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Prologue: The Forest Cries
Themes
and Colors
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 Ojibway people remember Ni-bo-wi-se-gwe as a great woman. Ni-bo-wi-se-gwe is born during an eclipse, so the community knows that she is a special child. Her parents, Me-ow-ga-bo (Father) and Wa-wi-e-cu-mig-go-gwe (Mother) are happy to finally have a child. Three weeks after the birth, a healer named A-wa-sa-si gathers herbs, and she names the new baby “Ni-bo-wi-se-gwe.” It means “Night Flying Woman,” in honor of the dark, fleeting eclipse that marked the baby’s birth. The baby’s nickname is “Oona,” which resembles the sound of her laugh. The community holds a huge feast on a beautiful golden autumn day to celebrate Oona.
Oona’s birth highlights her indigenous society’s communal structure. When Oona’s born, the whole community celebrates together. Moreover, rather than naming Oona themselves, her parents defer to an elderly community member (A-wa-sa-si) to name Oona. This shows how closely involved the community is with one another’s lives, and it also stresses the importance of respecting the elderly in Native American culture. The fact that Oona’s name references the physical environment around the time of her birth highlights the Ojibway’s close connection with the natural landscape.
Active
Themes
Oona’s family straps Oona into a cradleboard, so that they can carry her around, enabling her to watch the adults as they go about their tasks. When Oona cries, the adults gently brush twigs over her face and pinch her mouth so that she knows to stop. This is important for times when enemies are near. Oona spends her first few winters nestled in the family lodge watching shadows from the warm fire dance around the room. In the summers, when Oona’s family travels through the forest, she eats berries from the bushes. She’s surrounded by love and laughter as the cycle of Ojibway life unfolds around her.
The reader learns about the traditional day-to-day lifestyle of Ojibway people. As before, Broker emphasizes that traditional Ojibway culture centers around living in the forest, surviving on its resources (like berries), and living communally. Broker highlights Oona’s happiness and feelings of contentment to show that the Ojibway thrived when living according to their indigenous traditions.
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Themes
One spring, just as the forest is springing into life, a clansman arrives from the east. He tells Oona’s family that strange pale men are coming, and they want the Ojibway to sign some papers. When the Ojibway in the east signed the papers, the strangers began tearing down the forest for lumber. The village leader, A-bo-wi-ghi-shig (or Warm Sky) asks if the strangers will be friends or enemies. The clansman says that some of the strangers are kind, and that they even bring gifts—but others are deceitful. The clansman explains that soon after the pale men arrived, the eastern Ojibway people fell ill with a sickness that causes terrible coughs and bumpy rashes.
Oona’s grandfather (Grandfather) has seen the strangers before. Everywhere they go, they cut down trees and force the Ojibway to live in small pockets of land that they can’t leave. Grandfather thinks that the strangers are here to stay, because they’re building lodges and planting corn. A-bo-wi-ghi-shig suggests that the village should move deeper into the forest, where the land is boggy, knowing that the strangers won’t be able to plant crops on boggy land. Hopefully, this will deter the strangers from coming after them. The villagers discuss the idea for three days, as they smoke a peace pipe and reflect on their future. Some decide to leave, and others decide to stay and meet the strangers.
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One morning, five-year-old Oona wakes up and listens to the forest around her. She can feel a change in the air. She runs out to Grandfather, remembering to keep her eyes downcast until he greets her. In Ojibway culture, the elders must always speak first. Grandfather and Mother are packing bundles. Grandfather explains that they’ve been happy in their village for many years, but they must leave and travel west. Oona runs to pack her own small bundle. The villagers stand in a circle, so that they can remember one another’s faces as they part ways.
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