Transmotion Vol 1, No 1 (2015)
Lone Hill, Dana. Pointing
with Lips: A Week in the Life of a Rez Chick.
Greenfield: Blue Hand Books, 2014. ISBN: 978-1-4959-4529-8. 326 pp.
https://www.createspace.com/4670234?ref=1147694&utm_id=6026
Humor. There is much
one can say about this important first novel by Dana Lone Hill, Pointing with Lips: A Week in the Life of a Rez Chick, but humor is at the forefront of her work. On
nearly every page there is something to make the reader smile, chuckle, or tear
up with laughter. To be sure there are serious issues dealt with in the novel,
but humor sustains the reader through the work, as humor sustained the author
growing up on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, the setting for Pointing with Lips. In Custer Died for Your Sins, Vine Deloria, Jr. argues, "One of the best ways to understand a
people is to know what makes them laugh. Laughter encompasses the limits of the
soul. In humor life is redefined and accepted. Irony and satire provide much
keener insights into a group's collective psyche and values than do years of
research" (140). Lone Hill uses laughter as a setting for growing up Oglala
Lakota on Pine Ridge. In order to understand what encompasses being a "rez chick," the reader must understand the importance of
humor in the Lakota Nation. Likewise, one must know Lakota culture to
understand the clear portrait of what it means to be a member of contemporary
Lakota reservation life as portrayed in Pointing
with Lips.
In a recent interview
I conducted with Lone Hill, I asked her about the humor in the novel. She
responded, "My grandmother Dod was the funniest woman
I know... my uncles, my brothers, my father, so many people in my life and people
I grew up with have the best sense of humor. I believe it is something we have always had and always will—it
gets us through life. Especially
when you grow up in poverty, I mean you can't always cry." For Sincere Strongheart, known primarily as "Sis," the protagonist and narrator
of Pointing with Lips, survival is
her daily existence. Sis, single mother of three children by two different men,
lives and works a dead end job at the Great Sioux Shopping Center on Pine
Ridge. Before the reader is ten pages into the novel, Sis explains her entire
family structure. I was struck with the oddity of a narrator clearly laying out
a family tree so quickly in the story, until I remembered the importance of
Lakota kinship relationships. Lone Hill discussed the emphasis on kinship in
the novel: "I try to emphasize [kinship] so much because we keep our families
close, and I think we do it because we lose so much and lost so much. I
introduced her whole family first, even those absent in the book, because it is
our reality." Reality is what comes across in her delightfully drawn words,
Lakota reality. Sis observes, "If an Indian woman's worth is finding out a way
you're related to her then the women in my family are priceless" (146). Wolakota ogna skanpo, can be loosely translated, "to do this
is in the Lakota way." It became readily clear to me that Lone Hill was writing
a novel wolakota
ogna skanpo, or what I
call "writing Lakota." In Pointing with
Lips, Lone Hill translates modern reservation life through the lens of
Lakota customs, traditions, and lifeways.
First words of a
novel have always been important to me, a map to guide the reader through the
novel. Sis begins her story: "The
pow wow grounds on my reservation are always dusty. Actually, the whole village
of Pine Ridge, South Dakota is dusty." To those familiar with Lakota creation
histories, the little brother of the Four Winds, the Four Directions, Yumnimni (Yum), the "little whirlwind or dust
devil," can be seen in these opening lines. Lone Hill acknowledged that she is
familiar with Lakota origin stories, and at least "subconsciously," she
references, at the very least, the lessons handed down to her through these
stories. Throughout the text I kept finding characteristics that Yum and Sis
share. For amusement they will risk anything, they are governed by chance and
favor, and they cannot protect others or even themselves until they find
themselves. Sis protects her family, particularly her winkte cousin and best friend Boogie and her children, only to realize
that she cannot until she confronts her own burden, alcohol.
Critics will surely
have much to say about another comedic take on the "drunken reservation Indian,"
but I am reminded of what Muskogee poet Joy Harjo said in an interview with Laura
Coltelli; "Alcoholism is an epidemic in native
people, and I write about it. I was criticized for bringing it up, because some
people want to present a certain image of themselves.
