Melssa Sheppard

English 680

30 October 2000

On the Rez: Dense with Stories

In the very first sentence, Frazier tells the reader: “This book is about Indians, particularly the Oglala [Lakota] Sioux who live on the Pine Ridge Reservation in southwestern South Dakota, in the plains and badlands in the middle of the United States” (3). Although this is true, it is also about a place—a “bleak” piece of land—unwanted and seemingly worthless. This grass-covered area is home to the people the government cast aside. “The reservation landscape is dense with stories” and that is what Frazier spins for the reader: tales of heroes because “the Oglala still produce heroes” (54, 19).

Much of the book dwells on the alcohol abuse, violence and poverty of the Lakota. These are problems that Lakota have faced since the first encounter with wasicu (white man). However, the land calls the Lakota home, calls them back from New York, California and other places. This is how Frazier is lured there: a friend of his, Le, returns to the rez after living in New York, where Frazier and Le first meet. Le and Frazier, who narrates in first-person, are the central characters and their adventures, in addition to the evolution of a powerful friendship, are carefully woven into the tapestry of landscape. Although not overly concerned with the land, Frazier does focus on the people and weaves their stories with the land. He states: “The earth here is just the earth, unadorned, and the places people walk are made not by machinery but by feet” (15). The people provide the stories that make this earth secure and real.

In Chapter one, Frazier describes his fondness for Lakota: “What I want is just as “Indian,” just as traditional, but harder to pin down. That self-possessed sense of freedom is closer to what I want: I want to be an uncaught Indian like them” (4-5). In the narrative that follows then, he captures that sense in his writing—the restlessness, the endless hours of driving, working on a car all afternoon and just sitting and telling stories. This freedom he describes borders on the “romantic” allusions some whites have of being Indian. Frazier does show the reader the alcoholism and poverty as a part of life on the reservation, and perhaps the unconcern for a nine-to-five job that most on the rez do not have influences Frazier’s delusion. But on the rez, a steady job does not matter. Family matters, having a car that runs matters, watching television matters, and telling hero stories matters. Also in this first chapter, Frazier addresses native history, native contributions to American culture, native sense of time, and introduces the first of many heroes: Crazy Horse. Not much is said about the land directly, however, in explaining one translation of Oglala, meaning “dust scatterers,” Frazier does note that prior to colonization: “Social problems often were solved geographically: you and I don’t get along so you stay here and my family and friends and I will move over there” (11). Hence, he explains why social problems are so prevalent: the Lakota have nowhere else to go.

Chapter two takes place in New York and the reader tags along in the beginning stages of Le and Frazier’s friendship. Le comments that New York “concrete just eats shoes up” and compared to the foot-worn earth on the reservation, New York contrasts sharply (24). Frazier says little about the landscape except to explain a bad neighborhood or two.

In chapter three, Frazier and Le both head west: Le takes a bus back to the rez; Frazier and his family move to Montana. At this point in the narrative, Frazier describes the road he takes on one of many visits: “a back road from Hermosa to the reservation” (38). Frazier describes his travels according to the roads he takes and this chapter most vividly describes the landscape of the rez, including pre-gold discovery boundaries and present-day boundaries. He recounts the history of land allotment acts, reservation treaties, and on a trip with Le to the cemetery, learns more about Le’s family history. He also drives to the Badlands, South Dakota’s miniature Grand Canyon via “Red Shirt Table Road” (40).

In a recent review of On the Rez, Tracy Kidder states: “Frazier describes Pine Ridge without kindly condescension, and also without dreariness” (6). He places Pine Ridge, the largest town on the reservation, in relation to roads: “the intersection of Highway 18 and 407 [is the center of town and] people on the reservation [call] it “the four-way [.]” The four-way is the main crossroads of the Oglala nation” (50-1). Chapter four contains Le’s tour of the reservation. As he points to a location (when he and Frazier drive by), he recounts a story: hunting with some guys, sighting a ghost, passing a death site, showing whose land grazes the best horses—all stories of people and land intertwined (54-5).

