Native Tributes

Historical Fiction

By Gerald Vizenor

pp 102

In this sequel to Blue Ravens, acclaimed author Gerald Vizenor tells the story of Native American veterans during the Great Depression. In the summer of 1932, Basile Hudon Beaulieu and his brother Aloysius travel by train from the White Earth Reservation in Minnesota to Washington D.C, where they protest with thousands of other military veterans in the Bonus Army. Their cousin By Now Rose Beaulieu, a veteran of the Army Nurse Corps, rides her horse named Treaty to the same march. Aloysius creates hand puppets and entertains the spirited veterans with mockery of communists and president Herbert Hoover. General Douglas MacArthur forces the veterans from the National Mall, and the Beaulieu brothers move to an encampment of needy veterans in Hard Luck Town on the East River in New York City. The brothers visit the Biblo and Tannen Booksellers, a gallery owned by Alfred Stieglitz, the Modicut Puppet Theatre, and an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. Aloysius is inspired by Arthur Dove, Chaim Soutine, and Mark Chagall. Native Tributes is a journey of liberty that escapes the insistence of nostalgia and victimry.