Native American Lives Series

Heid E. Erdrich is Ojibwe enrolled at the Turtle Mountain reservation in North Dakota. She grew up in Wahpeton, North Dakota, not far from the White Earth reservation in Minnesota and the Sisseton-Wahpeton reservation in South Dakota. Her neighbors in her hometown were Dakota and Ojibwe from these tribal nations. Heid is the author of seven collections of poetry and a cookbook focused on indigenous foods of Minnesota and neighboring states titled Original Local. Her writing has won fellowships and awards from the National Poetry Series, Native Arts and Cultures Foundation, Minnesota State Arts Board and more. She has twice won a Minnesota Book Award for poetry. A long-time teacher of writing at colleges and universities, Heid enjoys editing. She edited the anthologies New Poets of Native Nations from Graywolf Press, and Sister Nations from the Minnesota Historical Society Press. Heid’s new poetry collection is Little Big Bully, Penguin Editions, 2020. Along with being Anishinaabe/Ojibwe, Heid’s extended family includes Anishinaabe from several bands, Dakota, Hidatsa, Somali-American, German-American, and immigrants from India and elsewhere. She is also Metis, which is a group of people whose ancestors were French and Native American, and who lived in what became the United States of America and Canada. She loves the Great Lakes area and calls it home. Heid has lived in Minnesota for many years, raising her kids in Minneapolis where they went to public schools. She enjoyed working with the authors and editors of this series of biographies and hopes you will read and re-read these books!

Gwen Nell Westerman is Dakota and enrolled with the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate in South Dakota. She is also a citizen of the Cherokee Nation. Her parents went to boarding schools in Oklahoma and South Dakota, and then met at Haskell Institute in Lawrence, Kansas. Gwen grew up in Oklahoma and Kansas, among many different tribal nations. She was even first runner-up for powwow princess! When she grew up, she was hired as university professor in Minnesota and returned to her father’s homeland. One of her earliest memories is from when she was three, scribbling in book. Her mother asked her what she was doing. She looked up and said, “I’m writing!” Today, she still loves to scribble, and writes about Dakota history and language. She won two Minnesota Book Awards for her work about Dakota people. Gwen’s first poetry book was written in English and Dakota. Her poems have been published in anthologies, and so have her art quilts. Her quilt art received awards from the Minnesota State Arts Board, the Minnesota Historical Society, the Great Plains Art Museum, and the Heard Museum, and has been exhibited in many places across the United States. Her children were born in Oklahoma and grew up in Minnesota. Gwen’s family tree includes teachers, leaders, and hard workers who were Dakota, Ojibwe, Odawa, and Cherokee, along with a few French and Scottish traders. She knows the names of all her ancestors on both sides of her family back before the American Revolution. She lives in Minnesota with her husband and their little black dog. She hopes you enjoy reading these books as much as she liked working on them, and that you will share them with your friends and families.