Witnessing your isolation/crash post-festival. Celebrating that it did indeed launch! Resonating with being apart from those who bring connectedness and cohesiveness... deep satisfaction to our days.
Hello Chris, I heard you speak at the Native American Lit. Fest last weekend. It turns out we have the same great great grandparents, Mose and Susan LaTray; I guess that makes us 3rd cousins. I'm in Missoula too. It would be good to get in touch. I didn't know the best way to reach you so I'll try here.
Thank you for sharing your experience. I can only understand what this might feel like in the tiniest of ways. Like when I went to gymnastics camp for the first time in Chicago and everyone was like you’re from Kansas do you know Dorothy and Toto? But that’s not at all the same. I can imagine those fields full of bison and literally just so much more alive. Every time a place I get to know here disappears to “progress” I feel the sadness of it. It must be similar but on a massively bigger scale. you think I know what it’s like to feel belonging, to feel like I’m with my people, but I have rarely felt that in my life. And I love your naming the feeling afterwards, a feeling of loss, and the inner story that it’s gone and it won’t last which may or may not be true but is an understandable story to live with. Thank you again for sharing your experience and helping me understand.
"Nothing is stopping you from pausing a moment to think about it too." The images you shared and the histories around them--and your reminder in this way to pause and think about it with you--was a perfect moment to in fact pause and envision that landscape, that history, the hauntings that we need in our lives, to recognize, honor, and to not forget or abandon. We need them among us all to make a better world--which is what the festival sounds like it did for many for that space and time. Wish I could have been there to see it, but grateful to hear of it and be reminded of how many people of a certain kind of faith and community are building worlds within worlds that matter. Despite the other parts of the world that want to convince everyone that everything is fucked up....
This is not totally the same, but I remember so distinctly the first time someone turned around & they looked like me. I wasn’t raised Jewish -- my Dad converted to Christianity -- and we lived in Louisiana, and I just never had occasion to be around other people with hair like mine. I never even thought about it until this girl in college turned around -- she was unpacking her car, moving into the dorm -- and she had the same look as I do -- and for her, a NYer, it was nothing, but for me, it was like a new sense-type got unlocked.
Also on the same theme -- I’ve been listening to this podcast, “60 Songs That Explain the 90’s” and in the one on Mary J. Bilge’s “Real Love” the host talks about how Blige and Method Man’s friendship was based on each knowing where the other came from, growing up in the Bronx, and their real love for each other is what gives them the platform to go out into the world and search for romantic love and have full lives. I guess my point being yeah, I hear you, having people around you -- particularly as an artist -- who know where you came from, whew. That’s such an important piece and and I hope the gathering serves as a foundation for many future gatherings to come.
Thoughtful reply on why the Little Shell are/were/are reservationless. In the long run, perhaps a good thing. But try to explain that to those still measuring indigenous by blood parts.
As a white Englishwomen with deep knowing of my indigenous soul in defiantly the wrong era, I have almost always been the outsider. So many of us deported and lost. And of course also the disgust of “belonging” to a people who’s values I don’t vibe with at all. While benefiting all the time. It’s hard not to get lost in self hatred and sabotage.
I am grateful to be able to see your belonging and hear the often hard truth of it, for me, your people who have somehow endured my people who don’t feel like my people. I had to go back 2000 years to see /feel part of being my people that made some kind of sense so I’m grateful for the miracle that you can connect in present day but what a double edged sword of suffering and how complex it all is and how clumsy I feel in trying to connect over these canyons of history.
I was harvesting mugwort once on Wy’east, north Oregon. I was with a group, we had been there 10 days in prayer to the place and it was of course the full moon and midnight. We had been trecking all day and this was our last harvest. The moon had not yet risen over the mountain but there was an eerie blue white glow and long shadows and as we walk across this field, we naturally file into single file and we’re all quiet. As you are when approaching an opening, the mugwort gate so to speak. At that moment, on the mountain ridge, in the approaching moonlight, walking with my group in synch with place and purpose I felt the timelessness of who I am for it felt so real and so right on that deep cellular level and I knew that I had been here before and the sense of belonging was profound.
I wish you success for your upcoming events and thankyou again for sharing and I love recommending you on my substack. I also owe you an apology, the last comment I made on one of your posts was flippant and othering and I’m sorry. I was pretty upset that you called the vaccine a miracle since I have had almost the opposite experience of it and was struggling with the dissonance of a very different point of view from you, who I admire. I know though that all healing is a miracle, and that is good common ground but it didn’t stop me from transferring my frustration your way. 😳
I enjoy whatever literary festivals I get to attend in the Southwest. But, regarding the widespread ignorance of the history and current situations of indigenous peoples on this continent, of course that has to do with the paucity of education in our schools of the history of the U.S. They have prohibited the teaching of slavery because it makes people "uncomfortable." In Arizona some years ago, the Superintendent of Education here banned courses on the history and culture of Mexican people, considering that Arizona and California and Texas once belonged to Mexico. The fears of learning about the horrors of colonialism is probably global, even as we see the grab for the Ukraine in the news. The more the lies and disinformation are uncovered, the more our children will know and, I hope, grow.
Hands down this was the best literary gathering I've ever attended. So grateful to all of you who made it happen. Lois Welch had me in tears TWICE.
Witnessing your isolation/crash post-festival. Celebrating that it did indeed launch! Resonating with being apart from those who bring connectedness and cohesiveness... deep satisfaction to our days.
Chris
When I moved to Montana 18 plus years ago, I had people asking me, with Masters and Doctorate degrees if Montana was in the USA?
So yes, I get the questioning.
Really wonder how and what people learned in their schooling?
I won't bother you with other questions I was and have been asked about living in Montana.
