Not wolf not dog (book)

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Not wolf not dog : On forgotten paths with an old Indian (in the original Neither Wolf nor Dog: On Forgotten Roads with an Indian Elder ) is a book published by Kent Nerburn in 1994, which, on the one hand, deals with the American way of life Native people busy and on the other hand their soul beings explored. It takes up the problem of the coexistence of whites and Indians in the United States and spans the range from the historical past to the present situation.

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At the beginning of the encounter Kent Nerburns with the natives of the North American continent , the call is a young woman who, in the name of her grandfather, who him in a Lakota - Reservation lives, asks him to visit as he intended to tell him to know. After a few days of deliberation, Nerburn set off for South Dakota, complying with the request . When he arrived at the reservation, he met Dan, an aging Indian, for the first time . Now at the end of his life, he intends to hire Nerburn as a ghostwriter for his planned book, in which his innumerable written notes, made over many years, will be used. In the course of viewing the material as well as after writing the first manuscripts, Dan is quite impressed by what has been presented. Not so Glover, a friend of Dan, whom Nerburn first met after a long absence during a renewed visit. He criticizes Nerburn, who tries to find a style appropriate to the occasion, to the effect of writing euphemisms like a stereotypical "white" about Indians without depicting reality. Taking up Glover's assessment, Dan decides to burn all of his notes in order to enable a fresh start and thereby enable Nerburn to “write a good book”.

With this in mind, Dan and Grover employ a trick that emerges from favorable circumstances. When Nerburn's pick-up had to be brought to a workshop for repairs during its long stay on the reservation, during which he was trying to find his way into the Native American way of life, the owner of the Nerburn deliberately left Jumbo in the dark about the actual duration of the repair, so that Dan and Grover manage to convince Nerburn of the idea of ​​going on a “little trip”. Also part of the party is Dan's dog Fatback, who has found shelter in a weathered car in front of Dan's house.

So begins in Grover's old Buick a journey to the most diverse places of Indian life, paired with grumpy, didactic and sometimes spiritual monologues of Dans, which are recorded by Nerburn or put on paper. In those, Dan ponders the ignorance of whites about his culture as well as the suffering of the Indians in the past and present. It illustrates the different values ​​of whites and Indians with regard to their moral and material values, supported by Glover, who works as a driver. In addition, the excursion enables Nerburn, who is increasingly feeling relegated to his needs due to the ignorance of the two Indians, to gain deeper insights into Dan's family life and to fathom his soul life, in which, among other things, Wounded Knee , a place where the US cavalry killed 150 unarmed men, women and children of the Minneconjou-Lakota people , plays a not insignificant role and accordingly the memorial in honor of the murdered is an important goal of the tour, an end point at which Dan the dead in the traditional way commemorates and Nerburn, included in that ritual, approaches the original Indian culture transcendently, slowly understanding its essence.

Reviews

  • Harald Eggebrecht states in a review for the Süddeutsche Zeitung that Kent Nerburn's "literary road movie" comes close to the "Native Americans without taking them over". He describes the journey of the three protagonists "as a journey of soul and education for the white man into the strangeness and diversity of Indian thought and Indian worldview". In the following, he points to the “guilty conscience” of the perpetrators with regard to the “outrages” committed, with which “the Indians were and are deceived, cheated, slaughtered, driven out, enslaved and considered inferior”.
  • Günther Wessel describes in his review for Deutschlandfunk Kultur that Kent Nerburn is on a “road trip through the Midwest ”, during which “the most important thing is the conversations” that he has with the two fellow travelers. These enable him "to penetrate deeper and deeper into the thinking of the Indians" and to understand their way of life to an increasing extent. Nerburn “senses” “that many Indians do not see themselves as poor victims”, but rather want to be seen as an integral part of a society guided by acceptance.

General

Not Wolf Not Dog found its publication in 1994 under the title Neither Wolf Nor Dog in the United States , where it received the Minnesota Book Award in the Personal Voices category the following year . The work is considered the first part of a trilogy that was continued on the one hand in The Wolf at Twilight: An Indian Elder's Journey through a Land of Ghosts and Shadows (2009) and on the other in The Girl Who Sang to the Buffalo (2013) . The film was adapted in 2016 and directed by Steven Lewis Simpson from a screenplay by Kent Nerburn . Along with the cinematographic implementation, a new edition of Neither Wolf Nor Dog appeared for the English-speaking world in 2017, and in 2018 the German-language edition, translated by Sky Nonhoff and published by the Munich publisher CH Beck, entitled Not wolf not dog: On forgotten paths with an old Indian .

The book was first published in German in 1997 in a translation by Ursula Graefe with the title The last holy things: On the trail of Indian wisdom .

literature

Kent Nerburn , Not Wolf Not Dog: On Forgotten Paths with an Ancient Indian . Verlag CH Beck , 2018, in the English original Neither Wolf Nor Dog, On Forgotten Roads with an Indian Elder , in the translation by Sky Nonhoff , with a foreword by Robert Plant . ISBN 978-3-406-72498-5 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Harald Eggebrecht: Silence dear. Süddeutsche Zeitung, November 11, 2018, accessed on April 23, 2019 .
  2. ↑ Günther Wessel: Learning respectfully from others. Deutschlandradio Kultur, November 6, 2018, accessed on April 25, 2018 .
  3. ^ A b WorldCat: Kent Nerburn, Neither wolf nor dog: on forgotten roads with an Indian elder. In: WorlCat. Retrieved on April 21, 2019 (English, overview page of all editions).
  4. ^ Minnesota Book Award: Minnesota Book Award Winners & Finalists. Accessed April 21, 2019 (English, overview page of the winners of the award).
  5. ^ Goodreads: Neither Wolf Nor Dog Series. Goodreads, accessed April 21, 2019 .
  6. ^ IMDb: Neither Wolf Nor Dog. In: IMDb. Retrieved April 21, 2019 .
  7. ^ A b Catalog of the German National Library: Kent Nerburn, Not Wolf Not Dog. German National Library, accessed on April 21, 2019 .
  8. ^ Catalog of the German National Library: Kent Nerburn, The last holy things: In the footsteps of Indian wisdom. German National Library, accessed on April 26, 2019 .