Night Flying Woman: An Ojibway Narrative

Ignatia Broker came to the twin cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul from the White Earth Reservation in 1941 and worked in a defense plant, as the United States was at war. While employment was available given mobilization for World War II, Indigenous people faced discrimination as consumers and especially in the housing market. Broker shared a room intended for one person with six others. Yet, true to Ojibway tradition, her roommates helped one another and shared what they had. When the war ended, the labor market tightened and Indigenous people were denied jobs. At this time, Broker married a veteran and moved to the river flats, a poor section of St. Paul where many other Indigenous people lived. Broker had two children and made money by doing day work, like cleaning homes. The Indigenous residents quickly learned that they could not take advantage of government programs because they would be denied help and forced back to the reservation. Broker’s husband was recalled to military service during the Korean war and killed in action.

After the death of her husband, Broker moved to a mixed neighborhood in Minneapolis with Spanish-speaking people. She and her two children were “aliens looking for a place to fit in” (2) but ultimately became a part of the neighborhood. Broker stayed in the neighborhood for 30 years—but noted how it changed and shrunk due to the construction of freeways and urban renewal. When she first arrived, she completed clerical training and worked at a health clinic. She joined a group of Indigenous people who had formed an Indian help agency, which successfully challenged the government policy of sending people back to reservations (7). Thousands of Indigenous people flocked to cities and had children who grew up knowing little of their tribal identity. However, Broker was happy to see that 30 years later, young people were reclaiming their tribal identity and seeking out the stories of the elderly.

Broker wrote a letter addressed to her grandchildren: In it, she emphasized the importance of learning about the past and explained that five generations of Ojibway make a circle. The first generation starts the circle and subsequent generations move away from Ojibway culture until the fifth generation returns and closes the circle. Broker described the Ojibway as a forest people who once lived north and east of what is now Minnesota. The Ojibway respected the rights of all in sharing the land. There were Medicine People (Mi-de-wi-wi-n) in all Ojibway communities that had knowledge of medicine (particularly herbs) and healed wounds and set bones. Broker’s family traveled a “tortuous path” (9) when strangers came to their land. To explain how the Ojibway were forcibly separated from their first generation, Broker tells the story of her great-great-grandmother, Night Flying Woman (or Oona). When Oona was young, the peaceful Ojibway’s lands were suddenly harvested for timber by white settlers. The Ojibway were required to sign six treaties, which passed their lands to the settlers and forced them to move onto Chippewa reservations in Minnesota. More settlers arrived and further restricted the Ojibway; then, came missionaries. It was in these times that generations of Ojibway began to move away from the first generation and its traditions. In telling Oona’s story, Broker seeks to educate the young and close the circle, returning to an embrace of Ojibway culture.