The Night Watchman
SynopsisPlot
Thomas Wazhashk is the night watchman at the jewel-bearing plant, the first factory located near the Turtle Mountain Reservation in rural North Dakota. He is also a Chippewa Council member who is trying to understand the consequences of a new “emancipation” bill on its way to the floor of the United States Congress. It is 1953 and he and the other council members know the bill isn’t about freedom; Congress is fed up with Indians. The bill is a “termination” that threatens the rights of Native Americans to their land and their very identity. How can the government abandon treaties made in good faith with Native Americans “for as long as the grasses shall grow, and the rivers run”?
Story
About this book
The year is 1953. Thomas Wazhashk keeps watch at night over a factory that makes jewel bearings, precision parts used in watches and instruments, near the Turtle Mountain Reservation in North Dakota. He also serves on the Chippewa tribal council, where members study a bill heading for Congress. It is called emancipation, but its effect would be termination, ending federal recognition and putting treaty land at risk.
Louise Erdrich based the novel on her grandfather, Patrick Gourneau, who held a similar watchman job and pressed the case against Native land loss as far as Washington. A second thread follows Pixie Paranteau, who has asked everyone to call her Patrice since she left high school. Her pay at the plant barely covers her mother and younger brother, and her father returns at intervals to frighten the family and demand money.
Patrice saves what she can to reach her older sister Vera, who moved to Minneapolis and has not written in months. Her search takes her into the city and into danger. Nearby stand a boxer called Wood Mountain, his mother Juggie Blue, Patrice's friend Valentine, and Hay Stack Barnes, a white teacher and coach. The council's case rests on treaty promises framed to last as long as grass grows and rivers flow.
