Yellow Bird

Hard to figure out, categorize, or rate. Ostensibly a memoir of the titular Lissa Yellow Bird — a truly memorable, fascinating, haunting and haunted character — the book is both much more and somewhat less: the Oil Curse; Native American sovereignty and resiliency despite the centuries-long abuses of the U.S. government; corruption; obsession; the power of relationships; and of course murder most foul. Murdoch treated these all as co-themes, not side ones, lending them equal weight, each one captivating but overall a little too choppy for me: I found it hard to track the broader picture.

Memorable, though: I finished the book feeling admiration for Yellow Bird, her family, and even the (outsider) author. I do wish the author had placed the Author's Note, or crucial parts of it, as a foreword instead of at the end — but I'm not sure how that could be done. So I'll just offer a heads-up to potential readers: the author does address some of the discomfort you may feel while reading, and does so to my satisfaction.

What an incredible tale of the MHA nation, of the Yellow Birds, of KC and the people around him, of the Arikara people and their land and the federal government's cruelty towards them. This is a story about a lot of people and a lot of land and all of it is too true and too untrue to be believed. I cried. I laughed. It hurt me to know that KC's body was not found. 

I want to be clear about something: I don't respect “True Crime” as a genre, or as a cultural touchstone in the U.S. This is not a “True Crime” book. This is a memoir, a biography, a sociopolitical explanation, an anthropological investigation. This is not about KC's murder at the same time that KC's murder drives the book and many of the folks in the book to the conclusion and the trial.

I doubt I will ever read something like this again. A book that truly takes to task the people, investigators, lands, peoples, and nations involved and present when someone is murdered; Yellow Bird is incredible. I'm glad I read it.