Michael A. Dorris, a contemporary author of anthropological studies, poetry and short stories, best known for his work in prose. Perhaps his interest and later achievement of a Masters of Philosophy in anthropology from Yale, in 1970 came from his unique genealogic tree, Irish and French on his mother’s side, and Modoc Indian on his father’s. Though born in Louisville, Kentucky on January 30, 1945, his family relocated to Passau, Germany where his father became a stationed army lieutenant. Soon after, in a tragic jeep accident, his father passed away and the family moved back to Louisville. After his father’s death, Michael was raised an only child in a loving household by “two grandmothers, three aunts, and a mother, all of whom were very strong women” (Chavkin 217). Perhaps these women’s strength inspired the novel A Yellow Raft in Blue Water. Though the family was destitute, hard work allowed him to go to college after obtaining a scholarship from Georgetown University. “For me, going to college was the most wonderful thing imaginable…I always liked to read, and at last I was surrounded by other people who read in a place where people were expected to read…I was the first person ever on either side of my fam

At the end of Rayona and Christine, we find Christine, once thought of as an antagonist becomes a protagonist, and their bonds of family are stronger than ever, due to the things they shared in the past. Also we discover Ida’s true feelings, motives and her actual message as a protagonist. She joins the two and the triad and chord of their family bond is magnificent. They have found that the true way of surviving life is through family. With music, like family, solos do not make up the song. The true symphony lies in all the sounds of all the different instruments blending together.

y family to go to college. I went on a scholarship. We were literally poor. We existed on my father’s pension. So I worked very hard. I wouldn’t have dreamed of taking a year off to ‘find’ myself or even missing a class” (Chavkin 91). This hard work paid off in 1967 as he graduated cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with a Bachelors of Arts in English and the classics. After a year in the graduate program at the Department of History of the Theater at Yale University, he changed his focus to anthropology. Upon the completion of college, he received an assistant professor position at the University of Redlands in California in 1970 and at Franconia College in New Hampshire in 1971-1972, eventually becoming Dartmouth bound in 1972. While single, in 1971, 1974, and in 1976, he adopted two boys and one girl, all of whom had Sioux heritage. In 1979, he became a full professor founded and chaired the Native American Studies Department at Dartmouth. He wed Louise Erdrich, a graduate of Dartmouth and known author, and in 1981. They later produced three additional girls. He started publishing anthropological studies in 1975, but Erdrich encouraged him to write fiction. They began publishing poetry and short stories under the name Milou North, and they collectively began to work on all literary products that either produced. His many awards in Native American Studies helped him to become strong in his ethnicity and later write the work A Yellow Raft in Blue Water in 1987.

The resourceful Ida, having lived her whole life on the reservation, went through hard times, which she had to face alone. One scholar added:

Christine’s naïve views of life outside the reservation bring up a strenuous ordeal that spread out, like a hand, into many different problems. Christine believes “the only way people around [there] are going to have an ounce of respect for Lee” (167), for tribal elections in the future, “is if he serves his country” (167) and has “Veteran” written under his picture as a nominee. She is naïve by not believing anything will happen to him in the war because of her sheltered life on the reservation. Does she want him to be successful in a future