I Would Love to Live Like a River Flows

Carried by the surprise of its own unfolding

Boozhoo, indinawemaaganidog! Aaniin! That is to say hello, all of my relatives! Welcome to another edition of An Irritable Métis. We have enjoyed three absolutely glorious days of warm, sunny weather here in Western Montana and I can feel something stirring. A bunch of somethings stirring, if you must know, and every one lovely and eager to be unleashed. It also means it’s suddenly promote-all-the-stuff-I’m-doing-this-year season since so much of it happens in warmer weather. Remember a lot of that grubby business is going to happen on my Instagram account, like this post, but some of it has to overlap here too. That’s just how it is, my friends; it’s how the donuts are made, as they say.¹ I appreciate your support more than you can imagine.

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Paddling with Zoey in the hottest stretch of the year last summer for our “Good Ancestors” workshop on the Missouri River with the Freeflow Institute.

I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity to spend significant time every year in rivers. In what some might consider a retreat from rivers I gave up fly fishing a few years ago but I probably spend more substantive and enjoyable time near them as a result; the fish and I are certainly happier and better off for it. As an example of my good fortune I will tell you I can be in one particular river in about ten minutes, a different one in another ten minutes, and a third in maybe thirty. Swimming, wading, prowling the banks, or just sitting nearby … I love and live for any and all of it.

Being in the consistent and immersive company of rivers is essential to my emotional and spiritual health.

I generally only get to engage in one extended river trip a year, though, and every year I emerge after a few days tired, a little sun-kissed, sometimes somewhat battered, and always renewed and invigorated and ready for another trip. I tell myself every year, “I need to do more of this!” and vow to buy my own little boat. Then I scowl and hiss at my calendar and realize I’m so overwhelmingly busy I’m fortunate to get to do it even once a year. But still … I’m really hoping to get myself something floaty I can get out on regularly. Missoula is made up of those three rivers I already mentioned², and there are a multitude of lakes and reservoirs inside of an hour’s drive. I don’t want to mutter about finding time. I am going to make the time.

From the source of the Madison River, a swimmer’s eye perspective on the teepee village at Madison Junction in Yellowstone National Park in August 2022, where I was representing the Little Shell.

I have been facilitating writing workshops on rivers with the Freeflow Institute since 2019. The Freeflow Institute “curates immersive outdoor learning experiences in Earth’s wildest classrooms – for all people, of all backgrounds. We help humans connect to places, to one another, and to the truest forms of their work and art.” They live up to their mission, and it has been my pleasure to facilitate workshops three times on the Blackfoot River and one on the Missouri River. Every trip has been uplifting in ways only outdoor experiences can be.

This year I am facilitating one on the Main Salmon River in Idaho. You may check out all the details HERE. This is the lowdown:

MINO-BIMAADIZIWIN: THE GOOD LIFE

Mino-bimaadiziwin is the Anishinaabe word for "the good life." What does this mean for the Anishinaabe people, who have strived for it for millennia? It isn't a label; it is a being, what we speakers of English might call a verb. At its simplest, it is living a life in balance with the world around us. A life of peace, a life in good physical, emotional, and spiritual health. As the late Anishinaabe elder and teacher Edward Benton-Banai said, to live an Anishinaabe life is to live a life where "every footstep becomes a prayer." Every breath a prayer. Mino-bimaadiziwin is moving through life with this sense of spiritual connection to everyone.

What does it mean to the rest of us? How do we achieve this "good" life? What are our responsibilities to our communities and our relatives – human and non – along the way? Who do we look to so that we may find how it was done in the past, in ways we have maybe become disconnected from? To be in balance, at peace, and in good health, means that we must be in such state not just with ourselves, but with everyone around us. Is this even possible?

If you have the means, please consider signing up for this workshop. I have no doubt it will be spectacular.

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THE FREEFLOW SCHOLAR INDIGENOUS SCHOLARSHIP

Last winter I attended a workshop that rewired how I want to approach every workshop I take on in the future. Over the Winter Solstice in 2023 I participated in a gathering called “Good Ancestors” at the Lamar Buffalo Ranch in Yellowstone National Park. Yellowstone Forever, the nonprofit education arm of YNP, and sponsor of the workshop, provided a dozen free scholarships for Indigenous students and educators to attend. In other words, these participants did not have to pay for the workshop, they merely had to get there on their own and bring their own food, same as non-scholarship people. The resulting experience was unlike any workshop I have ever had. As an Indigenous person myself, I am rarely joined by more than one of my Native relatives and am often the only one. That’s how it is for most Natives participating in such things. Being surrounded by Indigenous people was certainly part of the profundity of the experience, but having a group of people there who generally lack the means to attend such things was also a contributing factor. There was so much gratitude and enthusiasm! Sadly, as outfitting costs rise, outdoor experiences like this Main Salmon trip with Freeflow are moving farther and farther into the realm of accessibility only to the privileged. This is tragic and it is something those of us working in the arena need to address.

