Two Roads

Part of the tension that builds when Cal first enters the school occurs because neither Cal nor the reader knows how much has changed since the rampant abuses that occurred during Pop’s days at Challagi. Although Challagi is a fictional school, the novel’s Afterword notes that it is based on the real-life Chilocco Indian Agricultural School. Conditions during Pop’s time at Challagi were harsh. Possum has already told Cal about the real-life Meriam Report that detailed the abuses that frequently happened at these schools. It is important to note that in the world of the novel, neither the administrators nor the students gloss over these unpleasant historical facts, and they admit that while life can be hard at Challagi, it is not as bad as it used to be. The superintendent of the current school absolutely still holds racist attitudes, but he does at least attempt to treat the students somewhat more fairly than they used to be treated. However, such minor concessions do not disguise the many subtler social injustices to which the students are still subjected. Although many abusive practices have been discontinued, the question of fairness and justice at Challagi remains and is brought into question from the very beginning, for the students have a long memory of the atrocities that used to occur. For example, although the corporal punishments are not quite as tough as they used to be, they do still exist, and on Cal’s very first day at Challagi, he accordingly witnesses a student being imprisoned for an infraction. Thus, Cal must first experience and evaluate life at the school before he is able to determine whether things have really improved or not. He ultimately determines that Government-Sanctioned Abuse of Marginalized Populations at the school, while not entirely absent, has decreased somewhat in recent years.

Cal, in Chapter 20, still has not internalized what it means to be Creek, and he has not adopted this identity as his own. This does not stop him from feeling the effects of the discriminatory attitudes that others have toward Indigenous people. He understands that the government is trying to get rid of the students’ culture. He does not identify himself primarily as Creek, but others do, and he can feel how this affects them. Part of Cal’s journey toward internalizing this culture as his own requires him to confront these attitudes and develop a healthy way of dealing with them. When he is at the shoe shop, for example, he chooses to ignore the racist mannerisms of the owner because he sees no purpose in trying to change ingrained prejudices that cannot be changed. This is one way that people confront racism, and the tactic works well enough for Cal at this early point in his journey.

Cal’s refusal to join the track team symbolizes how he still has not allowed himself to believe he will be at Challagi for a long time, and because of this, he does not want to become overly involved in the school. He believes his father will be back soon to get him. His time at Challagi was never supposed to be permanent. He makes a place for himself at the school fairly quickly because Possum and his Creek gang welcome Cal almost immediately. Cal protects himself from overly identifying with Creek culture and with the school by keeping an emotional distance. He tries to maintain this emotional distance by only immersing himself in the culture as much as is necessary. He is learning about his heritage and becoming part of a Creek community, but he still holds ties to his old life and lifestyle. This is all symbolized through his refusal to join the track team despite his considerable speed.

As the narrator, Cal starts to explain the diversity of the student body at Challagi, for just as he works on his own process of Evaluating and Assimilating New Identities, other students are doing much the same. There are many different variations of skin tone at the school, with students at one end of the spectrum appearing very dark and kids at the other end looking fully white. There is also diversity in the reasons that students are attending the school, which demonstrates the complexity of belonging to an Indigenous culture in the United States. Schools like Challagi were essentially racist institutions because their express purpose was to systematically strip Indigenous students of their heritage, language, and cultural identity. Still, some students at Challagi manage to glean a sense of belonging with other students despite these difficulties, for they feel much more kinship with their fellow students than they do with members of mainstream white culture beyond the school’s boundaries. Others find inherent value in the education that Challagi provides even though its underpinnings are steeped in racism. For example, the agricultural skills taught in these schools can help people from Indigenous communities to thrive when they put these skills to use after they graduate. Thus, just as there is no monolithic, homogeneous “Indigenous culture” in the United States, there is no single Indigenous culture at Challagi, nor is there only one reason why students choose to attend the rather problematic school. Ultimately, the novel uses Cal’s many social observations to illustrate the complexities that drove people to commit to attending such schools during the Great Depression despite the ambivalent combination of positive and negative effects that such schools created for their students.

Just as Cal’s experiences allow him greater insight into Government-Sanctioned Abuse of Marginalized Populations in an academic setting, the boy also broadens his horizons enough to realize that veterans like Pop, dubbed the “Bonus Army,” are also being maligned, abused, and lied about as they conduct protests and rallies to gain the money that the government owes them for their loyal military service. Cal first learns about the details of his father’s mission when he reads a newspaper article that accuses people in the Bonus Army of being Communists. General MacArthur, who was the key figure in the highly criticized witch hunt to oust suspected Communists from American culture, is mentioned numerous times throughout the novel. Cal understands that this false portrayal of the Bonus Army as Communists represents yet another injustice against marginalized groups within American culture, and although he is currently powerless to take any action that might directly help his father, the interjection of this information into the novel’s primary plotline also serves to foreshadow the tumultuous events to come when Cal chooses to take more direct action for his father’s cause.

All of the main characters in the novel are male, and the only students mentioned by name are male, but still, the fact that girls are treated more harshly than boys is emphasized at numerous points throughout the novel. This pattern demonstrates that while both groups face the challenge of living in a racist environment, the girls also have to deal with additional injustices. This is first explored earlier in the novel when Pop tells Cal about the man who was very harsh toward girls during his time attending the school. There is no explicit mention of the type of abuse the girls endured, but the author gives enough information to allow experienced readers to infer that sexual abuses may have occurred. In Chapter 24, the hardships of being a girl are shown when compared to the freedom the boys have. The adults do not really care if the boys sneak out at night, and numerous adults hang out with the students around the fires at night. The girls are never seen doing this, however, as they are much more closely supervised. The reader gets no intimate details about how the girls are treated because Cal, as the first-person narrator, is not privy to this information. Through the few details that are given, however, the author makes it clear that the girls suffer much more at Challagi than the boys do.