Stringing Rosaries: The History, the Unforgivable, and the Healing of Northern Plains American Indian Boarding School Survivors

by Denise K. Lajimodiere

Denise Lajimodiere's interest in American Indian boarding school survivors stories evolved from recording her father and other family members speaking of their experiences. Her research helped her to gain insight, a deeper understanding of her parents, and how and why she and her siblings were parented in the way they were. That insight led her to an emotional ceremony of forgiveness, described in the last chapter of Stringing Rosaries.

The journey to record survivors stories led her through the Dakotas and Minnesota and into the personal and private space of boarding school survivors. While there, she heard stories that they had never shared before. She came to an understanding of new terms: historical and intergenerational trauma, soul wound.

Stringing Rosaries presents a brief history of the boarding school programs for Indigenous Americans, followed by sixteen interviews with boarding school survivors, and ending with the author's own healing journey with her father.

Contains black and white photographs, fold-out supplement identifying 366 US boarding schools by state, appendix, bibliography, and index.

History / Native American / Great Plains / 20th Century / Education
Vol. 2 of Contemporary Voices of Indigenous Peoples Series

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Indigenous, Memoir, Social Justice, Education, Historical

328 pages, Paperback

Published September 13, 2021

Reviews

[John Benson · Rating 5 out of 5]

For one of my Covid-19 projects, I decided to map out all the Native Residential Schools in Canada and the Native American boarding schools in the US. For the American part, I mostly used a list developed by Denise Lajimodiere, a retired professor from NDSU. I was able to hear her talk about this book on a Zoom presentation she did for our local library. The heart of this book is 16 interviews she did with Native American people who had attended native boarding schools in the Northern Plains. These interviews range from 5-20 pages and often go in many different directions like a normal conversation. At times, I found this frustrating but I also would sense that I knew the whole person because of it. The book, through their voices, is an indictment of how our European and Christian-centered American society dehumanized Native American people for generations. I was struck by how many attended Catholic boarding schools, but who only found healing after they totally rejected all parts of Catholicism in their lives, since Catholicism came down to them in such a cruel fashion in their childhoods. This is a very sad and powerful book written by a local professor.

[Joseph · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is an old saying that if you want to understand someone you should “Walk a mile in their shoes.” I cannot be Chippewa (Ojibwe), Lakota, Sioux, or a member of any other tribe. However, i can gain something of a sense of how badly these first Americans were treated by reading this book. The book is a series of real life experiences at boarding schools set up largely to make the first Americans more like Americans who came from Europe. Denise painstakingly recorded these stories one at a time. She is, like Confucius, a “transmitter of stories.”

This is not an easy book to read. Basically, Denise has recorded the stories of sixteen survivors. Their treatment in the schools was brutal and I could only absorb one story at a time without having to put the book down. For me, the book was all the more poignant because I was one of the ones sucked in by these schools and someplace I may still have one of these rosaries. Yes, I was one of those who sent one of these horrible institutions money, not a lot, but enough to help prolong the misery.

This book will not make the New York Times best seller lists. But, my friend Dr. Suzzanne Kelley, Editor in Chief at the North Dakota State University Press (the publisher) recently noted: “We are sending Stringing Rosaries to the printer on Monday. This, our 3rd printing, will include Denise's updated list of American boarding school locations...now exceeding 400. We are also working on paperback and Kindle versions. While we're working behind the scenes, Denise is fielding questions from national and international reporters. When you have a moment, you might lift a prayer or offer kind words for those who are working to locate the children who did not get to come home from school.”

This book deserves to be widely read. We owe that to the survivors.

[Hayley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Getting through this book was a process. After every interview, I had to take a break, because the accounts here are brutal, and rightfully so. the atrocities committed by the boarding schools are absolutely genocidal in nature. This book is an incredibly important read, and I highly recommend it. Please keep in mind the content is highly disturbing.

"When I asked my father about his experiences at Fort Totten, he refused to speak at all. He had told me horror stories of his war years, fighting the Japanese in the Aleutians, his beating at Chemawa, but he maintained silence on his time at Fort Totten" (273).

May we do what we can to ensure children never suffer like this at the hands of schools again. And may we teach our students what happened, so it is never forgotten.

[Libby Claerbout · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is truly engrossing and eye-opening, and deeply sad and disturbing. It covers such an important piece of our country's history; events that I hate to admit that I have never been exposed to even though I live smack dab in the middle of the geographical area where these instances all took place. This book should be required reading for every citizen of North America to help us understand the harm that was done to our indigenous brothers and sisters, and to see the generational trauma that still ripples through native communities to this day.

