I’m left wondering what it is about the story that has captured the hearts of so many.  Part of it would seem to be the simple fact that the elderly and helpless cry out to our hearts.  We see the echoes of our own future in their faces, and they embody all our latent respect and fear for our own parents.  We’d like to think that the world will treat us and them in the same fashion.

But that yearning and hunger would not be so great if it were not set against the dark backdrop of a world that seems so uncaring toward the weak and helpless.  It would be easy for me to go on a diatribe here, but it would serve no purpose.  What matters is that there is a hunger in the human heart for acts of caring, both toward us and by us.  And this, I think, is part of the real power of the story:  we want what we do to matter.  We want to believe that our small gestures can have real results.  This story speaks to that hunger.

What is most fascinating to me is that it is young people, by and large, who have written me about the story.  They want to praise me as a good man and thank me for what I did.  But what they really are saying is, “I would do the same thing if only I had the chance.”  They see it as a reminder and a mirror to their own best aspirations.

This younger generation has a rough road to travel, and I really, really like them.  They remind me, in their frustration and idealism of my own generation.  They’ve seen the hollowness of a materialistic future, yet they know that the forces of a materialist society demand their participation in some measure or they’ll be plowed under.  They haven’t seen their idealism rewarded and they refuse to acquiesce to the cynicism that seems the only logical response.  A story like the cab driver story speaks to a way to live in the cracks between an unrewarded idealism and an unproductive cynicism.  It reminds them of the truth of the words of Confucius, poorly paraphrased here, that we must value the small as well as the great.

This is a small story of a small moment of two small people.  But something good was created, and in that creation, bought a bit of light into the world.

I am giving some thought to putting together a speaking tour on this story.  If any of you would be interested in helping me arrange something in your city, write me at knerburn@kentnerburn.com.  We’ll see what we can do.

Recently, they have accorded me the distinct privilege of putting together an e course around my writings. It will consider the major themes, major ideas, and important passages in my work. I, personally, am very excited to see what they do with this, because no one has ever collated my thoughts before. I consider it a gift and an honor, because no one could do it better than they can.

I’m alerting you to this e course so any of you who might be interested will have a chance to sign up. I will be doing an audio interview with Fred and Mary Ann sometime during the course, so we will have a chance to share thoughts about the whole experience.

Please go to the following website to find out more: http://bit.ly/KentNerburnEC. I’m very excited about this event, and hope you will be, too.

Or is there?

Can a work be at once a work of fiction and non-fiction, or are the categories so ill-fitting that The Wolf at Twilight belongs in neither one – a veritable situation of being “neither wolf nor dog?”

These are questions that bear some discussion, because they underpin the dilemma that has confronted my two creative works about Native America, Neither Wolf nor Dog and The Wolf at Twilight, from the moment they first came out.

Let me tell you where I stand on the issue.

It is my personal conviction that we human beings are “believing” creatures.  Until we take something into our hearts and embrace it with conviction, we are seeing through a gossamer (and distancing) veil of analysis.  It’s true that the information we gather during analysis guides us toward belief — and one would hope that our information gathering is informed and educated – but it is not belief.  Belief is saying, “Yes, this is the way it is, and I will stand by it and defend it.”  It is a commitment of the heart.

I come from a long background in the study of religion.   One of the ongoing arguments in the intellectual field of religious studies was whether or not one must be a believer to understand a faith or a belief system.  After participating in this discussion for years, I came to the conclusion that the knowledge you gain is different based on whether you are a believer or an observer.  Each has its role:  sometimes it is better to stand on the outside for perspective; but to the extent that you can enter into a belief system and inhabit it, you come closer to the heartbeat of the spiritual experience that it expresses.

I came to believe – and I believe to this day – that the goal of any work of art that addresses spiritual issues should be to bring those who see or hear or read it as close to the experience of real belief as possible.   When I worked as a sculptor I sought to embody spiritual states rather than describe them.  When I turned to writing I sought to recreate moments of spiritual encounter rather than discuss them from the outside, and to walk my readers into them so they could participate in those encounters.

When I came to the unlikely calling of giving voice to the deep and complex spirituality of Native American people – a spirituality that has, I believe, much to teach us all — the challenge became more complex: how could I help you, the reader, enter into a complex spiritual experience not my own in a way that your hearts could be touched and your spirits informed by the richness of their belief?

