Night of the Living Rez

Dee and Fellis’s robbery of the tribal museum in “Earth, Speak” further complicates the already thorny relationship these characters have with their culture. The reduction of tribal artifacts to money used for buying drugs echoes Dee’s literal self-effacement in the previous story, “Half-Life.” His dependencies have shifted his relationship to his own identity, allowing him to perceive his own Indigeneity as something transactional. The fact that Fellis now also perceives his own identity this way as well—to the point that he’s the one who actually carries out the robbery—suggests that his relationship to his Penobscot heritage has changed over the course of the collection. In “Burn,” Fellis initially refuses to cut off his hair, opting instead to stay frozen to the pond longer if it means preserving that element of his identity. By “Earth, Speak,” Fellis, like Dee, has a much more distanced and cynical relationship to his culture. For both characters, addiction is a powerful form of Entrapment in Cycles of Trauma—a form of self-harm they are both compelled to repeat again and again.

Ralph Nelson is one of the few male characters in the collection who models a very different type of masculinity from Dee’s, Fellis’s, and Frick’s. Ralph is perceptive and empathetic, as Dee is, but unlike Dee, he acts on these feelings of empathy. His choice to hide Dee from the Tribal Police is one of the few instances in the collection in which Dee receives unrequited and unquestioning kindness. Ralph is also willing to use his identity in transactional ways (such as in the interaction with the police in which he tells them that they can’t enter the lodge where Dee is hiding because he “blessed it yesterday”), but Ralph uses his Indigeneity to benefit other Penobscot people (219). This is in keeping with the fact that Ralph is more in touch with his heritage than most of the other men in Dee’s life. He actively practices tribal traditions, even crafting his own drums and singing songs that Dee is unfamiliar with. Ralph’s presence in the story suggests that a healthy, involved relationship with one’s Indigeneity is not only possible but potentially also crucial to helping other Penobscot citizens struggling to find that same connection.