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MN Reads: "Walking the Old Road" by Staci Lola Drouillard

  What so many of the people I interviewed longed for - what I long for - is the ability to return to the place where our ancestors lived and be welcomed there, as part of the living, breathing story of the people who call it home.  ~Staci Lola Drouillard

Before there was a Grand Portage reservation, there was a village of around 200 Anishinabe families a mile east of Grand Marais.

Without a reservation to contextualize it for non-Indians, not much was written about Chippewa City by the white explorers and historians who wrote much of the early accounts of Grand Portage.

Chippewa City is gone, for the most part, now, but it didn't disappear long, long ago in an almost-forgotten past.  In fact, author Drouillard said goodbye to yet another piece of it just last month.

Walking the Old Road: A People’s History of Chippewa City and the Grand Marais Anishinaabe is published by the University of Minnesota Press.

Lisa Johnson started her broadcast career anchoring the television news at her high school and spinning country music at KWWK/KOLM Radio in Rochester, Minnesota. She was a reporter and news anchor at KTHI in Fargo, ND (not to mention the host of a children's program called "Lisa's Lane") and a radio reporter and anchor in Moorhead, Bismarck, Wahpeton and Fergus Falls.Since 1991, she has hosted Northland Morning on KUMD. One of the best parts of her job includes "paying it forward" by mentoring upcoming journalists and broadcasters on the student news team that helps produce Northland Morning. She also loves introducing the different people she meets in her job to one another, helping to forge new "community connections" and partnerships.Lisa has amassed a book collection weighing over two tons, and she enjoys reading, photography, volunteering with Animal Allies Humane Society and fantasizing about farmland. She goes to bed at 8pm, long before her daughter, two cats, or three dogs.
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