I did not want you to be able to move to the distance of analysis.  I did not want anyone to leave my writing saying, “That’s interesting.  I’ll have to give it some serious thought.”  Yet I did not want you to think you (or I) could appropriate Native belief – a complex, multiple, language- and culture based-spirituality – for ourselves.  To encourage that would be to continue the long tradition of cultural appropriation that has been our way of dealing with the Native peoples since our arrival on this land, and I wanted no part of it.

What I needed was a way to bring you, the reader, into the presence of Native belief, just as I had been brought into its presence, without allowing you the distance of the observer or the false identification with it as if you were donning its mantle as your own.

This was no easy task.  But I believed that Native experience contained truths we needed to know, and I knew that I had to make readers believe what I told them in order for them to take it into their hearts.   I had to write in a way that would grab you at the level of belief; I had to bring you into the presence of Native experience so that you would participate in it, be inhabited by it, and leave a changed person.

A tall order, yes?  But that’s how important I thought the truths of Native American experience were to the shaping of an authentic American spirituality.  We as a people have gotten lost somewhere between dogma and agnosticism, yet we are a spiritual people who hunger for belief.  The Native way, with its tradition of granting each person the right to his or her own spiritual journey, while finding truth and meaning in the land, seemed to me to feed that hunger with an authority and authenticity that nothing else possessed.   I needed to find a way to lead you into its presence in a way that would invest your experience with the authority of belief.

And so I set upon the task of searching for a literary vehicle that would serve that end.  Neither Wolf nor Dog, and, now, The Wolf at Twilight, are the results of that search.   Though done as traditional narratives, they use aspects of the novel, oral history, mythology, parable, and spiritual homily, to bring readers into the presence of Native experience as participants and not as observers.

How I came to create that narrative form is a story in itself.   It involved learning from Native storytellers, the fortuitous accident of becoming involved with collecting Native oral histories, and long personal and scholarly experience with the methods and purposes of sacred texts.   It also involved exploring ways of using language to describe, evoke, engage, and transport readers to the physical and emotional places I wanted them to go.

The end result, as reflected in Neither Wolf nor Dog and The Wolf at Twilight, was a genre-blending, category-blurring literary vehicle that placed you, the reader, by my side as I walked into another world and handed you off to people whose spiritual reality was so integrated into their daily life that it could not be separated from it or reduced to homily, lecture, or teaching.  What I experienced, you experienced.  What I felt, you felt.  And by making myself and my responses as emotionally authentic as I could (readers can sniff disingenuousness a mile away) I convinced you to follow me, participate with me, and take my experiences into your heart as your own.

To do this, I used first person narrative – that magical, distance-destroying literary point of view — to bring you along as fellow travelers into a world that is populated by actual people (though often well-disguised), actual settings (rendered with as much physical and emotional accuracy as I could muster), real events (though often not experienced in exactly the sequence or the manner in which they are presented), all developed along time-honored, almost archetypal, plot lines and universal stories of the human heart.

But none of this would have mattered if the works had not been absolutely authentic at the places where they touched against Native belief, practice, and understanding.  The words spoken had to be captured and shaped with the fidelity of the best oral history, the conversations and sense of humor had to be pitch-perfect, the experiences of such places as sweat lodges and boarding schools had to be as carefully rendered and factually precise as if this were an historical documentation.   I could take liberties with the characters and their narrative, but not with the world through which they walked. You and the other readers, both Native and non-Native, had to give total assent to the possibility of what I presented.  Factually, culturally, and interpersonally, there could be no false notes.

And so Dan and Grover and Wenonah and Jumbo and I and everyone else – real people all, but well-disguised where necessary – set off to lead you to a place of absolute emotional, cultural, and, to the extent possible, spiritual authenticity.  We went into Native reality and made you part of it.   There were no lies in that world; no falsifications of cultural circumstance, emotional response, or historical event.   You met real people, heard real stories, experienced real emotions, and participated in real events.   To the extent that I was able, I took you beyond understanding into participation.

So, what was I creating — fiction or non-fiction?  I truly don’t know, and, for my part, I truly don’t care.  My job was to bring you into the presence of a people and way of life, not to pass a litmus test of factual accuracy.   For me, the question of “is it fiction or non-fiction?” was as irrelevant as asking if Van Gogh’s Wheatfield with Crows is fiction or non-fiction, or if Bach’s Mass in B Minor is fiction or non-fiction.  My goal was to create something authentic, and to the extent that I was able to do so, I was not bothered that it did not fit neatly into standard literary categories.

