By Denis Harkin

In everyday life we share connections with people. Whether that is a significant other, teacher, or a policeman that is directing traffic through a closed off area of your daily route. These connections might look like a kiss on the cheek, a smile and a “good morning,” or a simple wave of hello. It’s in these small connections that humans show patterns in their daily life, but do we easily recognize every connection people have with others? Is it hard to pick up on connections that aren’t ours? About a week ago for another class I started to read a book that talks about someone struggling to see the perspective of someone else. Kent Nerburn the author of other works such as The Wolf at Twilight, and The Girl Who Sang Buffalo is called upon by an elderly Lakota man to write a book based on a Lakota’s perspective. 

The elderly gentleman, Dan, wants to write a compilation of observations. These are more easily described as stories of interactions between Lakota Indians and the white man. An Indian’s perspective is something Nerburn was somewhat familiar with writing, considering he had experience as a journalist/ writer on other reservations. However Dan’s perspective was a new ball game, making Nerburn strive to understand in full terms another man’s experience. This idea of seeing a different person’s perspective is the main theme, though it was difficult for Nerburn to grasp that Dan had lived his whole life seemingly locked on a reservation by the culture of “the white man” in which Nerburn grew up. The book Neither Wolf Nor Dog illustrates the journey Kent Nerburn (the author) goes on to understand Dan who has essentially commissioned his help. But there is a sense of irony in watching the author (a white male) slowly learn the ways of this older Lakota man, through stories, and his personal experience highlighting the racial prejudice that was placed upon the Lakota by white people who migrated the land when the United States were first founded.

Traveling the reservation is the basis for a lot of the plot in this book as well as developing the theme. We find Nerburn able to observe life through Dan’s own observations, while walking alongside him on his ancestors’ land. Most places on the reservation looked different than the everyday house and yards he was familiar with in mainstream America. Here not everything was shiny, new, or neat. Old cars, buildings, bikes, and other objects were scattered throughout the land. Stuff just seemed to be set to the side, not being used by anyone around them. Confused by this, Nerburn pondered the question deeper as he looked out the window of the moving vehicle that carried him across the reservation. Dan, the elder, saw this glare of disappointment and confusion as newburn stared out the window. So he began to talk about why things were scattered and left. He explained to Nerburn that the Lakota used every part of the buffalo when hunting, they were not wasteful, because everything had its use. Nerburn responded, “Junk cars aren’t buffalo carcasses” making the statement that junk cars don’t just rot away like dead animals, they are useless after they break. But Dan stood his ground, “Owning things is what white people’s lives are about… We believed that everything was a gift,  and that a good man or woman shared those gifts (Chapter 6).” The author clearly experiences a level of confrontation, when seeing things different from the old Lakota man. Dan makes a point to tell Nerburn that life doesn’t always come from a white man’s perspective. Even though a car is beyond fixing, it doesn’t mean that someone else can’t find value in it. What Dan is trying to illustrate for the author is that not all people conform to an idea he is used to. Dan even goes far enough to say that white people’s lives are all about possession, whether it’s over land, or cars and the condition that something has. Through this confrontation the author gets a little closer in his learning to what one of many different perspectives between people looks like, as well as experiencing his own effect on people of a different race. When Nerburn was writing this book, he had to look to a place of confrontation to explain the problem. He does a great job of using his real world experiences on the reservation to illustrate how he and Dan dont first see eye to eye, further enhancing the theme of Nerburn learning to see a different perspective. That theme becomes the underlying journey that’s difficult in a story, being written from a different cultural perspective not naturally occupied by the writer.

Kent Nerburn’s Neither Wolf Nor Dog uses cultural perspectives and ideas significant to how people perceive each other. When thinking about my life, and why that message is important to me, I don’t have to look very far. It’s evident to me that in a country like the United States, I tend to see people as divided, whether that means wealth, political standing, or values. It seems that there is always someone who is arguing, and not trying to learn and find common ground. Not enough people stop and say, “Hey, if I was in this position, would it make sense that this would be my outlook on life?” I think reading a book about putting yourself in another person’s shoes is important in 2020. I believe that the first person narrative that Nerburn gives us as readers is important, because it puts us in a position where our distance from the story is very close. We get all the author’s thoughts with the narrative, and not much is left up to the interpretation of the reader. This is important because it shows clear thoughts, and interactions between Dan and Nerburn, the two main characters in the book. That close proximity also makes it easier for us to look at their interactions with a critical lens.

That being said, we can look at the central problem of Nerburn understanding Dan’s perspective closer than if we were reading a book with less insight into the characters thoughts and values. It’s sad that people are too stubborn to think why other people feel the way they do. Other than that, this book might reach to other areas of interest for people too. Maybe someone feels a level of racial prejudice similar to that is put upon the Lakota, or is studying how social interactions between cultures work. In that case they might want to explore how someone else in their position handles, or confronts the issue. But overall the story will act as a good place to start for seeing how someone else might think differently from you, no matter whether it is just a casual book or place to study from.