Denise K. Lajimodiere Knihy

Lajimodiere's newest collection of poetry takes its title from a statue the author observed - an Indian on a horse - fashioned from welded-together farm implements. The premise of the collection is overt criticism of settler society, but the poetry is subtle, approachable, and grounded in Ojibwe knowledge and customs. Feathers is divided into five sections: Broken Glass Dreams, Identity, His Feathers Were Chains, Thin White Heat, and Dancing with a Whirlwind.Denise K. Lajimodiere is an enrolled citizen of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, Belcourt, North Dakota. She has been involved in education for thirty-eight years as an Elementary teacher and principal, earning her bachelor’s, master’s, and doctorate degrees from the University of North Dakota. She is also a traditional jingle dress dancer, a poet, and a birch bark-biting artist.

Education professor Denise Lajimodiere's interest in American Indian boarding school survivors stories evolved from recording her father and other family members speaking of their experiences. The journey to record survivors stories led her through the Dakotas and Minnesota and into the personal and private space of boarding school survivors. While there, she heard stories that they had never shared before. She came to an understanding of new terms: historical and intergenerational trauma, soul wound. 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. Stringing Rosaries presents a brief history of the boarding school programs for Indigenous Americans, followed by sixteen interviews with boarding school survivors, and ending with the author's own healing journey with her father