I’m Foremost a Storyteller: A Guest Post by William Kent Krueger
From Iron Lake to Spirit Crossing, the Cork O’Connor series has been entertaining us for over 25 years. Read on for William Kent Krueger’s exclusive guest post where he reflects on his time writing this series and explains the real-life inspiration behind Spirit Crossing.
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Spirit Crossing (Cork O'Connor Series #20)
Spirit Crossing (Cork O'Connor Series #20)
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Hardcover
$20.29
$28.99
Cork O’Connor teams up with the Iron Lake Ojibwe Tribal Police in this atmospheric murder mystery interweaved with Indigenous lore.
Cork O’Connor teams up with the Iron Lake Ojibwe Tribal Police in this atmospheric murder mystery interweaved with Indigenous lore.
If you take a good look at the content of the novels in my Cork O’Connor series, it should become obvious that many of the stories are built around an issue important to the Native American community. I’ve written about the battle over hunting and fishing treaty rights, the struggle to preserve sacred land, the influx of drugs and gangs on the reservation, the sexual trafficking of vulnerable Native women and children. Over the years, as I’ve spoken with my friends in the Ojibwe community in Minnesota, I’ve become more and more aware of yet another threat to the Native population of this continent—Murdered and Missing Indigenous People (MMIP).
In Indian Country, the issue of MMIP has been well-known for decades. Only recently has the alarming number of victims involved begun to seep into the consciousness of non-Native people. When I talk about this issue with my Ojibwe friends, I hear their frustration at the lack of response from law enforcement. All too often, I’m told, those responsible for investigating reports of missing persons ignore the pleas for help from families desperately trying to find a missing loved one. And if the worst happens and the loved one is found murdered, the response on the part of law enforcement is often blunted or blundering. The reasons vary. Confusion over jurisdiction, miscommunication among the many agencies that might be involved, lack of resources in rural areas, or just plain foot-dragging by some members of law enforcement who continue to hold to the detrimental stereotypes of Indians.
To get a better sense of the issues involved, I spoke not only with my friends in the Native community, some of whom know the issue from personal experience, but also with several people in Minnesota whose work directly involves coordinating law enforcement efforts in Indian Country. When it comes to law enforcement and the sovereign nations of Native people, jurisdictional complexities can create enormous barriers to effective policing. Despite this—or perhaps because of this and the growing awareness of its impact—there is an increasing effort, at least in Minnesota, to better address the issue of MMIP.
I’m foremost a storyteller and my first order of business always is to create a compelling tale. But I also hope that the stories I write for my series and that involve issues significant to my friends in the Native community might help broaden an awareness among White readers of the challenges Indigenous people face in so many aspects of their lives. To be publishing my 20th novel in the series is both gratifying and, frankly, a little amazing to me. I certainly had no idea when I began writing my first Cork O’Connor novel in the spring of 1992 that I’d still be composing these stories more than thirty years later. I’m eternally grateful to the readers who’ve encouraged me all along, to my publisher who has given me wonderful support in every regard, and to the Native people in this country, and in Minnesota particularly, whose trust I value, and whose courage and perseverance in the face of so many challenges continues to fill me with admiration and respect. I am, I recognize, a man much blessed.