LaDuke's novel says it all. It bares the roots of five hundred years of rather incredible history, the conflicts between cultures and peoples, the imposition of an extremely violent system of governance and retributive justice for property crime, the denigration of native peoples, application of "terra nullius", breaking of treaties, and the whole legalist campaign that put British descendants in firm control of North America.
Feminine, aboriginal, and ecological values are barely visible at the surface of this novel - there are no explicit treatises, no ideological passages. This is not "Atlas Shrugged for Greens" - you will not be sold a Green Party Card by this book. Nor is it the romanticized "Dances With Wolves" - you will not see the lives of the many diverse human beings of the native tribes of this small patch of North America as some kind of mystical journey. You will read real stories of each generation.
You will be brought up to the present.
This is the history book you were not given in school. You were, instead, taught something about military glory and how "proper" courts and "real" justice now prevail in North America west of the Mississipi River. You were taught nonsense.
You have a chance to learn the truth from a masterful author. If she someday becomes your President, and I can only hope that she will, you will understand why, and you will see why this is a necessary evolution. Women, Natives, Ecology still sound like special interest groups today. LaDuke's beautiful storytelling and poignant moments of misery and remnant pride will demonstrate better than any political speech, why they are not, and why there can be no future other than that which elevates the feminine, the aboriginal, the ecological, to their right precedence over the masculine, the colonial, and the industrial.
It is time to abandon the tribes you came with, and choose new ones. Let this book be your entry point. You will not regret it.