“Becoming Little Shell: A Landless Indian’s Journey Home” by Chris La Tray, current Montana Poet Laureate and Mètis storyteller, is the story he was destined to tell. The Frenchtown author of two previous books of poetry, including the award-winning “One Sentence Journal: Short Poems and Essays from the World at Large,” La Tray recently released his debut memoir with Milkweed, an independent press known for housing some of the world’s best authors, including Robbin Wall Kimmerer whose “Braiding Sweetgrass” continues to reside on the bestsellers lists nearly a decade after it was first published. In her transformative book, Kimmerer, a Potawatomi botanist and writer, explores the reciprocal relationship between humans and land. This type of kinship — of all our relations — is also touched on in La Tray’s singular story of discovering his Chippewa and Mètis identity.
Growing up, La Tray wanted to become two things: to be a rock star (and a writer, on the side) and an Indian. He felt drawn to Indians, thanks to limited knowledge from often racist depictions on the television screen or sanitized history lessons in school. He often recalled his grandmother mentioning that they were Indians, but his father denied any connection. “Becoming Little Shell” is the story of how, after his father died in 2014, La Tray began his official journey into learning more about his heritage. Using a DNA test, examining tribal records and family histories, including traveling to Lewistown to discover La Tray and Doney relatives, he learns that his father is a descendant of the Pembina Band of Chippewas. His mother, who is still alive, is white. The book is also the living history of Montana’s Little Shell Tribe, a tribe that fought for more than 150 years for federal recognition.
La Tray, who also writes the popular “Irritable Mètis” newsletter, isn’t hesitant to declare who he is and who he isn’t, especially in the space of writing, which often rewards those who have prestigious writing degrees or exclusive publishing connections. He has a high school diploma and still plays in a hard rock band. In the opening pages of “Becoming Little Shell” he writes, “I’m not a scholar. I’m not a historian. I don’t have an academic bone in my body. I’m a storyteller, and this is a story that needs telling. I feel compelled to share the story of the Mètis people of Montana with the world, to tell the story of the Little Shell Tribe, the longtime landless Indians of Montana.” The Mètis are a mixed-race culture and ethnicity of people resulting largely from intermarriages from French fur trappers and explorers with the Chippewa, who lived west of the Great Lakes and into Canada and Montana. While he may not have the formal training as a historian, 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. He became an enrolled member of the tribe in 2017 at the age of 50, and his memoir also charts his journey into tribal membership while also revealing the damaging policies set forth by a culture of anti-Indian sentiment like the creation of blood quantum laws forced upon tribes to determine member eligibility.
While La Tray delves into the past on the U.S. government’s repugnant dealings with tribes across the country, he reminds us that those treaties, often broken by the government, still have ramifications today. On the page, La Tray appears less comfortable writing about himself more intimately — the form memoir usually demands — so there are places in the story where his personal history feels guarded. Nonetheless, he seeks to understand why his father refused to recognize his Indian heritage. “My dad never wanted to be viewed as Indian. I’m the opposite,” he writes, describing a tension that surrounds the book, infusing La Tray’s physical travels across Montana and the Great Plains as well as the communal, cultural, and political quest to belong to his people. Yet for all the hardships and tensions that surround his story, including the racist attitudes toward Indians that made his father want to pass as white, La Tray’s story is full of joy and connection. His childhood dream was fulfilled although the writing gig is now much more full-time than playing music. La Tray also knows the importance of his storytelling role: “I set out to write this book as a Little Shell person in service to my Little Shell people, but now I find myself a Little Shell person in service to the world.” Part of that service is the celebration of his Indigenous heritage.