Category: Louise Erdrich. Turtle Mountain Reservation

The Way to Rainy Mountain, N. Scott Momaday

Here’s how I found my way to The Way to Rainy Mountain

For the past few years, the Josephy Center has had a book group. It started with small, in-person meetings, and moved online with the coming of Covid. Our last book was Murder at the Mission: A Frontier Killing, Its Legacy of Lies, and the Taking of the American West, by Blaine Harden. We were blessed to have Harden and Bobbie Conner and Chuck Sams join us for the discussion. Conner and Sams have Cayuse roots, and were consulted by Harden as he researched and wrote the book.Read Rich’s Post →

Indian Books

Our number one Josephy Library volunteer, Elnora Cameron, just returned from a trip across the North, and into the Midwest. She spent a few hours in Louise Erdrich’s Minneapolis bookstore, Birchbark Books (https://birchbarkbooks.com), and came back with a very interesting box of books by and about American Indians.Read Rich’s Post →

Turning the page

Turning the page is a common metaphor for beginning a new year—often implying that we are leaving what was unpleasant in the last year behind. There was plenty of unpleasant in 2020, but some good things happened too, sometimes in spite of or even as a result of the Pandemic. Read Rich’s Post →

Louise Erdrich’s The Night Watchman

I’m not halfway through Louise Erdrich’s The Night Watchman—and I’m uncomfortable. Erdrich is Turtle Mountains Chippewa. The Turtle Mountain Reservation is about 200 miles due west of Fosston, Minnesota, where I was born and started growing up. Her book is set in the 1950s, with the story of her grandfather fighting Termination at the heart of it. I was born in 1942, and remember northern Minnesota—the summer heat and bugs and winter cold; ice skates too big with paper stuffed in the toes; Lutheran churches and church potlucks; summer baseball, and on and on. But I don’t remember The Night Watchman’s world.Read Rich’s Post →