Kent Nerburn - Neither Wolf nor Dog

This book begins with a phone call. Author and artist Kent Nerburn gets contacted by the grandaughter of an Native American elder, who wants him to write his story. Nerburn has already published several books that present the stories and memories of Native Americans who lived on the Red Lake Ojibwe reservation, and Dave Bald Eagle (Dan), a member of the Lakota, feels that Nerburn can deliver. But this writing assignment becomes a spiritual journey for Nerburn when Dan, and his friend Grover, essentially kidnap Nerburn and take him on an intellectual journey to understand Native American history, thought and, above all, anger.

There is a great deal of mutual misunderstanding in this book. Nerburn often, and openly, fails to understand what Dan and Grover are telling him. He cannot comprehend the Lakota worldview, and he is helpless in answering and understanding what he is being told. Gradually he gets closer to it, after essentially having a breakdown in the face of the emotion, intensity and power of Dan's ideas. It is a journey (spiritually and physically) that is deftly told. Dan is hard on Nerburn, rarely allowing him space, and pressing him on points and the half-baked thoughts that the whiteman makes. There's a hard hitting bit when the three travellers visit some of Dan's family, and Dan tackles Nerburn for treating one of the children differently. One of the kids is half Indian and half white and Dan accuses Nerburn, "He wasn't an Indian to you. That's why you talked to him more." Nerburn doesn't see that he did anything wrong, and this just riles Dan more - "The little guy... he's never been as far as Rapid City. He speaks Lakota. He's never even seen his white dad. But to you the other kids are more Indian."

It's a powerful moment and Nerburn's protestations are frustrated and bitter. But it's honest. It leads the author, through Dan, to explore US politics around race, genocide and the reservations themselves. Nerburn is ill-equipped to deal with the onslaught of ideas, thoughts and new approaches to the world that Dan and Grover offer him. Dan complains:

You are still writing down our story, using your words, and you are still getting it all wrong. Your words are all full of sharp edges that cut us. But we have been bleeding so long we don't even feel it anymore.

It is a powerful lesson for Nerburn, and the reader. Nerburn is ill-equipped to tell it, and that's not just because he is not a Native American. It's also because he hasn't got any political framework to explain American history. If I have one disagreement with Dan's own politics its that it doesn't acknowledge that as capitalism sought to murder the Native Americans, it also destroyed the lives of countless other peoples whose world-views and livelihoods did not fit its model. The genocide of the Native Americans took place alongside the colonial destruction of peoples across the Global South as well as the destruction of European ways of life that had entirely different relationships to the world around them.  But Nerburn doesn't even appear to have heard of Wounded Knee. He's a great writer, and perhaps his naivety is the perfect foil for Dan's hard reality, but at times I was exasperated by him for different reasons to Dan's!

Nevertheless this "neither fiction nor non-fiction" account of a road trip is a powerful and illuminating read. Add it to your list, for a sense of the raging discontent and anger that remains at the heart of the so called "American Dream".

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