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SPEAKER: Jim Northrup isn't feeling great. In fact, he's very sick, but he's not worried. The Ojibwe writer, poet, performer, and basket maker lives on the Fond du Lac Reservation, south of Cloquet. Euan Kerr visited him recently to talk about life, death, art, and laughter.

EUAN KERR: Jim Northrup sits in a chair outside his home. As is his custom, he introduces himself in Ojibwe.

JIM NORTHRUP: [SPEAKING OJIBWE]

EUAN KERR: He pauses and then translates.

JIM NORTHRUP: So I said, hello, my relatives. I only speak a little bit of Ojibwe, but I'll try speaking Ojibwe. My name is Jim Northrup in the English language. I'm called Chibenashi in Ojibwe. My clan is Bear. I'm from the Fond du Lac reservation. And I live in the village of Sawyer.

EUAN KERR: He grew up speaking Ojibwe, but his teachers put an end to that when he went to one of the infamous Indian boarding schools. Northrup is 73 now. He uses Ojibwe as much as he can.

JIM NORTHRUP: Because I'm dreaming in it. I've got an eight month, two-year-old great granddaughter, and I speak to her all the time in the language because I want her to get familiar with the sounds of it. So when it comes time for her to speak, she'll be ready.

EUAN KERR: Northrup moves slower than he used to and occasionally pauses to catch his breath.

JIM NORTHRUP: I have cancer of the lung, and I have lymph nodes and my nose. I had a polyp in my nose that turned out to be cancer. And I go in for radiation on the spot that's in my brain. We must thank Uncle Sam for agent orange, because I think that's where it's from.

EUAN KERR: Northrup served in the US Marine Corps in Vietnam. A lot of his poetry focuses on that time. He also chronicled modern native life in his pointedly humorous syndicated column, Fond Du Lac Follies. Humor is helping him now. He's been composing inscriptions for his tombstone.

JIM NORTHRUP: Here's one deadline I didn't miss, and I think I read this one in a cartoon someplace. It was, "See, I told you it wasn't the flu."

EUAN KERR: He pauses and gets a little more serious.

JIM NORTHRUP: Gone to feed the trees and grass.

EUAN KERR: Northrup and his wife, Pat, live a traditional life on the Fond du Lac Reservation, gathering the bounty of nature through the circle of the seasons. They're known for their birch bark, wild rice baskets. The bark is gathered during the late spring when a skilled collector with a knife can pop whole sheets off a tree without harming it. Inside his house, singed baskets hang on the wall, bearing the smoke smudges from when they were used to parch rice gathered in the fall. Friends come a long way to learn what the Northrups have to teach.

TED CHARLES: [NAVAJO] Theodore Charles [NAVAJO].

EUAN KERR: Ted Charles introduces himself in Navajo. He's come from his home in New Mexico to check in on his ailing friend.

TED CHARLES: I knew Jim since 1961, '62 when we were in the Marine Corps, and we spent some time together. We were in Cuba together, plus some other choice spots like Hong Kong. And-- [LAUGHS] yeah, we'll talk about that later.

JIM NORTHRUP: We never did.

EUAN KERR: He does talk about how he makes traditional hunting bows from Hickory and deer sinew. He gets some of his supplies on these trips north. He also gets know-how.

TED CHARLES: Every time I come up here, Jim's always teaching me something. Like we went out to the ditch banks the other day, and we collected some kinnikinnick. We don't have that down in New Mexico either.

EUAN KERR: Kinnikinnick mixes well with tobacco or can be smoked on its own. Living a traditional life gives Jim Northrup peace and satisfaction, particularly now as he contemplates the end of his life.

JIM NORTHRUP: I know where I'm going. I'm going to, as the Ojibwe call it, in the language, the land of everlasting happiness.

[SPEAKING OJIBWE]

EUAN KERR: Northrup takes a fresh cup of coffee from Pat, who sits down nearby. They've been together for 37 years.

PAT NORTHRUP: A few months ago, he said, "Pat, I'm going to give you a year." I said, "Good, OK." And then not too long ago, he says, "Pat, I'm going to give you a year." I said, "Jim, you said that six months ago." He says, "OK, I'll give you another year."

EUAN KERR: Pat and Jim Northrup say they argue a lot. Jim claims often when he says one thing, she'll say the opposite. This prompts another tale. Jim says they were out driving near Cloquet.

JIM NORTHRUP: And a black dog ran across the highway, and I said, black. And she said, white. And a white dog ran across the highway.

EUAN KERR: It can get heated, Pat says, but she recently put it to him, what with him being ill, a lot of it is unimportant.

PAT NORTHRUP: If we have our disagreements, can we just say, let's start over. And he said, yeah, we can do that. So we've had let's start over, maybe just a handful of times in his last few months.

EUAN KERR: It's harder for them both to get out into the woods nowadays, but that's not stopping them. Family and friends harvested birch bark for them this year, so they can make baskets. They started that after finishing the annual task of tapping their maple trees and boiling down the sweet sap for syrup.

JIM NORTHRUP: People always ask me, how much did you get? And I say, I got enough for anishinaabe, not enough for a [OJIBWE].

EUAN KERR: Meaning?

JIM NORTHRUP: Oh. I got enough for us, but not for a white guy.

EUAN KERR: Are you insinuating something?

JIM NORTHRUP: Yes. Yes, I am.

[LAUGHTER]

Sarah, [OJIBWE]. That means come here.

EUAN KERR: Sarah Agaton Howes has lived across the street from the Northrups for several years.

SARAH AGATON HOWES: Well, Jim and Pat are really the patriarch and matriarch of this community.

EUAN KERR: Agaton Howes says, after much encouragement from the Northrups, her family tapped their own maple trees this spring.

SARAH AGATON HOWES: They borrowed us their kettle, and we did sugar bush for the first time, then, you know, burn sap and text Pat. And she'd come over and help me figure out what I did wrong with my sap. And so I feel like this is the best place to live. And so we're right here.

EUAN KERR: This causes a glint in Jim Northrup's eyes and an amused lifting of the edge of his mouth. Many things amuse him. He liked one newspaper article he read which had him standing on death's doorstep. Could be, he says. Or maybe not. He's not feeling sorry for himself.

JIM NORTHRUP: It's just one of the many things you can die from. The traffic accidents that are killing thousands every year. Cancer is just another one of those things that are, to quote myself in the poem, I said thinning the herd.

EUAN KERR: Another joke balanced with a worldview that leaves him at peace.

JIM NORTHRUP: I don't fear it. There's nothing to be afraid of. It's just a different world. I'm changing addresses.

EUAN KERR: And Jim Northrup breathes deep of the pine scented air and smiles again. Covering the arts in Sawyer, Minnesota, I'm Euan Kerr on the Fond du Lac Reservation.