Not from Here: A Memoir

When Allan Johnson asked his dying father where he wanted his ashes to be placed, his father replied-without hesitation-that it made no difference to him at all. In his poignant, powerful memoir, Not from Here, Johnson embarks on an extraordinary, 2,000-mile journey across the Upper Midwest and Northern Plains to find the place where his father’s ashes belonged.

As a white man with Norwegian and English lineage, Johnson explores both America and the question of belonging to a place whose history holds the continuing legacy of the displacement, dispossession, and genocide of Native peoples.

More than a personal narrative, Not from Here illuminates the national silence around unresolved questions of accountability, race, and identity politics, and the dilemma of how to take responsibility for a past we did not create. Johnson’s story-about the past living in the present; of redemption, fate, family, tribe, and nation; of love and grief-raises profound questions about belonging, identity, and place.