39 pages • 1 hour read
Michelle GoodFive Little Indians
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2020A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 9-12Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 9 Summary: “Howie”
The story now follows the experiences of Howie Brocket, who was at the Mission during the same years as Kenny and the others. During his time there, Howie was sexually abused by Brother until his mother and another relative smuggled him away to Oklahoma, where he grew up. As an adult, Howie needs to return to the vicinity of the Indian School to get some identification paperwork straightened out. While in the area, he encounters Brother again. Unable to control his rage, he beats the man nearly to death. As a result, Howie spends several years in prison.
His narrative picks up in the present moment while he is facing his seventh Parole Board hearing. He assumes the board wants him to apologize. Instead, he says of Brother, “He deserved what he got and more. Where was the law then when he was beating us, breaking bones, and other, even worse things? That man never saw a day inside, much less inside a courtroom, and yet I am locked in this hell” (163-164).
After his hearing, Howie assumes his request for parole will be denied. A week later, he can hardly believe that his sentence has been completely discharged, and he is now a free man. Returning to Vancouver, he is initially lost in the confusing outside world. Thanks to the kindness of an Indian waitress whom he meets at a diner, he learns about a job unloading stock and cleaning up a local dive bar.
Howie seems to be getting his life back on track, but recurring dreams from his childhood make him want to flee to the countryside where he can live in isolation. To get the money to relocate, Howie impulsively breaks into a Catholic Cathedral and steals a golden crucifix and other paraphernalia that he tries to pawn. He gets arrested almost immediately. At his trial, he expects to be sent back to prison. Much to his surprise, an Indian Courtworker pleads his case and gets him released if he promises to take vocational training at the Indian Friendship Centre and stays out of trouble for a year.
Chapter 10 Summary: “Mariah”
The narrative shifts to Mariah’s hut in the countryside, where Clara is recovering from her shoulder injury. Initially, Clara is wary of the old woman. This is especially true after she finds a ceremonial sweat lodge in the woods near the cabin. Mariah is a healer of both the body and spirit, and Clara grudgingly learns to trust her. She says:
There was something calming about Mariah. She was stern to the point of being gruff, but just as there had been something other than annoyance under her words last night, there was something under her austere exterior that hinted at a gentle kindness (190).
Mariah heals Clara’s shoulder, and the girl spends the winter in the woods, learning native survival skills and crafts. Clara initially wants no part of Indian spiritual ceremonies, in part because of Sister Mary’s Catholic indoctrination and in part because Clara felt the spirits of her ancestors abandoned her as a child. Toward the end of her recuperation period, Clara enters the sweat lodge and undergoes spiritual healing: “One woman walked into that lodge and another walked out. All Clara knew was that it took her back […] Back to who she was before Sister Mary, before the school, before they tried to beat her into a little brown white girl” (199). Shortly after this personal transformation, Clara is ready to return to the world. George and Vera arrive to visit with Mariah and to carry Clara and John Lennon back to Vancouver.
Chapter 11 Summary: “Kenny”
The story now follows Kenny’s life after he leaves Lucy. Over the following year, he returns and is thrilled that the couple has a daughter. During his many absences, he always sends money back to support Lucy and Kendra. When he is with the two, Kenny periodically battles the need to distance himself from his family. He thinks, “No one would have guessed that the old restlessness was so loud in Kenny that he could barely hear the baby coo or Lucy laugh” (210).
To counteract this tendency, Kenny proposes to Lucy, and the two get married. Shortly afterward, he feels an irresistible urge to flee again. While he is working a construction job up north, he gets word that Lucy is in the hospital, gravely ill. Kenny returns immediately to find Clara furious at him. Lucy isn’t too happy to see him initially either, but the couple manages to patch up their differences. Lucy cautions that they need to figure out their problems so that Kendra can have a stable family life. Shortly after her recovery, Lucy tells Kenny to leave before the urge becomes too strong. Maybe that way, he’ll come back sooner next time. The following morning, he slips away again.
Chapter 12 Summary: “Clara”
The story picks up at the end of Clara’s six-month absence from home. She and John Lennon enjoy a road trip with George and Vera as they travel back to Vancouver together. After she returns to Lucy’s house, Clara spends more time at the Friendship Centre, where she stumbles across an ad from the Native Courtworkers’ Society. She learns about their training program for new Courtworkers, who act as advocates for Indians in trouble with the law. Clara completes the six-month program to gain her certification, and she then learns the ropes from a Courtworker named Rose.
Clara reproaches Rose for being so polite to judges who are contemptuous of Indians. Rose says, “Clara, get it through your head: your job is not to change the world. Leave that to the politicians. Your job is to keep Indians out of jail” (222). Clara swallows her pride and learns to be tactful in court. She also becomes an effective advocate for her own people in the legal system.
Chapters 9-12 Analysis
This segment represents an upswing in the fortunes of two characters while two others continue on a less constructive path. This is also the first time that Howie expresses his own version of events pertaining to the abuse Brother targeted toward him.
Like all his schoolmates, Howie experiences bursts of rage, and his temper is the most dangerous of all. He nearly kills Brother when he encounters him years later. As is true of the other characters, Howie feels the force of the law directed at him rather than his abuser, and he spends years in jail. However, he also finds his fortunes changing when the system itself seems inclined to listen to Indian experience rather than judge it. The legal system begins to work in his favor, first when the parole board overturns his sentence and later when a Courtworker keeps him out of jail after his impulsive robbery of a Catholic Church.
Clara experiences a similar upturn just when her life looks bleakest. She is at the point of being arrested by the FBI for running guns to Indians in South Dakota when she escapes across the border to the Red Pheasant Reserve in Saskatchewan. Her fortunes change dramatically when she meets Mariah and experiences both physical and spiritual healing.
In both these instances, transformation becomes possible when Indians help Indians. Both Clara and Howie would have continued on a downward trajectory without the assistance of their own people. George and Mariah are catalysts for Clara’s change. Rose the Courtworker and Clara both help Howie. Unfortunately, Kenny continues to engage in unhealthy coping strategies. He flees from the only constructive relationship in his life with Lucy and Kendra. While Lucy makes modest gains in her life, she, too, doesn’t get too far away from the Mission.
