The Painted Drum

There are many references in the novel to the devastating and ongoing effects of the historical European invasion of North America. Before the arrival of white people, the Ojibwe had an “old agreement between themselves” (111) and the animals and the land that sustained all of life. This agreement not only obliged people to hunt no more than necessary to fulfill their own needs, it also, by its mere existence, testified to the deep respect the people had for life, regardless of the form it took. From the idea that the same life-force animates people and animals alike, it follows that the people assumed the names of animals they closely identified with, just as Ziigwan’aage “was named for the spirit of the wolverine” (134).

By seizing Ojibwe land, carving it into plots of property, and forcing the people to resettle in towns, colonizers disrupted the Ojibwe’s traditional relationship with their environment. While the Ojibwe once took only what they needed from nature, the whites introduced guns and commodity markets, and soon the Ojibwe themselves were hunting and trapping for profit. Recognizing that they had betrayed “the old agreement” (111) with the wolves,