Time after time, when the characters in The Night Watchman confront conflicts, they respond with solidarity to overcome them. When people in power try to enforce their will on others, the most effective way those people can fight back, the novel seems to suggest, is through collective action. For example, when Patrice forgets to cook her bread and has nothing to eat for lunch, the community of people she works with steps in to give her food. She forgets to cook her bread in the first place because she is rattled by her father’s drunken outburst, which is an exhibition of power (in the form of physical force and the threat of violence). Another example also takes place at the jewel bearing plant. When Mr. Vold takes away their coffee breaks, the women band together to start a petition to have them reinstated. Readers learn from a note after the book that the real-life women who worked at the plant, on whose story the book is loosely based, ultimately attempt to unionize. While they were unsuccessful in that campaign, they did get wages raised, the cafeteria finished, and coffee breaks reinstated as a result of their efforts.
The central conflict of the novel demonstrates a similar dynamic. Arthur Watkins is a senator who uses his power to advocate for the elimination of federal recognition of Native tribes. If his proposed bill were to pass, it would be devastating for the Native people it impacts. To counter this exhibition of power, Thomas helps to mobilize his community, and the community bands together to fight. First, they start a petition, which Louis tends to like “a garden” as he aims to get everyone on the reservation to sign. And the community comes together again for the fundraiser, a community-sponsored boxing match, that enables a group to travel from the Turtle Mountain Reservation to Washington, D.C. to testify against the bill. This solidarity is not idealized, though. When Thomas convenes the committee to decide who will go to Washington, even though they know how important it is, most people don’t want to go. Even when solidarity is widespread, action based on that solidarity can be difficult to achieve, especially because success isn’t guaranteed. Eventually, though, Thomas does get a group together, and their collective action ultimately succeeds in defeating the bill. The novel suggests, then, that community action, though difficult to achieve, can effectively counter unfair displays of power, whether they come from an exploitative boss or an agent of one of the world’s most powerful institutions.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Power, Solidarity, and Community Action ThemeTracker
Power, Solidarity, and Community Action 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.
Thomas was named for the muskrat, wazhashk, the lowly, hardworking, water-loving rodent […] Although the wazhashkag were numerous and ordinary, they were also crucial. In the beginning, after the great flood, it was a muskrat who had helped remake the earth. In that way, as it turned out, Thomas was perfectly named.
Word went out that dough was in Patrice’s bucket. That she’d forgotten to cook it, bake it, fry it […] Saint Anne pushed a buttered bun across the table to Patrice. Someone handed an oatmeal cookie down the line. Doris gave her half a bacon sandwich.
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.
Many years back, the first Wobleszynski had encroached on the land owned by Wood Mountain’s grandmother. Since then, the Wobleszynskis sent their cattle to graze on Juggie’s land so often that her family had finally shanghaied a cow. This happened during berry-picking time, when there were extra people camped out everywhere, so if the cow was stolen it was quickly absorbed into boiling pots. Nothing was ever traced or proved but nothing was ever forgotten, either. Over the years, resentment between the families had become entrenched.
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.”
“This one takes away the treaties.”
“For all Indians? Or just us?”
“All.”
“At least they’re not picking on us alone,” says Biboon. “Maybe we can get together with the other tribes on this thing.”
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?
“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.”
Louis Pipestone tended the petition like a garden.
He reached over to his lunch box. Maybe he’d left that crust. It was LaBatte’s lunch box, full. A meat sandwich with real butter. More bread, this time with butter and sugar. A baked potato, still warm. Apples.
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.
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.
