The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich ****

***2021 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction*** TheNight Watchman by Louise Erdrich tells the story of congressional plans to terminate the Turtle Mountain Chippewa, abrogate their treaties, and take away their land. Following Pixie, her grandfather, and several others, the story of the people on the Turtle Mountain Reservation unfolds. It is a story of a heroic challenge to white encroachment, triumphant spirit, and the dismal treatment of the native Americans. Alternately it is a heart-warming tale of overcoming adversity and humble circumstances

It is set in “the mid - 1950s, supposedly the golden age for America, but in reality a time when Jim Crow reigned and American Indians were at the nadir of power — our traditional religions outlawed, our land base continually and illegally seized (even as now) by resource extraction companies, our languages weakened by government boarding schools.” The narrator is Pixie (Patrice) Paranteau, a single young woman with works at the Jewel Bearing Plant. The central character is her grandfather who is chairman of the Turtle Mountain Advisory Committee and night watchman at the Jewel Bearing Plant.

Opposite Thomas Wazhashk and the Turtle Mountain Chippewa was Senator Arthur V. Watkins. He “was indeed a pompous racist. But to give Watkins his due, he also was instrumental in bringing down Senator Joe McCarthy and ending an ugly era in national politics.” In “Watkins’s religion, the Mormon people had been divinely gifted all of the land they wanted. Indians weren’t white and delightsome, but cursed with dark skin, so they had no right to live on the land. That they had signed legal treaties with the highest governmental bodies in the United States was also nothing to Watkins. Legality was second to personal revelation. Everything was second to personal revelation. And Joseph Smith’s personal revelation, all written down in The Book of Mormon, was that his people alone were the best and should possess the earth.”

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