Racism and Assimilation Theme Analysis

Elijah swings again, and again the marten squeals. My stomach feels sick. I pick up a heavier piece of wood, step up, and give it a sharp blow to its head. The hide noose snaps and the marten drops to the ground. It doesn’t move. I club its head once.

Elijah stares at me.

“We had to do it,” I say.

I'd much rather be outside on the cool grass, me, but the officers won't allow it. We've been over here in this place that some call Flanders and others call Belgium for three weeks now. I felt stupid and small when Elijah had to explain that Belgium is a country, like Canada, and Flanders is just one small part of it, like Mushkegowuk. I'm still uncomfortable with the language of the wemistikoshiw. It is spoken through the nose and hurts my mouth to try and mimic the silly sound of it. I opt to stay quiet most of the time, listening carefully to decipher the words, always listening for the joke or insult made against me. These others think that I'm something less than them, but just give me the chance to show them what I'm made of when it is time to kill.

Smithy shakes his head and looks away. He is small and skinny. He's going bald. He looks like a Hudson's Bay Company man I know back in Moose Factory who teaches Sunday school to the children who live on the reserve and not in the bush, the homeguard children. "That ain't true atall," Smithy mumbles. "There's another Indian feller goes by the name Peggy. Ojibwe, I think." He looks over at me. ''He's got close to a hundred kills but no officer wants to give him credit since he likes working alone." Smithy suddenly stops talking and looks embarrassed that he's said so much. "Peggy's salt of the earth," he adds as an afterthought. "Every Canadian enlisted man knows he ain't no liar."

The world is a different place in this new century, Nephew. And we are a different people. My visions still come but no one listens any longer to what they tell us, what they warn us. I knew even as a young woman that destruction bred on the horizon. In my early visions, numbers of men, higher than any of us could count, were cut down. They lived in the mud like rats and lived only to think of new ways to kill one another. No one is safe in such times, not even the Cree of Mushkegowuk. War touches everyone, and windigos spring from the earth.

The next morning after stand-to, Thompson approaches Elijah and me. He talks to both of us, but his words are for Elijah. "What do you think of the last days, Whiskeyjack?" he asks, lighting a cigarette, exhaling and looking at the sky.

I can see that Elijah knows exactly what Thompson's asking. Thompson is asking if Elijah likes killing. Elijah considers it for a moment. "It's in my blood," he finally says.

Thompson smiles, then walks off. He didn't ask me the same question. Does he sense something? How am I different? A strange sensation, one I do not recognize, surges up my spine.

I know that Xavier wants to talk to me. He goes so far as to let words come out of his mouth when he sleeps. He says very little when he's awake. I'm not able to make out more than the odd sentence when he is sleeping, though, and sometimes when he dreams he speaks aloud in English. I can't help but smile a bit when he does. As a child he was so proud that more than once he claimed he would never speak the wemistikoshiw tongue. And now he does even in his sleep. He cannot speak to me yet, and so I decide, here on the river, that I will speak to him. In this way, maybe his tongue will loosen some. Maybe some of the poison that courses through him might be released in this way. Words are all I have left now. I've lived alone so long that I realize I'm starved to talk. And so, as I paddle him gently with the river, I talk to him, tell him about my life.

The awawatuk accepted that I was the natural extension of my father, the new limb through which my family's power travelled. By the time I was living my seventeenth winter, men would come to me not for what men usually seek women out for, but to ask questions and advice. Most often, they wanted to know where to find game, and so I divined for them, placing the shoulder blade of the animal on coals and dripping water onto it as I had watched my father do. The rare hunter came to me wanting to understand the symbol of a dream and sometimes to learn his future. If I had not experienced a fit in some time, I constructed a shaking tent and crawled into it, summoned the spirits of the forest animals to come inside and join me, so many of them sometimes that the walls of my tent puffed out and drew in with their breath, becoming a living thing all its own. Most often, though, it was the spirit of the lynx that came to me first and stayed through the night, showing through its sharp eyes the secrets of the forest.

The other soldiers often ask Elijah about his name too. And he is happy to talk. His Cree name is Weesageechak. But that is something he doesn't share with the wemistikoshiw. Whiskeyjack is how they say his name, make it their own. He has told me that what they do to his name is what sounds to my ears like a longer word for bastard, making his name a name without a family.

"Whiskeyjacks should fly better," he says.

Elijah looks at him. "How do you know my name?"

"I don't," the man says. "I was dreaming. There was a flock of whiskeyjacks." He looks confused. "They were pecking at something dead."

Elijah stands and walks back to me.

"What did the old man say to you?" I ask.

"He knew my name. Claims he was dreaming of whiskeyjacks."

"It's a sign,” I say.

"Everything's a sign to you." Elijah looks out the window. "Hey, there’s a sign," he says, pointing outside. "It says Abitibi River. But you wouldn't know that, considering you're a heathen."

I lie deep in the trench when the day is calm and think about how the world of the soldier consists of staring up at the sky, crawling upon the earth at night and living beneath it during the day. In the dark of night I think that my life has been divided into three for me by these wemistikoshiw. There was my life before them and their army, there is my life in their army, and, if I live, there will be my life after I have left it and returned home. They must have some magic in their number of three. I know that you, Niska, taught me that we will all someday walk the three-day road, and now I'm left wondering what connection there might be between their world and mine. I need to find out if we share something, some magic. Maybe it will help me get through all this.

"Why does she call you Nephew and not your real name?" he asked.

"Nephew is my real name," you answered. "I am her nephew."

“Does she ever call you by your Christian name?" he asked.

You shook your head, looked at me nervously. "My name is Nephew."

"Your name is Xavier," your friend answered.

It was not said meanly. I could tell from his voice that the boy was simply trying to understand.

"Your Christian name is Xavier," he said. "And mine is Elijah."

"Show us how the grouse danced," Old Francis said, and drunk from the attention, you stood, and made everyone else stand around the fire too. You imitated the big grouse, and everyone lifted their arms and moved around the circle. Do you remember? You called out and we moved around the circle, and then you raised your arms and called out again and we all touched our fingertips above our heads and moved the other way, you rustling your arms like feathered wings and everyone laughing. And that is when I said, "From now on we call you Little Bird Dancer," and everyone laughed and agreed it was a good name for you.

I do not know how to make them understand who I am. To them I am Elijah Whiskeyjack, sniper and scout. Hero. When I want medicine, I tell the pretty-mouthed nurse that the pain is too bad, that I need a little of it. She leaves for a short time, comes back carrying a needle. I spend hours staring out the window; rubbing at the stub of leg through the pinned-up material of the pajamas, feeling the warm river rushing below me. It is easier not to tell them anything, easier not to explain at all. I allow myself to believe that I am Elijah. In this way he is still alive.