Her father was of Germanic descent, her mother of Chippewa and French descent. Three-eighths Chippewa, Erdrich is related through her mother to Kaishpau Gourneau, who was tribal chairman of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa in 1882, and she is an enrolled member of that band in the reservation town of Belcourt, North Dakota. Although she has never lived on the reservation, she has visited it often with her family. Both of her parents worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs at a boarding school in Wahpeton, North Dakota, where she spent most of her youth. Her parents encouraged her writing: her father paid her a nickel for each story she wrote, and her mother gathered the stories together and sewed them into little books.
After being educated in various schools in Wahpeton, in 1972 Erdrich enrolled at Dartmouth College as a member of the first class of women admitted into the previously all-male institution. She arrived the same day as Michael Dorris, a mixed-blood of Modoc descent who was nine years her senior and a new professor of anthropology; their romantic interest in each other would not begin until some years later.
This is a free page. This page contains 181 words. This
biography contains 8,778 words (approx. 29 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Biography with our Louise Erdrich Access Pass.
