Neither Wolf Nor Dog

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1994

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Introduction-Chapter 4

Chapters 5-11

Chapters 12-16

Chapters 17-21

Chapters 22-26

Key Figures

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

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Discussion Questions

Chapters 5-11Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 5 Summary: “A Land of Dreams and Phantasms”

As Nerburn spends more time on the reservation, he becomes mesmerized by the landscape of the open plains. Dan compliments Nerburn for his ability to sit in silence, saying that most white people speak too much. He explains that indigenous children are taught to think critically before they speak or act, and that white teachers often confuse this for ignorance or belligerence. Dan says that remaining silent allows him to listen to the voices of the Earth as expressed in wind, land, and animal life. He tells Nerburn that he can hear the voices of his dead ancestors; Nerburn remembers sensing the presence of graves while on a peyote trip in the 1960s. Dan claims to be able to communicate with his dog, Fatback. Nerburn accepts this, rather than trying to prove his claims, just as an anthropologist might.

Chapter 6 Summary: “Junk Cars and Buffalo Carcasses”

Dan and Nerburn drive to visit Grover. Nerburn is fond of Grover, despite the fact that he knows Grover does not fully trust him. On the drive, Nerburn is surprised to see junk cars and other abandoned property around the reservation. Dan notices that Nerburn is bothered by the reservation’s aesthetics, and explains that indigenous people see modern cities as equally full of junk. He argues that people on the reservation use objects like cars beyond their original use: the junk car in his yard, for example, is Fatback’s house. Nerburn challenges the idea, saying that junk cars are not the same as buffalo carcasses. Dan argues that the white view of objects as property is foreign to indigenous people. When the pair arrives at Grover’s tidy, well-maintained home, Dan laughs and claims that Grover has lost his culture.

Chapter 7 Summary: “Rooting for the Cowboys”

Dan and Nerburn find Grover watching an old Western movie, in which a group of cowboys chase a group of indigenous warriors across the plains. Nerburn is surprised that Grover can stomach the outdated, stereotypical portrayals and Italian actors playing indigenous men. Grover explains that he watched Westerns as a kid and always cheered for the cowboys. As an adult, Grover feels annoyed by the stereotypes but believes there are bigger issues. Dan explains that American stereotypes of indigenous people began with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show in the 1850s. Capitalizing on the success of indigenous tribes at the Battle of Little Big Horn, Buffalo Bill toured with a group of indigenous people to entertain white audiences. Grover believes that most media that purports to be about indigenous people actually centers white people. He warns Nerburn not to make his book about himself.

Chapter 8 Summary: “Taking Maize from Squanto”

Disturbed by Grover’s warning, Nerburn feels a new distance between himself and Dan. He worries that he is an observer in the story rather than a participant, and that Dan feels like he has to perform for him. Nerburn begins to regret starting this project: Grover has become overbearing, Dan doesn’t know what he wants the book to be, and publishers are unlikely to accept Dan as a protagonist. He decides to quit, and turns on a baseball game. The broadcast features fans dressed in offensive indigenous costumes, and Nerburn feels called to continue the project.

The next day, Nerburn learns that Dan has left town. When he shares his frustration with Wenonah, she reveals that, as a child, Dan was taken from his family and sent to an Industrial School where he was physically and emotionally abused.

Chapter 9 Summary: “Jumbo”

As Nerburn speeds away from Dan’s house, his engine begins to smoke. Nerburn steers the loud, smoking car through the reservation’s main town, desperately searching for a mechanic. A group of young kids on bikes direct him through town to a small, run-down mechanic’s shop. The mechanic, a massive man named Jumbo, approaches the car without speaking to Nerburn. Jumbo says he’s never heard of Nissan and returns to his house. Nerburn begins to panic, worrying that Jumbo and other indigenous people don’t understand the value of his car. Jumbo reappears and says that he looked up the problem and can fix it, but won’t give Nerburn an estimate of when it will be done. The kids help Nerburn steer the car into the garage. Suddenly, Dan appears with Grover, saying that he knew Nerburn needed him.

Chapter 10 Summary: “Ponytails and Jewelry”

Worried that he’ll never see his truck again, Nerburn falls into a sleep in the back of Grover’s car. The men wake him outside of a rest stop restaurant. Dan mocks a green school bus that has been converted into a camper van. Inside, Nerburn notices the bus’s owners—a middle-aged, white, hippie couple with three young children. Dan avoids the family, explaining to Nerburn that white hippies always want to talk to him. Grover jokes that he should cut his hair so that white people will ignore him. Dan tells Nerburn that long hair is a sign of pride for Lakota men, and that his hair was cut at the Industrial School. The family leaves without speaking to Dan. Dan compares the hippies to professionals who try to buy indigenous art and jewelry, claiming that both are trying to buy indigenous culture.

