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JUDIT ÁGNES KÁDÁR
difficult for him far from home. Remembering means mental and emotional
survival in hard times: “I force myself back to Mushkegowuk”.*° He reinforces
his own ethnic identification in several ways, for instance through naming that
expresses ethnic pride? and keeping his Cree language as a primary medium
of communication. Xavier loses his hearing a bit, which suggests his being deaf
to alien ways, too, although Elijah sometimes serves as an interpreter. Finally,
when he returns home, Xavier physically and spiritually reconnects with his
ancestral roots with the help of Niska, the facilitator of their transformations
and reference point for their ethnic identification and provider of the sweat
lodge ceremonial cleansing and healing that cures Xavier.
In terms of ethnic identity change, the army and the war provide a
cataclysmic space for personal development, as in the tradition of the war novel
in Crane, Findley, Heller and Vonnegut. The friends start their journey with a
moose hide bag, a medicine bundle that Niska gave them to provide spiritual
protection. Dreams and visions which serve as passages between worlds”
help both of them. They "share a space"? and their primary confusion in the
trenches of the French frontline as well as in their position among military
peers. But this shared space stimulates totally divergent reactions in them.
Xavier is certainly able to keep the core of his identity intact both in terms of
his personality traits and his ethnic identification. Although the war makes
both pals ghost-like liminal beings, the entire journey to European fronts
and back home makes Xavier experienced but does not profoundly change
who he is. The whole experience of war and living in the army focuses on the
problem of escaping in disguise, and Xavier definately learns the pragmatics
of camouflage as a scout. Nevertheless, Elijah goes far beyond that. A sign
of this is already present at residential school, where he protests against the
nuns’ traditional hairstyle by shaving his own head bald.** In contrast, he
is willing to have his hair cut for the army. As for language, “as a child he
was so proud that more than once he claimed that he would never speak the
wemistikoshiw [white man’s] tongue”.* However, in the European military
environment, they learn that adapting somewhat to white ways and also using
Cree language and skills for their own benefit are necessary survival skills.
They become practically bilingual and their language choice depends on the
situation. They use Cree as a code language* and also express emotions in a
slightly manipulative fashion,’ as the situation demands.
30 Tbid., 123.
31 Tbid., 117.
2 e.g Ibid., 80, 88.
33 Ibid., 39.
34 Tbid., 101.
35 Ibid., 98.
36 Tbid., 279.
37 e.g. Ibid., 60.
* 316 °