Collective Spirit Podcast
First Peoples Fund presents the Collective Spirit® podcast. The Collective Spirit moves each of us to stand up and make a difference, to pass on ancestral knowledge, and simply extend a hand of generosity. The Collective Spirit podcast features Native artists and culture bearers who discuss the power of Indigenous art and culture. The Collective Spirit® podcast is produced by First Peoples Fund, whose mission is to honor and support Indigenous artists and culture bearers through grant-making initiatives, culturally rooted programming, and training & mentorship. Learn more at www.firstpeoplesfund.org
Collective Spirit Podcast
S2E11: Denise Lajimodiere (Ojibwe, Métis)
2023 Artist in Business Leadership Fellow Denise Lajimodiere (Ojibwe, Metis) has worked tirelessly to shed light on Residential/Boarding School experiences among Native Americans and First Nations people through her career as a writer, artist and educator. Her stirring accounts of survivors, whom she's interviewed with empathy and diligence, urge us to listen to the whispers of history long ignored. Denise weaves her personal voyage with her cultural roots to unravel the stories that have scarred Indigenous communities. Her poetry is a testament to her healing journey, while her research casts light on the dark corridors of institutions such as Chimawa and Fort Totten. Through her artistic lens, Denise's mission to document these tales encompasses both the personal and the collective, ensuring that the echoes of the past will not fade into silence.
The biggest thing that I always say is that the boarding school era was America's best-kept secret. The people that I interviewed they said please tell the world what happened to us.
Speaker 2:First People's Fund presents the Collective Spirit podcast. The Collective Spirit moves each of us to stand up and make a difference, to pass on ancestral knowledge and simply extend a hand of generosity. The Collective Spirit podcast features Native artists and culture bearers who discuss the power of Indigenous art and culture.
Speaker 1:My English name is Denise Lajmeder. I want to quote Ikwe Kaz. My tribal name is White Thunder Cloud Woman. My home is the Tour de Mareservation in North Central North Dakota and Ashizak Nidoldeim. I am from the Korean clan.
Speaker 1:The medium that I applied for for First People's Fund was as a writer. I'm an academic writer. I have an academic book out called Stringing Rosaries about boarding schools and I have a children's book out, josie Dances, published by Minnesota Historical Society Press. I'm mostly known as a poet, so I have two full-length books of poetry and two what are called chat books. As part of the First People's Fund grant I also put that I would be doing more boarding school research at Chimawa and at Fort Totten Chimawa, oregon and Fort Totten here in North Dakota.
Speaker 1:Most of my writing is done with being a tribal person, being a native person, being Ojibwe Métis and living here on the reservation and living here in North Dakota. So most of my poems just explores who I am as a native person. It also has been extremely healing for me. Poetry has probably saved my sanity. Poetry helps me deal with grief, with post-traumatic stress syndrome and with racism and discrimination I've experienced as a native person. It's been very therapeutic for me.
Speaker 1:My experience with First People's Fund was first as a Birchbark lighting artist. I received funds to help me set up a website to gather materials that I can use when I go out and show my work at camera, because I got turned down from a grant once because my pictures were poor. So things like that helped me advance my work as a Birchbark lighting artist and Birchbark lighting is a pre-contact art that was done before Columbus was here. I learned from my wonderful mentor, kelly Church, and it took me about four years before I felt that I was good enough to start selling my work. So First People's Fund helped me set up my little business and I would see a website and so on. It really changed my life as an artist. So I owe a lot to First People's Fund as an artist and now, of course, as a writer.
Speaker 1:I was using First People's Fund money that I was able to spend two weeks up in Alaska at Homer at Story Knife and then came back from there immediately and went to a two-week writing workshop on a college campus in Minnesota. So they've helped me advance my work as an artist and now as a writer, and also part of the grant is to do research on boarding schools. I put in there that and I'll be heading to Portland Oregon to head down to Chmawa, where my father was sent there as the student in 1925. So I'm going to be meeting with an archivist there that is writing a book about Chmawa from 1800 to 1900. I'm currently writing a middle grade novel. I should finish it this week and send it off. I have an editor that has requested it, so I'm just thrilled about that, and I was able to do a lot of the writing in Homer Alaska through the grant that provided me funds to be able to go up there. I was awarded the Jennifer Easton Award a few years back also, and they took me to Hawaii. That was absolutely again, a life-changing, unforgettable moment in my life. So I'm finding with First People's Fund is that once you've been awarded grants and you are part of a family, so I encourage as many people as I can to apply for the grant and to become part of their family.
Speaker 1:I've been doing this work with boarding schools since 2011, when we worked with the National Board of School Healing Coalition, along with Native American Rights Fund. I had been interviewing my parents. Both my parents were sent to boarding school along with my mom's grandfathers and my dad's mother, but she died during the 1918 flu epidemic and in my research I just found out that she also was sent to Fortton boarding school. The biggest thing that I always say is that the boarding school era was America's best kept secret. The people that I interviewed they said please tell the world what happened to us. So that's why I continue doing boarding school research. In Tumawa, forest Grove, the archivist has found seven unmarked graves of kids that died at Forest Grove when it was first formed in 1880. So I like to visit the graves and offer prayers, offer tobacco and pray for these kids that never had a chance to go back home.
Speaker 1:I want to go to Kansas City and also just to Fort Tawton here, and maybe to the State Historical Society, to do more research on Fort Tawton. I like to write just a slim volume, just a slim book, on some of the history of Fort Tawton, and my father was there but he ran away. His father, my grandfather, was there. I have a picture of him there in 1898 with his army uniform, along with his sister next to him. So I have some family history there and of course a lot of our tribal members were sent to Fort Tawton because it was so close, but again, they weren't allowed to come home for nine months, no matter how there's people I interviewed in the book that they could see their home. They could see their grandmother's home as little boys, but they weren't allowed to leave for nine months. So we're looking at healing as a national boarding school healing coalition. We're looking at what does healing look like to board of school survivors, but we need to ask them what does healing look like for you as a boarding school survivor? And that's what I hope to do in my book or any continued writing and research that I do about boarding schools, the National Native American Board of School Healing Coalition. They have a website that has all kinds of information that anyone can look to for information on boarding schools.
Speaker 1:I'm retired. This is my fifth year retired, so I'm good to go. My legacy, of course, is 44 years involved in education as a teacher, a principal and as a educational leadership professor. So I just encourage young people to get an education that opens so many doors and so many opportunities for you. My birch bark biting. As long as I have teeth, which I still do, I will continue during my biting, I put it away for a year while I was writing this middle grade novel, but I started back in yesterday, so I'm excited to start doing some more shows. And then, of course, my legacy as a writer. I hope to write more children's books. I have some ideas running around my head. I'm working on my fifth book of poetry right now. So hopefully, as long as they'll stay in print or they're out there, that will be part of my legacy also.
Speaker 2:The Collective Spirit Podcast is produced by First Peoples Fund, whose mission is to honor and support indigenous artists and culture bearers through grant-making initiatives, culturally-rooted programming, and training and mentorship. Learn more at FirstPeoplesFundorg.