Thomas S. Whitecloud's "Blue Winds Dancing" is an emotional short story that describes a young Chippewa man's journey home in vivid imagery. The unnamed man is returning to his village from university, reflecting on the oppression he faced there as he treks home across a valley.
The narrator's adoration and appreciation for nature is established through his detailed accounts of his memories of home, perhaps beautified by nostalgia. He longingly describes the scent of "wild rice and venison cooking", the sound of birds singing "their last songs before leaving", and the "sunsets burst[ing] each evening over the lakes... [making] them look as if they were afire" (87). He admits that there is beauty outside of his Chippewa village, where the trees grow in neatly arranged rows and stand with a certain stiffness, but maintains that "it is the beauty of captivity... a pine fighting for existence on a windy knoll is much more beautiful" (87). As the narrator finds various means to reach his home, crouching in cattle car and hiding in the dark of a Santa Fe passenger train, he is glad to leave the oppressing methods of the white men at his university behind. The narrator is "weary of trying to keep up [the] bluff of being civilized... dancing to the strings of custom and tradition" as the white men want (88). He recalls how the white men look down upon his people as inferior, and that "it is terrible to sit in classes and hear men tell you that your people worship sticks of wood... that your gods are all false" (88). |
Once his reservation nears, the narrator's excitement is replaced with a fear that the oppressing hand of the white man has changed him for the worse - that he will be "looked on as a stranger by [his] own people" (89). For a moment, he is unsure if he is still Indian or if he is white, and wonders "if [his] people will remember [him]" (90). When he finally enters the lodge, however, the narrator realizes he has nothing to fear; his people "nod slightly, imperceptibly, and their eyes laugh into mine... no one quests my being here... I am home" (91).
Throughout the narrator's journey, the effects of the oppression he faced at a white university become clear. Forced to give up his culture and conform to white standards, he fears that his Chippewa tribe will see him as white instead of Indian. Of course, the narrator never forgets his roots or pride for his culture, and his reflections on his journey home highlight his love for his tribe. By never forgetting where he came from, he has defeated his oppressors. |