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Pif Magazine
Pif Magazine |
On The Rez
If every textbook in every school were written with the style and grace — the sheer readability — of Ian Frazier's On the Rez, all the schoolchildren in America would clamor for more, anxious to read about our great land, eager to discuss what they have learned, and ready to move beyond folklore and stereotyping. It is not because the book has a wealth of pictures or fancy diagrams. Nor is it divided into easy-to-read subsections with charts and wingdings. In fact, the Table of Contents lists only three sections: On the Rez, Notes, and Index, and when I first opened the book, this spare map of the contents was a mite intimidating. After all, aren't all nonfiction works meant to enlighten the reader in as palatable a manner as possible, with tables of contents and indices providing easy access to the information within? What kind of arrogant, self-indulgent writer was this Ian Frazier not to supply me with a detailed chart with which to approach his work? The best kind of writer, as it turns out. On the Rez unfolds as a long conversation between the author and reader, a conversation in which knowledge is imparted and absorbed effortlessly. For this reason, while On the Rez is an excellent source of information regarding Indians, their lives on a reservation, and their place within American society as a whole, it is also the best sort of storytelling. Frazier opens his narrative in a laudably simple manner: "This book is about Indians, particularly the Ogala Sioux who live on the Pine Ridge Reservation in southwestern South Dakota, in the plains and badlands in the middle of the United States." But while On the Rez is indeed a book about Indians, it is also a book about the history of the United States as a whole, with an approach more truthful than most of the nonsense we are force-fed in these oh-so-sensitive times. Frazier quickly disputes common rhetoric about the destruction of the Indians. "Killing people is one thing, killing them off is another," he says. Indians, as he calls them (not the more politically correct "Native Americans"), are alive and growing as an ethnic group, four times faster than the population as a whole, in fact. Though "bleak" is most often the word used to describe Indians and their lives on the reservations, Frazier notes that it is not a word Indians use to describe themselves. In perhaps his most pithy summary of the continuing fascination of the world with the American Indians (people from all over the planet make pilgrimages to Indian reservations around the United States yearly), Frazier sums up the current fantasies about Indians thusly: "American Indians were a proud people who believed in the Great Circle of Being and were cruelly destroyed." Frazier continues, through his stories of the real lives of such Indians as Crazy Horse, Red Cloud, Wesley Bad Heart Bull, Dennis Banks, Russell Means, Le War Lance, and, most especially, SuAnne Big Crow, to debunk this myth to a degree that forces the reader to rethink her perceptions about the Indians, perceptions often built around childhood Thanksgiving stories and Western movies. As a book about Indians, and a book about the settling of the United States by "marauding" Europeans, On the Rez offers insights seldom found in textbooks on the subject. Indians are jealous, Frazier says, and notes that "some Indians say that jealousy is a bigger problem for their people than alcohol." Indians were notoriously unwilling to unite against outside threats, worrying more about enemies within their tribes or other Indian rivals than the threat of the Europeans. Disunion, though, was not unique to the Indians, Frazier says. Though the story of disunion is less often told, "it is right below the surface of American history," a history that is the history of schism. Frazier clarifies this idea by asking — and answering — the question "Why can't Indians get with the program?" It is not that Indians can't get with the program so much as that "we have already gotten with theirs." Frazier follows with accounts of the ways in which immigrants did not simply reproduce in America the life they left behind, but adapted instead to the Indian culture they found on their arrival. While Indians did get the worst end of things in terms of despoilment, "such accounts can't do justice to the thrilling spark of freedom in the encounter — the freedom the Indians had, the freedom that white people found. As surely as Indians gave the world corn and tobacco and potatoes, they gave it a revolutionary new idea of what a human being can be." This concept is more than just that of the "noble savage," an idea embraced by one and all in these days of bashing the white man for ever having set foot on the continent. It is a realistic attitude about a real group of people, the best example of which may be the late SuAnne Big Crow. Frazier drops the name SuAnne Big Crow into the mix early on as an example of a true Ogala hero. Like a character in a good novel, we want to know more about Big Crow. Though I first read the name SuAnne Big Crow on page nineteen, I knew immediately that she was a pivotal part of Frazier's narrative. I read on, eagerly anticipating the full story of this young woman, a fine student and athlete who died tragically just before her eighteenth birthday. Almost 180 pages later, Frazier drops her name again, in a narrative about Ogala war heroes and athletic heroes. Though I hesitate to admit it for fear of sounding corny, my heart began to beat a little faster in expectation of finally learning about this SuAnne Big Crow and why Frazier so admires a young woman he never met. Frazier does not disappoint. With a bit of self-deprecating apology, Frazier embarks on the story of SuAnne Big Crow with this caveat: "Reader, books are long, and I know that even the faithful reader tires. But I hope a few of you are still with me here. As much as I have wanted to tell anything, I want to tell you about SuAnne." Mr. Frazier, you need not worry. The story of SuAnne, told so eloquently and reverently, was worth waiting for and worth reading through. If this were a novel, her story would be the climax of the plot. Especially beautiful is the account of fourteen year old SuAnne Big Crow's Lakota shawl dance, performed in the middle of a gymnasium in Lead, South Dakota, filled with heckling Lead fans yelling epithets like "squaw" and "gut-eater." After dribbling out onto the court, SuAnne tossed the ball away, draped her warm-up jacket across her shoulders and began to do the Lakota shawl dance, "a young woman's dance, graceful and modest and show-offy all at the same time." A teammate recalled that the crowd fell silent and "'all that stuff the Lead fans were yelling — it was like she reversed it somehow.'" SuAnne's dance was a fine example of modern-day counting coup, an act of bravery greater than killing or plundering, an act that was not of war but of peace. Frazier considers SuAnne's impromptu dance an act of profound courage on the part of such a young girl. Her traditional shawl dance illustrated that the fans of Lead's "fake Indian songs were just that — fake — and that the real thing was better, as real things usually are." This is also an excellent summation of Frazier's account of the Ogala Sioux on the Pine Ridge Reservation. Fantasies and myths are unreliable and often dangerous; stories told from experience with the real thing are better. Frazier's experience is with the real thing, and it shows. A good professor of mine once told me that the best way to tell your reader what you want to say is to simply say it in as straightforward a manner as possible, and then to continue writing in the same vein. This is the writing style of Ian Frazier. Frazier talks with the reader, sharing his thoughts and questions in a way that urges one to read on and to learn more. Thus, there is no need for a lengthy Table of Contents or a drawn-out and torturous explanation of the purpose of the book. The reader is drawn in by Frazier's ease with his subject matter, and particularly with his honesty, both about the Indians he encounters on the rez and himself. As a result, On the Rez is superb storytelling with curative powers. Tell us what you think. Email talkback@pifmagazine.com Want Pif to review your book? Candace Moonshower is an army brat who taught herself to type the summer she turned eight, knowing even then she would write. Now a graduate student at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, she studies English and writes both fiction and nonfiction. Candace's personal and ongoing work involves researching and writing about the cultural aftermath of the Vietnam War, especially with regard to the men and women that served and the families they left behind, in the hopes of promoting an understanding of our national consciousness before, during and since our involvement there. |
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