My grandfather would probably be up there on Line 3,' protesting the Enbridge Energy oil pipeline. And so it's for the Turtle Mountain people and for the people up on Line 3 who are fighting every day for a future that we can live in. 'Honestly, this book - it's all about persistence and survival. 'I was talking to a friend - I guess I called her up in despair - and said, 'Who's ever going to read a book about a dreadful bill that was passed by Congress in 1954?' I was thinking, this'll never fly. When she was working on the book, Erdrich said on Friday, she worried that nobody would read it. Two dozen of the 113 tribes this happened to became extinct, Erdrich said in a 2020 interview with the Star Tribune. The government planned to terminate their protected status, which was guaranteed in treaties, end their government health care and education, abolish tribes, relocate them from reservations to cities and stop any kind of aid or payments for taking their land. government's efforts in the 1950s to 'emancipate' the Turtle Mountain band and other tribes from their Indianness. 'The Night Watchman' tells the little-known story of the U.S. It has a resonance that I think is making my mom really happy right now.' It's recognition for something outside of myself, for a Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa tribal member.

Despite all of her other honors, 'It's huge. She was a Pulitzer finalist in 2009 for 'The Plague of Doves.' She has won numerous awards over her long career, including the National Book Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and, twice, the National Book Critics Circle fiction award. I really do.'Įrdrich, 67, is an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians. I hope he knows that he won the Pulitzer. 'But you know, I'm so happy about this because I felt so close to what my grandfather was going through in this book. 'I can't believe it,' Erdrich said on Friday.

Minnesota writer Louise Erdrich won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction Friday for her novel 'The Night Watchman,' a glowing and multilayered novel based on the life of her grandfather, Aunishenaubay Patrick Gourneau.

The night watchman pulitzer prize