Becoming Little Shell: A Landless Indian's Journey Home

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A People Magazine "Best New Book of the Month"

Winner of the 2025 Pacific Northwest Book Award

A Kirkus ReviewsBest Nonfiction of the Year Selection

A Book Riot"Best Memoirs, Nonfiction Science, and Food Writing of the Last Year"

"I'm in awe of Chris La Tray's storytelling. Becoming Little Shell creates a multilayered narrative from threads of personal, family, community, tribal, and national histories."-Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass

Growing up in Montana, Chris La Tray always identified as Indian. Despite the fact that his father fiercely denied any connection, he found Indigenous people alluring, often recalling his grandmother's consistent mention of their Chippewa heritage.

When La Tray attended his grandfather's funeral as a young man, he finally found himself surrounded by relatives who obviously were Indigenous. "Who were they" he wondered, and "Why was I never allowed to know them" Combining diligent research and compelling conversations with authors, activists, elders, and historians, La Tray embarks on a journey into his family's past, discovering along the way a larger story of the complicated history of Indigenous communities-as well as the devastating effects of colonialism that continue to ripple through surviving generations. And as he comes to embrace his full identity, he eventually seeks enrollment with the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians, joining their 158-year-long struggle for federal recognition.

Both personal and historical, Becoming Little Shell is a testament to the power of storytelling, to family and legacy, and to finding home. Infused with candor, heart, wisdom, and an abiding love for a place and a people, Chris La Tray's remarkable journey is both revelatory and redemptive.

Reviews

Praise for Becoming Little Shell

La Trays pride and conviction will have readers eager not only to learn more, but to take action. A brilliant contribution to the canon of Native American literature.Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"Blending history and memoir, research and interviews, La Tray combines separate yet connected personal, family, and community narratives to craft a story of both recovery and loss."Esquire, "Best Memoirs of 2024"

[A] gripping debut memoir. . . . La Trays crystalline prose and palpable passion for spreading Indigenous history bolster his account. Readers will be fascinated.Publishers Weekly

"Heartbreaking, infuriating, and remarkable, Becoming Little Shell is a memoir thats packed with historical details,transcending and amplifying a personal quest to understand a familys past."Foreword Reviews, starred review

Smart, emotional, and bracingly honest, La Tray is a powerful storyteller who should have significant appeal.Booklist

La Tray is as much a consummate storyteller as an Indigenous historian, breathing life into how the Little Shell people became landless, belonging to no reservation and not earning federal recognition status until 2019. Flathead Beacon

Im in awe of Chris La Trays storytelling. Becoming Little Shell creates a multilayered narrative from threads of personal, family, community, tribal, and national histories. Together they make a story as strong and beautiful as a Metis sasha story of identity, kinship, and the journey toward justice.Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass

Chris La Tray is a powerful voicea force of nature, reallyto guide us through the swirling confluence of Native and white worlds, both past and present. Becoming Little Shell is the American story of our eratracing the arc of its author brought up in the white world before discovering his roots as an original inhabitant of this continent.Peter Stark, author of Gallop Toward the Sun

Indigenous identity can be complicated, and Becoming Little Shell compels us into the thick of itNative people dispossessed of not just land but recognition; blood quantum laws originally crafted to complete a genocide and still wreaking havoc in identity debates today; racism that drove many Native people to disassociate from their families; and descendants, like La Tray, who have found their way back, fighting for the reconnection of their communities and for the observance of their very existence. La Tray is a loving, discerning, curious, funny, and generous guide. This is a beautiful, big-hearted book.Sierra Crane Murdoch, author of Yellow Bird

Becoming Little Shell is a moving, deeply felt, and incredibly detailed account of Chris La Trays search for his origins among the Mtis, Pembina, and Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians. Combining memoir, history, interviews, and travel, La Tray gives us nothing less than the history of a people in the form of an absorbing and emotionally searing memoir. This book will, without a doubt, become a classic in Native American literature. Must read.David Treuer, author of The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee

What I appreciate so much about Chris La Trays writing on Indigenous identity and history is the wit, clarity, and integrity embodied in every word. Becoming Little Shell beautifully encompasses a journey that we can all learn from, a journey toward asking better questions about land, belonging, and connection, and through this book La Tray epitomizes historian, poet, and teacher. Full of Indigenous history, personal stories, and the complex dance between the two, La Tray reminds us that the journey of finding ourselves and making sense of the way colonialism plays out around us is an essential part of being human. Please read this book. Youll be so glad you did.Kaitlin B. Curtice, author of Living Resistance

Author Bio

Chris La Traytis 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 of One-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 as Descended from a Travel-Worn Satchel" and lives near Frenchtown, Montana.