Join us for an evening with Sierra Biidaaban Nadeau, author of What the Ancestors Say, on Saturday, Sept. 26th at 6:00-7:30 pm.

“A moving story of reclaiming an erased heritage.” – Publishers Weekly 

️ “Balancing keen reportage with emotional and spiritual reclamation, What the Ancestors Say is a gripping history about the reprehensibility of Indigenous American boarding schools.” – Foreword Reviews, starred review 

In her debut book, local Odawa Anishinaabe reporter Sierra Biidaaban Nadeau uncovers ten of her own relatives in enrollment records of Native American boarding schools and traces the legacy of these institutions across generations.

Drawing on survivor testimony, archival research, and her own family’s stories, Sierra documents how over 500 residential schools operated in the US—facilities that sought to erase Indigenous identity through cultural suppression, abuse, and forced assimilation—while illuminating the resilience, resistance, and memory‑keeping that persisted despite them.

About the author:

Sierra Biidaaban Nadeau is an award-winning Odawa Anishinaabe storyteller from Traverse City, Michigan. In 2020, she started a fellowship with the Mishigamiing Journalism Project, a partnership between the Traverse City Record-Eagle and Indigenizing the News. In 2021, she received a fellowship with Report for America and became the Record-Eagle's first full-time Native American reporter and the state's only full-time Indigenous affairs reporter. She currently works as the reporting specialist for Miigwech, Inc., and also works as a freelance writer and keynote speaker.