Becoming Little Shell: Returning Home to the Landless Indians of Montana

(Hardback)

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Description

From Montana Poet Laureate Chris La Tray, a singular story of discovery and embrace of Indigenous identity.

Growing up in Western Montana, Chris La Tray always identified as Indian. While the representation of Indigenous people was mostly limited to racist depictions in toys and television shows, and despite the fact that his father fiercely denied any connection, he found Indians alluring, often recalling his grandmothers consistent mention of their Chippewa heritage.

When La Tray attended his grandfathers funeral as a young man, he finally found himself surrounded by relatives who obviously were Indigenous. Who were they he wondered. Why didnt I know them Why was I never allowed to know them Catalyzed by the death of his father two decades later, La Tray embarks on a sprawling investigation. He takes a DNA test, which offers the first key clue to his heritage: a family tree. He scours the archives of used bookstores, interviews family, and travels to powwows, book fairs, and conferences. Combining diligent research with a growing number of encounters with Indigenous authors, activists, elders, and historians, he slowly pieces together his family history, and eventually seeks enrollment with the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians.

As La Tray comes to embrace his full identity, he discovers the rich history of his people. He learns of Mtis origins and border crossings, usurped territories and broken treaties, exile and forced assimilation, poverty and food deprivation. He also encounters the devastating effects of settler colonialism rippling through surviving generations today, from the preservation of blood quantum laws and the trauma of boarding schools for Indigenous children to the ongoing crises of homelessness, addiction, and missing and murdered Indigenous women. And eventually he is moved to take part in their 158-year-long struggle for federal recognition, unflinchingly documenting past and present along the way.

Brimming with propulsive, vibrant storytelling, Becoming Little Shell is a major contribution to the burgeoning literature of Native America.

Reviews

Praise for One-Sentence Journal

La Tray is a perimeter man, seeing the reality in wildness yet dealing the best he can at reconciling truth in nature.Barry Babcock author of Teachers in the Forest

[This] book truly represents excellence in Montana literature and is an important contribution to the genre. The committee of readers was unanimous in our selection.Elizabeth Jonkel, Chair of the Montana Book Award Committee

This book is proof of the power of language, even at its most spare.Russell Rowland, author of Fifty-Six Counties

With a humble and grave generosity to all things and people who cross his path, La Tray reminds us all to slow down and take stock of our surroundings. Attention is the true work of a writer and poet, a tribe La Tray can proudly call himself to be.Charles Finn, editor of High Desert Journal

This is a sunrise book, a book of revelations, of creekwalks and roadfood and ordinary sadnesses, ordinary joyswhich are, in the end, the only kind.Joe Wilkins, author of Fall Back Down When I Die

Author Bio

Chris La Trayis the author ofBecoming Little Shell. A Mtis storyteller, a descendent of the Pembina Band of the mighty Red River of the North, and an enrolled member of the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians, he is also the author ofOne-Sentence Journal: Short Poems and Essays from the World at Large, which won the 2018 Montana Book Award and a 2019 High Plains Book Award, as well asDescended from a Travel-Worn Satchel, a collection of haiku and haibun poetry. La Tray is the Montana Poet Laureate for 20232025. He writes the weekly newsletter An Irritable Mtis and lives near Frenchtown, Montana.