Her New Roots Will Burrow Deep
Still, someone is always a stranger here
Boozhoo, indinawemaaganidog! Aaniin! That is to say hello, all of my relatives! Welcome to another edition of An Irritable Métis. I began this birthday month with a triple-shot of posts and it felt like things were off to a stirringly creative, communicative start … only to wither as the tumult of activity surpassed all that fresh spring enthusiasm. And spring truly is here! I have the unattended jungletastic yard to prove it, a situation that will require me summoning enthusiasm to mow it somewhere between now and when the rain stops1. I can almost hear it growing outside my window. It’s a beautiful time of year and, even though every year I vow that it will finally be the one where my yard isn’t allowed to get out of control before I address it, it’s also nice to see it unleashing its lusty verdance as well.
Less beautiful is my email inbox which is almost as unattended to as my yard. I’ve not had much opportunity for perching before a computer and such administrative activities – emails, paying bills, writing newsletters – are of a sort I prefer not to engage with over my stupid phone if I can help it. Don’t even ask me about the state of my office, or my Missoula lair … which I will be heading into town immediately following the posting of this newsletter to relocate before the month ends in a matter of days….
Which is to say I appreciate the patience of those of you waiting for a response from me. Same with folks texting me. I’m not willfully ignoring anyone, trust me.
Gratitude as always for those of you helping finance all of my perambulations around Montana in service to poetry and everything else via your paid subscriptions to this newsletter. For three more days your $50 subscription will send $25 toward the Freeflow scholarship (more on that below), so it’s an opportune time to be doubly generous! Many of you already have, and that’s wonderful.
As the weather improves things are heating up concerning my road schedule. Last Sunday I was in Helena for a reading at the library, then another reading at the library in Bozeman on Monday2. Tuesday I drove from Bozeman to Great Falls so that I could be in position to be at Highwood Public School to talk to students first thing Wednesday morning. Highwood is a tiny town in a stunningly beautiful location in Central Montana and my experience there with the kids was one of the best yet.
I ate a tasty cheeseburger and chips3 for lunch that I washed down with a Diet Coke4 at The Well Bar in Highwood, where I had a friendly and spirited conversation with the bartender/owner there. His name escapes me. My lovely teacher contact at the school directed me there, and when I entered I told the bartender I’d been assured it was the place to be for lunch. As he fired up the grill to cook my lunch, he said, “I don’t suppose whoever told you this is the best place to eat in town didn’t also tell you it’s the only place to eat in town?” He invited me to come back sometime on a Friday for steak night and assured me I wouldn’t leave hungry. I intend to take him up on that.
Bustling downtown Highwood at lunchtime. I feel lucky to have found a place to park.
After leaving Highwood Wednesday afternoon I drove to Helena for a series of meetings on Thursday, and then a keynote address at Carroll College Thursday night. That went well too. And I got to hang out with my fellow ruffians from the Montana Arts Council and that is always a pleasure. I was home Friday and now it’s Saturday; I’ll be leaving shortly to read in Virginia City tonight, then returning Sunday with hopes the rain will stop long enough for me to mow my lawn and catch up on some other things before embarking Monday to be in Browning (on the Blackfeet Reservation), then Sunburst (so close to the Medicine Line that it may as well be Canada, with plans to, weather permitting, pile into a yellow school bus with a bunch of kids and venture out to the legendary Sweetgrass Hills), and then to Pablo (Flathead Reservation) to read for children at SKC.
The week after I’m happily in Missoula all week but will spend four days at C.S. Porter middle school working with 7th graders, with a couple events in the evenings ... like THIS ONE. The week after that it’s off to American Prairie near Lewistown to spend five days in the field with middle schoolers from a couple reservation schools, then on to Red Lodge for an outing with more students, and then as a guest at the Mountain Words Literary Festival in Crested Butte, Colorado. All this only takes me to June!
If it sounds like a lot, it is. But I’m managing to enjoy myself. I even have an appointment scheduled in the midst of all that to get this magnificent art tattooed onto my left forearm. It’s the Seven Grandfathers!
I do think all this coming and going is making a difference. For example, at all three events this past week I received gifts, which isn’t that unusual. But in this case, the gifts were various combinations of sage, cedar, sweetgrass, and tobacco. These are our four sacred and traditional medicines and are also traditionally used for just this purpose: gifting (for lack of a better word for it) in exchange for teaching. At Carroll College my new friend there, Erin Butts, gave me all four. I nearly wept. These are powerful gestures and I’ve been receiving more and more of them, proof that people are beginning to pay attention to what it means to be in relationship to Indigenous people, and to each other. These medicines, and their open-hearted exchange, facilitate that!
