The Game of Silence

Content Warning: This section of the guide addresses the displacement, loss, and historical injustices faced by Indigenous American communities.

Omakayas pensively observes the lake around her island, Moningwanaykaning, which is also known as the Island of the Golden-Breasted Woodpecker. She sees canoes approaching. She thinks of her loved ones: her pet cow, Andeg; her grandmother, Nokomis; the hunter, Old Tallow; her brother, Pinch; her sister, Angeline; her mother and father; and the brother she lost to smallpox two years ago, Neewo. Omakayas means Little Frog. She is nine years old.

As the canoes approach, Omakayas notices that something is not right. There are too many canoes for this to be a family visit, and the absence of anything to trade suggests that the canoes are not arriving for business. Additionally, “[t]he presence of women and children meant that these people had left behind their camps and homes” (xi). Omakayas sees desperation on the faces of the approaching people. She runs out to greet them.

Omakayas’s tribe comes to the beach to help the arrivals. The visitors are marked by their poverty; babies are naked, and people look bedraggled and hungry. Only their leader, Miskobines, looks calm and dignified.