Reviews with content warning for Sexual violence - The Night Watchman

My 6th Aspen Words 2021 longlist read! I feel like it’s gonna be cutting it close to get this whole longlist read, but I am doing my best. This is my third novel by Erdrich. I read The Round House before joining starting this blog, years ago now, so I don’t have an official review of it here, but I do have some quick notes I added on Goodreads and the main point is that it was heartbreaking, over and over. But also, with Erdrich’s amazing writing to deliver the emotional blows with such eloquence. And then just a year or two ago I read Future Home of the Living God, which was such a fascinating premise, with Erdrich’s signature writing, but just wasn’t quite as “right” for me as a reader. It was, however, the first time I had listened to an audiobook of one of her books and Erdrich read it herself, spectacularly. So, I knew that I planned to “read” this one that way as well. And that was 100% the right call – Erdrich’s oral story-telling cadence and voice is, in my opinion, the perfect medium for delivering/taking in her writing.

The Night Watchman is historical fiction, but based on part of the life of Erdrich’s own grandfather, who, in the 1950s, worked as a night watchman at a factory and also was the chairman of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Advisory Committee. He was in that role when the government attempted to “terminate” his tribe, and led the fight against that legislation. This fictional interpretation of his role in that effort is told alongside some main other characters from the tribe, including Patrice, a young woman who works at the local jewel bearing plant and is working through growing up herself, while searching for her sister who has gone missing. In addition, we focus quite a bit on Wood Mountain, a young man who is also coming of age while trying to find out who he is, what he wants from life, and who treasures his connection to the land/his people. Plus, a few extra character POVs, including Barnes (a teacher and Wood Mountain’s boxing coach), Vera (Patrice’s disappeared sister), Valentine (Patrice’s friend), Millie (a grad student whose research helps with the fight against the termination bill), and a number of other short perspective spotlights added throughout.

So, let me just start with this: Erdrich is a glorious narrator. Aided by her own voice, there is a flow to her writing that is quietly powerful, making this slow-paced story seep into your pores as you make your way through it. Also, her ability to create a setting, a sense of place, not just physically, but spiritually, in space and time, is something truly special. I was transported not just to the location of this story in the United States, but also emotionally and in a sort of metaphysical way that I cannot explain. Masterful.

Other than that, I just want to mention the story itself, which obviously is one close to Erdrich’s heart. This is a book where I highly recommend reading the Afterward – the depth of involvement from her family, friends, colleagues and her own emotional depths is profound. Likely in part because of that, but also because, as I’ve come to notice, such strong personal investment emanating from Erdrich’s words is a cornerstone of all her novels, you can tell on every page how much pride she has in the strength and resolve of her people and culture. In this case, she is able to illustrate with lyrical gravity how important the land is to her Indigenous family, and how broad the effects of white US governmental colonization of her people and their land has been. Her demonstration of how profound the devastation that the theft of land, language and culture has been, not just through statistics (which are equally horrific to look at), but through individual stories and examples is so affecting. Each perspective, from Thomas (the character modeled after her grandfather) fighting against termination to Patrice’s mother Zhaanat keeping the old ways alive to Mille’s attempts to use her education to bring awareness/evidence to Roderick’s (the ghost of Thomas’ friend from childhood) haunting, and myriad other side characters, we are given a new and unique way that Indigenous life is indelibly marked by the centuries of forced erasure their culture(s) has(ve) faced…sometimes overcome and often succumbed to.

This novel, as with all Erdrich’s works, provides an insight of magnificent proportions into the history of Indigenous people in the US and the constant struggle for recognition, support, individuality and more after centuries of mistreatment and condescension at the hands of the selfsame country/government (so, therefore, white people). The pacing is, perhaps, a bit slow, but the development of the story deserves the time spent on it, because while the plot matters, the people it gives voice to matter more.

I want to end with Erdrich’s own words, the last passage in her Afterward: “Lastly, if you should ever doubt that a series of dry words in a government document can shatter spirits and demolish lives, let this book erase that doubt. Conversely, if you should be of the conviction that we are powerless to change those dry words, let this book give you heart.” She speaks here to both the colonizers and the Indigenous peoples they’re attempting to remove and, for me, it really captured the heart of the story. A lament and a celebration all in one. What an impression this one leaves on a reader.

“But every so often the government remembered about Indians. And when they did, they always tried to solve Indians […] They solve us by getting rid of us.”

“So it comes down to this […] the neutral strings of sentences in the termination bill. We have survived smallpox, the Winchester repeating rifle, the Hotchkiss gun, and tuberculosis. We have survived the flu epidemic of 1918, and fought in four or five deadly United States wars. But at last we will be destroyed by a collection of tedious words.”

“There weren’t enough jobs. There wasn’t enough land. There wasn’t enough farmable land. There weren’t enough deer in the woods or ducks in the sloughs and a game warden caught you if you fished too many fish. There just wasn’t enough of anything and if he didn’t save what little there was from disappearing there was no imagining how anyone would get along.”

“You cannot feel time grind against you. Time is nothing but everything, not the seconds, minutes, hours, days, years. Yet this substanceless substance, this bending and shaping, this warping, this is the way we understand our world.”

“The services that the government provides to Indians might be likened to rent. The rent for use of the entire country of the United States.”

“Without warning, they threw you down. That’s how it was to live with them. […] He had striven to in every way to be like his teachers. And every boss. He had tried to make their ways his ways. Even if he didn’t like their ways, he’d tried. He’d tried to make money, like them. He’d thought that if he worked hard enough and followed their rules this would mean he could keep his family secure, his people from the worst harms, but none of that was true.”

“...anyone who took on and tried to sweepingly solve what was called the “plight” or the Indian “problem” had a personal reason.”

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