Which brings me to this scholarship. Freeflow offers scholarships of their own – which you may view and apply for HERE – already and I am grateful for that; they are committed to providing free and discounted opportunities for attendees through their own Freeflow Foundation. However, as a much smaller organization than the likes of Yellowstone Forever, and with the rising costs of pretty much everything related to these kinds of experiences, Freeflow isn’t in a position to sponsor an entire trip – or twelve seats – the way Yellowstone Forever did.

I would like to have as many of those seats as possible filled with Indigenous folks so that they can have opportunities generally unavailable to them, with no strings attached.

I approached my friends at Chickadee Community Services to assist because their mission and values mirror mine. This is what they are about:

The mission of Chickadee Community Services is to provide aid and support to Indigenous-focused education projects with particular emphasis on tribal programs. Our goal is to promote Indigenous education and language revitalization, and to serve educational needs in other worthy sectors related to education of, by, and about Indigenous peoples.

I am focused on Indigenous people because I am Indigenous and I want to dedicate my efforts to providing opportunities for my people. I want more of us back on the water, to be transformed by the river, and the landscapes, and the deep interactions with other committed and creative and thoughtful people, and then go back out into the world motivated to make changes in it. Just as I have been. The world is the original storyteller and our original teacher, and too many of us have forgotten how to pay attention. I want more people to have a chance to listen again.

So here’s what is going to happen. Chickadee is going to help me raise at least $7000 to put at least two Native folks on this Main Salmon trip with me. HERE is more info in how you might participate in this effort.

Here is what I am going to contribute:

• Match donations up to $1750 (half of one scholarship). This is roughly what I get paid to do an event like this so I’ll be doing it for nothing which I feel is entirely appropriate and necessary.

• I will donate 50% of all new yearly paid subscriptions (that’s $25 on the $50 option) through April. So if you’ve been thinking of subscribing, now’s the time.

• I will donate $10 for every preorder of Becoming Little Shell via Fact & Fiction from now through April as well. HERE is where you can get on that.

What can you do to help?

• Any little bit helps if you DONATE through Chickadee. If half the people who allegedly read this newsletter³ donated a mere $5, we’d damn near fill all twelve seats for this trip. It’s that simple!

• I get asked all the time, “What can I do to help?” THIS is what you can do to help. Native folks, and other marginalized communities, lack opportunity. This is an opportunity to participate in something meaningful. But it’s not much of an opportunity if one is the only Native invited to such an event. Then it feels like a token, or a box check, and it’s uncomfortable. I know this as well as anybody. That’s why I want to sponsor at least two people, and hopefully more.

We will raise scholarship money through April. We’ll see where we are then, then open those seats up for submissions. We’ll figure out that step when we get there; it will likely be as high tech and complicated as drawing names out of a hat or something similar.

I would love to live like a river flows, carried by the surprise of its own unfolding.

– John O’Donohue

Friends, I have a mountain of mixed feelings about all of this. Should it be so bloody expensive to have access to landscapes that belong to all of us? No! Nor am I talking specifically about “public land” because I find the concept of most of what passes as “private land” as particularly odious. No one should be able to lock off any of our common ground for their own selfish use just because they are wealthy. We will never solve the multitude of problems we have concerning land and wildlife as long as we worship at the altar of private property. But that’s a rant for another day.

One may question why this is so important. There is no less than our future on the line! I feel like reconnecting to the world outside of human made structures and electronic devices is essential to our collective survival. This is a great way to inspire someone to be moved to do something, however small, that they might not have considered otherwise. I can’t even guess what that might be. I just know rivers are mighty and the stories they tell are essential to our wellbeing.

I want to facilitate getting people out to hear them whisper us back to a better relationship with Everything.

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A Couple Other Announcements

• My friend Russell Rowland interviewed me for his podcast, State of Montana, a couple weeks ago. You may check that out HERE. It’s the first “official” one about Becoming Little Shell, as Russell has actually read the book! Thanks, Russell!

• This Thursday, March 21, at 7:00PM I’ll be delivering a bloviation FREE TO THE PUBLIC! at the Great Falls Public Library. All the details HERE.

• I mentioned it before but I’ll mention it again: you may still preorder Becoming Little Shell HERE.

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What’s This, Yet Another Preorder?!

Yes it is, and I almost forgot! Dig this:

I’m in it! And so is my pal Ana Maria Spagna! And Heidi Barr (who invited me along in the first place) and Iris Graville and Michael friggin’ Garrigan! What a list! What a Rogues Gallery!

You may preorder this magnificent anthology HERE.

And get this: its release date is the exact same day as Becoming Little Shell. Whaaaaat?!

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1. Speaking of donuts, they were trounced by ice cream in this critical poll and I don’t know how I feel about that.

2. The Clark Fork, the Bitterroot, and the Blackfoot, to name them in order of proximity to where I’m sitting right now.

3. Not just subscribe but actually read the thing!