Cook County Community Read Discussion and Potluck: Walking the Old Road
Admission
- Free - In-Person at CCHE
- Free - Online over Zoom
Description
Cook County Community Read Discussion and Potluck: Walking the Old Road: A People’s History of Chippewa City and the Grand Marais Anishinaabe
There is a power in the stories we read–to connect us with experiences beyond our own. Besides being a relaxing hobby, reading can create space for self-reflection and can also give us an effective way to have real conversations with our families, friends, co-workers, and neighbors.
Join the community in reading Walki
Join us for an in-person or Zoom book group-book discussion and potluck at Cook County Higher Education. This Community Read is a book club that everyone in the community is welcome to attend!
Book Details:
"At the turn of the nineteenth century, one mile east of Grand Marais, Minnesota, you would have found Chippewa City, a village that as many as 200 Anishinaabe families called home. Today you will find only Highway 61, private lakeshore property, and the one remaining village building: St. Francis Xavier Church. In Walking the Old Road, Staci Lola Drouillard guides readers through the story of that lost community, reclaiming for history the Ojibwe voices that have for so long, and so unceremoniously, been silenced.
Blending memoir, oral history, and narrative, Walking the Old Road reaches back to a time when Chippewa City, then called Nishkwakwansing (at the edge of the forest), was home to generations of Ojibwe ancestors. Drouillard, whose own family once lived in Chippewa City, draws on memories, family history, historical analysis, and testimony passed from one generation to the next to conduct us through the ages of early European contact, government land allotment, family relocation, and assimilation.
Documenting a story too often told by non-Natives, whether historians or travelers, archaeologists or settlers, Walking the Old Road gives an authentic voice to the Native American history of the North Shore. This history, infused with a powerful sense of place, connects the Ojibwe of today with the traditions of their ancestors and their descendants, recreating the narrative of Chippewa City as it was—and is and forever will be—lived."Zoom - 6:10-6:15pm Welcome, 6:15-7:15pm Small Group Discussion with zoom attendees, 7:15-7:30pm Large Group Discussion with zoom and in-person attendees
In Person at CCHE - 5:30-6:10pm Potluck and Table Top Discussions, 6:10-6:15pm Welcome, 6:15-7:15pm Small Group Discussion, 7:15-7:30pm Large Group Discussion with zoom and in-person attendees. Please bring a dish to share during the potluck.
Book Group Facilitator:
Staci Lola Drouillard lives and works in her hometown of Grand Marais, Minnesota, on the North Shore of Lake Superior. A Grand Portage tribal descendant, she has degrees from the University of Minnesota. Her first book, Walking the Old Road: A People’s History of Chippewa City and the Grand Marais Anishinaabe was awarded the Hamlin Garland prize for popular history from the Midwestern History Association, won the NE Minnesota Book Award for non-fiction, and was a finalist for a MN Book Award. Her most recent book, Seven Aunts, is an unconventional portrait of family and women’s lives in northern Minnesota.