Waking Up In Paradise

FROM CHAPTER ONE: Love It or Leave It

June 15, 1974

A sleeping bag, one small suitcase, and two boxes of books. A road atlas and a cloth shoulder bag large enough to hold a wallet, my hairbrush, a letter or two. Everything else—except the latest boyfriend—behind me. Or so I thought.

I pointed by ’68 VW Bug west toward the Rosebud Indian Reservation where Eric was waiting for me. I wasn't an anthropologist or journalist, a social worker, government employee, or missionary, just a twenty-one-year-old trailing a rebellious white boy, my excuse to get far away from my parents and their vision of the young lawyer or businessman I’d marry someday. Some years later, Eric would graduate from law school with honors to become an attorney specializing in Indian law—not the kind of lawyer they had wished for.

Now that I had my college degree, my father wanted to send me to secretarial school. It was the only occupation he could imagine for an unmarried woman other than nursing or teaching. He knew my history of fainting at the sight of blood—a reflex I inherited from him—so nurse was unthinkable, and I had no interest in becoming a teacher. You’d make an excellent secretary. He’d said that more than once. I'd known and admired several of the executive secretaries who'd served him over the years—capable women who could have had much different lives if given the chance. After earning a degree from all-female Smith College, I had no desire to imitate the design of their lives. Rather, I heralded the accomplishments and independence of Smith alumnae like Gloria Steinem, the artistry of Sylvia Plath.

There would be no Katie Gibbs secretarial school for me.

I was crossing the prairie, headed for an Indian reservation, traveling to a state I could barely place on a map six months ago. South Dakota. I liked the exotic sound, its texture on my tongue...

A Thirty-Year Writing Journey

I couldn't give up

“There are stories that take seven years to tell. There are other stories that take you all your life.”

-- Diane Glancy, The West Pole

Waking Up In Paradise is not just a personal memoir given its important historical context and my young narrator’s reflections on having unwittingly landed there. How I struggled to belong that first summer as one of the only white people around… how the daily life and awe-inspiring ceremonies of this legendary Lakota family provided love and healing while forcing me to confront astounding poverty and my nation’s ugly, genocidal history… and how I processed the persistent, often violent, government supported harassment of the Crow Dogs and the AIM camp at Paradise and eventually took defiant action myself… those experiences and themes propel the narrative forward in this character-rich story. Well-grounded historical facts woven in at important moments lend weight to that tapestry.

While I cannot claim Indigenous ancestry, what I offer readers, specifically non-Native readers, is the story of an outsider like them—a beneficiary of what Native historian Nick Estes and others describe as “settler colonialism”—waking up first-hand to its enduring consequences for Indigenous communities.

My decision to publish this story has not come easily. The misrepresentation and exploitation of Indigenous traditions by non-Indians are serious concerns that have plagued Native peoples and communities for generations. Examples of such cultural appropriation are plentiful in all forms of media and ubiquitous, though largely unacknowledged, in place names, fashion, even the auto industry. If anything, this story—rife with examples of ignorance and clumsiness on the narrator’s part—holds up a mirror to white America in a way that I believe only a white person can do.

Awards, Residencies, Publication & More

Awards

These first four awards recognized excerpts from an earlier draft of Waking Up In Paradise or a related essay:

2018: Finalist in Nonfiction, Tucson Festival of Books, Tucson, AZ

2016: Finalist in Nonfiction, Top of the Mountain Award, Northern Colorado Writers, Ft. Collins, CO

2015: Finalist in Creative Nonfiction, Writers at Work, Salt Lake City, UT

1992: Summer Fishtrap Fellowship, Enterprise, OR www.fishtrap.org

1977: B.K. Roy Prize for best essay, University of Wisconsin-Madison Dept. of South Asian Studies

1974: Dean's List, Smith College
1973: Citation for Academic Excellence, Dartmouth College (I attended Dartmouth my junior year on the Twelve-College Exchange)

Residencies

2016: Artist Residency, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, Nebraska City, NE

2016: Pentaculum Writing Residency, Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, Gatlinburg, TN

Publication

Smith Alumnae Quarterly, Fall 2015: "Words with Friends,"

The Aspen Institute blog, 2014-2015, various posts. See aspeninstitute.org

The Aspen Idea, Summer 2014, Aspen Writers' Foundation Uses Poetry Slam to Empower Kids , see page 67

The Sopris Sun, Carbondale’s nonprofit newspaper, June 13 and June 20, 2013, "A Ditch Runs Through It," two-part series on potential impacts of oil and gas development on water in the Thompson Divide. Also a variety of other articles and theater reviews, 2013-2016: See soprissun.com (search on "Dills")

In Defense of Che Wana, 1985, self-published booklet on contemporary Indian fishing rights struggles along the Columbia River in Oregon and Washington.

Radio Interview

Featured interview on the monthly show and podcast, Shifting Gears, on KDNK Community Radio, September 1, 2025,

Why this book? Why now?

The People. The Place. The Times.

For generations, the Crow Dog family was at the center of efforts to protect and preserve Lakota spiritual and cultural traditions. I had the rare good fortune, as a 21-year-old white woman from the East, to be welcomed into their multi-dimensional world.
The American Indian Movement was not perfect, but it has been unfairly maligned over time, beginning with misrepresentation in the media during and after the Occupation of Wounded Knee in 1973. My personal experience living with good-hearted AIM members and the kind Lakota elders who sheltered and mentored them offers an outsider's "inside look" at the time known on South Dakota reservations as "The Reign of Terror."
The Crow Dogs' enduring wisdom and spiritually-grounded values -- reflected in the daily life they shared with me -- has much to offer the wider world in these troubled times.
"Be a good relative" is a central value in Lakota culture. To be a good relative means including all of nature, not just our fellow humans: the animals, fish, insects, and birds as well as the so-called inanimate expressions of nature (the rocks, the water, the air, the soil, etc.). Those of us who are not descendants of the Indigenous people of this hemisphere can strive to be good relatives, too. But we might also consider the call to "be a good ally." Supporting the current efforts of Indigenous people and organizations to preserve that wisdom and way of life for the health and well-being of their communities is a critical next step. I hope this story inspires readers to find personally meaningful ways to do that.