To put it another way, I was creating works of spiritual encounter, not literary or historical documents, and the liberties I took were directed toward that end.  In so doing, I was working in a long and honored tradition of spiritual writing.  The Gospel writers employed contradictory narratives to communicate the spiritual richness of Jesus’ mission; Taoist teachers placed stories from many sources into the mouth of Chuang Tzu to help people apprehend the Tao; Kahlil Gibran created the character of Al Mustapha to give proper voice to his spiritual teachings.  Neither Wolf nor Dog and The Wolf at Twilight were my journeyman efforts to use the skills at my command to open people to the interwoven cultural and spiritual reality of Native America.

In the last analysis, I was following the guidance of the man who served as the primary model for Dan:  “People learn best by stories,” he told me,  “Because stories lodge deep in the heart.”   Neither Wolf nor Dog and The Wolf at Twilight were created as teaching stories meant to bring you into the presence of the rich, human, and deeply integrated spirituality of contemporary and historical Native life.   If they did so, they have served their purpose.  How they should be categorized, I leave up to you.

Here is an interview that I recently did on The Wolf at Twilight.  I think it will give you an insight into the book that is well worth having.  We have permission to use this interview in any way we like.  So I offer it up to any of you who wish to use it, publish it, excerpt it, or pass it on.  I encourage you to do so, not only because I would like the book to sell well, but because the more I get feedback on it from Native and non-Native readers, the more I become convinced that it contains an important story that must be told.  That I was able to tell it has been my good fortune.  It is now up to all of us to make sure that we pass it on.

Enjoy the interview:

Kent Nerburn’s new book, The Wolf at Twilight: An Elder’s Journey into a Land of Ghosts and Shadows, is a follow-up to his award-winning classic, Neither Wolf nor Dog. It continues the story of the Lakota elder, Dan. But this time it brings us along on Dan’s search for his lost sister who disappeared decades ago in the Indian boarding school system. I talked to Kent via email about The Wolf at Twilight. I’d like to share our conversation with you.

Neither Wolf nor Dog has long been one of my favorite books. I was concerned that The Wolf at Twilight wouldn’t measure up. But it is every bit the equal of Neither Wolf nor Dog, and, in some ways, it’s superior.

That’s kind of you to say. I tend not to compare books. They’re like children: each is unique with its own strengths and weaknesses. However, I’m curious, what is it that you found “superior” about The Wolf at Twilight?

I was taken into the book on a different level. Neither Wolf nor Dog was a road trip with revelations and insights. The Wolf at Twilight reads like a mystery with revelations and insights.

That’s because it’s based on a mystery – the mystery of what happened to Dan’s little sister, Yellow Bird.

But there was something else, too. There was a different emotional texture to the book – kind of an undercurrent of sadness and loss.

That ‘s there, no doubt. And it’s quite intentional. Much of contemporary Native life is about sadness and loss – more than most of us can ever understand. I wanted to bring that timbre to the book. But I hope that’s not all you took from it.

On the contrary. That’s just the added textural element that intrigued me and made the book so satisfying. Other than that, it had the same quality of insight, the same wonderful sense of humor, the same surprising combination of comedy and tragedy, and the same rich cast of characters that made Neither Wolf nor Dog so unique. But this time you offered up a” can’t put it down” plot line and shed some light into the darker corners of Native experience.

Well, I wanted to tell more of Dan’s story, to be sure, so readers would have a further glimpse into the world of contemporary Native American life and its spiritual insights and beliefs. But I also wanted to go a little deeper into some of the darker places than I did in Neither Wolf nor Dog, so readers would come face to face with some of the hidden history of Native America. I guess if it were up to me to describe, I’d say that Neither Wolf nor Dog was written in a major key, and The Wolf at Twilight was created in a minor key.

I like that description. But let’s change gears for a moment. The Wolf at Twilight is a difficult book to categorize. It reads like fiction, but you say it is based in fact.

It is, absolutely. It’s a strange literary beast, to be sure, but that’s how I wanted it. It falls into the squirmy literary category of “Novelized non-fiction,” which is as shapeless, amorphous, and contradictory a category as I can imagine. I prefer to think of The Wolf at Twilight as a teaching story. Dan once said to me, “People learn best by stories, because stories lodge deep in the heart.” I wanted to tell a story that would lodge deep in the reader’s heart, and would do so in a way that reveals some of the dark truths of Native experience while giving voice to the bright truths that Native reality contains.

You keep referring to the light and the dark truth of Native reality. Can you explain this a little more?

