Remembering Jim NorthrupSave

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SPEAKER 1: We're remembering the writer and performer Jim Northrup, who died yesterday afternoon. He was 73. The acclaimed Ojibwe author, playwright, and poet wrote stories inspired by Indian lore, as well as works about his personal experiences growing up on the infamous-- or growing up in the infamous Indian boarding schools, living on the Fond Du Lac Reservation, and serving as a Marine during the Vietnam War. He mined his experience in this poem, "Grandma's Hair"

JOHN NORTHRUP: It was really crazy at times.

Once we got caught out in this big rice paddy.

Bad guys started shooting at us.

I was close to the front of the formation,

So I got inside the tree line quick.

They couldn't see me anymore.

When I leaned over to catch my breath,

| heard the snick, snick, bang sound of someone firing a bolt-action rifle,

Shooting at the Marines still out in the rice paddy.

I could tell where he was from the sound of his rifle.

Snick, snick, bang.

I fired a three-round burst at the noise.

That [BLEEP] turned and fired at me.

I saw the muzzle flash, heard the bullets snap by at the same time.

I fired another three-round burst.

I moved closer.

Then, through a little opening in the brush,

I could see what looked like a pile of rags, bloody rags.

I went over and gave them one in the head to make sure.

We used to do that all the time, one in the head to make sure.

When my 7.62 bullet hit, it knocked his hat off.

When his hat came off, all his hair come spilling out.

It was a woman. She had hair like my grandma's.

SPEAKER 1: That's Ojibwe writer and performer Jim Northrup, and his poem "Grandma's Hair." Northrup died yesterday. He was 73. Euan Kerr spoke with him last month as he was facing the end stages of cancer. Find that profile online at mprnews.org Northrup will be honored in a traditional Anishinaabeg wake and funeral this Thursday and Friday at Sawyer Community Center in Sawyer, Minnesota.

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