Marcie Rendon: Anishinaabe Songs for a New Millennium

Poem-songs summon the voices of Anishinaabe ancestors and sing to future generations:

In Anishinaabe Songs for a New Millennium, Marcie R. Rendon summons her ancestors’ songs, and her poem-songs evoke the world still unfolding around us, reflecting our place in time for future generations. Bringing memory to life, the senses to attention, she breaks the boundaries that time would impose, carrying the Anishinaabe way of life forward in the world.

"This collection undoubtedly sings through and for generations to come! These powerful poems ask us to trust the wind to catch and carry our songs and prayers. Through each page, Marcie R. Rendon guides us to radically dream a future of strength and reminds us that ‘Win or lose, there’s dancing to be done." - Tanaya Winder, author of Words Like Love

Marcie R. Rendon, White Earth Ojibwe, was included on Oprah Winfrey’s 2020 list of thirty-one Native American authors to read. She has written numerous works of fiction and nonfiction, including the Cash Blackbear mystery series, the third volume of which, Sinister Graves, was a 2023 Minnesota Book Award finalist. In 2020, she received Minnesota’s McKnight Distinguished Artist Award, and in 2017, with poet Diego Vazquez, she received the Loft Spoken Word Immersion Fellowship for their work with incarcerated women in the county J*il system.

Musician & Cultural Educator, Lyz Jaakola, also known as Nitaa-Nagamokwe, is an enrolled Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Tribal member who intertwines making art, music and educating. Lyz has been fulfilling cultural protocol by “paying it forward” through teaching for the last 32 years while also singing in various styles and venues such as traditional women’s hand drum circles, activist marches, jazz stages in the twin cities or local opera, choral or blues performances. A reservation-based performer, Lyz often works to bring others with her on stage and into the “limelight”, such as her mash-up band #theindianheadband, a women’s hand drum group Oshkii Giizhik Singers, or at her Tribal College’s Ojibwemowining Digital Arts Studio. Although very busy teaching, singing, making videos or parenting 3 wonderful children, she manages to find some time to write, record and produce original work sometimes sharing it live or on the internet. More recent projects are working on an ethnomusicology PhD, composing an opera celebrating Zitkala-sa,(a Dakota woman activist, composer and educator) and performing at Kennedy Center in 2022. Lyz received recognition as a Native Nation Rebuilder, AICF Faculty of the Year (2018), Arrowhead Regional Arts Council George Morrison Artist Award (2014), Ordway’s Sally Award for Arts Educators (2013), and First People’s Fund Community Spirit Award (2012). She will be the first to say that any honor belongs to her husband, family, and community, because of their generous support and encouragement. Mostly, we owe all to our ancestors for what we have endured and retained so that we may be Anishinaabe.

Mark Erickson’s ancestral roots are the Pillager and Red Lake Band of Chippewa. His traditional singing is Chippewa, which started as a late teen, and he is now an elder approaching seventy years old. Erickson is currently the Mississippi Ojibwe Singers' drum keeper and lead singer. He is still active in many pow wows and drum and dance circles in the Twin cities.

Host or Publisher Birchbark Books and Native Arts