My grandparents were Finnish immigrants who homesteaded in Montana in 1890. They were pioneers, but not in the winning of the west kind of way. Because they died before I was born, and their records were lost, I had to put together their story from sories I was told by my father and other relatives. Because of the multiple voices, I used a hybrid, a poly-vocal, multi-genre form. Also I wanted to open, in places, to a more associative use of words, poetry perhaps, as the use of words is important to me.

My grandfather--Gus Johnson, Gusti, The Old Man--was a miner and an alcoholic, mean when he was drinking or needing a drink. My father didn't like him.

My grandmother, Hilda, was in the old country considered a shaman, but in the new world she was called a midwife. Finland being at the remote edge of Europe, many ancient traditions--rune singing and shamanic healing--remained well into the Nineteenth and even Twentieth Centuries. She was a healer who used cups and often exchanged information with her neighbors--the Crow or Apsalooke tribe. For these transactions she often sent my father, her youngest, to their village. When my grandfather was declared dead after a mine accident, she brought him back.

Their story was a story of stories--healing, cooperation, even shipbuilding. Whitebird is a hybrid history told from these stories.

Jim Johnson has published twelve books of poetry, most recently A Good Sauna Always Burns Down (Shipwreckt Books, 2025). He was twice honored as Poet Laureate of Duluth, Minnesota. He taught writing in the Duuth public schools and at the College of St. Scholastica and continues to conduct family history writing workshops.