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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
Oona has two sons, and she gives them both Ojibway and Christian names: Warm Sky (or David) and Brother (or John). Her family respects her for keeping her Ojibway traditions alive. A few years later, Grandfather and Grandmother die. Oona buries them according to Ojibway tradition, by laying birch bark over their bodies. She whispers their names to the water and the wind, so that the earth will always remember them.
As Oona ages, the elderly people around her die, and the younger generations increasingly integrate into settler culture. Oona thus becomes one of the few remaining people with knowledge of her people’s traditions and stories. The traditional burial rituals emphasize the Ojibway’s close connection with—and respect for—their natural environment. The birch bark also symbolizes this respect for nature.
Themes
Oona and Michael’s farm thrives, and they harvest a lot of potatoes and corn. They also have milk cows, though they sell the milk because they prefer traditional Ojibway drinks, which Oona makes with wild berries. Her sons, Warm Sky and Brother, go to school and learn how to become skilled farmers. Oona’s sons don’t learn about ancient Ojibway herbal medicine traditions, but she makes sure that they go on vision quests, hear traditional stories, and learn how to hear the trees rustling, so that they can pass these traditions on. Her grandchildren also learn these traditions.
Oona and Michael’s children don’t know much about their own culture beyond the parts that Oona shares with them. This emphasizes how, in the span of a single generation, the Ojibway’s traditional way of life is all but wiped out. The only remnants are what Oona remembers. She wants to teach Ojibway stories and traditions to her children so that her culture will stay alive. A large part of these traditions centers on feeling connected with trees, something that’s been important in Oona’s life as well as her ancestors’.
Themes
By the time Oona is in her forties, the Ojibway village grows into a suburban town. The government makes Ojibway children go to boarding schools run by nuns, and this makes it harder for Ojibway children to learn their own cultural traditions alongside Christian values. The government also begins to regulate many traditional practices like fishing, hunting, and growing rice, even on reservations. The Ojibway have to conduct these activities in secret so that they don’t get caught.
As time goes on, the government continues to prohibit Ojibway cultural activities even more. They force children to go to Christian boarding schools (to distance them from Native American culture) and ban many food-gathering practices that connect the Ojibway with the land. This highlights the systematic erasure of Ojibway culture and the lack of freedom the Ojibway have, even on the reservation.
Themes
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Oona feels sad when she sees her grandchildren’s generation growing ill with many new diseases. She knows their food is less healthy than traditional Ojibway food. Ojibway people also begin consuming alcohol, and this saddens Oona too. She thinks that many people drink to forget that American society turns Ojibway people into caricatures. Many Ojibway people seek work in lumber yards. The people in Oona’s village learn how to square dance, and they integrate this dance into their rituals. By 1910, the logging industry moves farther west, leaving many Ojibway people unemployed.
As Oona ages, she notices that her people are now physically more ill and emotionally more unhappy than they’ve ever been. This suggests that their new culture makes them suffer much more than their traditional lifestyle did, both emotionally and physically, because of the way it distances them from their land and traditional practices. The fact that the lumber industry moves further westward suggests that deforestation is so rapid and consuming that the lumber industry has run out of trees in the Midwestern United States.
Themes
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Despite the hardships of unemployment, the Ojibway people rely on ancient traditions to get by, such as digging out medicinal roots and weaving. The only difference is that they now sell their wares to tourists. Oona starts a club (called the First Daughters Club) for Ojibway women to meet every month to weave together, so that they can sell their woven products and raise money for their community. Oona decides that Grandmother was wise to teach her such traditional skills—without them, the community wouldn’t survive.
Broker reinforces the idea that the Ojibway’s new lifestyle of working to earn money for things leaves them poor and unhappy. The only way they survive is by relying on their traditional skills and their community values. As before, their traditional practices continue to serve them better than their new lifestyle does, suggesting that it’s a better way for them to thrive.
Themes
By the 1930s, new taxation policies begin driving the Ojibway people further into poverty. The government forces their children into boarding schools that are far away, where they’re taught to forget their heritage and learn Christian traditions instead. At the same time, the Ojibway lean on the churches in their village for community gatherings. The adults begin to embrace activities like bingo and card games, while the children learn baseball and football instead of traditional Ojibway dances. When those children become adults, they don’t know enough about Ojibway traditions to pass them on.
Broker continues describing the cultural erasure that takes place on reservations: in less than 50 years, the Ojibway’s lives are unrecognizably different, and very few Ojibway people know about their traditions, stories, and culture. Because of this, Broker worries that the culture will die out completely. Broker also continues emphasizing that the Ojibway struggle more and face greater poverty than they did when they lived self-sufficiently off the land.
Themes
