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Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Night Flying Woman, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Colonization, Oppression, and Loss
Storytelling, Knowledge, and Culture
Deforestation and Urbanization
Money, Sharing, and Community
Summary
Analysis
The family moves to the big village, and they pick out a spot of land by a stream to build their log home, exactly where Oona dreamed they would be. After some months, one of the family’s sons returns from school. They’re shocked that he can speak the strangers’ language. He tells them that in the strangers’ language his name is David. He had to choose a second name, and he chose “Green,” for the color of the forest. Father decides that the family shouldn’t rely on the strangers for food, so they will continue gathering food in the forest.
Broker highlights how forced schooling attempts to indoctrinate Native children into replacing their own culture: Oona’s cousin has to speak in English and use an English name, effectively distancing himself from his own language. His decision to choose “Green” as a last name emphasizes his desire to feel connected with the disappearing forests. Even though the family faces pressure to change their lifestyle, they are not confident that this new lifestyle will sustain them, so they rely on their traditional food-gathering methods to get by. This suggests that the Ojibway’s traditional lifestyle serves them better than their new one.
Themes
Father keeps working at the lumber plant, and his boss offers him money, but he refuses: he wants the logs he was promised, so that he can build his hut. His boss agrees. A soldier arrives to take the children to school, and Mother decides they must do as the soldier says. A lot of people in the big village are suffering. The strangers didn’t give them enough food, and many children have the sickness. The family is worried, but Mother feels like they should try and integrate and embrace this new life.
Oona’s family struggles to understand the concept of currency, showing that earning money to pay for things feels foreign to them. The family begins to sink into poverty and struggles to afford enough food, highlighting that this new lifestyle leaves them worse off than their traditional self-sufficient, forest-dwelling lifestyle. Broker highlights how the family feels coerced when soldiers force their children into schools, distancing them further from their traditional lifestyle.
Themes
In the summer, 14-year-old David returns from school. He wants to go and work with the strangers, building fences around their homes. The family agrees that it will be good for David, as his father also built things like huts and arrows. Mother wants to learn more about the strangers’ ways. She goes to the agent’s home and sees many strange objects inside. The agent suggests that Mother work with his wife in the home; she’ll teach Mother about all the objects and how to use them. Mother agrees.
Broker reinforces the idea that forced schooling and urbanized reservation life distances Native Americans from their traditions: David is swiftly integrating into settler culture, and Oona’s mother, too, begins to adopt the settlers’ way of living. The agent’s suggestion that she work as a servant in his home highlights the family’s limited work options and ongoing poverty.
Themes
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Mother goes to work in the agent’s home every day, and she learns how to sew clothes and use a stove. She also becomes familiar with furniture like tables and chairs, and she even learns the strangers’ language. The agent’s wife is a kind, generous woman, and the Ojibway people like her, so they give her many gifts. Meanwhile, Oona goes to school. Her family builds their home, and it looks like the agent’s home. The other Ojibway people are happy to see that even though Oona’s family are embracing this new way of life, their children still remember old traditions, like keeping their eyes downcast around adults.
Life on the reservation shifts Oona’s family further away from their traditions. The Ojibway’s efforts to maintain aspects of their own traditions show that they do not want to change the way they live, but they feel like they have no choice. Their ability to see kindness in their oppressors (especially the agent’s wife) suggests that they still want to retain a sense of community and generosity toward others, even the settlers who force them to change their way of life.
Themes
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After Oona’s family builds a house, the big village has a feast. They give offerings and tell stories for the children to remember. They are happy, and they almost forget about the strangers. David returns and names their village Greenwood. Their lives have become a mixture of their old traditions and the strangers’ new ways. Their homes have Christian pictures in them, next to traditional items. The Ojibway people wear muslin clothes like the strangers’ clothes, but they keep their old clothes for traditional ceremonies.
The Ojibway strive to maintain some of their society’s cultural practices: like feasting communally, making traditional offerings, and sharing indigenous knowledge through traditional stories. Broker nonetheless highlights the subtle cultural erasure that reservation life causes: the Ojibway now live a hybrid lifestyle that integrates settler culture more firmly into their day-to-day lives.
Themes
The next harvest is better, as the people in the big village have learned to rely both on their traditional food-gathering methods as well as the strangers’ food. The sickness still rages on, taking many people’s lives. Father gathers herbs to help the sick, but this angers the agent—he wants to ban traditional medicines. Soldiers surround the village to make sure that the Ojibway people don’t use herbs. Many Ojibway people die, but those that remain are grateful to have one another, and they don’t grow bitter.
According to this passage, embracing the settlers’ culture leaves the Ojibway worse off. The Ojibway can’t sustain themselves by living as the settlers do, and they only survive by relying on their traditional food-gathering practices. This fact suggests that they lived more comfortably before adopting the settlers’ ways. Settlers continue to oppress the Ojibway by banning more of their traditions, like herbal medicine. This, in turn, causes more sickness and death, emphasizing the Ojibway’s suffering under colonialism.
Themes
