On the coldest day of 2024, Montana's Poet Laureate Chris LaTray spoke in tandem with author Peter Stark at an Open Book Club event in Seeley Lake, lending an Indigenous perspective to Stark's latest book about the West. Those of us lucky enough to attend have been eagerly awaiting LaTray's return.
Fresh from a nation-wide tour, Chris LaTray will be presenting his newest book, Becoming Little Shell, A Landless Indian's Journey Home at the Swan Valley Community Hall in Condon, Saturday, Nov. 9 at 2 p.m. Hosted by Alpine Artisans' Open Book Club and Swan Valley Connections, the event is free. Everyone is welcome.
Chris La Tray didn't discover his heritage as a Métis and a member of the Little Shell band of Chippewa Indians until he was in his 20s. His father was Métis and Chippewa, his mother white, but his dad refused any acknowledgment of his heritage. It wasn't until 1996, when La Tray was 29 and at his grandfather's funeral, that he noted that the pews were packed with Native Americans. It hit him that he didn't know what tied him to this community of mourners. Chris' Indigenous heritage revealed itself over time as he sought out family and others who filled in the missing pieces of his story.
At the same time, the Little Shell people were nearing the culmination of a 150-year quest to receive Federal recognition as a distinct Indigenous nation. Chris skillfully weaves his discovery of his heritage with the long-fought struggle of his forebears and their descendants.
The story Chris tells in Becoming Little Shell: A Landless Indian's Journey Home is powerful and revealing, both for the historic denial of First Peoples' history and continued presence throughout the West, particularly in Montana, and for the will and power of community to overturn these historic wrongs.
Becoming Little Shell brought me closer to my family history as well. My French descendants originally came to North America as indentured servants in 1632, settling in Quebec. Working as dairy farmers and seeking new land, they were part of the massive westward settlement in 1875 into the same Red River Valley of the North that is the original homeland of the Métis, straddling the Minnesota/North Dakota border, an incursion that pushed Chris' tribal ancestors westward. Like most of us educated in the 50s and 60s, the history we were taught neglected that story. In fact, the Old Crossing Treaty signed in 1963 that LaTray describes as "the event that set in motion more than a century of landlessness" for the Métis was signed just 12 miles from where my family established their farm.
We invite you to hear Chris speak about these intertwined stories and learn about the personal and public journeys, which collide in this compelling new memoir.
Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass, states, "I am in awe of Chris LaTray's storytelling. Becoming Little Shell creates a multi-layered narrative from threads of person, family, community, tribal and national histories."
LaTray's first book, One-Sentence Journal: Short Poems and Essays from the World at Large won the 2018 Montana Book Award and a 2019 High Plains Book Award.
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