The Painted Drum

There are many references in the novel to the devastating and ongoing effects of the historical European invasion of North America. Before the arrival of white people, the Ojibwe had an “old agreement between themselves” (111) and the animals and the land that sustained all of life. This agreement not only obliged people to hunt no more than necessary to fulfill their own needs, it also, by its mere existence, testified to the deep respect the people had for life, regardless of the form it took. From the idea that the same life-force animates people and animals alike, it follows that the people assumed the names of animals they closely identified with, just as Ziigwan’aage “was named for the spirit of the wolverine” (134).

By seizing Ojibwe land, carving it into plots of property, and forcing the people to resettle in towns, colonizers disrupted the Ojibwe’s traditional relationship with their environment. While the Ojibwe once took only what they needed from nature, the whites introduced guns and commodity markets, and soon the Ojibwe themselves were hunting and trapping for profit. Recognizing that they had betrayed “the old agreement” (111) with the wolves, Old Shaawano “never blamed the wolves for what they had done” (169) to his daughter. He understood that they were simply hungry because “our guns had taken all their food for furs and hides to sell” (111). The girl’s death is an indirect consequence of colonization, but, ironically, it becomes a source of healing for the community, for the drum Shaawano makes “gathers people in” (180) and reestablishes connections between them.

Ira’s story shows that, by the 21st century, it is all but impossible for Ojibwe individuals to survive living according to tradition. Her struggle to practice the Ojibwe lifestyle of her father within the context of 21st-century consumer culture leaves her penniless. Those who forsake their traditional culture for Americanization may enjoy the spoils of capitalism, but, like John, they suffer spiritual malaise. Sitting with John in a bar, Ira says, “The dead are drinking here tonight” (196) and later argues, “You can either be a drunk or a spiritual person. Not both if you’re an Indian” (202). Her remarks imply that drunkenness is a symptom of spiritual deadness which afflicts many, from Old Shaawano, to Bernard’s father, to John and all the “dead” at the bar. As the drum ceremony indicates, community was central to Ojibwe spirituality. By uprooting people from their land and severing community ties, colonization eroded their spiritual core.

European colonization also ravaged Indigenous communities by introducing diseases like tuberculosis (from which Old Shaawano dies), but also, and intentionally, through assimilation campaigns. In the 19th century, the United States government implemented a policy of removing children from their tribal communities to indoctrinate them with the ideas and belief systems of the dominant white culture. Bernard reveals that Seraphine was disfigured by boarding school matrons because she stubbornly spoke her native language, and he suggests her experience was typical. Children were compelled to read “Bible passages, Shakespeare’s sonnets, […] and the Declaration of Independence” (30) and to adopt the dominant culture’s values, which privileged individualism over community.

The effects of the boarding school program is evident in Faye and her mother, whose own mother attended Carlisle Indian school. The women pride themselves on their skepticism, detachment, and expertise at disregarding the sentimental value of heirlooms in favor of their market value, and they also forgo community ties that might have that without which they become trapped in their personal tragedy.