Denise Lajimodiere was named North Dakota Poet Laureate last year and as is beginning her second year.
North Dakota Poet Laureate Denise Lajimodiere will be coming to campus on April 4 to read from her various works. The event will take place in the Memorial Union’s Prairie Rose room from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. with a book signing and reception after.
Lajimodiere will read from "His Feathers Were Chains" (poetry); "Stringing Rosaries" (academic book); and "Josie Dances" (children's book).
Lajimodiere is an enrolled Citizen of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa in Belcourt, North Dakota.
She has been involved in education for 44 years as an elementary teacher, principal and professor, earning her bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate degrees from the University of North Dakota. Lajimodiere is a retired associate professor from NDSU’s education leadership program within the School of Education. She recently received an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from NDSU in 2024.
Lajimodiere is one of the founders of the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition and was recently hired as an Oral Historian. Lajimodiere is a poet – “Dragonfly Dance;” “Thunderbird;” “Bitter Tears;” “His Feathers Were Chains;” children’s book author, “Josie Dances,” and academic book author, “Stringing Rosaries: The History, The Unforgivable, The Healing of Northern Plains Boarding School Survivors.”
She was named North Dakota Poet Laureate last year and as is beginning her second year. Lajimodiere is a traditional Jingle Dress dancer, Ojibwe Birch Bark Biting artist and lives in a cozy cottage by a lake on the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation.
