Louise Erdrich is an American author of Ojibwe and French ancestry. Born in Little Falls, Minnesota, she is an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa. (Chippewa is an alternate name for Ojibwe, although many tribal members now prefer the name Anishinaabe. Ojibwe is the most recognizable of the group’s names, and it is the one Erdrich uses in much of her writing.) Erdrich’s grandfather served as the longstanding chairman of their tribe, and her parents both taught at a Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding school in North Dakota.

Although not raised on a reservation, Erdrich’s close ties to her tribe and deep bonds with her extended family helped her to cultivate both a strong sense of her Ojibwe identity and an interest in the history of Indigenous peoples in her home region. These connections would also come to shape her writing, for it was through listening to family lore and Ojibwe legends that Erdrich first developed an interest in storytelling. She began to craft her first short stories when she was still a young girl, and her father supported her burgeoning interest by paying her a nickel for each story that she completed.

Erdrich attended Dartmouth University from 1972 to 1976 as part of the school’s first group of admitted female students.