Métis

Growing up in Montana, Chris La Tray always identified as Indian. Despite the fact that his father fiercely denied any connection, he found Indigenous people alluring, often recalling his grandmother’s consistent mention of their Chippewa heritage.

When La Tray attended his grandfather’s funeral as a young man, he finally found himself surrounded by relatives who obviously were Indigenous. “Who were they?” he wondered, and “Why was I never allowed to know them?” Combining diligent research and compelling conversations with authors, activists, elders, and historians, La Tray embarks on a journey into his family’s past, discovering along the way a larger story of the complicated history of Indigenous communities—as well as the devastating effects of colonialism that continue to ripple through surviving generations. And as he comes to embrace his full identity, he eventually seeks enrollment with the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians, joining their 158-year-long struggle for federal recognition.

Both personal and historical, Becoming Little Shell is a testament to the power of storytelling, to family and legacy, and to finding home. Infused with candor, heart, wisdom, and an abiding love for a place and a people, Chris La Tray’s remarkable journey is both revelatory and redemptive.

Reviews
“La Tray’s pride and conviction will have readers eager not only to learn more, but to take action. A brilliant contribution to the canon of Native American literature.”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review

“[A] gripping debut memoir. [. . .]  La Tray’s crystalline prose and palpable passion for spreading Indigenous history bolster his account. Readers will be fascinated.”—Publishers Weekly

"Heartbreaking, infuriating, and remarkable, Becoming Little Shell is a memoir that’s packed with historical details,transcending and amplifying a personal quest to understand a family’s past."—Foreword Reviews, starred review 

“Smart, emotional, and bracingly honest, La Tray is a powerful storyteller who should have significant appeal.”—Booklist

“I’m in awe of Chris La Tray’s storytelling. Becoming Little Shell creates a multilayered narrative from threads of personal, family, community, tribal, and national histories. Together they make a story as strong and beautiful as a Metis sash—a story of identity, kinship, and the journey toward justice.”—Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass

“Chris La Tray is a powerful voice—a force of nature, really—to guide us through the swirling confluence of Native and white worlds, both past and present. Becoming Little Shell is the American story of our era—tracing the arc of its author brought up in the white world before discovering his roots as an original inhabitant of this continent.”—Peter Stark, author of Gallop Toward the Sun

“Indigenous identity can be complicated, and Becoming Little Shell compels us into the thick of it—Native people dispossessed of not just land but recognition; blood quantum laws originally crafted to complete a genocide and still wreaking havoc in identity debates today; racism that drove many Native people to disassociate from their families; and descendants, like La Tray, who have found their way back, fighting for the reconnection of their communities and for the observance of their very existence. La Tray is a loving, discerning, curious, funny, and generous guide. This is a beautiful, big-hearted book.”—Sierra Crane Murdoch, author of Yellow Bird

“Becoming Little Shell is a moving, deeply felt, and incredibly detailed account of Chris La Tray’s search for his origins among the Métis, Pembina, and Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians. Combining memoir, history, interviews, and travel, La Tray gives us nothing less than the history of a people in the form of an absorbing and emotionally searing memoir. This book will, without a doubt, become a classic in Native American literature. Must read.”—David Treuer, author of The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee

“What I appreciate so much about Chris La Tray’s writing on Indigenous identity and history is the wit, clarity, and integrity embodied in every word. Becoming Little Shell beautifully encompasses a journey that we can all learn from, a journey toward asking better questions about land, belonging, and connection, and through this book La Tray epitomizes historian, poet, and teacher. Full of Indigenous history, personal stories, and the complex dance between the two, La Tray reminds us that the journey of finding ourselves and making sense of the way colonialism plays out around us is an essential part of being human. Please read this book. You’ll be so glad you did.”—Kaitlin B. Curtice, author of Living Resistance

Additional Information
320 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | Hardcover

Toni Jensen grew up around guns: As a girl, she learned to shoot birds in rural Iowa with her father, a card-carrying member of the NRA. As an adult, she’s had guns waved in her face near Standing Rock, and felt their silent threat on the concealed-carry campus where she teaches. And she has always known that in this she is not alone. As a Métis woman, she is no stranger to the violence enacted on the bodies of Indigenous women, on Indigenous land, and the ways it is hidden, ignored, forgotten.

In Carry, Jensen maps her personal experience onto the historical, exploring how history is lived in the body and redefining the language we use to speak about violence in America. In the title chapter, Jensen connects the trauma of school shootings with her own experiences of racism and sexual assault on college campuses. “The Worry Line” explores the gun and gang violence in her neighborhood the year her daughter was born. “At the Workshop” focuses on her graduate school years, during which a workshop classmate repeatedly killed off thinly veiled versions of her in his stories. In “Women in the Fracklands,” Jensen takes the reader inside Standing Rock during the Dakota Access Pipeline protests and bears witness to the peril faced by women in regions overcome by the fracking boom.

In prose at once forensic and deeply emotional, Toni Jensen shows herself to be a brave new voice and a fearless witness to her own difficult history—as well as to the violent cultural landscape in which she finds her coordinates. With each chapter, Carry reminds us that surviving in one’s country is not the same as surviving one’s country.

Reviews
“Like a murmuration of starlings, Toni Jensen’s new book Carry changes its shape constantly and effortlessly. . . . The value of Carry lies in its unique structure, its sparse, powerful prose, and in the stinging perspective it provides on events that are numbingly common. Until we see it as clearly as Jensen does, the lens she offers on gun violence in America will be relevant again and again and again.”—Chicago Review of Books

“In Carry, Jensen scours language to find a new way of writing about how historical injustices seep into the present. . . . With a controlled voice like a Philip Glass composition, smooth, meandering yet repetitive, Jensen considers her troubled past and begins the work of stitching herself back together. . . . An unsettling account that creeps into your bones.”—The New York Times Book Review

“Toni Jensen grew up around guns. But bird-hunting with her father was a much different experience than staring down bored barrels at Standing Rock. A new and much-needed voice, Métis author Jensen shares her deepest thoughts and most emotional experiences in Carry.”—Bustle

“Toni Jensen’s memoir is stunning. There’s no other words that come to mind—it’s about growing up Métis, existing as an Indigenous woman in America, and the looming threat of ever-pervasive gun violence. . . . A must-read.”—Alma (Alma’s Favorite Books for Fall 2020)

“Moving between personal recollections and historical observations, Jensen narrates what it means to be Métis, and what it feels like to be connected by bodies and land. . . . A meditative exploration of people and place that shows what it means to live and survive.”—Library Journal

“[A] debut memoir from a Native author enmeshed in the American way of violence, alienation, and death . . . a powerful rejection of a culture that has always been grounded in violence and intimidation.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Carry explores the gun’s tragic impact with heartfelt prose and deep intellect—on politics, on history, on Black and Indigenous bodies, on women’s bodies, and on children behind closed doors . . . It is full of difficult and vital news, delivered right on time.”—Terese Marie Mailhot, New York Times bestselling author of Heart Berries

Additional Information
304 pages | 5.24" x 7.94" | Paperback