Retrieval and Commemoration of History
From the very beginning, Erdrich notes that she has tried to be faithful to history and in particular to the life of her grandfather, Patrick Gourneau, the real-life person whom the character Thomas Wazhashk is based on. Thus, the novel serves as a retrieval and commemoration of history as much as it is a work of fiction. This history eschews a "Great Man" model of history and instead insists on a collective and plural one that follows many "minor" characters and their intersecting lives. Erdrich both follows multiple characters, and toggles between different periods of time and places. Her nonlinear, plural, and interwoven form of narrative emphasizes difference, interconnectedness, and reconciliation.
Poverty
Poverty is a widespread fact of life on the reservation. There are few jobs, and those that exist still pay minimum wages. Patrice's family, without a working father, is especially poor, which constantly weighs on her mind when she brings her lunch to the factory or when someone drives her home and sees the disheveled facade.
Progress takes time to reach those parts. By design, these lands have been deprived of government funding and support for generations. Lawmakers have used the law for decades to eradicate Native Americans by starving them out. Thomas works at the first factory ever built within the vicinity of their reservation. Pixie, like her colleagues, works for outrageously low wages—less than a dollar an hour–to feed her large family.
Death and Violence
Horror creeps underneath the entire novel and occasionally surfaces, jarring the reader out of the warm and quotidian atmosphere of the reservation. Gender violence is especially rampant—whether through abduction and trafficking of native women in the cities, or the rape and assault of women on the reservation—safety is never guaranteed.
Indigenous American women who have been murdered or gone missing is a long ignored crisis. The few databases that do exist report dozens of girls and women have gone missing each year. If they do return, they often cannot access necessary treatment or counseling. The pandemic of missing women points to a confluence of patriarchal and colonial structures that leave women vulnerable.
Erdrich centers women's voices and their experiences of violence, giving human names and stories to them without exploiting their pain. She also shows how families and communities, particularly among women themselves, try to keep each other safe and work to heal each other.
Collective Resistance and Survival
The main conflict running through the novel is between government-mandated extinction and tribal survival. Thomas is the leader who understands early on the danger of the bill and spearheads the effort against it, but many people pitch in their time, energy, and money to block the bill once they come to understand its implications. Erdrich carefully portrays the characters as not merely passive victims of colonialism but strivers, caretakers, organizers, lovers, fighters, and survivors.
Language and Folklore
Language itself is made visible by the use of Chippewa throughout the novel—often without translation—and occasional comments on why characters use Chippewa instead of English and what the language more easily transmits. Names are particularly important because they are untranslatable and thus are given in their original untranslated form. We are given the origin story for Thomas' surname, Wazhashk, meaning "muskrat." Patrice calls Vera's baby Gwiiwizens, meaning "little boy." The older generation in the novel, such as Moses Montroose, prefers to use Chippewa for certain affective modes of communication, such as humor and irony. The use of Chippewa testifies to the importance of language as a form of cultural and spiritual survival.
Spirits of the Dead
The world of The Night Watchman is riven with ghosts, spirits, and ancestors. The line between the living and the dead is transgressed so often and in such a matter-of-fact way that it barely even appears. Thus, Erdrich's prose in the novel could be described as magical realist in its evocation of the everyday and the magical side by side.
Through the presence of ghosts and spirits, Erdrich draws out the violent effects of assimilation and how they persist long after formal institutionalization ends. However, not all these ghosts are bad; they often speak to the enduring bonds between people, as Roderick looks out for LaBette and the ancestral northern lights benevolently shine down on the living people.
Assimilative Schooling
Government boarding school as a project of assimilation and destruction of tribal identity casts a long shadow over the novel. Thomas the protagonist is haunted by his memories of boarding school, primarily through the ghost of Roderick, a former classmate who got sick after being locked in a cellar by a schoolteacher and eventually died. Roderick remembers teachers who used corporal punishment and outlawed any "Indian talk." Thomas remembers his mother cutting his hair in anticipation of the teachers cutting off their hair once they arrived.
Tova Cooper writes in the article "Assimilative Schooling and Native American Literature" that US involvement in Native American education dates back to 1819 when the Indian Civilization Fund Act was enacted, but really gained traction in the late 19th century. The Dawes Act of 1887 promised citizenship to tribal members who had fulfilled certain requirements, including "becoming Americanized." In 1891, Congress made attending assimilative school mandatory. Children were often coerced into attending boarding school, had to abruptly end contact with their families and communities, and endured brutal and punitive conditions.
