Much of the brutality depicted in The Night Watchman is done by people who claim, and by some who might believe, that they are acting for the good of the people they harm. When Patrice travels to Minneapolis, a stranger almost kidnaps her, and then Jack Malloy steps in to “help.” Jack offers to do whatever she wants and takes her to the addresses she has written down to try and find her missing sister Vera. His plan, of course, is deeply manipulative, as he aims to make money off Patrice without concern for her wellbeing (he hires her to perform as a “waterjack,” which involves dancing in a water tank in a costume that resembles Paul Bunyan’s sidekick, Babe the blue ox). Patrice later removes herself from the situation soon after she learns that the first two waterjacks who performed in Jack’s club “didn’t last long” (ostensibly because the costume was poisonous).
Similarly, Arthur V. Watkins cloaks his racism, and his desire to terminate Native tribes, in either the neutral language of bureaucracy or the salvific rhetoric of religion. He uses lofty words like “emancipation, freedom, equality, success” to “disguise the truth: termination.” This desire for termination is rooted in racism and white supremacy. Martin Cross, a tribal chairman, writes to Thomas that, from his view, the Mormon project of conversion of Native people aims to “change Indians into whites” and that “they think if you follow their ways your skin will bleach out.” When the hearings take place, Arthur Watkins (in excerpts from the actual historical records of the proceedings) uses racist ideas and language to argue his point. This is one instance of the persistent desire, on the part of the U.S. government, to eradicate Native history, culture, and people, and Arthur Watkins plays his part in this history while still believing himself to be deeply “righteous.” Another instance of this history is the boarding schools that Thomas and Roderick went to and that ultimately claimed Roderick’s life. The government established the boarding schools with the supposed intention to “help” Native people, but in effect, they often sought to destroy Native culture, history, and people. Through these repeated examples, the novel shows how a desire to “help” or “do good” and a belief in one’s own righteousness can often be the impetus for actions that oppress, exploit, or otherwise endanger others.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Oppression and Supposed Good Intentions ThemeTracker
Oppression and Supposed Good Intentions Quotes in The Night Watchman
My grandfather Patrick Gourneau fought against termination as a tribal chairman while working as a night watchman. He hardly slept, like my character Thomas Wazhashk. This book is fiction. But all the same, I have tried to be faithful to my grandfather’s extraordinary life. Any failures are my own. Other than Thomas, and the Turtle Mountain Jewel Bearing Plant, the only other major character who resembles anyone alive or dead is Senator Arthur V. Watkins, relentless pursuer of Native dispossession and the man who interrogated my grandfather.
Mr. Vold forbade speech. Still, they did speak. They hardly remembered what they said, later, but they talked to one another all day.
Thomas had a good friend in the Bureau of Indian Affairs Area Office in Aberdeen, South Dakota, who had sent him a copy of the proposed bill that was supposed to emancipate Indians. That was the word used in newspaper articles. Emancipate.
Valentine said, “You can have my days.”
“What do you mean?”
“My sick days. Mr. Vold told me that I could give my days to you. Under the circumstances.”
In the newspapers, the author of the proposal had constructed a cloud of lofty words around this bill—emancipation, freedom, equality, success—that disguised its truth: termination. Termination. Missing only the prefix. The ex.
“They think if you follow their ways your skin will bleach out. They call it lightsome and gladsome.”
So it comes down to this, thought Thomas, staring at the neutral strings of sentences in the termination bill. We have survived smallpox, the Winchester repeating rifle, the Hotchkiss gun, and tuberculosis. We have survived the flu epidemic of 1918, and fought in four or five deadly United States wars. But at last we will be destroyed by a collection of tedious words.
How should being an Indian relate to this country that had conquered and was trying in every possible way to absorb them? […] How could Indians hold themselves apart, when the vanquishers sometimes held their arms out, to crush them to their hearts, with something like love?
He had been there a few months when he heard the phrase a flag worth dying for, and a slow chill prickled.
“Survival is a changing game.”
“I would like to move we refer to House Concurrent Resolution 108 as the Termination Bill. Those words like emancipation and Freedom are smoke.”
They didn’t look alike anymore, but they walked in exactly the same straight line, full of mystifying purpose.
They had as good as killed Roderick down there.
“A pimp is someone who owns the lady. Takes the money she got paid for having sex, see?”
“No. I don’t see,” said Patrice flatly. But she did see. Jack would have tampered with her slightly, just enough so that when somebody else came along she’d have that shame, then more shame, until she got lost in shame and wasn’t herself.
And Patrice thought another thing her mother said was definitely true—you never really knew a man until you told him you didn’t love him. That’s when his true ugliness, submerged to charm you, might surface.
“Their hatred was fixed, and they were led by their evil nature that they became wild and ferocious, and a blood-thirsty people, full of idolatry and filthiness, feeding upon beasts of prey, dwelling in tents, and wandering about in the wilderness with a short skin girdle about their loins.”
“What do you think, Rosey?” said Thomas. “It’s us.”
His mind was everything to him, but he hadn’t the slightest notion how to save it. He just kept diving down, grabbing for the word, coming back up. The battle with termination and with Arthur V. Watkins had been, he feared, a battle that would cost him everything.
