Chippewa City: Home and the History of Small Places

Chippewa City and the History of Small Places is a look back at the cultural history of Chippewa City and the Anishinaabe presence at Kitchibitobig–a town now known as Grand Marais. Nishkwakwansing (Chippewa City) was an off-reservation Anishinaabe fishing village located one mile east of Grand Marais. Local author and Chippewa City descendant Staci Drouillard will discuss the process of researching and writing about history from the perspective of the people who once lived there, and lead a group discussion about why the history of small places matter, and how learning the true history of a place can make a difference within the local, state and national historic framework.

Staci Lola Drouillard is a Grand Portage Band of Ojibwe direct descendant. She lives and works in her hometown of Kitchibitobig—Grand Marais, on Minnesota’s North Shore of Lake Superior. Her first book Walking the Old Road: A People’s History of Chippewa City and the Grand Marais Anishinaabe (UMP, 2019) won the Hamlin Garland Prize in Popular History, the Northeastern Minnesota Book Award for nonfiction and was a finalist for a Minnesota Book Award. Her second book Seven Aunts (UMP, 2022) won the 2023 Minnesota Book Award for Memoir and Creative nonfiction, the Northeastern Minnesota Book Award and was a “Minnesota Reads” selection at the Library of Congress National Book Festival. Staci works as a radio producer for WTIP North Shore Community Radio and authors the monthly column Nibi Chronicles for Great Lakes Now, a branch of Detroit Public Media.