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

       www.canongate.co.uk

      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

       FOREWORD

       INTRODUCTION

       Chapter 1 An Old Man’s Request

       Chapter 2 Burnt Offerings

       Chapter 3 Talking for the Grandfathers

       Chapter 4 One Wily Old Indian

       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 9 Jumbo

       Chapter 10 Ponytails and Jewelry

       Chapter 11 The Selling of the Sacred

       Chapter 12 Welcome to Our Land

       Chapter 13 Tatanka

       Chapter 14 Seeing with Both Eyes

       Chapter 15 Shiny Soup

       Chapter 16 The Stranger

       Chapter 17 Leaders and Rulers

       Chapter 18 Drunk on Jesus

       Chapter 19 Pushing

       Chapter 20 Revelations

       Chapter 21 Half-breed

       Chapter 22 The Song of History

       Chapter 23 Storm

       Chapter 24 Paha Sapa

       Chapter 25 Wounded Knee

       Chapter 26 The Promise

      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