Early Indigenous Literatures

Ambivalent space of dreams

Though the grandmother fears the child has disengaged from this important story, there is an ambivalent hope in the process of dreams. Rather than simply sleeping, the young girl "dozed away into another dream" thereby suggesting that she is connecting with the tale at an intimate level. The story opens, after all, with the young woman entering into the dreamspace of the tale in which she can see her ancestors and gradfathers clearly. Stories and dreams come together as an embodied way of experiencing kinship and (grand)children are posited as especially attuned to these potentialities. The connections of dreams to the young person's nation, culture, and belonging are further indicated by the references to sweetgrass--that bed on which she is held and protected--as well as the ending image of a "guardian star" "beam[ing]...passionately down upon the little tepee on the place" (135). The story ends with specifically Dakota senses of belonging and imagines a continued future in which the young Native woman can grow up surrounded by guidance, support, and safe futures in which she can dream soundly.

Contents of this annotation: