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Stringing Rosaries: The History, the Unforgivable, and the Healing of Northern Plains American Indian Boarding School Survivors

Denise Lajimodiere's interest in American Indian boarding school survivors’ stories evolved from recording her father and other family members speaking of their experiences. 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. That insight led her to an emotional ceremony of forgiveness, described in the last chapter of Stringing Rosaries.

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.

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.

Paperback, 328 pp., 39 black and white photographs, updated listing of more than 400 US boarding schools by state, appendix, bibliography, and index. $24.95


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Denise K. Lajimodiere is an enrolled Citizen of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, Belcourt, North Dakota. She has been involved in education for forty-four years as an elementary school teacher, principal, and professor, earning her bachelor, master's, and doctoral degrees from University of North Dakota, Denise recently retired as an associate professor from the School of Education, Education Leadership program, North Dakota State University, Fargo. She is one of the founders of the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition.  

Denise is also a traditional Jingle Dress dancer, a writer (Thunderbird [North Dakota State University Press, 20171, Bitter Tears (Mammoth Press, 2016], Dragonfly Dance (Michigan State University Press, 20101, His Feathers Were Chains [North Dakota State University Press, 2020), Josie Dances [Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2021)), and a Birch Bark Biting artist. Denise lives in a cozy cottage by a lake on the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation. 

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