Money, Sharing, and Community Theme Analysis

In Night Flying Woman, author Ignatia Broker’s ancestor Oona is a young girl living in an Ojibway village that sustains itself through communal living and sharing possessions. However, when incoming settlers introduce currency and trade into Ojibway society, the Ojibway people begin working for money and selling handicrafts to buy goods (like homes, clothes, and food). As the Ojibway grow more dependent on this new lifestyle, they experience poverty and hardship, in contrast to the self-sufficiency they’ve known for countless generations. The book suggests that living a communal, self-sufficient lifestyle made them happier than working for money to buy things. Broker also highlights how supporting one another and sharing enable her community to survive hard times, both in Oona’s generation and her own, reinforcing the idea that community and sharing are far more essential to human flourishing than money and material goods.

Ignatia stresses the importance of sharing in Ojibway culture, emphasizing that it is ethical and that it helps the Ojibway survive. The Ojibway do not think about owning the land, but rather think of its resources as precious gifts to be shared. Ignatia notes, “We did not own the land acre by acre as is done today, but we respected the right of all people to share in the gifts given by the Great Being […] We do not waste the precious gifts, but share them with our brothers.” Sharing thus helps the Ojibway make sure thay they do not exploit the land or create conflict with each other over territory and resources, enabling them to better sustain their communities over many generations. When struggling to survive on underfunded reservations, Native people maintain their commitment to community and sharing, enabling many people to survive the hardships they face. Oona’s community continues to share their resources with the sick and needy, which helps many people survive when the reservation faces a food shortage. Broker notes that “[t]he many changes in the Ojibway material life did not change their traditional way of sharing. There was a kindness in the people and in the help they gave to those in distress.” This suggests that the community’s sharing also helps to lift people’s spirits, helping them to cope in hard times. Ignatia also stresses that the Ojibway culture’s emphasis on sharing helps her community survive urban life in the 1940s while facing harsh discrimination. Ignatia shares her home, money, and food with other Ojibway people, noting that “[o]ur paydays were on different days and so whoever had money lent carfare and bought meat and vegetables […] I know other Indian people did the same thing, and sometimes whole families evolved from it. This was how we got a toehold in the urban areas—by helping each other.” While discrimination prevents Native Americans from earning enough to sustain themselves, by pooling their resources and sharing everything, they’re able to pull through and survive.

In contrast, when settlers introduce currency and trade into Ojibway communities, the Ojibway find themselves growing poorer and more miserable, suggesting that they lived far better lives when they shared everything. The settlers who run the reservation explain that the Native community must work for money, which they need to buy things. As a result of this unfamiliar practice, many Native Americans find themselves trapped in seasonal, underpaid jobs and struggle to feed themselves, suggesting that they were better off living off the land and sharing their resources. Many Native Americans in Ignatia’s generation also struggle to find work after World War II, and they cannot afford food and housing, reinforcing the idea that they struggle more when working for money than when they used their labor to gather and share food and resources from the land. Those who are able to find work that supports them, like Oona and her husband Michael, have little time left for other pursuits. Oona has no time to meditate and loses her ability to dream, which both saddens her and suggests that she has to work much harder to get by in this new lifestyle—she can survive, but she doesn’t thrive as she presumably would in a traditional Ojibway community.

Overall, the book suggests that working for money to buy things is more laborious, less fruitful, and more emotionally taxing than living as a community that shares their resources, suggesting that the Ojibway lived better, happier, and easier lives before settlers introduced currency and trade into their lives. Moreover, despite embracing a lifestyle centered on earning money to survive, the Native community still relies on sharing and supporting each other to get by, suggesting that it’s a more reliable way to ensure a community’s cohesion and well-being.