The most powerful story, for me, was the author's father's experience as one of the first children to be subjected to the horror of being sent away to an Indian boarding school. His story is told in the last chapter, and I recommend that section if its the only one you read. (I believe it is also a stand alone article written for a psychology journal, too).

[Donna · Rating 1 out of 5]

This subject matter deserves much better treatment than this book gives it. The stories are repetitive. Their stories are transcribed verbatim, or what I can only assume is verbatim given that they wander and repeat themselves. No fault of the interviewee who was simply telling their story. This is on the author and editor. The author provides no insight into this tragedy, no summation. I so looked forward to reading this book. Now I look forward to reading a different one, one that would provide more context and evoke more emotion. This period of our history deserves an impactful book not a sterile one.

[Maryann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Firsthand accounts by elders describing the way they and others were treated while being forced into boarding schools. For me, I had to take numerous breaks because of how emotional I became after nearly each story. It was very emotionally draining, but it was something I needed to read.

[Trudy Ackerblade · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very difficult history of the Indian Boarding schools and the multigeneration trauma done by them. Their sole purpose was to "kill the Indian in him, and save the man". It explains a lot of the causes that affect First Nation people to this day. I am amazed that these schools existed into the 1980s. It is a very ugly blemish on the United States of America. Fortunately these schools were not 100% effective - some First Nation people survived and are working toward healing their soul wounds. I wept.

[Brenna]

I read this book slowly this year for a monthly anti-racism book club. The majority of the book are lengthy interviews with Native American survivors of boarding schools. The stories are gut-wrenching but the book also points toward a path of healing.

I am not rating this book since it feels more like a sociological text and is mostly a verbatim recording of people telling their stories and the impacts that boarding schools have had on their lives and the next generations.

[Sharon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brutal and necessary.

[Nadine · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is a bit hard to "rate" this book because much of it is largely unedited interview transcripts and, as such, it is slow laborious reading. However, the primary research and capture of the experiences of people who are already quite old is amazing. Lajimodiere brings in a very personal note through the experiences of her family in the last chapter, which is very well done.

[Les · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is what the author/researcher/interviewer says it is. There is some historical context provided and there are some elements of healing that people have fought for, but of the title's well-chosen words, this is mostly about the Unforgivable. I became aware of the use of boarding schools and foster care (still) as colonizing weapons of Indigenous peoples in the U.S. and Canada some years ago, but this is my first deep dive into it. Very much like reading a history of concentration camps, slave narratives, and the script for "Sleepers" but with nuns and priests. I use the term "historical" somewhat lightly, as some of the last boarding schools of this nature in Canada didn't close until the mid-1990s, which is when I graduated from a traditional college-prep boarding school. I've no doubt that many five-star reviews (here or elsewhere) are not so much for how this is structured as much as for what it is and what it sets out to do, which is help people free themselves from trauma through their narratives and, of course, to tell the damn truth when the churches that ran these won't (not to this degree). Five stars it is for me, again because what are stars for book structure and writing quality/reading experience compared to appreciation for them sharing their stories? Yes, for those who remained anonymous and of course those who refused anonymity to speak truth to power. My rating is really just an insufficient "thank you" - to them and Lajimodiere, who no doubt needed even more healing once she completed this labor of love, pain, tragedy and resilience.

[Francesca · Rating 5 out of 5]

Edit: 1819 to the 1970s. The interview structure, provided in the appendix, lays bare the horrifying impact of US anti-Indian policies. This approach is so effective in both conveying the cultural background for a variety of northern plains tribespeople between the 1890s and 2018, and in corroborrating the stark historical trauma of boarding school experiences.

I have negative zero Native American ties; my education to this point included only peripheral awareness of Indian boarding schools' existence due to the fictional children's book The Education of Little Tree. I wouldn't go back to read that nor recommend it now, knowing how problematic Forrest Carter was. Meanwhile, Stringing Rosaries is still one of too few detailed, nuanced documentations of living American tribes.

Sourced statistics in this book state that during the middle of the 20th century upwards of 80 percent of all Native American children were forced to attend these schools. Abuse and sub-par education were beyond common, built into the system. The schools were central to federal policies of "assimilation" through the 60s. Brava to the author for giving these people a voice, for framing the interviews with solid educational content, and most of all, for forgiving her own father.






This book is simply stunning.

