“Emancipation” is the term used in House Concurrent Resolution 108, but as Thomas notes:

Freed from being Indians was the idea. Emancipated from their land. Freed from the treaties that Thomas’s father and grandfather had signed and that were promised to last forever. So as usual, by getting rid of us, the Indian problem would be solved (80).

The denotation of the word lines up with an ideal of freedom, but its application in the bill would result in devastation. It would separate the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa from their land and violates every treaty that the US government signed.

Thomas recognizes this: “In the newspapers, the author of the proposal had constructed a cloud of lofty words around this bill—emancipation, freedom, equality, success—that disguised its truth: termination. Termination. Missing only the prefix. The ex” (90). Erdrich’s book challenges its readers to think in this critical way and to recognize the importance of words. Watkins thinks that he can use his office and the law to complete the violent attempts at extermination taken up by figures such as Joseph Smith, yet it appears sanitized and associated with the American notion of pulling oneself up by the bootstraps to achieve independence. However, Thomas—and Erdrich by extension—wants to bring this story to light, the story of a group of Indigenous people who held off the US government while also recognizing the devastating effects that words can have.

Spirits appear throughout the novel in both quick appearances to major ones. Roderick is the most significant of the spirits. When he appears, Thomas has to explain to him that he died, and Roderick doesn’t believe it. Thomas feels particularly guilty (as does LaBatte) because Roderick took a punishment for LaBatte at the boarding school and it led to his death. Thomas imagines himself being braver than he was, going down into the cellar with Roderick: “For the rest of his life, when Thomas thought of the moment his teacher asked whether he wanted to join Roderick in the cellar, Thomas imagined saying, ‘Yes, yes, sling me down there, you scabby rat.’ But he hadn’t said that” (403). Roderick does not appear to hold this against anyone, but he misses the world of his friends., in the In the end, Roderick stays behind in Washington, DC, by accident, and he ends up meeting more spirits.

Thomas also encounters spirits the night he locks himself out of the jewel bearing plant. At this point in the novel, Thomas can’t stop thinking about what happened to Vera, and there is a very real risk that he will freeze outside once his car stops working. However, he soon sees several glowing beings, and “all of a sudden nothing hurt. Radiance filled him and he reared up, knowing that the drummers wished him to dance” (226). He dances, and once the drumming stops, Thomas can get back into the building, almost as nothing had even happened. However, he feels a rejuvenating energy, much like Patrice does when she sleeps near the bear.

A less friendly spirit is Pogo Paranteau, who appears to Patrice after his death during the night watch as they prepare to bury him. He looks over the grave, and it feels to Patrice like he is “trying to pull the life out of her” (329). However, she tells him that he can’t get them now, and he appears to crawl down into the grave.

Spirits and the supernatural are treated as part of the characters’ day to day lives. Erdrich weaves in these experiences to demonstrate the perspective of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa and their connection to the past.