NDN Country 1975
Work in Progress
NDN Country 1975 is a hybrid book of memoir, essay, and storytelling that mixes imagined elements, family lore, and archival research. Generically, the book is best understood as creative nonfiction. The point of origin of NDN Country 1975 is a cache of family slides taken at a Central Maine Indian Association gathering in August 1975—the month and year I was born and seven months before my Mi’kmaw father was murdered.
NDN Country 1975 is also a collection of hand-woven pony bead beadwork.
In the slides, my aunt and uncle dance in front of a canvas teepee wearing Plains Indians regalia. Is a feathered war bonnet representative of their traditional Eastern Woodlands culture? Not before the United States became a thing. Were my relatives reclaiming their tribal identities anyway? I believe they were. These are the ironies I’m interested in. Real and fake. Memory and myth. Regalia and costume. In the context of ongoing colonization, Native experience is shaped by these contradictions, making it hard to determine who or what belongs to whom.
The first essay in the written collection appears in the Spring 2026 issue of North American Review.
Watch/listen HERE as NAR editor Jeremy Schraffenberger discusses “Legacy” and “The Ballad of Ollie Jackson” by Eric McHenry.