Sure. As regards The Wolf at Twilight, the dark truth is the tragic, often horrific reality of the boarding school experience where Indian children were taken from their parents’ homes, stripped of their language and identity, and made to become someone they were not. It’s a truth of childhood rapes, forced labor, unbearable loneliness and dislocation, and an indoctrination into self-hatred that has repercussions to the present day.

The bright truth is the beautiful and deeply insightful way of teaching, learning, and understanding, that the boarding schools tried to destroy, but which still beats at the heart of the Native experience.

In The Wolf at Twilight I try to bring you into the presence of both these truths through the story of Dan’s search for his little sister, Yellow Bird, who disappeared from the boarding school system under mysterious circumstances when both she and Dan were very young.

Give me some examples of the dark truths of the boarding school experience.

Here’s one that is told by Dan’s friend, Grover, in the course of the book. He recounts the story of a young boy in a boarding school who was falsely accused of using his handkerchief for toilet paper and was dropped down in the outhouse and made to crawl back and forth on his hands and knees digging for his handkerchief while the school matron stood above and watched.

These things really happened?

Absolutely. These, and worse.

But the book doesn’t seem to dwell on things like this.

No, just like the Native people don’t dwell on them. They are always present in the mind and heart, and the trauma runs deep. But life needs to go on. Dan and Grover reveal these dark truths as much as is necessary, but I wanted to focus on the bright truths that Dan reveals about the traditional Native way of teaching and understanding the world.

Tell me some of these bright truths.

Sure. Let me read you a short passage where Dan is speaking:

“We do not look at our children as ‘full-growns waiting to be.’ We see them as special beings who bring us the freshness of wonder. They keep our hearts soft and our hands gentle. They keep us from thinking only about ourselves. They give the elders a reason to live, because we entrust the elders with the shaping of their hearts and setting their feet straight upon the path of life.”

This is part of a long teaching he gives about the circle of life. Like so much else he says, it offers us a glimpse into a beautiful way of life that we came close to destroying, but which still beats strong in the Native heart.

They sound like teachings worth learning.

They are, and throughout the book Dan speaks about them at length, revealing such things as the way the elders taught the young by training their powers of silence and observation, and the way that moral behavior was taught to children through observation of the animals.

And he offers his usual interesting takes on modern culture – for example, saying that Native cultures are “honoring” cultures, while European cultures are “discovering” cultures.

As always, he’s a deeply insightful man whose thoughts, to my mind, are well worth hearing.

I can’t let this interview pass without noting the wonderful sense of humor that The Wolf at Twilight shares with Neither Wolf nor Dog.

I’m glad that came through. It’s an essential part of Native life and has been part of every situation I’ve had the good fortune to experience.

Like Jumbo, the four hundred pound mechanic, and Shitty, his assistant Shitty who drives a pickup truck with a plywood door and a mason jar for a carburetor?

Exactly.

And Mr. Peanut?

We don’t talk about Mr. Peanut.

Understandably.

But, yes, this is exactly the kind of humor that I so treasure about the Native world. The tragic and the comic are inseparably intertwined, as are the sacred and the ordinary.

I’m glad you mentioned that intertwining of the sacred and the ordinary.

To me it is one of the key elements of Native culture that the rest of us should embrace. The spiritual is ever-present in their lives, no matter how ordinary or even debased the particular situation might be.

Like the time Dan berated you for not offering thanks to the Creator for a half-cooked rancid hotdog?

You’ve got it.

What else is it that attracts you to Native cultures?

The love of family, the deep connection to the land, the belief in honor, the respect for the elders – I could go on and on. But I hope all these values are revealed in the book.

Well, you’ve been very kind to answer so many questions. Let me try to sum up. Would it be safe to say that The Wolf at Twilight is a teaching story that is part history lesson, part spiritual lesson, and part road novel, and part mystery?

That’s a lot of parts. But, at its best, “yes.” I would add that it’s a glimpse into contemporary Native life that few non-Natives ever see and a story worthy of the hearing.

Let me close with one last question about your interest in Native issues. How did you come by it, and what do you see as your responsibility to Native materials as a non-Native writer?

Thank you for asking this. Part of my interest in Native issues is due to circumstance. I live between three reservations in the woods of northern Minnesota where the white footprint does not run deep. Living and working among Native people where the land still feels like theirs makes it easy to care about the world as they see it and live it.

But part of my interest is because of my belief that a true spirituality should grow naturally from the land. America is Indian land, and the Indian peoples have shaped their spiritual understanding in a way that feels authentic and integrated. We all have much to learn from it, and I want to do my part to assist n that learning.

