Because of the schools’ affiliation with the federal War Department, records on each child were heavily archived. A future project is partly based on her maternal grandfather’s experiences in Indian boarding school.

Erdrich’s Ojibwe families track several generations.Īlthough she says she does not write about her family in her books, her mother, a continuing vital influence, has inspired her to research her ancestors. Even in scenes from the 1970s and 80s, the main non-Indians are descendants of these Europeans. French words mix with the Ojibwe language. Her stories about these people include love, intermarriage, stolen lands, murder, racial prejudice, religious conversion and a tense co-existence. In her North Dakota Ojibwe communities, most of the outsiders are French, German and Swedish. So any environmental or other issue is part of the narrative.”Įrdrich’s novels weave important historical events such as the Red River and North West resistance movements led by the Metis leader Louis Riel, German and Swedish immigrant homestead encroachments on Native lands, the Dawes Act and rape and murder on reservations. I try hard not to go on a rant because people don’t want to read that. “A book needs suspense, and the issues have to be part of the suspense. “Both sides of my family, the German and the Indian, were great storytellers,” she says. But she writes almost poetically in a way that doesn’t sound like propaganda. Erdrich’s books frequently deal with important issues of social justice.

Louise erdrich la rose