To Save the Man
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- $29.99
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- $29.99
Publisher Description
In the vein of Never Let Me Go and Killers of the Flower Moon, one of America’s greatest storytellers sheds light on an American tragedy: the Wounded Knee Massacre, and the ‘cultural genocide’ experienced by the Native American children at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School . . .
In September of 1890, the academic year begins at the Carlisle School, a military-style boarding school for Indians in Pennsylvania, founded and run by Captain Richard Henry Pratt. Pratt considers himself a champion of Native Americans. His motto, “To save the man, we must kill the Indian,” is severely enforced in both classroom and dormitory: Speak only English, forget your own language and customs, learn to be white.
As the young students navigate surviving the school, they begin to hear rumors of a “ghost dance” amongst the tribes of the west—a ceremonial dance aimed at restoring the Native People to power, and running the invaders off their land. As the hope and promise of the ghost dance sweeps across the Great Plains, cynical newspapers seize upon the story to whip up panic among local whites. The US government responds by deploying troops onto lands that had been granted to the Indians. It is an act that seems certain to end in slaughter.
As news of these developments reaches Carlisle, each student, no matter what their tribe, must make a choice: to follow the white man’s path, or be true to their own way of life . . .
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Filmmaker and novelist Sayles (Jamie McGillivray) offers an electrifying and convincing chronicle of resistance among Indigenous students at the Carlisle Industrial School in 1890. Antoine LaMere travels from Wisconsin to the school in southern Pennsylvania, where he joins fellow students Herbert Sweetcorn, the restless son of an 1860s war chief; Clarence Regal, a master sergeant in the school's military training program who appears to be a model example of a Westernized Indian but who sees himself as a spy in the white man's world; Wilma Pretty Weasel, who becomes pregnant by Sweetcorn; Makes-Trouble-in-Front, who fails to assimilate; and Grace Metoxen, a young woman with whom Antoine falls in love. Many are galvanized by rumors of the Ghost Dance, a spiritual movement predicting the end of the white man's reign and the triumph of Indigenous culture, and pledge to keep their culture alive despite the school's mission to "kill the Indian" in them. Sayles constructs his story masterfully, weaving together the disparate motivations of his characters—from the homesick students to their Indigenous teachers and the well-meaning but misguided white administrators who see their reeducation policies as more humane than outright genocide. Readers will carry this with them for a long time.
