Neither Wolf Nor Dog. Kent Nerburn
Kent Nerburn was born and raised near Minneapolis. He studied American Studies at the University of Minnesota, then went on to Stanford University to study Religious Studies and Humanities, then to the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, where he received a Ph.D. in conjunction with the University of California at Berkeley. After several years living in Europe he returned to Minnesota and worked on the Red Lake Ojibwe reservation helping students collect the memories of the tribal elders. He has been writing about Native American history and culture for over twenty years.
Also by Kent Nerburn
Calm Surrender
Chief Joseph and the Flight of the Nez Perce
A Haunting Reverence
The Hidden Beauty of Everyday Life
Letters to My Son
Make Me an Instrument of Your Peace
Road Angels
Simple Truths
Small Graces
The Wolf at Twilight
Edited by Kent Nerburn
The Wisdom of the Native Americans
The Soul of an Indian
Native American Wisdom
First published in Great Britain in 2017 by Canongate Books Ltd,
14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE
This digital edition first published in 2017 by Canongate Books
Copyright © Kent Nerburn, 1994, 2002
The moral right of the author has been asserted
First published in the United States of America in 1994 by
New World Library, 14 Pamaron Way, Novato, CA 94949
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 78689 016 0
eISBN 978 1 78689 018 4
For the silent ones
CONTENTS
Chapter 1 An Old Man’s Request
Chapter 3 Talking for the Grandfathers
Chapter 5 A Land of Dreams and Phantasms
Chapter 6 Junk Cars and Buffalo Carcasses
Chapter 7 Rooting for the Cowboys
Chapter 8 Taking Maize from Squanto
Chapter 10 Ponytails and Jewelry
Chapter 11 The Selling of the Sacred
Chapter 12 Welcome to Our Land
Chapter 14 Seeing with Both Eyes
Chapter 22 The Song of History
THE VOICE OF THE NATIVE HEART
A Foreword by Robert Plant
It’s a dirty familiar history
A story of broken treaties, giddy expansion, collision and relocation
Of abuse, denial and unfair advantage
As far from the Lone Ranger as one can imagine
For almost fifty years on journeys through the extremes of the New World
I have wrestled with the questions
And carried the weight of empire
For many years Kent Nerburn, too,
Has been immersed
In the inflamed frontier that
Separates and divides
Neither Wolf nor Dog takes us on a real life journey
Playing out the exhausted residue
The push and pull between our cultures
Bringing into sharp focus the fallout from the European slog
The