Karana’s tribe has faced conflict with Russian and Aleut otter hunters coming to the Island of the Blue Dolphins before—and, when a Russian ship arrives at the beginning of the novel bringing more hunters, Karana’s tribe rightfully fears the worst. After the hunters spend months killing otter, Karana’s father and the Russian Captain Orlov argue over payment for the pelts; a fight breaks out and the Aleuts end up killing two-thirds of the men in Karana’s tribe. And almost a year later, white men arrive, supposedly sent by a former chief of the tribe, to take Karana’s tribe away “across the sea.” The new arrivals not only murder animals that Karana thinks of as her friends; they also seemingly go back on their word to return for Karana for almost two decades. Alone on the island for those years, Karana feels as though she’s walking among the ghosts of her ancestors and loved ones, struggling to keep her culture’s way of life alive long enough to sustain her until the white men return for her (at which point, the novel hints, Karana’s culture basically becomes extinct). Overwhelmingly, the novel presents colonial forces—in this case, Captain Orlov and, to some degree, the white men who return for Karana—as fundamentally violent and as trying to control both indigenous culture and the natural world. Through their actions, these colonial forces ultimately bring about the end of Karana and her tribe’s way of life.
From the beginning, the novel presents colonial forces—the Russian and Aleut otter hunters specifically—as fundamentally violent. Though Karana, like the rest of her tribe, distrusts the Aleut hunters and Captain Orlov on principle because she fears they’ll become violent, her main complaint is that they’re on the Island of the Blue Dolphins to hunt otter, something that’s extremely bloody. Karana fears that there will be no otter left once the Aleuts are done—a fear that is, perhaps, a bit overblown—but one that reflects how destructive the Aleuts are being. The novel suggests that this is Karana’s focus, though, because she’s too young to remember the last time the Aleuts came to the island, and how bloody and violent that visit was. Karana’s father, Chief Chowig, does remember, and he implies that it was terrible and traumatic for his tribe. Indeed, he doesn’t trust Captain Orlov in the present because of what happened last time, which shows that the relationship between the Nicoleños and colonizing forces is historically fraught—and that the colonizers’ default is to be violent.
Over the course of the novel, the colonizers’ violent actions lead to the end of Karana’s tribe’s way of life. After the Aleuts spend months brutally killing otter in the kelp beds, Karana observes that it doesn’t seem like a huge leap for the Aleuts and Captain Orlov to turn to killing the indigenous islanders once Chief Chowig demands payment for the killed otter. In the ensuing battle, the Aleuts do kill about two-thirds of the tribe’s men, leaving the tribe with a dilemma: it’s impossible for them to continue living as they always have, with men hunting and fishing and women doing domestic tasks and gathering food. It becomes necessary for survival to assign hunting and fishing tasks to women, upending the tribe’s long-held social order. So not only do the Aleuts murder a substantial percentage of the tribe, but this action also forces the tribe to completely overhaul their customs and way of life in order to survive. Then, when Spanish missionaries arrive the following year to take Karana’s tribe to the mainland, the tribe’s departure represents the end of their culture on the island. And when Karana finds herself left behind on the island for 18 years, she quickly casts aside customs and habits that she once followed, as they are no longer necessary to her survival. She burns the huts that once made up her village, she makes weapons (a task the tribe forbade women from doing), and she makes smaller changes, like keeping her fire burning all day and sleeping in in the mornings—keeping a fire going constantly means less work for her, and there’s no reason to be up and working early when she’s only one person on the island. So, although Karana uses her tribe’s customs and knowledge to survive on the island, it’s impossible to ignore that the various colonizing forces effectively brought an end to the tribe’s successful, peaceful existence on the Island of the Blue Dolphins.
Ultimately, though Karana is happy to leave the Island of the Blue Dolphins with Spanish missionaries at the end of the novel, this ending is bittersweet. Karana leaves believing that she’s going to be able to reconnect with her family and friends who left the island so many years ago—but it’s unclear if this ever happens. And when the missionaries make Karana change into a scratchy blue dress rather than let her wear her beloved cormorant-feather skirt, the novel suggests that Karana will be forced to give up everything that she once held dear about her culture. Karana’s story, then, isn’t just one of survival and tenacity—it portrays the death of Karana’s people, their language, and ultimately their entire culture by colonial hands.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Colonialism, Violence, and Indigenous Culture ThemeTracker
Colonialism, Violence, and Indigenous Culture Quotes in Island of the Blue Dolphins
Behind in the boat stood a tall man with a yellow beard. I had never seen a Russian before, but my father had told me about them, and I wondered, seeing the way he stood with his feet set apart and his fists on his hips and looked at the little harbor as though it already belonged to him, if he were one of those men from the north whom our people feared. I was certain of it when the boat slid into the shore and he jumped out, shouting as he did so.
