The Night Watchman(113)

My grandfather wrote a series of extraordinary letters during 1953 and 1954. They were addressed to my parents. My mother gave them to me to look after because I was born in 1954. Patrick Gourneau had attended government boarding schools at Fort Totten, Haskell, and Wahpeton. The letters are written in graceful “boarding-school handwriting” familiar to those who were schooled in the Palmer Method, and they are packed with remarkable, funny, stereotype-breaking episodes of reservation life. Altogether, they compose a portrait of a deeply humane intelligence as well as a profoundly religious patriot and family man.

A first speaker of Ojibwemowin, my grandfather was the son of Keeshkemunishiw, the Kingfisher, and the grandson of Joseph Gourneau, Kasigiwit, head warrior of the Pembina Band of Ojibwe. They had lived by hunting buffalo across the plains into Montana. My grandfather was of the first generation born on the reservation. His family made the desperate, difficult transition to farming. Eventually they were successful. Patrick wrote about his magnificent truck garden, delighted in details like the moss roses he grew for beauty, and told stories about how he planted oats but somehow harvested flax. He recounted funny things his children said and avowed love for his wife, Mary Cecelia LeFavor. He confided in my parents and spoke of new anxieties that had complicated his job as chairman of the advisory committee. At the time he wrote, the job paid thirty dollars per month, but the tribe was dead broke so he didn’t collect those wages. He’d received word of the Termination Bill and immediately understood that this was, as it has been called, a new front in the Indian Wars.

“Most of the pending legislation, if passed, would result in the end of our last holdings on this continent and destroy our dignity and distinction as the first inhabitants of this rich land,” said Joe Garry, then president of the National Congress of American Indians.

“This new bill is about the worst thing for Indians to come down the pike,” said my grandfather.

Although I had many times read his letters for solace or inspiration, eventually I thought to read his letters in conjunction with a stack of the termination-era research I’d put aside. Once I did, setting his carefully dated letters against the time line of the bill, which gave tribes only a few months to mount a response to Congress, I realized that my grandfather—along with others in the tribe, astute friends like Martin Old Dog Cross, and non-Indian allies—had accomplished something that altered the trajectory of termination and challenged the juggernaut of the federal push to sever legal, sacred, and immutable promises made in nation-to-nation treaties. Of the initial tribes slated for termination, the Turtle Mountain delegation was the first to mount a fierce defense and prevail. Now I could see the desperation and exhaustion behind my grandfather’s jokes. He was a whirlwind, writing all night long and attending meetings all day long. Sometimes he slept only twelve hours per week. I had as well the knowledge of what his pursuit of a seemingly impossible task, reversing termination, cost him, our family, and Indian Country.

In all, 113 tribal nations suffered the disaster of termination; 1.4 million acres of tribal land was lost. Wealth flowed to private corporations, while many people in terminated tribes died early, in poverty. Not one tribe profited. By the end, 78 tribal nations, including the Menominee, led by Ada Deer, regained federal recognition; 10 gained state but not federal recognition; 31 tribes are landless; 24 are considered extinct. Ada Deer’s recent memoir, Making a Difference: My Fight for Native Rights and Social Justice, is great reading on this subject.

Much of this book was written in a state of heavy emotion as I remembered the grief my grandmother and my mother’s siblings endured as the continued political fights took their toll and my grandfather’s health began to fail. Eventually, he suffered a long decline. Yet Patrick Gourneau never stopped being funny, optimistic, and kind. I hope this book reflects his gracious spirit. Also, I like to think that the efforts of the Turtle Mountain people helped other tribal nations negotiate the long messy nightmare of termination. In 1970, Richard Nixon addressed Congress and called for an end to this policy. Five years later, a new era of self-determination for Native people began.

There are many people to thank. First of all, Patrick and Mary Gourneau and the remarkable family they raised, including my mother, Rita Gourneau Erdrich, an artist who meticulously saved my grandfather’s letters and the mimeographed chairman’s reports that included his articles and jokes. Thank you to my dear aunt and friend Dolores Gourneau Manson, my aunt Madonna Owen, and my uncle Dwight Gourneau, who has served Native people all of his life, notably as the chairman of the boards of the American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES) and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI). Thank you to my uncle Howard Gourneau, our family’s Pipe Keeper, and to Roberta Morin. My sister Liselotte Erdrich, writer, poet, and our family historian, gave me invaluable advice and support. I’d like to thank Judy Azure for dancing for us all. Our tribal historian, Professor Les LaFountain, gave this manuscript an invaluable early read that was full of brilliant suggestions. Denise Lajimodiere also made important changes. I am very grateful for the response and reminiscences of Zelma Peltier, whose mother worked at the jewel bearing plant. Gail Caldwell bucked me up when I had doubts. Brenda Child, Northrop Professor at the University of Minnesota, listened at length to the evolution of this book, and gave me fireside pep talks, generous advice, and introduced me to the joys of research at the National Archives. My mother talked at length about her life on the reservation in the 1950s. It was a joy to share her memories.