[Rachel Coyne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Intense and riveting

[Lauren Cooke · Rating 5 out of 5]

“I mean it was Nazism. I would say that. I think I could imagine what they did to the Jews” p. 214

While I already knew about some of the horrors inflicted at these schools and the generational trauma they caused, I was still horrified with each survivor’s story. I think the quote that I included in this review really captures how these schools were tools of genocide to immediately destroy lives (particularly of school children) as well as the future in terms of broken people, families, and ways of life. There are many more events of genocide throughout history that are so often labeled as other atrocities since those events were not solely focused on the immediate death of a people and they spanned a greater time duration. This book really drives home that genocide can take many forms and can be just as detrimental to a people (not that there is a hierarchy to devastation and sadness). I appreciate that the understand of mortality rate has expanded over the years to include immediate and long term repercussions. My heart broke for every child in this book, from the survivors to the other children they mentioned. I don’t know if it was because it was towards the end, but I was absolutely broken by the survivor that described his love of learning only to be denied access to the library books at the school.

In terms of pacing, I really appreciated the time and space given to each survivor’s story. It helped me steadily pace myself through the reading process to really take it all in and sit with it for however long i needed. I would be interested in any updates from the author considering this book was published a couple years before the U.S. Residential School report was published. When I saw the numbers they were citing, I was like “oh no” knowing the new stats.

Last note— I deeply appreciate that the academic texts that I’ve read (and written) about this topic always conclude with that more research and investigation into these atrocities needs to be done. While it is incredibly disappointing that all that is needed hasn’t happened yet, I am grateful how the academic world is calling for action and more research.

[Shirley Freeman]

We read this in a group and I believe it was enlightening for all of us. Lajimodiere has compiled a couple dozen interviews with folks who either went to Indian Boarding Schools themselves or their parents did. The reasons for their attendance range from forced removal from their families to becoming orphaned or poor with few options to parents deciding it was their child's best option for an education. Certainly not everything was bad about the schools but enough was bad (and often truly horrible) that the human cost outweighed the benefits. The costs included generational trauma leading to poor parenting, self-medication, lack of traditions/social network, and the list goes on. Reading the interviewees words can feel relentless at times, but it also seems important.

[Kevin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Indian boarding school stories are tragic, but the most shocking part of this book is how recent the stories are. I often think if boarding school as something that happened in the early 1900s, but most of these people were born around 1950 and some were in boarding schools being horribly treated as late as the 1960s and 1970s. While it's a history that needs to be known, this book is more a catalog of experiences, simply recounting 16 different stories, than an actual narrative history of boarding school abuses. An important and necessary book, and of course a difficult read, but it's not a book I'd recommend.

[Linda Spyhalski · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wish I had read this book when I was working in Special Education in the middle school in northern Minnesota. I had students that I could possibly have understood better. I could not read to fast and it required breaks for me to deal with my own thoughts and feelings!

What a fantastic author and I admire greatly for her ability to write such a detailed book. Her interviews were so awesome! It must have been so difficult for her!

I thank her so much for sharing her story and the interviews she did. What a gift she has given readers.

[Nancy Bordine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dr. Lajimodiere participated in gathering histories from Lakota survivors of Indian Boarding Schools. Her interviewees opened up to her deeply shadowed memories that some had never told anyone else. Stringing Rosaries captures the spiritual, physical and emotional pain inflicted on Native American children by the U.S. government for generation after generation. A read that will surely open eyes to the barbaric truth behind Manifest Destiny.

[Jessica Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

What history books left out. I read this after seeing the news on the multiple unmarked grave discovery of the Canadian Indian boarding school (June 2021) I was looking for information on the murders/deaths but these are real life accounts of survivors. If you can sit there and deny these findings in the support of a faith, you’re choosing to be ignorant.

[Britta · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first hand acounts, written as if you were listening to the survivors speak, was deeply moving and an absolutely necessary read if you're interested in Great Plains or American Indian History, stories of trauma, or are just looking to read something of substance. An important book.

[Zach · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredibly powerful in the interviews shared in this book. A history that must be learned about. One that too few of people have learned about. I use passages from the book when I teach my North Dakota History class when we cover the boarding schools in ND.

[Anne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Honest and important book that can show us the unforgivable and the possible healing. The respectful recording of people's stories matters.

[Lois Peterson]

371.82997 L147S

[LindaL · Rating 4 out of 5]

Each chapter is a different interview and each is powerful and painful to read.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

An important historical read and a beautifully produced and written book.

[Dona · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting piece of history I was not aware of. I definitely learned something new. Each story/ interview was verbatim transcribed. Some stories could have been edited

[Hailee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Haunting, and a necessary read. I am grateful for this book and the inside view into what my mother might have experienced during her boarding school days.

[Jenn Moudahi · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a must-read. Take it slow, it’s hard to hear survivor’s stories, but they need to be heard. Much appreciation to Denise for everything that went into this book.

[Kim Murphy · Rating 4 out of 5]

History that needs to be told.

[Bobby L · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was a very good book that I would actually read again.