Suffice to say, with my sarcasm, which at times is very believable, I have come up with some very creative answers. 😂
Hello Chris, I heard you speak at the Native American Lit. Fest last weekend. It turns out we have the same great great grandparents, Mose and Susan LaTray; I guess that makes us 3rd cousins. I'm in Missoula too. It would be good to get in touch. I didn't know the best way to reach you so I'll try here.
"Nothing is stopping you from pausing a moment to think about it too."
Thank-you.
Would have loved to attended the festival. I do hope it can lead to future collaborations among attendees. Coalition building is all we got!
Thank you for sharing your experience. I can only understand what this might feel like in the tiniest of ways. Like when I went to gymnastics camp for the first time in Chicago and everyone was like you’re from Kansas do you know Dorothy and Toto? But that’s not at all the same. I can imagine those fields full of bison and literally just so much more alive. Every time a place I get to know here disappears to “progress” I feel the sadness of it. It must be similar but on a massively bigger scale. you think I know what it’s like to feel belonging, to feel like I’m with my people, but I have rarely felt that in my life. And I love your naming the feeling afterwards, a feeling of loss, and the inner story that it’s gone and it won’t last which may or may not be true but is an understandable story to live with. Thank you again for sharing your experience and helping me understand.
"Nothing is stopping you from pausing a moment to think about it too." The images you shared and the histories around them--and your reminder in this way to pause and think about it with you--was a perfect moment to in fact pause and envision that landscape, that history, the hauntings that we need in our lives, to recognize, honor, and to not forget or abandon. We need them among us all to make a better world--which is what the festival sounds like it did for many for that space and time. Wish I could have been there to see it, but grateful to hear of it and be reminded of how many people of a certain kind of faith and community are building worlds within worlds that matter. Despite the other parts of the world that want to convince everyone that everything is fucked up....
This is not totally the same, but I remember so distinctly the first time someone turned around & they looked like me. I wasn’t raised Jewish -- my Dad converted to Christianity -- and we lived in Louisiana, and I just never had occasion to be around other people with hair like mine. I never even thought about it until this girl in college turned around -- she was unpacking her car, moving into the dorm -- and she had the same look as I do -- and for her, a NYer, it was nothing, but for me, it was like a new sense-type got unlocked.
Also on the same theme -- I’ve been listening to this podcast, “60 Songs That Explain the 90’s” and in the one on Mary J. Bilge’s “Real Love” the host talks about how Blige and Method Man’s friendship was based on each knowing where the other came from, growing up in the Bronx, and their real love for each other is what gives them the platform to go out into the world and search for romantic love and have full lives. I guess my point being yeah, I hear you, having people around you -- particularly as an artist -- who know where you came from, whew. That’s such an important piece and and I hope the gathering serves as a foundation for many future gatherings to come.
Thoughtful reply on why the Little Shell are/were/are reservationless. In the long run, perhaps a good thing. But try to explain that to those still measuring indigenous by blood parts.
Celebrating that feeling of coming together!
Belonging.
As a white Englishwomen with deep knowing of my indigenous soul in defiantly the wrong era, I have almost always been the outsider. So many of us deported and lost. And of course also the disgust of “belonging” to a people who’s values I don’t vibe with at all. While benefiting all the time. It’s hard not to get lost in self hatred and sabotage.
I am grateful to be able to see your belonging and hear the often hard truth of it, for me, your people who have somehow endured my people who don’t feel like my people. I had to go back 2000 years to see /feel part of being my people that made some kind of sense so I’m grateful for the miracle that you can connect in present day but what a double edged sword of suffering and how complex it all is and how clumsy I feel in trying to connect over these canyons of history.
I was harvesting mugwort once on Wy’east, north Oregon. I was with a group, we had been there 10 days in prayer to the place and it was of course the full moon and midnight. We had been trecking all day and this was our last harvest. The moon had not yet risen over the mountain but there was an eerie blue white glow and long shadows and as we walk across this field, we naturally file into single file and we’re all quiet. As you are when approaching an opening, the mugwort gate so to speak. At that moment, on the mountain ridge, in the approaching moonlight, walking with my group in synch with place and purpose I felt the timelessness of who I am for it felt so real and so right on that deep cellular level and I knew that I had been here before and the sense of belonging was profound.
I wish you success for your upcoming events and thankyou again for sharing and I love recommending you on my substack. I also owe you an apology, the last comment I made on one of your posts was flippant and othering and I’m sorry. I was pretty upset that you called the vaccine a miracle since I have had almost the opposite experience of it and was struggling with the dissonance of a very different point of view from you, who I admire. I know though that all healing is a miracle, and that is good common ground but it didn’t stop me from transferring my frustration your way. 😳
I enjoy whatever literary festivals I get to attend in the Southwest. But, regarding the widespread ignorance of the history and current situations of indigenous peoples on this continent, of course that has to do with the paucity of education in our schools of the history of the U.S. They have prohibited the teaching of slavery because it makes people "uncomfortable." In Arizona some years ago, the Superintendent of Education here banned courses on the history and culture of Mexican people, considering that Arizona and California and Texas once belonged to Mexico. The fears of learning about the horrors of colonialism is probably global, even as we see the grab for the Ukraine in the news. The more the lies and disinformation are uncovered, the more our children will know and, I hope, grow.
The festival was a success, I would say. It was joy to see and the perfect occasion to finally get your book!
Hi Chris,
Never say good-bye. Always say see you later. I hope that this will cheer you.
Thoroughly enjoy the luscious events that you find before you.
Sincerely,
Melissa
Dear Substack members,
I am inviting you to visit my page where I reviewing different topics regarding music, books. Recently I have started a serie of reviewing a certain type of books. Thank you everyone! https://jaroslavnovosyolov.substack.com/p/serie-books-from-anton-la-veys-shelf?utm_source=%2Finbox&utm_medium=reader2