No One Ever Sees Arapahos

On Margaret Coel’s Fictional Representation of the Northern Arapaho

Part One: Introduction
When I viewed Orson Welles’ last completed film, "F For Fake" I was struck at one portion of the film and the issues it raises on the presentation of the unreal as real. More specifically, how Welles presented information and relied heavily on his audiences’ reaction to the information as truth. Thus, setting up the viewer’s ego as the fall guy in a filmic magic trick I had never seen before.

This ran accord of my own line of thoughts on Native American depiction in media and Native self-representation and first-voice. The film, a self-described "essay film", touched on a theory of my own concerning the "Authorship of Expertise" in art. I made the connection of this authorship in the representation of Native American cultures, presenting the unreal as real, which is perfectly reflected in the Wind River Mystery Series written by Margaret Coel.

This article began as a review of Coel’s book "Eye of the Wolf" but has since expanded as I found I had much more to write about the series as a whole and the misrepresentations it contains. Also, of how that Authorship of Expertise almost allows for no other representation to be taken as true as Coel’s books, thus it expanded beyond mere review.

I will also try note comparisons between Coel’s fiction and the non-fiction work of Dr. Jeffery Anderson’s "One Hundred Year of Old Man Sage" to gauge how different each approach is and to compare depictions between an actual Northern Arapaho’s life and the fictional lives on Coel’s Wind River Reservation. I also, note Sherman Alexie’s review of Ian Frazier’s "On the Rez", another book by a non-Native on Native American reservation life. It is the book "Invisible Natives" by Armando Jose Prats that helped firm up my ideas on this subject and I will refer to all three writings throughout.

I will admit right here that I had stopped reading Coel’s Wind River Mysteries after her "The Shadow Dancer". Mainly, because I felt that more and more she was beginning to write less and life about the people and communities of the Wind River. Though at the beginning of the series I had more than a passing interest in the novels since they are set on the Wind River Indian Reservation in west central Wyoming. I was born and raised on the Wind River Reservation and spent most of my adult life there, leaving in 1999 to pursue a film making career. So, my experience in reading "Eye of the Wolf", while specific to me, seems to illustrate the complex problem of Native self-representation in the media.

I will begin this series with a review of the book "Eye of the Wolf" (2005) before delving into the representations (Or rather, misrepresentations) of the Northern Arapaho people within the series entire and how it connects to the growing problem of commodification of Native American imagery and culture and how it lends to usurping Native American first-voice through the taking Native identity. Also, I will explore how the Authorship of Expertise allows this misrepresentation to be accepted as truth.

A reviewer on a website called Dancing Badger (Which reviews several Indian Reservation mysteries and the growing genre) remarked on the Coel mysteries that the books are more an intellectual exercise of the author rather than a well-crafted genre piece. After reading "Eye of the Wolf", I am inclined to agree.

Margaret Coel herself is an anthropologist having published a book on the Southern Arapaho leader Left Hand. But for me, being a learned anthropologist does not equate a good mystery writer and certainly not make one the spokesperson for an entire tribe of Indians. So, let us take a look at the book "Eye of the Wolf" itself before connecting it to the larger theme of Native self representation.

On Eye of the Wolf
The mystery in the eleventh book of her series concerns the discovery of three slain Indian men at the site of the Bates Battle, which has significance in Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshoni tribal history on the Wind River Indian Reservation.

The battle took place on July 4, 1874 in which the US Calvary and Shoshoni scouts found an Arapaho encampment and attacked it. This was in retaliation for earlier violence and attacks on white settlements in the area prior. Later evidence suggested that this camp of Arapahos had nothing to do with that earlier violence. In Coel’s story, the battle is still a sore point for the tribes after so many years and this is the driving thrust of the mystery.

Coel’s literary hero, Father John O’Malley discovers the three bodies frozen in poses at the battle site after a cryptic phone message for "the Indian Priest" sends him out there to look, rather than calling the police. He almost preternaturally realizes that the bodies are arranged to look like old photographs from the Bates Battle aftermath and knows instantly that this will somehow touch off an intertribal war on the reservation. This sends him on the trail of the murderer of the three men, identified as Shoshoni tribal members. (The Arapaho’s "traditional" enemies, according to several characters in "Eye of the Wolf" and the tribe they share the Wind River Reservation with.)

Coel’s other literary creation, Arapaho lawyer, Vicky Holden makes an unsteady entrance into the story defending a young Arapaho man named Frankie Montana, who, in a striking coincidence, is accused of beating the same three Shoshoni men prior to the start of the story. Thus, he becomes the story’s only prime suspect in the murders after the body of a forth Shoshoni man, once again discovered by O’Malley following another phone message, is found at the battle site.

