Becoming Little Shell by Chris La Tray
Milkweed Editions, Hardcover, $28.00
Early in the going of Chris La Tray’s exquisite memoir, Becoming Little Shell, a heart-rending scene occurs shortly after his grandfather’s funeral. Sitting with his father at a VFW bar, his old man says of his old man, “I’m not sad. Not even a little bit. That sonofabitch never did a thing for me.”
Going in, you will suspect that the elder La Tray’s hostility to his father is rooted in racial self-loathing, and you will be right. “Suggesting my dad was Native made him angry,” La Tray writes, “And I could never understand why. I was the opposite. I wanted to be Indian.”
What ensues in the subsequent pages of this frank and stunning book from Montana’s Poet Laureate is a journey of discovery and recovery of his identity and a bittersweet coming to terms with his father’s antipathy to his Native roots.
Tragically, it is La Tray’s father’s death that sets him on this path of inquiry into his roots. “I had strands of it tangled in my fingers before he died, but I was hesitant, even fearful,” La Tray bravely acknowledges. The unknown harbors fears for us all, but delving into a painful litany of historic wrongs carries with it special burdens, and a lot of unlearning…from society, your miseducation, and even your own family.
“Before I was a teenager, I heard nothing but horrible stories about Arlee and other nearby Indian communities,” La Tray acknowledges of his childhood growing up in Frenchtown. But what La Tray learns in discovering his own Métis heritage is not just his origins—but a community that continues to fight for its survival. Accounting for his people’s history, La Tray quickly joins that fight, and this book admirably serves that effort.
Foremost Becoming Little Shell is an achievement of synthesis. La Tray’s broad inquiry is most rewarding, perhaps, for the way he artfully explains Métis origins as a fully developed society made of Chippewa, Cree, and French origins, and how intermarriage with other Europeans and other Indians made the Métis people “something specifically their own.”
Describing their Michif language, their capote- and sash-dominant dress, their cattle herds, and Red River Catholicism, La Tray is rightly proud of his people and their thriving culture. Which makes La Tray’s father’s outright rejection of that heritage a confounding through line in the book—and serves as some of the most compelling writing in this deeply personal inquiry.
As he meticulously charts injustices to the Métis and the Little Shell tribe’s history in detail, La Tray conveys a litany of crimes with incredible force. Broken and bad-faith treaties are dragged into the light. Racial policies of “termination” occurring in law and ad hoc are documented thoroughly. And the shifting legal definitions of indigeneity that turned La Tray’s ancestors into Canadians in order to kick them off their land are exposed. The level of constant betrayal leaves the reader aghast:
“Imagine you’re abroad somewhere, vacationing, visiting family, or working . . . and return to find someone else in your house, it having been sold to them out from under you by someone who never owned it in the first place. And what if it turned out your neighbor, or even a family member, was in on the deal? How devastating would that be when you realized there was absolutely nothing you could do about it?”
But Becoming Little Shell is ultimately a tale of a man discovering that he belongs to something much larger than he imagined. This can be seen in a detailed map of the “Métis Archipelago” in the foreword section of the book, highlighting the country where La Tray’s people roamed. It is a big country, and this book is a remarkable part of their big history.
Thank you, Milkweed Editions, for the advanced reader copy.