Frazier and Le also visit Wounded Knee, the site of a massacre in 1890 and 1973. Frazier describes that the “only reference points the eye can find are the silhouettes of cemetery gates and stone monuments on the hilltop, the roof of a small church beyond the cemetery, and a couple of pole structure holding pine boughs to shade people selling dream catchers and beadwork at a graveled pullout next to the road” (59). This description of the prairie is just how it is. Frazier gives the reader a brief history on the Wounded Knee incidents (both) and elaborates about the militant movement on the reservation.

In chapter five, Frazier covers a lot of ground: describing how the Indians “live on the edges” of society, especially literally (72). He describes a difference between mainstream America and Indians: “Our wheeled and plumbed and wire society prefers landscapes of a temperate and level kind, but Indian occupation predates the requirements of technology” (72). He goes on to say that many Indians, including the Lakota, live without modern conveniences-- without electricity, running water, computers and other such amenities. He traverses the whole country via reservations, describing how each people got there, why, and how the tribes were surviving. He does not point fingers, directly, but does lend a sympathetic ear to the land struggles that many tribes continue to fight. He, again, connects stories of people, this time as a tribe, to the land.

Frazier is effective in drawing his reader into the stories of the Oglala he meets. In chapter six, Frazier and Le meander through the reservation visiting relatives and friends, and Frazier picks up some Oglala lore, what some call ‘home remedies.’ This sharing of experience Frazier attributes to the reservation. For example, he is told by one of Le’s sisters: “Hair spay kills insects almost as good as insect spray” and he observes: “On the reservation, I noticed that people often told me tips like that” (105). Two pages of these tips further Frazier’s connection of people to this reservation.

In chapter seven, Frazier visits the Red Cloud School and brother C.M. Simon, S.J. shares with him how Lakota culture has survived. “It’s remarkable […] how much of their tribal culture the Sioux have retained. For most of us, the only thing we’ve got left of our Old World ethnic culture is the food” (115). However, Frazier does not comment here. Instead, he relates brother Simon to the reservation and Red Cloud School by quoting him: “I always feel safer here” (115). Frazier tends to agree, although sometimes he is taken aback. During a visit to Le’s sister, without Le, “she came to the door with her face set hard enough to scare away whoever it might be. Then she recognized me and smiled. The transformation from fierce to friendly was so sudden it dazzled me” (123). This dazzlement comes not only because of people, but their connections to the land.

Once more, focusing on place to influence people, in chapter eight, Frazier quests for an ‘Indian’ bar. All over the country, from Billings to LA to New York, “There’s no bars around here where Indians can drink anymore,” Frazier quotes a woman (135). He suggests that these places like the irreplaceable shops and factories in Pine Ridge, “usually, though, people don’t go to bars to remember, and after a particular bar is gone no one much wants to remember it” (135). The removal of these places, however, does not change the presence of alcohol on the reservation. In Scenic, S.D., Frazier does discover a “cowboy and Indian bar” and after recounting the bar’s shady past, he draws the reader from the Budweiser cans of the bar to the Budweiser cans on “the ground at popular outdoor drinking spots” on the reservation (136-7). Frazier attributes the increase of drinking to the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, which was meant to relocate Indians to cities outside the reservation and in addition, “allowed for more leniency in anti-drinking laws” (140). This indirect connection to place neither draws Frazier’s blame to the place, nor the people, but a piece of paper carries the heavy burden of alcoholism.

Through a descriptive history of Buffalo Gap, S.D., Frazier connects this little town to the Lakota, who followed “the buffalo’s spring migrations through the gap” (140). He weaves another bar-tale from Buffalo Gap and includes the AIM (American Indian Movement) leaders Dennis Banks and Russell Means in this location of reservation. Both men are activists and come into contact with the law quite frequently and were both arrested in conjunction with the 1973 Wounded Knee demonstration (149). Although these men’s adventures began in a bar, Frazier quotes a woman who says: “We’re down to one bar in Buffalo Gap now. The Indian mostly don’t go there. Mostly they go to Hot Springs or Oelrichs. Well, there’s always been a bar in Buffalo Gap, and I guess there always will be” (152). Frazier seems to add his own conclusion: there’s always been a bar in Buffalo Gap and one will survive with or without the Indians. So, in this sense, the Indian past has already been forgotten in the Buffalo Gap bars and now there are no Lakota to tell stories about this place.

