The Night WatchmanThe Night Watchman
a Novel
Title rated 4.15 out of 5 stars, based on 779 ratings(779 ratings)
Book, 2020
Current format, Book, 2020, 1st ed, Available .Based on the life of author Louise Erdrich's grandfather who worked as a night watchman and carried the fight against Native dispossession from rural North Dakota all the way to Washington, D.C. 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" which 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"? Since graduating from high school, Pixie Paranteau has insisted everyone call her Patrice. She makes jewel bearings at the plant, a job which pays barely enough to support her mother and younger brother. Patrice's alcoholic father returns home sporadically to terrorize his wife and children and to bully Patrice for money. But Patrice needs every penny to follow her beloved sister Vera, who moved to the big city of Minneapolis. Vera may have disappeared; she hasn't been in touch in months and is rumored to have had a baby. Determined to find Vera and her child, Patrice makes a fateful trip to Minnesota which introduces her to unexpected forms of exploitation and endangers her life.
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