The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich (review)

louise erdrich's the night watchman is a personal journey into the psychological effects the threat of Public Law 280, also known as the Termination Act of 1953 or House Resolution 108, had on members of the Turtle Mountain Reservation. Erdrich's protagonist, Thomas Wazhushk, a night watchman at the reservation's Turtle Mountain Jewel Bearing Plant and tribal chairperson, is based on Erdrich's own grandfather. Although the time of the impending Termination Act serves as the backdrop and is a central idea of the tale, The Night Watchman does not have the same legal focus of other Erdrich works such as The Round House. Yet The Night Watchman does focus on several thematic elements of Indigenous rights and repeatedly addresses elements of mistreatment Indians received at boarding school. In this light, The Night Watchman would be more akin to Tracks, in which legal issues and questions of rights are prevalent, but the true central theme is the presentation and examination of family structures and the desire to create interpersonal bonds and reconnect with missing family members.

Like many of Erdrich's novels, The Night Watchman is told from the perspective of multiple narrators. The two most prominent narrators are the aforementioned Thomas Wazhushk, who represents Erdrich's grandfather Patrick Gourneau, and Patrice "Pixie" Paranteau, who Erdrich explains in her "Author's Note" is completely fictional.

Erdrich's success as a novelist is due to her ability to create stories with cross-over appeal; this ability is evident in The Night Watchman. The Night Watchman is a work of Native American literature, as it contains many of the more widely accepted elements of what constitutes the genre: the story is set primarily on a reservation, most of the characters—especially the more prominently featured ones—are Indigenous, and the narrative reflects on how the Turtle Mountain Chippewa reacted to a pending bill, House Concurrent Resolution 108, which would negatively affect the reservation. Yet Erdrich's work should not be viewed as being limited to only fitting within one genre. The true strength in Erdrich's writing is her ability to simultaneously and seamlessly address more universal elements of life—families struggling economically and emotionally due to destructive parental figures or breaking apart due to geographic separation, as well as the daily struggles of life and love—while maintaining her thematic focus on Indigenous life and its challenges.

Erdrich opens her novel by presenting Thomas, the night watchman at the Turtle Mountain Jewel Bearing Plant, as smart, honest, hardworking, and reliable. She explains that Thomas was named after the muskrat, wazhushk, who after the great flood managed to remake the earth. Here Erdrich connects to the Anishinaabe creation story, in which the great spirit, Kitchi-Manitou, created a great flood when displeased by the behavior of the first people to inhabit the earth. While other animals were unable to dive deep enough to the bottom of the flood to reach land, only the humble muskrat, wazhushk, was successful, but it lost its life in the process. The bit of earth it brought back was placed on a turtle's back, which expanded until it became North America. By opening her novel with the presentation of Thomas and the allusion to the Anishinaabe creation story, Erdrich connects the sacrifice the muskrat made to the life Thomas is leading as she writes, "In that way, as it turned out, Thomas was perfectly named" (6).

The jewel bearing plant is arguably the most significant location on the reservation, as it is where Erdrich's primary characters work, and it is the primary source of income for many on the reservation. The plant is where Thomas has his visions and is visited by the ghost of his childhood friend who died during boarding school. During his night watch Thomas also fulfills most of his duties as tribal chair, as he steadily writes letters to various allies in hopes of stopping Senator Arthur Watkins's proposed termination bill. Although the fight against the impending bill is a major element in the novel...