However, having said that, it is a challenge being a non-Native writer working in Native subject matters. You must always be taking your spiritual temperature to see where you’re at. And you are always open to the criticism of “dabbling in Native themes for fun and profit.” But I look at it as a chosen obligation to use such skills as I have to help bring Native issues and knowledge to as wide an audience as possible.

We are all common children of a common land, and there are wrongs that must be acknowledged and healing that must take place. But more than that, there is a richness in Native tradition – spiritually, culturally, and morally – that has much to teach us all. We need to find a way to listen to that richness without trying to appropriate it or twist it.

My job, as a writer, is to serve as an ally to the Native people to get their story told to the extent that they want it shared, and to help bring the depth of their spiritual insight to bear on the world in which we all live.

The Wolf at Twilight, like it’s predecessor, Neither Wolf nor Dog, is an effort to do this. I hope that you and your readers will find my efforts worthwhile.

I have half-baked theories about his bi-racialism fostering an innate sense of compromise, and larger conspiratorial fears, fostered by my more wing-nut friends, about greater forces than we know forcing decisions upon even our most visionary politicians. But I don’t trust any of these thoughts. They are simply the product of an utter stunned disbelief that the Democrats and Obama would roll over in the face of the moral bankruptcy and outright political criminality of the Republicans and Blue Dogs, and allow a too-gullible American public to be manipulated by craven, disingenuous, politically bought-and-paid-for minions of corporate interests.

So, I resist. Maybe Obama is smarter by a factor of ten than I am, and that he’s playing political “rope a dope.” I have to hope so, and while I entertain this faint hope I will keep my silence regarding my great and bottomless disappointment at what appears to be a policy of appeasement that ranks with the greatest political miscalculations in recent memory.

Perhaps I’ll write more on this as the situation progresses. My hope, however, is that he’ll prove me wrong. All I know for certain is that he allowed the opponents, who are some of the most venal politicians I have seen in my lifetime, to define the issue as one of “public option”, when the real issue is affordable health care for all. It is, as I said before, a fist fight in a closet while the house is burning down.

But, enough. I’m depressing myself just thinking about it. Let’s move on to something more pleasant and exciting.

That “something” is the imminent release of The Wolf at Twilight and the strong support it has already received from many people in the Native community for whom I have the greatest respect. In a few days my new website will be active, and you’ll be able to read many of these comments for yourself. I’ll send out a note when it finally goes on line. But, until then, I thought I’d share the first review we’ve received. It is from Foreword Reviews, which I have been informed is a core source used by librarians and independent booksellers.

Here it is. Enjoy:

The Wolf at Twilight: An Indian

Elder’s Journey Through a Land of Ghosts and Shadows

Kent Nerburn

New World Library

Softcover, $14.95 (344pp)

978-1-57731-578-0

Kent Nerburn’s latest book, The Wolf at Twilight, is a combination of memoir, historical narrative, and spiritual reflection that showcases his innate flair for storytelling. In response to a summons from Dan, a tribal elder, Nerburn returns to the Lakota reservation that provided the landscape for his previous book, Neither Wolf nor Dog. Dan wants Nerburn’s help in finding his sister, Yellow Bird, who was lost nearly 75 years earlier to the U.S. Indian re-education programs. Dan and Nerburn embark on an unsettling journey into a part of the past that has long been relegated to the shadows of the American conscience.

Nerburn’s access to this history is one of the chief strengths of this book. From the 1870s through the 1940s (and beyond) Native American children were separated from their families and sent to federally funded boarding schools whose mission it was to strip Indian language, spirituality, and culture from the children. Former students are increasingly telling of their experiences of malnourishment, overwork, and brutality at the hands of the government and church, and the study of these schools has become one of the most active areas of American Indian historical study. In The Wolf at Twilight, the memories and experiences of Dan and his family give the reader a glimpse of this history and its impact on individuals.

It would be tempting for Nerburn to report this information from the detached and authoritative role of the observer. He successfully shrugs off the role of journalist, however. Nerburn is just as comfortable writing about his own connection to the fraught relations between White America and Native America as he is Dan’s. It is precisely his connection with the people and places in his book that gives his writing resonance. The Wolf at Twilight is a wonderful read for any reader who wants to learn more of our national history, who longs to connect to spirituality, or who simply wants to read a story told from the heart. (November) Lizzy Shramko

Remember, you can pre-order an autographed copy of The Wolf at Twilight by going to wolfnordog.com. I’m very proud of this book and very excited to share it with you.

Technorati : boarding schools, historical trauma, native american, wolf at twilight