Neither Wolf Nor Dog

The American government’s violent treatment of indigenous people and communities is an important theme in Dan’s speeches in Neither Wolf Nor Dog, and the legacy of that violence is evident throughout the book. In the introduction, Nerburn describes a roadside attraction featuring an indigenous sculpture of a buffalo as a symbol of this history of violence: “the spirit of the land, the spirit of a people, named, framed, and incarcerated inside a fence” (2). Imagery related to incarceration and imprisonment appears across the novel, as when Dan describes how the federal government “herded [indigenous people] onto reservations and rewarded Indians who acted just like white people” (59). He describes reservations and federal housing as the government’s attempts to “give [indigenous people] our own cage” (158). Dan’s sense of history also emphasizes metaphors of enclosure. His description of how white colonists “came and landed on the shores in the east while others came up from the south” (164) creates a sense of claustrophobia that reinforces his earlier use of cage imagery. Dan later argues that the federal government’s policy of “killing us and chasing us from our land just so they could get rich” (210) made indigenous communities feel like animals, rather than people.