Becoming Little Shell - A Landless Indian's Journey Home

A People Magazine "Best New Book of the Month"
Winner of the 2025 Pacific Northwest Book Award
A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction of the Year Selection
A Book Riot "Best Memoirs, Nonfiction Science, and Food Writing of the Last Year"
A Reading the West Book Award Finalist
“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.”—Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass
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.

List of contents

INTRODUCTION
2022, WESTERN MONTANA / xiii
CHAPTER 1
1977, FRENCHTOWN, MONTANA / 1
CHAPTER 2
2019, MISSOULA, MONTANA / 14
CHAPTER 3
2011, PLAINS, MONTANA / 23
CHAPTER 4
2013, MISSOULA, MONTANA / 35
CHAPTER 5
2022, FRENCHTOWN, MONTANA / 45
CHAPTER 6
2014, SIX MILE, MONTANA / 62
CHAPTER 7
2020, COUNCIL GROVE, MONTANA / 74
CHAPTER 8
2017, GREAT FALLS, MONTANA / 86
CHAPTER 9
2017, BROWNING, PABLO,
AND MISSOULA, MONTANA / 97
CHAPTER 10
2017, ULM, MONTANA / 109
CHAPTER 11
2021, HELENA, MONTANA / 119
CHAPTER 12
2018, GREAT FALLS, MONTANA / 138
CHAPTER 13
2020, GREAT FALLS, MONTANA / 149
CHAPTER 14
2019, BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA / 162
CHAPTER 15
2019, FRENCHTOWN, MONTANA / 179
CHAPTER 16
2019, LEWISTOWN, MONTANA / 195
CHAPTER 17
2020, CHOTEAU, MONTANA / 210
CHAPTER 18
2021, MISSOULA, MONTANA / 223
CHAPTER 19
2019, MISSOULA, MONTANA / 236
CHAPTER 20
2020, GREAT FALLS, MONTANA / 248
EPILOGUE
2021, BUTTE, MONTANA / 266
NOTES / 273
BIBLIOGRAPHY / 285
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS / 287

About the author

Chris La Tray is a Métis storyteller, a descendent of the Pembina Band of the mighty Red River of the North, and an enrolled member of the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians, he is also the author of One-Sentence Journal: Short Poems and Essays from the World at Large, which won the 2018 Montana Book Award and a 2019 High Plains Book Award, as well as Descended from a Travel-Worn Satchel, a collection of haiku and haibun poetry. La Tray is the Montana Poet Laureate for 2023–2025 and a former bookseller at Fact & Fiction. He writes the weekly newsletter “An Irritable Métis” and lives near Frenchtown, Montana.

Product details

• Authors: Chris La Tray
• Publisher: Milkweed Editions
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Release: 01.08.2025
• EAN: 9781571311665
• ISBN: 978-1-57131-166-5
• No. of pages: 320
• Subject: Social sciences, law, business > Ethnology > Ethnology