But again, it comes back to what I was saying: part of the process of healing
is to address what is evil" (140). Lone Hill is writing her reality:
When I wrote Pointing
with Lips, I was incarcerated, awaiting sentencing. My future was up in the
air and I had no idea how long I was going away. All I knew was I was so
absolutely lonesome for my kids, my family... my home, my land... I was hoping, in
a way, I can show people on the rez, reckless
behavior will never let you advance; you have to do it yourself. I was tired of
the "I am a victim" society I grew up in, and I wanted to show we are
survivors.
The seven days Sis
narrates cover drunken and drugged out mothers who do not take care of their
children, and she translates the extremely horrific consequences of those
actions through her own family's history, but there is hope too, as when she
believes, "If someone wants to quit drinking it has to come from within them
self" (181). The connection to Yum is readily apparent and it is in this
connection to Lakota tradition and customs where Lone Hill demonstrates a means
for survival.
The connection to
Lakota humor and Landscape are also a means of survivance. Sis describes a
drunken scene in a corn field following a night out in a border town:
We are throwing the cans in some farmer's field, I am sure
in the morning some fat farmer, riding his tractor will be raging and shaking
his fist at the Lord in the sky, "These damn drunken Injuns!"
Fuck him I think, as I throw a half full can into his field.
This is our land!"
Whoa, now I know I am shit faced. I hate littering. I really
do, not to the point where I am the fake Indian letting a tear roll down my
cheek. But I do care to the point where I do give a hoot to not pollute.
(65-66)
Pointing with Lips is filled with wonderful inside
jokes about PSA Indians, recycling owls, commod
cheese, wateca,
and pointing with lips, but there are also Lakota lessons being passed along in
the picturesque descriptions of the Black Hills, Badlands, and even the Pine
Ridge Reservation. In our interview, Lone Hill told me, "People see our reservations
and they see poverty, broken down communities and families. What they do not
see is the beauty I see and respect. Landscapes tell a story, they tell [us] we
need to continue with educating the next generation that we belong to this land
and we need to care for the land that feeds us, shelters us, gives us water."
The stories are passed down from generation to generation in the novel and in
Lone Hill's life, "I think my biggest influences for storytelling were two of
my grandfathers. I was never presented them in written form, always oral and I
try to remember them and tell them to my children. It is a way of keeping our
history... alive." The story Lone Hill passes down and the stories Sis narrates
are Lakota histories recorded for survivance.
There are a number of
critics who have lamented Sis's "white boyfriend" Mason Thomas, "Mase," riding to the rescue of Sis at the end of the novel.
I asked Lone Hill what she thought of this characterization: "I don't think Mase saved her at all, I think it was the first time in her
life she felt appreciated by a man. I think Sis has to save herself; however,
much support from Mase and mainly her family will get
her there." If the text is read in a Lakota way, lessons from origin histories,
like the tales of Yum, and kinship relationships, can guide the reader to
better understand how Sis has to save herself, with the help of her family and
friends, including Mase.
While Pointing with Lips can be seen as just another
comedic "rez chick" novel, (though Lone Hill
acknowledges she labels it as such) it is really much more when read through a
Lakota lens. Writing Lakota is a challenging task. To fill a novel full of
traditional Lakota kinship relationships, stories, language, landscapes, and
humor is demanding, but to do so and
portray real contemporary reservation life, the good, the bad, ugly and sad, in
a thoughtful, honest, and humorous portrayal is what makes writing Lakota and
Dana Lone Hill's Pointing with Lips uniquely
wonderful.
Brian J. Twenter, University of
South Dakota
Deloria Jr., Vine. Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian
Manifesto. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998. Print.
Harjo, Joy. "A
Laughter of Absolute Sanity: An Interview with Angels Carabi."
The Spiral of Memory: Interviews. Ed.
Laura Cotelli. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press,
1996. 133-42. Print.