Nector [speaking to Bernadette] could have told her, having drunk down the words of Nanapush, that comfort is not security and money in the hand disappears. He could have told her that only the land matters and never to let go of the papers, the titles, the tracks of the words, all those things that his ancestors never understood how the vital relationship to the dirt and grass under their feet.

Edrich returned to Dartmouth in 2009 to receive an honorary Doctorate of Letters and deliver the commencement address to the graduating class of her alma mater. Erdrich earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing at Johns Hopkins University in 1979. In addition to books the store sells Native art and traditional medicines and it is something of a locus for Native literati in the Twin Cities.

She is an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians a band of the Anishinaabe (also known as Ojibwa and Chippewa). She is also the owner of Birchbark Books a small independent bookstore in Minneapolis that focuses on Native American literature and the Native community in the Twin Cities. In 2009 her novel The Plague of Doves was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.