“The Aleuts come from a country far to the north,” he said. “Their ways are not ours nor is their language. They have come to take otter and to give us our share in many goods which they have and which we can use. In this way we shall profit. But we shall not profit if we try to befriend them. They are people who do not understand friendship.”
It was a pleasant place to stay, there on the headland. The stars were bright overhead and I lay and counted the ones that I knew and gave names to the many that I did not know.
In the morning the gulls flew out from their nests in the crevices of the cliff. They circled down to the tide pools where they stood first on one leg and then the other, splashing water over themselves and combing their feathers with curved beaks. Then they flew off down the shore to look for food. Beyond the kelp beds pelicans were already hunting, soaring high over the clear water, diving straight down, if they sighted a fish, to strike the sea with a great splash that I could hear.
The thought of being alone on the island while so many suns rose from the sea and went slowly back into the sea filled my heart with loneliness. I had not felt so lonely before because I was sure that the ship would return as Matasaip had said it would. Now my hopes were dead. Now I was really alone. I could not eat much, nor could I sleep without dreaming terrible dreams.
I was not sure what I would do if the Aleuts came. I could hide in the cave which I had stored with food and water, for it was surrounded by thick brush and the mouth of the ravine could only be reached from the sea. The Aleuts had not used the spring and did not know about it because there was another one closer to where they had camped. But they might come upon the cave by chance and then I must be ready to flee.
For this reason I worked on the canoe I had abandoned on the spit.
Often I would put on the skirt and the sandals and walk along the cliff with Rontu. Sometimes I made a wreath of flowers and fastened it in my hair. After the Aleuts had killed our men at Coral Cove, all the women of our tribe had singed their hair short as a sign of mourning. I had singed mine, too, with a faggot, but now it had grown long again and came to my waist. I parted it and let it fall down my back, except when I wore a wreath. Then I made braids and fastened them with long whalebone pins.
I also made a wreath for Rontu’s neck, which he did not like. Together we would walk along the cliff looking at the sea, and though the white men’s ship did not return that spring, it was a happy time. The air smelled of flowers and birds sang everywhere.
The star passed out of sight and another took its place. The tide lifted the canoe higher in the room, and as the water lapped against the walls it sounded like the soft music of a flute. It played many tunes through the long night and I slept little, watching the stars change. I knew that the skeleton who sat on the ledge playing his flute was one of my ancestors, and the others with the glittering eyes, though only images, were too, but still I was sleepless and afraid.
I watched her go through the brush. I stood for a long time listening to her footsteps, until I could hear them no more, and then I went to the headland and brought the baskets back to the cave.
Tutok came again the next day. We sat on the rock in the bright sun, trading words and laughing. The sun went fast in the sky. The time came soon when she had to leave, but she returned on the day that followed. It was on this day, when she was leaving, that I told her my secret name.
“Karana,” I said, pointing to myself.
On sunny days I would wear them with my cormorant dress and the necklace, and walk along the cliff with Rontu.
I often thought of Tutok, but on these days especially I would look off into the north and wish that she were here to see me. I could hear her talking in her strange language and I would make up things to say to her and things for her to say to me.
Ulape would have laughed at me, and others would have laughed, too—my father most of all. Yet this is the way I felt about the animals who had become my friends and those who were not, but in time could be. If Ulape and my father had come back and laughed, and all the others had come back and laughed, still I would have felt the same way, for animals and birds are like people, too, though they do not talk the same or do the same things. Without them the earth would be an unhappy place.
I came to the mound where my ancestors had sometimes camped in the summer. I thought of them and of the happy times spent in my house on the headland, of my canoe lying unfinished beside the trail. I thought of many things, but stronger was the wish to be where people lived, to hear their voices and their laughter.
Then one of the two men who stood behind him spoke to me. His words made the strangest sounds I have ever heard. At first I wanted to laugh, but I bit my tongue.
I shook my head and smiled at him. He spoke again, slowly this time, and though his words sounded the same as before and meant nothing to me, they now seemed sweet. They were the sound of a human voice. There is no sound like this in all the world.
