Plague of Doves with The Round House, transporting readers to the Ojibwe reservation in North Dakota.

It is an exquisitely told story of a boy on the cusp of manhood who seeks justice and understanding in the wake of a terrible crime that upends and transforms his family.