Métis storyteller Chris La Tray shares his powerful tale of tribal enrollment.

On this episode of Fully Booked, Chris La Tray discusses Becoming Little Shell: A Landless Indian’s Journey Home (Milkweed Editions, Aug. 20). In this standout debut memoir, La Tray, Montana’s poet laureate, tells the story of embracing his identity as a member of the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians. In a starred review, Kirkus calls Becoming Little Shell “a brilliant contribution to the canon of Native American literature.”

Chris La Tray is an enrolled member of the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians. His 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. He writes the weekly newsletter “An Irritable Métis” and lives near Frenchtown, Montana.

Here’s a bit more from our starred review: “La Tray, a Métis 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.”

La Tray tells us about western Montana: its landscape, rivers, population, wildlife, and highways. We discuss his relationship to his Indigenous heritage growing up, and how and when he decided to learn more about his father’s side of the family. La Tray shares his admiration and affection for historian and folklorist Nicholas Vrooman, whose book The Whole Country Was… ‘One Robe’: The Little Shell Tribe’s America inspired his research. We talk about what it means to identify as a storyteller, and the importance of integrating multiple streams of knowledge into our understanding of historical events. We also talk about the federal restoration of the Little Shell tribe, communities of care, women’s power, Indigenous languages today, the best parts of his job as poet laureate, and much more.

Then editors Laura Simeon, Mahnaz Dar, and Laurie Muchnick share their top picks in books for the week.

EDITORS’ PICKS:

Where Wolves Don’t Die by Anton Treuer, illus. by Mangeshig Pawis-Steckley (Levine Querido)

Borderlands and the Mexican American Story by David Dorado Romo (Crown)

Hum by Helen Phillips (Marysue Rucci Books)

THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS:

The Zeroth Day by Daniil Rozental

Bubba’s Dad, Duffy, and College Football’s Underground Railroad by Tom Shanahan

Fully Booked is produced by Cabel Adkins Audio and Megan Labrise.