Becoming Little Shell

June 10, 2024
Montana poet laureate La Tray (One-Sentence Journal) combines personal reflection and cultural history in his gripping debut memoir. La Tray grew up near Missoula in the 1970s and ’80s with “vague knowledge my father’s side of the family was Indian.” He loved imagining himself as Tonto from The Lone Ranger, but both La Tray’s father and his grandfather often denied their Indigenous heritage. After both men died, La Tray’s curiosity about his roots deepened, leading him to dig into his family history. Eventually, he learned that he was descended from Montana’s Métis people. In 2017, he enrolled in the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians with the intention of becoming “someone people come to with questions about where they come from.” As he outlines that process, La Tray constructs an engrossing history of the Little Shell Tribe, including their pioneering use of wheeled carts for transport at the turn of the 19th century, their label as “landless Indians” after white settlers divided their traditional lands into separate countries as the U.S. began enforcing its border with Canada in the 1870s, and their designation, in 2020, as a federally recognized tribe. La Tray’s crystalline prose and palpable passion for spreading Indigenous history bolster his account. Readers will be fascinated.

August 1, 2024
In this hybrid memoir, Montana Poet Laureate Chris La Tray tells the story of investigating and reclaiming his Indigenous heritage. Growing up in a family where there was little discussion of the past and with a father who steadfastly refused to discuss to his Native American ethnicity, La Tray was perplexed by the subtle clues that pointed to a Chippewa connection but were never expressed or celebrated. Propelled by the deaths of his grandfather and father, the author began a determined investigation into his own ancestry. Here he shares the many routes he traveled, through literature, historical texts, visits to powwows and conferences, and interviews with family, friends, and scholars, to understand not only who he is but also the intricacies of past and present Native life. He shares the long-reaching effects of a litany of broken treaties and government promises and how a legacy of manipulation led to blood quantum, which has come to define tribal membership. Smart, emotional, and bracingly honest, La Tray is a powerful storyteller who should have significant appeal.

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Starred review from June 15, 2024
The poet laureate of Montana tells the story of embracing his identity as a member of the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians. La Tray, a M�tis storyteller, grew up with a strong curiosity about Indigenous culture, captivated by his grandmother's stories about their family history, but he was also raised by a father who did not want to acknowledge their Indigeneity. "Suggesting my dad was Native made him angry. I could never understand why. I was the opposite," writes the author. When his father died in 2014, he left behind "a lifetime of questions about who he was and where he came from. No, who we are, where we come from." Without his father to ask, La Tray set out to answer questions about his family's heritage and that of the tribe in which he would eventually enroll: the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians. The resulting narrative is richly layered, carried across time and the vast state of Montana by the author's unique voice and masterful storytelling. Building off the work of those who came before him, such as historian and folklorist Nicholas Vrooman, La Tray weaves a history of his tribe that blooms into the present day. He movingly demonstrates how far they've come from the loss of their home in the early days of settler colonialism, and he makes important connections between the landless Little Shell and the many groups of refugees across the world today. "I'm here writing to urge you, anyone who has fought against and continues to fight against erasure, oppression, genocide, and hatred, to be proud," he writes. "Look at what we Little Shell have done." La Tray's 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.

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