A Return to Attention

Price

$50-300*

Duration

4 Weeks

About the Course

“As an Anishinaabek person, I believe our original instruction, from the moment of our creation, is to go out in the world and listen. To pay attention to it."

— Chris La Tray

The Seven Fires prophecy of the Anishinaabek people tells us that, in order to survive into a green and beautiful future, we must return along the trail to retrieve those traditions we have had to set aside along the way to getting where we are today. Attention to the relationship we have with our world is one of those traditions. This workshop is an initial step toward that return, in how we pay attention first to our own lives and how we might reflect that attention out into the world.

A Return to Attention is a four-week, face-to-face via Zoom course meeting July 6, 13, 20 & 27 from 7:30-9 pm Mountain.

Registration opens June 12.

Cost is what you* can afford: recommended $50-$300.

*If you are Indigenous (American Indian, Alaska Native, First Nations, Native American, etc), this course is free - email Anna@chickadeecs.org.

Your Instructor

Chris La Tray

Chris La Tray is a Métis storyteller, a descendent of the Pembina Band of the mighty Red River of the North and a citizen of the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians. His third book, Becoming Little Shell: A Landless Indian’s Journey Home, was published by Milkweed Editions on August 20, 2024 and was a winner of a 2025 Pacific Northwest Book Award and a 2025 Writing the West Award. His first book, One-Sentence Journal: Short Poems and Essays from the World at Large won the 2018 Montana Book Award and a 2019 High Plains Book Award. His book of haiku and haibun poetry, Descended from a Travel-worn Satchel, was published in 2021 by Foothills Publishing. Chris served as the 2025 Kittredge Distinguished Visiting Writer at the University of Montana and was awarded the 2025 Montana Heritage Keeper Award by the Montana Historical Society. Chris writes the weekly newsletter "An Irritable Métis" and lives near Frenchtown, Montana. He was the 11th Montana state poet laureate from 2023–2025.