Summary
In this section, readers learn more about Lionel's past. As a child, he was involved in a mishap where, after being hospitalized for a routine operation, he was confused with another child and taken to Toronto for a major heart operation. The mistake was eventually caught, but he is still often reported as having a medical condition he does not in fact have. Later, as a university student, Lionel travels to Salt Lake City to present a paper at an academic conference on behalf of his supervisor. His paper is badly received by the group of Indian activists who are present, and they invite him to a rally, which he reluctantly goes to. At the rally, his shoe gets caught and he falls on top of a police officer, who treats this as an attack and arrests him. As a result of a long series of misunderstandings and miscommunications, Lionel ends up with a criminal record, which limits his employment prospects.
With few choices, Lionel agrees to take a job selling electronics at Bill Bursum's store. Bill wants to hire Lionel because he wants to attract business from other Aboriginals by having a Blackfoot salesman. Lionel plans to have the job for only a short time and then return to school, but keeps delaying and delaying, even though various family members, including Charlie, warn him about being trapped. Now, his aunt Norma is disappointed both in his lack of career ambition, and his lack of spending time with his family and honoring traditions. She compares him unfavorably to his sister Latisha, who is running a successful restaurant.
More details also emerge about Alberta. After her class, she returns a call from her lover, Charlie Looking Bear, a lawyer who lives in Edmonton. He invites her to come and visit him, but she declines because she has plans to go to Blossom and see Lionel. Charlie objects to this plan, and also points out why he thinks Lionel is not deserving of her. Alberta has been balancing romantic relationships with both men for some time, since she does not want to end up in a serious relationship with either. She does, however, badly want to have a child, and doesn't feel comfortable with any of the options for how she might achieve that. Part of Alberta's discomfort with relationships is rooted in an earlier marriage to a man named Bob, who expected her to drop out of school and work to support him. She is also haunted by the behavior of her father Amos, an alcoholic, who eventually abandoned the family.
Meanwhile, God, Coyote, and the narrator continue to observe the scene of creation, noticing a separation between Sky World and Water World. In Sky World, a figure named First Woman emerges and enters into Water World. She ends up living in a garden with a male companion named Ahdamn. They live an idyllic existence with plentiful food, despite Ahdamn's attempts at giving things the wrong names. Watching them, God becomes more and more frustrated and eventually enters the garden. Once there, he starts yelling at First Woman and Ahdamn to stop eating his stuff, which they ignore. They do eventually become frustrated enough to leave the garden and move West.
After leaving the garden, First Woman and Ahdamn come across a group of rangers lying dead at the bottom of a canyon. They are then approached by a group of rangers who accuse them of having been involved in violence. In order to protect herself, First Woman puts on a mask and they decide that she is the Lone Ranger. She also tells them that Ahdamn's name is Tonto and that he is her Indian friend, at which point the rangers leave them alone. However, as soon as she takes off her mask, the two of them are arrested. They are taken by train to Florida where Ahdamn becomes a celebrity for drawing pictures. First Woman, however, knows that she has work to do so she puts on her mask and assumes the Lone Ranger identity. This allows her to leave the prison, and meet up with the other elders.
At the asylum, Dr. Hovaugh consults with another doctor, Dr. John Eliot, hoping to get him to sign death certificates for the four Indians, which Dr. Eliot refuses to do. Dr. Hovaugh explains his theory that the previous escapes of the elders have coincided with major disasters. Sergeant Cerneo continues to question Babo, becoming increasingly frustrated when she has no information to give him, and seems to disagree about even basic details like the names of the Indians and whether they were men or women. He talks to Dr. Hovaugh instead, but can't get much information from him either. Dr. Hovaugh is vague about the Indians, and how they ended up in the asylum, but does suggest they have been there for well over a hundred years.
At the end of the section, the different storylines begin to intersect. As Norma and Lionel are driving, they see the four elders by the side of the road and stop to pick them up. When he steps out of the car, Lionel notices he is standing in a puddle of water. When Coyote is confused by the end of the story of First Woman/Lone Ranger, the narrator decides to start over.
Analysis
This section continues to engage with creation stories, but now becomes more critical and even satirical. A traditional Aboriginal creation story is prioritized over the traditional European, Judeo-Christian creation narrative, in order to show that both are ultimately stories, and therefore one is not superior to the other. The God figure however, is shown to be power-hungry, authoritarian, and greedy. He behaves childishly in his insistence on trying to maintain order and control by imposing rules. This behavior reflects the multiple kinds of control asserted by Europeans over non-European peoples through colonialism. Insistence on Christian values and doctrine is presented as arbitrary, while the various discussions of bureaucratic policies in this section reveal how attempts at making laws about how to govern people is often an attempt at controlling them.
This section also highlights how Aboriginals experience discrimination as a result of their racial identity. What Lionel describes as his "mistakes" don't actually result from him making bad choices so much as from assumptions others make. The mishap at the hospital is almost funny, but results from the fact that Lionel is confused with another aboriginal child, indicating a tendency to see people belonging to a specific group as being interchangeable with one another. The long running impact of this event is also significant: it highlights how bureaucracy and administrative mistakes can seriously impact someone's life, which is very important given how much of the experience of the Blackfoot people is shaped by their interactions with the government. It also functions as an example of how something from the past can have lingering consequences. The typical response to historical traumas experienced by Native peoples is often to be told that these things are over, and this small story about Lionel's past reveals how simply moving on from past events is not as simple as it might sound.
After leaving the garden, First Woman and Ahdamn experience similar types of discrimination. Like Lionel, they are presumed to be violent and threatening simply because of their cultural identity. First Woman reveals her understanding of how appearances can determine behavior when she puts on a mask. The mask literally disguises her appearance but it also associates her with a figure from Western popular culture. The Lone Ranger was masked figure who featured in numerous Western novels, radio plays, television series, and films as a hero out to defeat enemies (often Indians). When she presents herself this way, First Woman is suddenly treated with respect. She also protects Ahdamn by giving him the identity of Tonto, who was the Indian helper of the Lone Ranger. This strategy suggests that only Indians who are working for or alongside white individuals will be trusted. Her giving Adam a new name also reverses the scene in the garden where he tries to create authority by naming things, but only ends up looking ridiculous.
First Woman's taking on this identity shows that the narratives featuring Coyote and the narrator, and the story of the four Indian elders, bleed into one another. It is never entirely clear what exactly the relationship is between the protagonists of the creation stories (First Woman and the other female figures who appear in the later version) and the four elders. They seem to be versions of each other, or mirrored doubles. This fusion also creates an opportunity for further criticism of dominant, masculine values. As Suzanne Rintoul notes, "When First Woman becomes the Lone Ranger, Changing Woman becomes Ishmael, Thought Woman becomes Robinson Crusoe, and Old Woman becomes Hawkeye, each Indian also modifies European narratives of patriarchal and colonialist control" (239). Coyote's confusion about the interconnection of the story, and the way in which individuals seem to appear in the story at random reflects what the reader is likely to be feeling. The narrator's decision to begin again suggests that the purpose of a story is less to convey information than to make a point or teach a lesson. Because Coyote hasn't yet grasped the point, the story will begin all over again.
