Neither Wolf Nor Dog

“In an act as simple and caring as a Catholic’s genuflection before the Blessed Sacrament, that person had placed the sacred gift of tobacco on the crude image of the buffalo, and in so doing had paid homage to the animal that is the physical embodiment of the universe in all its bounty for the Lakota people.”

This passage reflects Nerburn’s attempts to speak directly to a white audience in his book. By comparing indigenous tobacco offerings to the Christian tradition of communion likely to be familiar to white audiences, Nerburn provides a familiar analogy for indigenous traditions. Throughout the narrative, Nerburn is explicit in identifying white readers as his primary audience.

“Though I was a white man, and all too aware of the effects of well-intentioned white people on the well-being of the Indian people, I wanted, from within my world, to help them retain the goodness in theirs.”

Nerburn’s acknowledgement of his positions as an outsider proves essential to his characterization as a narrator. Despite his good intentions, this passage reveals that he still maintains colonial habits and ways thinking. Distinguishing between his world and the indigenous world elides the fact that he is living on indigenous land, pointing to The Role of Language in Oppression.

“Now he had burned them himself. Now I was the box. Now he was going to fill it again.”

In the first chapter of the book, Dan gives Nerburn a box full of essays and notes and asks him to transform them into a book. Later, he burns the book as a symbol of his desire not to perform for white people. From this point forward, Nerburn serves as a conduit for Dan’s thoughts, which he records directly from Dan’s dictation rather than attempting to revise them.