Gichigami Hearts: Stories and Histories from Misaabekong

Linda LeGarde Grover's book combines family and Ojibwe history with stories from Misaabekong, the place of the giants, on Lake Superior. It explores the lives of her ancestors, their marriages to voyageurs, relocations to reservation lands, encounters with spirits, and the search for meaning in the transformations of our day. The book encapsulates a way of life forever vibrant at the Point of Rocks.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 200 pages
Publication date: 30 November 2021
Publisher: University of Minnesota Press

Long before the city of Duluth, Minnesota, emerged from the towering gabbro rock ridge along the western shore of Lake Superior, a massive outcropping that divides the city existed. The Ojibwe people, in a great westward migration, journeyed to this place, known as the Point of Rocks. Against this backdrop of Misaabekong, the land of giants, the lives chronicled in Linda LeGarde Grover's book unfold, some in myth, some in long-ago times, some in an imagined present, and some in her family history, all deeply intertwined with the land, each other, and the Ojibwe culture.

Within the broader historical context, Grover weaves the story of her ancestors' arrival at the American Fur Post in far western Duluth more than two hundred years ago. Their fortunes and the family's future are intricately linked with tales of marriages to voyageurs, relocations to reservation lands, encounters with the spirits of the lake and wood creatures, the renewal of life—both in myth and art—and the search for meaning in the transformations of our day, which is always vital.

Finally, in one man's struggles, age-old tribulations, the intergenerational traumas of extended families and communities, and a uniquely Ojibwe appreciation for the natural and spiritual worlds converge, forging the Ojibwe worldview and will to survive as his legacy to his descendants.

Blending the seen and unseen, the old and the new, the amusing and the tragic, and the hauntingly familiar, this lyrical work encapsulates a way of life forever vibrant at the Point of Rocks.

Weight: 220g
Dimension: 142 x 215 x 15 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781517911935