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Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Three Day Road, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Isolation vs. Community
Racism and Assimilation
Language and Storytelling
Nature, War, and Survival
Summary
Analysis
“Listen carefully, Nephew,” Niska says to Xavier. The wemistikoshiw trapper, a Frenchman, came to visit often in the bush. Even after Niska moved to her summer camp, he still came. They made love everywhere that summer, and Niska’s mother could tell that Niska had changed. She made Niska drink “bitter tea” to keep her from getting pregnant and warned her daughter with her eyes. The “wemistikoshiw were not to be trusted,” her eyes seemed to say.
Niska says “listen carefully, Nephew” as if she knows Xavier needs to hear this story in particular. Lisette remains a sore spot for Xavier even after he learns she is a prostitute, and Niska seems to be telling him not to be ashamed or think badly of himself for what happened with Lisette. Not only was Xavier lonely, but the wemistikoshiw can’t “be trusted.”
Themes
Winter came, and the wemistikoshiw trapper came to visit again. While he was there, an awawatuk from a nearby clan knocked on Niska’s door. His clan had found little game for the winter, and he had brought a moose shoulder and asked Niska “to divine” for him. She had no choice and told the trapper to leave. It was time to do her work.
Niska’s role as the clan’s hookimaw takes priority, and she must ask the wemistikoshiw to leave so she can build a sweat lodge and divine. Wemistikoshiw aren’t used to be sent away by an awawatuk, and the trapper is clearly offended as he never comes back.
Themes
The following spring, the wemistikoshiw trapper did not come to visit Niska. By late summer, Niska packed a canoe and headed to the place she had “promised” she “would never return to.” When she began to smell “garbage,” Niska knew she was close to Moose Factory. She left her canoe in the water and walked through the “Indian part” of town. All the Indians looked “full of food” and “drink,” and they all stared at Niska as she walked by. A woman called her children away, and an Indian man “blessed himself” and shut his door.
The wemistikoshiw don’t respect the land in the same way Indigenous people do, and wemistikoshiw garbage litters the riverbed and stinks up the town, yet the wemistikoshiw still maintain that Niska is the “uncivilized” one. They have even convinced the local “homeguard” Indians that the awawatuk are criminals, and this is reflected in the Indian mother who guards her children and the Indian man who prays as Niska walks down the street.
Themes
“Ashtum,” whispered an old Indian woman from her door. “Come here.” Niska entered and the woman closed the door. “You are the one,” the old woman said. “You must watch yourself around here. Or the same thing that happened to your father will happen to you.” She gave Niska some brightly-colored clothes and a bandana. “Wear these,” she said. “You must wear them so that you fit in with the others.”
The old woman automatically knows who Niska is. As the clan’s hookimaw and windigo killer, the wemistikoshiw would likely consider Niska some kind of evil sorcerer and arrest her like they did her father. The woman gives Niska wemistikoshiw clothing, and in doing so makes Niska less Native, and less noticeable to the both the wemistikoshiw and the “homeguard” Indians on the reserve.
Themes
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The old Indian woman offered Niska some food. “There is talk that a certain wemistikoshiw trapper was fucking you,” the old woman said. “Be careful of that one,” she continued. “There are little half-French, half-Indian children running around this place that he refuses to claim. […] This is not the place for you, Little One. You are a hookimaw, from a strong family. Happiness is not yours to have. You are a windigo killer.” When Niska left the old woman, she couldn’t believe what she had heard. The “world was not nearly as secret as [Niska] thought it was or wanted it to be.”
Like Xavier’s relationship with Lisette, Niska believes her relationship with the wemistikoshiw is more than it really is. The loneliness and isolation of Niska’s life in the bush as her peoples’ hookimaw and windigo killer has led her to crave human contact so much that she will take anything she can get. As Niska is so isolated, she figures her life is a “secret,” but it clearly isn’t, and the wemistikoshiw don’t understand her traditional role.
Themes
Niska walked through the wemistikoshiw part of town, but no one stared at her dressed in the old woman’s clothes. She walked into a pub and saw the wemistikoshiw trapper at a table. “Niska,” he said. “I missed you.” He offered Niska a drink and motioned to the bartender for another. Niska “choked down” the drink and stood up. “No more,” she said and walked out the door. Without thinking, Niska walked toward the school and church where Rabbit had been taken. The trapper walked up behind her quietly. “This is a good place, a holy place,” he said as he led Niska to the church. “You are a holy Indian, no?”
Niska is invisible in the old woman’s wemistikoshiw clothes. Walking through the streets of Moose Factory in the brightly-colored clothes, Niska is just another assimilated “homeguard” Indian, and no one pays her any attention. The people of Moose Factory only notice her when they think she is an awawatuk—and therefore a “thief and murderer—and they are frightened of her because they don’t understand her traditional culture and lifestyle.
Themes
Niska and the wemistikoshiw trapper made love inside the church, and afterward, the trapper began to laugh. “I fucked the heathen Indian out of you in this church,” he said. “I took your ahcahk. Do you understand? I fucked your ahcahk, your spirit. Do you understand that?” Niska pushed him away. “You are nothing special,” the trapper said, “just another squaw whore. I took your power away in this place and sent it to burn in hell where it belongs.”
The trapper initially implies that Niska belongs in the church because it is “a holy place” and she is “a holy Indian,” but he is only looking to hurt her. He calls her a “heathen” and tells her she is going to hell (a place Niska knows nothing about) because she is an Indian. The trapper both degrades Niska and strips her of her spirituality and identity.
Themes
Niska left the church and went directly back to the bush. She slept hard the moment she reached her lodge, and when she woke, she began to construct a matatosowin. She crawled into the steam and “prayed to the four direction and to the earth, the sky, the water and the air,” and then “the spirit animals began to arrive.” The bear and moose came, as well as the fox, but the lynx “came to [Niska] most strongly.” Niska prayed to the lynx to “find the source” of her “hurt and extinguish it.”
This again reflects Niska’s connection to nature and animals through her spirituality. She is hurting from her experience with the wemistikoshiw trapper, so she summons the animal spirits for guidance. The lynx again seems to have a special connection to Niska, and she asks it directly for help during the sweat lodge ceremony.
Themes
In the following months, Niska’s mother came to visit Niska at her lodge. She told Niska that she had heard talk of a wemistikoshiw trapper in Moose Factory who had “gone mad” and was “running up and down the street trying to escape pursuing demons.” He had run to the top of a tall building and jumped out. The priest at the church claimed it was a suicide and “refused to give him a Christian burial.”
The spirit of the lynx has found “the source” of Niska’s “hurt and extinguished it.” Ironically, the trapper is pursued by “demons” after he damned Niska to hell. The trapper’s religion forsakes him when the priest won’t bury him, and this is a fitting end to the trapper who used Christianity to hurt Niska.
Themes
