To be held at 6 p.m. on Tuesday at the Library
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The Huron Public Library is pleased to present the movie “Neither Wolf nor Dog,” Tuesday at 6 p.m. at the Library. Adapted from the acclaimed novel by Kent Nerburn, the story follows a white author who gets sucked into the heart of contemporary Native American life in the sparse lands of the Dakota’s by a 95-year-old Lakota elder and his side-kick.
Kent Nerburn, a goodhearted, white American writer, receives a mysterious phone call asking him to meet an old man on a distant Indian reservation. Despite misgivings, Kent travels across the Great Plains to the old man Dan’s clapboard shack on a bleak and poverty stricken reservation. Dan interrogates Kent as to his motives for working with Natives. Satisfied, Dan hands Kent a shoe-box full of notes and tells him to turn them into a book. Kent is stunned by their profound insights about American culture and the Native perspective. In a desolate motel, Kent tries to construct a chapter from the notes.
Upon his return to read it to Dan, he’s subjected to a frosty reception from Dan’s granddaughter, Wenonah, and his friend, Grover, who describes it as “tom tom bullshit.” Upset, Kent frantically reworks it but fails. Dan convinces him to ask Grover for help. Grover agrees, but persuades Dan to burn the notes. Kent is horrified. “Now we’ll do it the Indian way,” Grover states. “Now you’re the box. Now we’re going to fill you up.”
After a tormented night, Kent wakes resolved to quit, but upon returning to tell Dan, Wenonah informs him “Dan’s gone on a little trip.” Kent confronts Wenonah as to their terrible treatment of him, but she silences him with a barrage of the horrors Dan has faced. Kent angrily speeds away; ironically, his truck revolts and dies. In despair he leaves it in the hands of Jumbo, a 400-pound mechanic. Grover and Dan emerge and suck Kent into a road trip deep into Lakota Country; stopping at an old, ruined homestead, visiting a “frontier town” museum and helping a drunk Lakota man and his girlfriend. Throughout Dan talks sporadically, echoing the notes in the box. Kent records it all.
COURTESY PHOTO
The film, “Neither Wolf nor Dog,” will be shown Tuesday at 6 p.m. at the Huron Public Library. The book is based on the acclaimed novel by Kent Nernburn.