Several springs later, seven-year-old Omakayas and her family prepare to move into their summer home, a hand-built birchbark house. As he goes, however, one of the traders imagines that if anyone would come back to rescue the girl, it would be his strong-willed, fearless wife Tallow. As it chronicles the year's events, the narrative thematically explores the connection between human beings and nature, the effect of whites on indigenous culture, and the necessity of confronting fear.Ī brief prologue describes how a group of canoeing fur traders abandons the sole survivor of a smallpox outbreak, a baby girl, because they're afraid of being infected with the disease that killed everybody else in her Ojibwa community. This interview has been edited and condensed.This young adult novel is the story of a year in the life of a young Ojibwa girl who, over the cycle of four full seasons, comes to a deeper understanding of life, herself, and the relationship between the two. Bookstores aren’t supposed to be perfect, and neither are writers. Our bookstore isn’t sleek or cute - we’re kind of scruffy, in fact. We’re grateful to the people who supported us - they got us through that time. I became closer to everyone there during the pandemic, customers included. I’m very fond of my staff of young people - they feel like relatives - and the store’s as collaborative as possible. At Birchbark, I sign and sort books and check in or joke around with everyone. Two of their artists - Dyani White Hawk and the Hmong American Pao Houa Her - are in the Whitney Biennial this year. Sometimes I walk a few doors down to Bockley Gallery, whose focus is also on Native artists. We have a handmade canoe hanging from the ceiling, and an old confessional that’s now a forgiveness booth, where instead of confessing you just touch it and are absolved. The store itself was made from cedar wood and bark-on birch logs that fell after a winter storm. I wanted to have a bookstore where we could also sell the extraordinary things made by Indigenous people - so we have jewelry, beadwork, baskets and medicines.

We’re a tiny general-interest shop with a concentration in Native American or Indigenous writing: fiction, poetry, history, politics, food, memoir and material that supports Indigenous language revitalization, particularly the Ojibwe and Dakota languages. (My tribe is Turtle Mountain Chippewa.) The store’s on Dakota land. In 2001, I opened Birchbark Books in Minneapolis, named because some of the first books in North America were written on scrolls of bark by the Anishinaabe people. Maybe by then I feel the pull of the bookstore.

I switch to drinking black tea with honey.

The birchbark