50 pages • 1 hour read
D'Arcy McnickleWind from an Enemy Sky
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1978A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Authorial Context: D’Arcy McNickle
Content Warning: This section addresses themes of racism, cultural erasure, and violence against Indigenous people.
D’Arcy McNickle was an Indigenous American activist, anthropologist, and writer. He was born in St. Ignatius, Montana, in 1904 to William McNickle, a rancher of Irish descent, and Philomene Parenteau, a Cree Métis woman who was adopted into the Flathead tribe after the failed Métis uprising in 1885. McNickle was raised on the Flathead Reservation as the youngest of three children. Despite his mother’s objections, he was taken to the boarding school in Chemawa, where he experienced the brutal attitudes toward Indigenous American children firsthand. He attended the University of Montana to study language and literature. After a recommendation to do so by a professor, he sold his tribal allotment and traveled abroad first to Oxford University and then to the University of Grenoble, although he finished a degree at neither university.
When McNickle returned to the United States, he settled in New York City. There, he first worked as an editor for Encyclopedia Britannica before beginning a writing career. His debut novel, The Surrounded, was published in 1936 and explored themes of cultural conflict and identity within Indigenous communities. His other books include They Came Here First: The Epic of the American (1954), Indian Runner in the Sun: A Story of Indian Maize (1954), Indians and Other Americans: Two Ways of Life Meet (1959), and Indian Tribes of North America (1962).
His commitment to Indigenous rights led him to the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) under John Collier’s leadership. During his tenure, he advocated for self-governance and tribal autonomy and co-founded the National Congress of American Indians in 1944. However, as federal policies shifted toward the termination and relocation of tribes in the 1950s, McNickle resigned from the BIA. He was awarded an honorary doctorate in 1966 from the University of Colorado and established an anthropology department at the University of Saskatchewan, where he served as a professor. He died in 1977 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Wind From an Enemy Sky, which McNickle had worked on for 40 years, was published posthumously in 1978.
Historical Context: Assimilation of Indigenous Americans in the Early 20th Century
The early 20th century was marked by aggressive federal policies aimed at assimilation, land seizure, and the erosion of tribal sovereignty of Indigenous Americans across the United States. Policies such as the Dawes Act of 1887, also known as the General Allotment Act, divided tribal lands into individual allotments to be given to Indigenous American families, with the remainder sold to non-Indigenous settlers. While the goal was the assimilation of Indigenous American people into the agrarian society favored by the United States, the result was also the loss of millions of acres of tribal land and the undermining of traditional communal landholding practices as well as tribal self-sufficiency. The discovery of valuable resources such as oil, timber, and minerals on tribal lands further fueled efforts to seize them.
One notable example of land seizure during this period was the case of the Osage Nation in Oklahoma. In the early 1900s, the Osage Reservation was found to sit atop vast oil reserves, making the tribe incredibly wealthy. However, this wealth attracted the attention of crooks who sought to exploit the Osage people and their resources. Through a series of fraudulent schemes, including the manipulation of inheritance laws and the murder of Osage tribal members, individuals from outside Indigenous communities gained control of Osage oil rights, leading to widespread corruption and violence within the tribe.
Residential schools, such as the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania, were another tool that facilitated the forced assimilation of Indigenous Americans into Euro-American culture, this time specifically of children. These schools, operated by various Christian denominations under federal supervision, sought to eradicate Indigenous languages, cultural practices, and identities through forced acculturation. Children were punished for speaking their languages or practicing traditional customs, which fostered a sense of shame and disconnection among them. This led to both loss of cultural identity and extreme intergenerational trauma. Many children died as a result of the mistreatment they faced at these schools and were never returned to their families.
The establishment of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1824 marked the beginning of federal oversight of Indigenous Americans, with the agency exercising significant control over tribal lands, resources, and governance structures. The Burke Act of 1906 further diminished tribal sovereignty by extending the federal government’s authority over individual Indigenous American allottees. Under this act, the Secretary of the Interior was granted the power to determine whether Indigenous Americans were “competent” enough to manage their own affairs, effectively stripping them of their legal rights and autonomy. This paternalistic approach to governance reinforced the notion of Indigenous American inferiority and perpetuated the subjugation of Indigenous peoples under federal authority.
Despite all these challenges, Indigenous American tribes resisted these attempts at assimilation and the destruction of their sovereignty. Tribal leaders and activists such as Zitkala-Ša (Gertrude Simmons Bonnin), Carlos Montezuma, and Charles Eastman (Ohíye S’a) were vocal advocates for Indigenous rights and sovereignty during this period. Through their writings and advocacy efforts, they sought to raise awareness of the injustices that Indigenous American communities face and mobilize support for tribal self-determination.