Chapter nine locates Le outside the reservation: at Frazier’s house in Montana. The story connected to this place is that Frazier is not hospitable, is ashamed of Le’s spilling coffee on Cora, Frazier’s daughter, and “practically pushed him [Le] out the door” (159). Frazier admits: “I was not too happy about how I had behaved. Here Le had shown me around the reservation, introduced me to his friends and family and I could hardly find it in myself to invite him in for a sandwich” (159). Le acts no differently off the rez than he does on the rez; perhaps that is what frustrates Frazier about himself. The rez changes his attitude.

In chapter ten, Frazier’s main focus is the disappearing places in Pine Ridge. The inhabitants of Pine Ridge “talk about the old golf course […] or about the Pejuta Tipi, the drugstore […] the bowling alley, the moccasin factory, Gerber’s Hotel, the motel, […] the fishhook factory” (169). All of these places have closed and nothing else has filled the vacant holes. Frazier notes that the neighborhoods of Pine Ridge “are used to illustrate poverty, an inescapable fact of the reservation” (171). Seems pretty ‘bleak,’ again. However, Frazier does draw a conclusion about Pine Ridge Reservation’s location: “the richest part of the United States is suburban Washington, D.C.” and “[Pine Ridge] is the country’s poorest place. Like the poorest place in the country, the riches places get their money mainly from the federal government” (172). Despite this poverty, the Oglala thrive on this land. Frazier quotes Le: “It’s not hard for me. I’m nomadic” (44). Thus, the people shape the place and place shapes the people.

Chapter eleven is a commentary about ‘bad’ Indian movies, including one about Red Cloud, and the fantasy created by Hollywood about Indians. A short biography of Red Cloud informs the reader of his tremendous involvement with the government and Oglala movement to the reservation in the 1870’s. Also in this chapter, Frazier returns to his hero theme and recounts more history about Crazy Horse and introduces the reader to SuAnne, whom Frazier sees as a modern-day hero. Although this chapter is more historical, Frazier traces for the reader the movement of the Red Cloud agency, which “during the 1870’s […] had four different locations” (188). Moved from Fort Laramie, to White River (in Nebraska), to the Missouri River banks in central South Dakota, and finally to the present location (188). This nomadic movement was not for the benefit of the Oglala, though; it was because the white people “did not want the Sioux within their borders” and the “railroad interests’ imperatives push[ed] the Indians around” (188). Frazier recounts the Oglala stories of these moves and retells European history of these events, this time including a more personal side of the Oglala in relation to the land.

In Chapters twelve to fourteen, Frazier describes SuAnne Big Crow, an Oglala, smart, vivacious, and star athlete, who was killed at age seventeen. These chapters give accounts of her successes and failures growing up, family and friends stories and the more factual account of her death. Frazier sees her as one of the rez’s heroes: [She] is unmistakably still around. The good of her life sustains this place with a power as intangible as gravity, and as real” (254). Thus, Frazier connects another person and her stories to the reservation in which she dwelled.

Frazier closes his reservation experiences open-endly in chapter fifteen. Frazier returns to Pine Ridge via “Highway 79 from Rapid City” and proceeds to search for Le (262). After stopping at Le’s sisters’ houses and his brother’s, the two finally catch up with each other and spend the afternoon watching Le’s cousin fix a car and “talking about one thing or another” (274-5). The day Frazier decides to return to Montana Le cannot be found. Frazier, after conferring with Le’s brother and several friends, “decide[s] not to look” for Le (279). So, without seeing Le, he then “start[s] for home down the Red Shirt Table Road” without another word (279).

Although not directly stated, On the Rez is a compelling narrative of journey and storytelling on the reservation. Frazier uses the stories recounted to him to paint a picture of more than just alcohol, poverty, and brutality. The people, the heroes give worth to the landscape. As Le says, “This [is my] land and […] I know who I am!” Kidder summarizes: “Something wonderful about the American Indian flourishes even in the midst of what one of the residents of Pine Ridge describes as ‘just a slum’” and that is exactly what Frazier shows the reader (6).

Works Cited

Frazier, Ian. On the Rez. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2000.

Kidder, Tracy. “Among the Sioux: Ian Frazier offers an account of an extended sojourn on the Pine Ridge Reservation.” The New York Times Book Review. 105.3 (2000): 6.