Métis storyteller and 11th Montana state poet laureate Chris La Tray joins us to discuss the themes in Becoming Little Shell: A Landless Indian's Journey Home, largely the story of a people who were known as "the landless Indians" for nearly two centuries. How is it possible that an Indigenous people of any land could ever be considered "landless" in the first place? How is that story reflected in today's world where more people are forced from their homes for any number of reasons not necessarily related to choices they've made, or forcibly removed, or deported?
Chris La Tray is an Anishinaabe/Métis storyteller, a descendent of the Pembina Band of the mighty Red River of the North and a citizen of the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians. His first book, One-Sentence Journal: Short Poems and Essays from the World at Large won the 2018 Montana Book Award and a 2019 High Plains Book Award.
Chris served as the 2025 Kittredge Distinguished Visiting Writer at the University of Montana and was awarded the 2025 Montana Heritage Keeper Award by the Montana Historical Society. He has facilitated workshops for The Missoula Writing Collaborative, Yellowstone Forever, the Freeflow Institute, Writing the Wild, Orion, Torrey House Press, and others.
Chris writes the weekly newsletter "An Irritable Métis" and lives near Frenchtown, Montana. He was the 11th Montana poet laureate (Aug. 2023 – Aug. 2025).
Funded by the Sno-Isle Libraries Foundation.
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This event will be recorded for later viewing on the Sno-Isle Libraries YouTube channel.
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Please click the link below to join the webinar at 6:30pm on Apr 21, 2026:
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