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Chapter 7: Lucy
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Five Little Indians, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Resilience and Redemption
Cruelty and Trauma
Family
Finding Home
Summary
Analysis
Clara’s restlessness grew after she, Lucy, and Kendra moved into the house, but it had started before that. After Harlan fired her, she had begun spending more and more time at the Indian Friendship Center. There, she followed American Indian Movement actions on the television. Then one day, George and Vera and other AIM activists held a meeting at the Center. At first, their overt embrace of the symbols of Indigenous culture—including bone chokers and beaded jewelry—made her uncomfortable. Sister would not have approved. But she was deeply moved as George talked about protests at Alcatraz, the Trail of Broken Treaties, and the occupation of Wounded Knee. Clara was stunned—and excited.
Clara’s innate desire to protect others and to seek to redress the injustices she and others have suffered naturally draws her to George and Vera and into the American Indian Movement. AIM activists engaged in many high-profile actions designed to draw attention to the plight of Indigenous people like the ones described here, all of which took place in the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s. One of the things that moves Clara is the AIM’s proud and visible embrace of the emblems of Indigenous heritage that had so long been used to segregate them from mainstream society and prove that they were unworthy to participate in white society.
Themes
Now, Clara and her dog, John Lennon, head for the Canadian-American Border. The Canadian border guard rips apart her car, strewing clothing and dog food across the pavement as he interrogates Clara. She keeps her cool and he eventually stops harassing her when he realizes how traffic is backing up behind her. He drops her Indian Card on the ground instead of handing it back to her, forcing her to bend down to retrieve it. She does, but she waits until he isn’t looking at her. As she crosses the border, she sings along—loudly—to her favorite Buffy St. Marie songs. And she thinks about how she fell in with George, Vera, and the AIM movement.
Clara’s primary engagements with white society come from interactions with legal authorities—police and border guards. Racism and prejudice poison these interactions, which the book casts as representative of mainstream society’s attitudes toward Indigenous people. On the infrequent occasions when white people are nice to Clara, they’re civilians. Still, she keeps a lid on her temper here, showing that she’s maturing thanks to George and Vera’s friendship and to having a cause toward which she can direct her rage.
Themes
Clara stops for breakfast at a diner she frequents on her trips to the states to visit George and Vera. As she drives east, she reminisces about her first meeting with George, how he told her the AIM movement couldn’t be stopped because it arose from so many directions at once. His words reminded her of hearing voices on the wind on her last walk home from church with her mother. She fled the room, weeping, and he chased her down, caught her into an embrace, and held her until she stopped crying.
The American Indian Movement gathered Indigenous people from various nations together under the banner of their shared Indigenous heritage and rights. It forged new bonds to replace the traditional ones destroyed by the power of conquest and assimilation. Likewise, George shows Clara how personal and political families can be linked.
Themes
Long after midnight, Clara arrives at George and Vera’s house. They live on a reservation outside of Billings, Montana. They visit comfortably for an hour until their talk turns to the following day. George and Vera are supporting a group of Indigenous people resisting the sale of their reservation’s land to oil and gas interests, backed by the American government. Clara is going to help them smuggle weapons to the besieged resistance on the Willow Flats reservation.
The situation at Willow Flats mirrors historical events like the Occupation of Wounded Knee in 1973, in which 200 activists seized control of the city in South Dakota to demand the impeachment of an Oglala Sioux tribal president whose actions undermined Oglala interests. Modern readers might also catch allusions to similar 21st-century actions by Indigenous people in the United States and Canada to prevent the oil and gas companies from accessing Indigenous lands.
Themes
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In the morning, George bolts a long box to the underside of Clara’s car, which he, Clara, and Vera fill with guns and ammunition. The plan is for him and Vera to create a distraction at the Willow Flats checkpoint so that Clara—unknown to the US government—can slip through easily. Then she will deliver the munitions to the resistance, which is holed up at a church. The National Guard is supposed to let anyone with a white flag through. Thanks to George’s distraction, Clara gets onto the reservation easily enough. But before she gets to the church, National Guardsmen want to search her car. Clara panics, guns her engine, and flees. She can hear the sirens in the distance as the Guardsmen chase her down, and she runs off the road into a ditch, losing consciousness.
As in historical parallels, the US government intervenes on the side of the oil and gas companies rather than the Indigenous people whose lands it is bound by treaty to respect. And this episode demonstrates the importance of mutual aid and friendships to advocacy movements: George and Vera (and by extension the Willow Flats traditionalists) cannot succeed without the help of friends like Clara. But AIM’s activism isn’t without danger, and Clara also showcases her bravery and resilience by going through with the mission despite its dangers.
Themes
Clara comes to in the antiseptic environment of a hospital room. George is there. He and Vera found her—protected by John Lennon—the morning after her accident. They had her car towed and brought her to the hospital, where doctors operated on her shoulder. When Clara complains about her pain to a condescending doctor, he orders more morphine for her, which puts her to sleep. When she wakes up again, George has left to get food. In his absence, two FBI agents visit Clara and attempt to interrogate her. She sticks to her cover story until George returns and forces the men to leave. Then he and Clara sneak out of the hospital and back to Montana, where an ecstatic John Lennon greets his owner.
The bonds that tie George, Vera, and Clara are strong. Each is willing to protect and support the others despite the dangers to themselves. Abandoned—if not directly vilified or victimized—by mainstream white society, the Indigenous characters in the book can still rely on one another. And they come through for one another every time. George sneaking Clara out of the hospital parallels Clara sneaking Kendra and Lucy from the hospital in Vancouver. Despite all that white society has taken away from them, Clara and her circle not only survive, but they also help one another out.
Themes
George, Vera, and Clara plan Clara’s escape to Canada. It’s risky, but she’s going to have to sneak across illegally through Indian reserve lands near the crossing at Climax, Saskatchewan. The trio (and John Lennon) drive north the following day, killing time at a diner and at a local park so that Clara can cross under cover of darkness. She makes her way to a seldom-used service road but is immediately intercepted by border agents and RCMP. She and John Lennon abandon the car and run toward a row of houses where they hope to find shelter with the reserve’s residents. Three men run into the fields to delay the border agents while a mysterious woman helps Clara clamber into a pickup truck and drives her away under cover of darkness.
Despite their closeness, there’s a practical and geographic limit to how much George and Vera can help Clara. Fortunately, they are tapped into a broader community of Indigenous activists and individuals, and where their direct help to Clara ends, others step in to offer aid. This scene emphasizes how her community continues to grow broader and deeper.
Themes
