Tricia Renée Kucinski | Author

Chicago is a pretty great place for artists of all types to be. I’m originally from Wyoming, though, more specifically the Wind River Indian Reservation. My yet unpublished novel is set in my homeland. Growing up, I moved back and forth between Fort Washakie, a community within the Rez, and Lander, a neighboring mountain town. You’ve probably never heard of any of the places I’ve mentioned, and I understand that now. 

Chicago is a pretty great place for artists of all types to be. I’m originally from Wyoming, though, more specifically the Wind River Indian Reservation. My novel is set in my homeland. Growing up, I moved back and forth between Fort Washakie, a community within the Rez, and Lander, a neighboring mountain town. You’ve probably never heard of any of the places I’ve mentioned, and I understand that now.

When I first moved to Chicagoland, I was frequently asked where I came from. Upon answering, “Wyoming”, I was always met with, “where’s that?”. To me, it was a strange response, given that Wyoming is such a large state. Once I was asked, “what is that?”.

What is that?

“One of the 50 states” is all I could think to say! It baffled me then, but it’s kind of funny to me now. 

The fact is, Wind River is the size of Rhode Island and Delaware combined. That’s not all of Wyoming, just the Rez. There are more Indians there (and everywhere) than most people know about or can imagine, but Wyoming as a whole is isolated and underpopulated. People often ask me what reservation life is like. It’s difficult to explain a place they don’t believe or understand exists in a “first-world” nation like America. So I will quote a 2012 New York Times article to help you visualize:

Crime may be Wind River’s most pressing problem, but it has plenty of company. Life, even by the grim standards of the typical American Indian reservation, is as bleak and punishing as that of any developing country. On average, residents can expect to live 49 years, 20 years fewer than in Iraq.

The reservation’s high school dropout rate of 40 percent is more than twice the state average. Teenagers and young adults are twice as likely to kill themselves as their peers elsewhere in Wyoming. Child abuse, teenage pregnancy, sexual assault and domestic violence are endemic, and alcoholism and drug abuse are so common that residents say positive urinalysis results on drug tests are what bar many from working at the state’s booming oil fields.

And it goes on.

It hurts me to read that for many reasons. My mom died at 46–below the (shockingly low) average life expectancy. My tribe is plagued with alcoholism and addiction issues, suicide, and other unspeakable sorrows detailed above.

What’s most hurtful, though, is that it isn’t the full picture, and it isn’t anyone’s story to tell but ours.

Despite the undeniable multi-generational pain and tragedy that has gripped Wind River and American Indians, that’s not all we are. We’re not just tragedy. We’re also not your metaphysical, spiritual, transcendental mascot either, while I’ve got you here.

We are love, lust, pain, strife, dysfunction, joy, boredom, ecstasy, cunning, victory, casualty, human.

Through all of this, we are storytellers. We are storytellers in a very meaningful way, with our Elders passing on everything from family anecdotes to oral history of the tribe. And we are storytellers in a nurtured way, where we bullshit, joke, and entertain—the way we learned, the way we passed time, the way we’ve always known.

So, I wrote a book called The Courage to Exist in Daylight, which sees Mary-Claire through the days-long burial ceremonies for her mother. There’s pain, there’s crime, there’s truth. And jokes. We’re not just sad.