Moving, disturbing, uncomfortable read.

I have had this book in my to be read pile since- according to the receipt since 2004.
Wow!
Should be required reading in every high school in America.
One man’s opinion but he makes a strong case.
Excellent explanation of what was done to the American Indians and why everything everyone has done since doesn’t fix the problem and oftentimes makes things worse.
Outstanding book!
( )

As the book blurb on the back of the book says: “An unlikely cross between On the Road and Black Elk Speaks, Neither Wolf nor Dog takes us past the myths and stereotypes of the Native American experience, revealing an America few ever see.”

After author Kent Nerburn helped his Native American students publish the stories of their elders, he was contacted by an elder who wanted Nerburn to write a book for him.

Although the elder, referred to only as Dan, had written down many of his thoughts over the years, he ended up burning them, and instead took Nerburn on a Indian roadtrip across the high plains, through the Badlands and to the site of Wounded Knee. As they drove and experienced, Dan gave Nerburn many of his little lectures in the context from which they were born.

Beautifully written and much to think about.

4.5 stars. I’ll be reading the sequel. ( )

Nerburn is ask by an Indian elder to write a book form the Indian's perspective. Written in first person, Nerburn creates memorable characters from the ideas and history the elder shares.

Nerburn receives an unexpected call: "My grandpa wants to talk to you." It's unclear if that's to criticize Nerburn's earlier books on the Red Lake Ojibwe or to discuss something else, and no further detail is forthcoming. Nerburn reluctantly agrees to meet. So begins an uncertain and at times frustrating relationship between Nerburn and Dan, an Oglala Lakota wanting a book ghostwritten for him.

Dan isn't writing his life story or even his memories. He's not dictating sacred teachings. He wants written down what he's got in his head. "I watch people. White people and Indian people. I see things. I want you to help me write it down right." [17]

Neither Wolf Nor Dog is partly the book Dan requests but mostly it's an account of writing that book, with the result that much of what Dan has in mind doesn't make it into the text. Rather than a postmodern narrative trick, though, Nerburn's sincere grappling with Dan's request, figuring out how to honour it while avoiding the trap of romanticizing Dan as a holy man or noble red man, becomes the best means for fulfilling his promise. The resulting irony not so much literary -- deliberately crafted -- as one arrived at unintentionally, unforeseen. (Dan's burned shoebox of notes and jottings elegantly confirms this.)

Nerburn's achievement is significant, remarkable enough that almost unnoticed is the fact that one book is lost in order to better pursue another. Some of the one is here, necessarily, in order to tell of its abandonment. But it is that abandonment which is told here, a story of how Dan came to ideas, and then how Dan could share those ideas with a white man, and how a white man could understand those ideas. The ideas themselves (that first book!) become less important than their transmission, from one man to another, across cultures. So not a book on Oglala culture, nor an Oglala critique of U.S. mainstream culture, but a book on how the cultures interact.

I found the tone at times exasperating, its solemnity or gravitas too self-conscious and earnest. Nerburn makes gaffes almost inconceivable for someone who spent so much time among Ojibwe and other Native Americans. And yet, I must acknowledge for the book to work, Nerburn had to act, speak, think like a white man, even while wrestling with our sins. Perhaps, after all, he dutifully described the sharp elbows, the shame and emotion of cultures awkwardly bumping and crowding, deliberately included these embarassments because it's inevitable in genuine exchange. A model for our times.

//

Reference point: Nerburn's account appears to illustrate a case study of nonviolent communication, though Nerburn doesn't specifically cite Marshall Rosenberg (even assuming he's aware of him). The book also avoids performative self-contradiction. ( )