Between Earth and Sky(109)
She glanced up at Asku. His dark eyes met hers for a final time and she knew he heard them, too, the drums, breaking through the silence.
More drums would sound tonight at White Earth during the Mide-wiwin funeral ceremony. The northward train carrying his body had probably already pulled into the Detroit Lakes station. Part of her longed to be there, to hear the Mide’s chants guiding Asku to the Land of Souls, to keep vigil over his body beside Minowe and the others in the birch bark lodge and later at the grave. But that was not her world.
She lay down beside her husband. He turned toward her in his sleep and she welcomed his warm breath against her skin. Her arm wound around his head and she twirled her fingers through his soft sand-brown hair. For once, she felt entirely free to love him, to enjoy their happiness together without guilt’s nagging prick.
Her eyelids drooped with the train’s sway. The well-oiled gears and spinning wheels sang out a lullaby. In this bleary half sleep, a memory floated across her mind—she and Asku at the train depot in La Crosse before he had left for Brown.
“I hate goodbyes,” she’d said after kissing him on the cheek. Tears sprang in her eyes and drained down her face.
He swept his thumb over her wet cheekbone. “The Anishinaabe have no word for goodbye.”
“What do you say in parting?”
“You see life as a straight line. But for us, life is a circle. After something or someone enters our circle, they travel with us forever, influencing us even if they are not physically present. To us, there is no such thing as goodbye.”
Once again water filled her eyes as Asku’s voice became an echo in her thoughts. But unlike those tears shed at the La Crosse depot or beneath the torch-lit elder tree, these bore not the ache of misery but the salve of long-awaited peace.
She looked out the train window again. A ribbon of color rippled across the black of the horizon. She smiled, remembering the Anishinaabe believed that the sinuous colors were the spirits of the dead dancing through the sky. Tonight Askuwheteau danced with them, beside and , beside his brave and intrepid forebears whose great imprint on the earth could never be learned away.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
While Between Earth and Sky is cast with fictitious characters, the historical events underpinning the story are true. Beginning in the late 1870s, several off-reservation Indian boarding schools were established across the United States and, until the 1930s, operated in much the same manner as portrayed herein. Stover School for Indians is a fictional amalgamation of these schools, patterned after historical accounts. Other locations in the novel—La Crosse, White Earth, etc.—though sketched with an eye toward authenticity, are used fictitiously. The massacre at Wounded Knee, the Dawes and Nelson acts, the exploitation of Upper Midwest Tribes’ land and timber rights are all part of recorded, though oft-forgotten, history.
The circumstances of Askuwheteau’s life after leaving Stover were inspired, in part, by the real-life experiences of a Lakota man named Tasunka Ota. An attendee of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in the 1880s, he shot U.S. Army Lieutenant Edward Casey in the aftermath of the Wounded Knee Massacre. During his trial, he cited his time at Carlisle and his desire to be reunified with his people as impetus for the killing. Ultimately, he was acquitted and returned home to the Rosebud Reservation. My hope in writing this story is to bring to light his struggle and those of the many Native American children whose lives were damaged or destroyed in the name of assimilation.
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The curious reader may enjoy the following texts, many of which were instrumental in my research: Away from Home: American Indian Boarding School Experiences, edited by Margaret L. Archuleta, Brenda J. Child, and K. Tsianina Lomawaima; Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience, 1875–1928, by David Wallace Adams; My People the Sioux, by Luther Standing Bear; The Heathen School: A Story of Hope and Betrayal in the Age of the Early Republic, by John Demos; The Struggle for Self-Determination: History of Menominee Indians since 1854, by David R. M. Beck; Wisconsin Indian Literature: Anthology of Native Voices, edited by Kathleen Tigerman; Living Our Language: Ojibwe Tales and Oral Histories, edited by Anton Treuer; The Mishomis Book, by Edward Benton-Banai; The White Earth Tragedy: Ethnicity and Dispossession at a Minnesota Anishinaabe Reservation, 1889–1920, by Melissa L. Meyer; Rez Life, by David Treuer; and In the Shadow of Wounded Knee: The Untold Final Chapter of the Indian Wars, by Roger L. Di Silvestro.
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Tragically, today many Native American languages face extinction, due in no small part to the boarding schools, day schools, and mission schools established at the turn of the last century. Some, however, like Anishinaabemowin, are enjoying a revitalization, thanks to the tribe’s careful stewardship. In writing this novel, I made every effort to render the Native American languages accurately, employing the help of native speakers, dictionaries, ethnological surveys, recorded tales, and oral histories. All errors are my own, and for any such occurrences I sincerely apologize.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Anishinaabe Midewinin tradition reminds us that humans are but a small part of the ishpiming, the greater universe. So too am I but one part of this story’s transformation from flickering idea to published novel.
Many thanks to my agent, Michael Carr, for believing in both me and the story, and finding us a home at Kensington. To my editor, John Scognamiglio, whose wisdom and commitment helped Between Earth and Sky achieve its highest potential. To Kristine Mills for the book’s beautiful cover, Paula Reedy, the production editor, Sheila Higgins, the copy editor, and the entire Kensington team. Your hard work is deeply appreciated.