MindFull Media: Winter in the Blood

Growing up as a Montanan, history classes are loaded with Lewis and Clark and the Battle of the Little Bighorn with a sprinkle about Glacial Lake Missoula.

We read about the horrors of reservations and Indian boarding schools and how white men strove to assimilate natives into white culture. We fail to hear, however, about the aftermath — how and where the native peoples found their place in Montana society.

James Welch allows you into that world in his novella "Winter in the Blood." It's the "Catcher in the Rye" of 1970s Montana, and it's not every day that the big city setting is Havre, population 9,000.

It's a story of a man searching for an identity as his people are losing their culture, taking readers inside the saloons with interactions between native ranchers and white men. The reader watches as the unnamed protagonist rolls with the punches (literally and metaphorically) as he loses his brother, Mose, and father, First Rise, and is sucker punched in sloppy Havre bars.

It's by no means a happy story, and its pace is slow, but Welch's storytelling holds you in. The book began as a poem and grew into a 135-page narrative ­­— the scene and setting of the Rocky Mountain front, the ranch lands of the Fort Belknap Reservation and a glimpse into what life used to be. The protagonist stumbles from present time to his haunted memories of his brother's death and the mystery of the blind wise man, Yellow Calf.

This weekend, Welch's 1974 book will come to life. The Wilma Theatre and the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival will present a behind-the-scenes documentary, screening a sneak preview of the new motion picture filmed in our backyard: Great Falls, Havre, Glacier Park and the Little Rocky Mountains.

Welch grew up on the Fort Belknap Reservation with his Blackfoot father and Gros Ventre mother. He studied creative writing at the University of Montana, earning a bachelor's and master's degree.  Before Welch passed in 2003, he said that he wished to see his words become pictures, and the only just way to do so was to set the film where he was raised.

The film stars Montanans who grew up on the reservations and some who graduated from UM, as well as many local extras from the greater Great Falls area. The producers had help from the University's Media Arts department. Uncut footage and a question-and-answer session with directors and interns will follow. The documentary may not be the completed movie, but it is a chance to see our mountains, plains and the people who live here — a film set in Montana that may end up in the ranks with "A River Runs Through It."

michael.beall@umontana.edu