Neither Wolf nor Dog Read Free

like the buffalo rock — rough-hewn, elemental, and born of the earth. But, like the buffalo rock, he is also possessed of a deep spirituality for those who have the eyes to see.
    Listen to him. Learn from him. Come along on our journey and share our story. You will learn as I have learned, and you will be the better for it.
    In the last analysis, we must all, Indian and non-Indian, come together. This earth is our mother, this land is our shared heritage. Our histories and fates are intertwined, no matter where our ancestors were born and how they interacted with each other.
    Neither Wolf nor Dog
is one small effort to help this coming together. It is not an attempt to build a fence around a man and his people, but to honor them with the gift of my words. I have done my best, and I place this book before you, like the tobacco before the buffalo rock, as a simple offering.
    May you receive it in the spirit with which it is offered.
    Kent Nerburn
Bemidji, Minnesota
Spring 1994

NEITHER WOLF
NOR DOG

CHAPTER
ONE

AN OLD MAN’S
REQUEST
    I got to the phone on the second ring. I could hear the scratchy connection even before the voice spoke.
    â€œIs this Nerburn?”
    It was a woman. I recognized the clipped tones of an Indian accent.
    â€œYes,” I responded.
    â€œYou don’t know me,” she continued, without even giving a name. “My grandpa wants to talk to you. He saw those ‘Red Road’ books you did.”
    I felt a tightening in my chest. Several years before I had worked with students on the Red Lake Ojibwe reservation collecting the memories of the students’ parents and grandparents. The two books that had resulted,
To Walk the Red Road
and
We
Choose to Remember
, had gained some notoriety in the Indian community across North America. Most of the Indians had loved them for the history they had captured. But some found old wounds opened, or familial feuds rekindled.
    Occasionally, I would receive phone calls from people who wanted to challenge something we had written or to set the record straight on something their grandfather or grandmother was supposed to have said.
    â€œSure,” I answered. “Let me talk to him.”
    â€œHe doesn’t like to talk on the phone,” the woman said.
    I had grown accustomed to Indian reticence about talking to white people, and I knew there were still a few of the very traditional elders who didn’t like to use the telephone or have their picture taken.
    â€œIs he upset?” I ventured.
    â€œHe just wants to talk to you.”
    My nervousness was growing. “Where is he?”
    She told me the name of a reservation. It was a long way from my home.
    â€œWhat does he want?”
    â€œCould you come and see him?”
    The request took me aback. It was a strange request on any terms, coming as it did from someone I didn’t even know. But the distance involved made it even stranger.
    â€œI guess it’s important for me to know if he’s angry,” I said.
    The woman betrayed no emotion. “He’s not angry. He just saw those books and he wants to talk to you.”
    I rubbed my eyes and thought of the travel. When I had left the oral history project I had made a silent promise that I would keep using such skills as I had for the good of the Indian people. I had never enjoyed a people so much and had never found such a joyful sense of humor and lack of pretension. But more than that, I had felt a sense of peace and simplicity among theIndians that transcended the stereotypes of either drunkenness or wisdom. They were simply the most grounded people I had ever met, in both the good and bad senses of that word. They were different from white people, different from black people, different from the images that I had been taught, different from anything I had ever encountered. I felt happy among them, and I felt honored to be there.
    Sometimes I would stand on the land in Red Lake and think to myself,