Chapter 11 Summary: “The Selling of the Sacred”

The three men return to the car and depart in silence. As Nerburn sits in the backseat with Fatback, he becomes overwhelmed by the beauty of the plains and his mood lightens. Dan and Grover sing a Lakota song together, and Nerburn begins to cry. Dan announces that he has a speech to make. Nerburn begins recording. Dan explains that it hurts him to criticize his people, but that indigenous people who sell sacred ceremonies or objects to white people are killing indigenous culture. He says that white Americans are unhappy with themselves and want to be indigenous, and that indigenous people should not enable their fantasies and insecurities at the expense of indigenous culture. He warns that things that are sold stop being sacred, and that indigenous culture will die if white people are able to buy access to it. The men return to silence.

Chapters 5-11 Analysis

In this section, Nerburn struggles with his place as an outsider on Dan and Grover’s reservation and a representative of white, male power and privilege perpetuating The Lasting Trauma of America’s Violence Against Indigenous Communities. Nerburn’s actions and attitudes in these chapters challenge the first section’s depiction of him as an empathetic ally for indigenous communities. In the introduction, Nerburn criticizes the “myths and false images [about indigenous people] on which we have been raised,” (5) and acknowledges that these stereotypes are “dehumanizing” (5). In this section, however, he reinforces several harmful stereotypes about indigenous communities, complicating his claim to “honor them with the gift of [his] words” (8).

As a writer, Nerburn’s reinforcement of these harmful and outdated stereotypes inadvertently exemplify one of the novel’s central themes: The Role of Language in Oppression. As he enters the unnamed reservation’s main town for the first time without Dan and Grover, Nerburn notes with dismay that “there [is] no sense of order or indication of effort to keep things clean” (74). He describes the town as “a world of half-efforts” (74) in which “nothing ha[s] been brought to conclusion” (74). Most tellingly, he expresses wonder at the “willingness of people to live in squalor, when only the simplest effort would have been required to make things clean” (74). The emphasis in these excerpts on effort and completing work suggest that Nerburn considers the residents of this town to be lazy, signaling his engagement with a long historical tradition of condemning indigenous communities for failing to conform to white cultural norms and America’s “attitude toward possessions” (76).

While Nerburn acknowledges the pervasive, racist, and harmful stereotypes held by white America about indigenous communities, this section suggests an inability to recognize them in himself. When Nerburn visits the reservation’s mechanic, Jumbo, he immediately engages harmful stereotypes about indigenous people. When he first meets Jumbo, Nerburn worries that “there was no way [he’s] going to be able to communicate the desperation of [his] situation to a man who live[s] in a land where cars were as disposable as tin cans or a pair of cheap shoes” (106). Nerburn’s belief that Jumbo—a professional mechanic—doesn’t understand the value of modern necessities indicates his implicit bias stereotype of indigenous people as “savage” or primitive (5). Despite the town residents’ endorsement of Jumbo as a skilled mechanic, Nerburn instinctually believes Jumbo can’t be technologically savvy enough to fix his car. Later, after reluctantly leaving his truck with Jumbo, Nerburn imagines Jumbo abandoning his car and selling it for parts, leaving him stranded while “happy Indians rode around on its new hundred-dollar tires and listened to powwow tapes on its recently purchased two-hundred-dollar tape deck” (110). Nerburn’s anxieties speak to pervasive and harmful stereotypes about indigenous people as untrustworthy in negotiations. Although he considers himself to be an empathetic ally for indigenous communities, these passages suggest that he still holds harmful beliefs about the people for whom he claims to advocate.

Nerburn’s discovery of Dan’s personal history reinforces the novel’s thematic interest in The Lasting Trauma of America’s Violence Against Indigenous Communities. Throughout this section, Nerburn introduces new details about Dan’s past, such as the fact that he was taken from his home and sent to an Industrial School, a federally run school designed to assimilate indigenous children into white American culture. Dan’s granddaughter Wenonah describes in devastating detail how her grandfather was physically and emotionally abused at the school, and points to that abuse to justify his suspicion of white men like Nerburn.