Night Flying Woman Assignment
American Indian Social Welfare Perspective The book that I decided to read was Night Flying Woman by Ignatia Broker. The tribal identity in the book was Oibwe from the White Earth Band. Ms. Broker started out the book from the present day in Minneapolis where she grew up. There wasn’t much culture to be seen, and the younger generations were getting too lost in the new world. Ms. Broker made sure to mention that she still taught her children the Ojibwe ways, and told them the stories that her grandmother had once told her. Throughout Ignatia Broker’s introductory chapter, we got a sense of the amount of respect she had for you great-great grandmother Oona, or Night Flying Woman.
When Ms. Broker first moved to Minneapolis, she lived in a diverse neighborhood, heavily populated with Latinos. She described being a Native American woman growing up in the urban Minneapolis area. From the time she had first moved there until the present time she was writing about, there had been an increase in the Native population. With the increase in population, she explained how where she lived suddenly was surrounded by factories and freeways. Many of the Ojibwe people in Minneapolis identified themselves as Native American from a certain reservation, not like a clan as they did in her great-great-grandmother’s childhood. Her opening introduction was explaining the differences of the land and customs of the past to the present way. The book then began to tell the personal story of Ignatia Broker’s great-great-grandmother Ni-bo-wi-se-gwe, or Night Flying Woman. Ni-bo-wi-se-gwe was an only child to Me-ow-ga-bo (Outstanding), and Wa-wi-e-cu-mig-go-gwe (Round Earth). Three weeks after birth, in Indian tradition, came the time when naming must be planned. Oona’s parents consulted with Grandfather and Grandmother and decided that A-wa-sa-si would be the namer. A-wa-sa-si chose the name Ni-bo-wi-se-gwe (Night Flying Woman)