I don’t expect these things but I welcome them. It makes all this solo time on the road a lot less lonely when it feels like people are paying attention. That is the message I’m trying to share, my friends. That we must pay attention to the world, inside and out. Make each footstep a poem. Each footstep a prayer.
I would like to be writing more, sure. I have poems to finish. The next book churning in the back of my mind. But this purposeful wandering about is part of it5. I feel my ancestors have a hand in directing me over these long highways which is why I have no intention of slowing down, even as the budgets start to dry out. I’ll just keep offering those medicines to the universe. It’s worked so far. We are all always being looked over by spirits who love us, even when it doesn’t seem like we are.
Freeflow Scholarship
Friends, we are in the closing days of this effort and you have risen to the occasion beyond what anyone might have expected and I’m so, so grateful. For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, you may read my original post HERE. Or a more succinct description HERE.
I was discussing this particular river trip with a friend recently, about the expense of it. They told me that they and a couple friends had discussed signing up but ultimately decided they’d just take their own rafts and do their own trip somewhere else. Which perfectly underscores my entire point in trying to raise this money. The vast majority of my Indigenous relatives don’t have the option that so many non-Native folks just kind of take for granted. Even if Natives only comprise 7% of the population in Montana6, we should probably comprise about 7% of the people out on (name) the river, give or take, any given day, shouldn’t we? I guarantee we’re not. The flex of privilege makes my teeth grind, whether it is willful or not.
Anyway. We are about $2000 away from filling one more seat and I would love to see that happen. If you’re game, just make a donation HERE and we’ll see where we land. $2000 isn’t an insurmountable summit to make! We can do it!
BLS Has a New Subtitle
The subtitle has changed for Becoming Little Shell. I’m not a fan but I accepted long ago that cover aesthetics wasn’t a hill I was going to die on and now I kind of regret that stance because I’m generally unhappy with it and don’t like looking at it. Let’s just say there won’t be a framed print of it hanging in my office like there is OSJ and Descended.7 I feel like the idea that “The Landless Indians of Montana” is too regional sounding is an affront I should have fought harder because that is literally what we were called and now I feel I’ve sold us out. But if these decisions allow more people to read the story of the Little Shell – which is what this book is about, it’s not about me! – then I suppose my discomfort is worth it. The people who were going to sling rocks at me for how I’ve chosen to tell this story would no matter what it’s called, so there’s that too. Do I sound neurotic? You have nooooo idea. If writing books is hard, selling them and promoting them and all that is far worse.
And Finally….
A poem to celebrate my friend Erin O’Regan White! I met Erin through Freeflow back in 2019 and we’ve been friends ever since; she received her MFA in poetry last year from the University of Montana. She also just won the 2024 Merriam-Frontier Award, has had a Pushcart nomination, a 2021 Best American Essays notable mention, and was the editor of CutBank for a couple issues, including, for the first time ever, an all-Indigenous one (#99) that included one of my poems. I remember sitting with her discussing the idea of that particular edition on a sunny afternoon on campus more than a year ago and it was great to see it come to fruition. Anyway, for her reading to celebrate the award, Erin printed up a pile of broadsides of this lovely poem, which I share here for all of you to enjoy as much as I do….
Miigwech, friends, for your attention. I appreciate it!
Yes, I’m opposed to the idea of yards as the common culture demands them, but I’m also opposed to having the Laheys on my ass waving a maintenance agreement contract as well.
Weirdest poet laureate experience yet here. I was told, as I was asking where to set up my books to sell, that I couldn’t do that unless I also gave a cut to the library foundation. What?! This in Bozeman, arguably the wealthiest city in the state, certainly one of the most expensive places to live, and also an event where they were paying Humanities the bare minimum to have me there. I was pretty taken aback by it. Friggin’ Bozeman. If I hadn’t agreed during a meeting earlier that day to do a BLS event at the Museum of the Rockies when BLS comes out I might never do an event in that burg again! *shakes fist at sky* And I don’t even like to set up my books to sell (unless I have someone to help me, which I usually don’t) but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to be indignant about it.
Lay’s Classic, duh!
Can’t say I wasn’t tempted, if only in celebration of the comraderie, by the barkeep’s offer of a beer or whiskey.
I wander without purpose during all this as often as I can too, which is equally important.
Now consider that what, only 300 years or so ago we were essentially 100%? That’s genocide of the bloodiest kind.
There will be one of the map, though!
Thank you, Chris. I forgot the release date was 8/20.
No worries then.
Kayleen
Love reading your entry’s in Substack! I was also eager to receive a copy of your book I paid online for I think three months ago. Have those orders been mailed yet?
Thank you, Kayleen Pritchard