The two threads lie together uneasily. They are only connected to each other by the character of Frankie Montana, an obvious red herring; the young man is so devious, callow and rude that you just know that he is not the killer. The fact that every other character in the book thinks he is, only added to my suspicion that he was really innocent of the crimes.

What I like about a good mystery, think Christie’s work, is how there is more than one prime suspect to confuse things. There are several characters in the story that have the motive and opportunity to kill the victim. Coel’s "Eye of the Wolf" and even after eleven novels does not have that type of experienced layering. She seems to be getting by on her knowledge of Arapaho history. It seems lazy to me.

One other thing that bothered me is that for some reason, every character in the book, in addition to saying Frankie Montana is guilty, thinks the murders will incite some sort of "war" between the Northern Arapaho and the Eastern Shoshoni and it is referenced to often (As often as Frankie Montana’s guilt.). And this serves as the means to propel events forward. O’Malley, determined to prevent "war" then begins to investigate and get answers that propel his story arc forward.

Vicky Holden does nothing. She sits in a holding pattern for most of the novel up until the anti-climactic ending when the suspect needs a hostage, and seems more a reiteration than a revelation. Of late, the series is becoming more and more about Father John O’Malley and his trials and triumphs in and among the people of the Wind River Reservation overshadow the life and loves of Vicky Holden, who along with the people and communities of the Wind River serve only to elevate Father John to savior status.

The emotional hurtles they both have to jump through seem unresolved after eleven novels. O’Malley is a recovering alcoholic who feels the need to drink whenever the pressure is on. Yet, he still faces the unpaid bills and unreturned phone calls and meetings he never seems to attend and a provincial assistant who will last only the duration of the novel.

Holden has now been relegated to an "Indian Princess" role. She comes from a broken marriage to an Arapaho man and is untrusting of Indian men. Untrusting even the man she is in a relationship with but seems to trust the white O’Malley implicitly. While their unspoken attraction to each other seems to be behind them in "Eye of the Wolf" they never seem to move on from their starting points in resolving their own personal issues that stem from the very first novel "The Eagle Catcher". And as if to prove the story does not need her, the two main characters of this series do not meet until more than half way through the book.

Holden, for most of the book, does nothing but question her loyalties. Does she continue to support her tribe in defending Frankie Montana or does she take on "more important cases" with her new Lakota law partner? She also questions her relationship with that same law partner, the ubiquitously named Adam Lone Eagle. She does not bring any new information to O’Malley’s investigation of the crimes and serves only to point the glaring spotlight of guilt at Frankie Montana. Otherwise, she seems distracted by her relationship with Lone Eagle.

This lacking narrative left me uninterested in the killer’s identity. First and foremost, because of the characterization of the lead suspect Frankie Montana, the actual murderer is telegraphed in the scenes of its’ introduction. A white supremacist thread, which gives the story a sense of currency due to the fact that a major church of white supremacy has moved to Wyoming, is introduced and basically goes nowhere. Father O’Malley’s interaction with a ex-girlfriend of one of the supremacists seems to come from an entirely different book. This leads to the bigger weaknesses of the book, the final act and the motive of the killer.

In the later chapters, Holden eventually discovers relevant information "off-screen", as it were, as Coel does not bother to follow Holden within the narrative as she does her own investigation and uncovers new information pertaining to the killer’s identity. Holden just shows up at the end when O’Malley needs her to fill in the pieces. A feminine Tonto (who did all the dirty work), to O’Malley’s Lone Ranger (who did nothing but peep in windows). Then, together they race off toward the face off with the killers. When the plot is revealed and reason for the killings is brought to light, the information is so wrapped up in Whiplash-ian histrionics that all that was missing was the moustache-twirling.

Besides a very weak reason for the murders (So weak that a single sentence summation by O’Malley near the end sounded just plain silly.), the killers acted so out of character at that point from what was established for much of the book. One actually begins to monologue like a comic book villain that thinks he has the hero trapped and stupidly reveals all before ineptly trying to kill the hero. Speaking of comic books, the fact that a character is suddenly "bat-shit insane" is too easy a narrative convention overused in turning heroes into villains that it smacks of creative laziness and a lack of originality.

While Coel lies these threads together awkwardly, it is her characterization of Father John O’Malley that is the strongest point of the series. It is also the biggest hurtle in representing the Northern Arapaho people. Her writing for O’Malley has gotten stronger mainly because Coel writes him the most. I have noticed that a slew of secondary Arapaho characters, such as Chief of BIA Police Art Banner, and the Saint Francis housekeeper, have all but vanished from the series in favor of O’Malley’s turmoil. In "Eye of the Wolf" the housekeeper now only leaves notes for O’Malley at dinner time, the only indication she is ever there.

Though one has to admit, Coel does write him well. A scene in "Eye of the Wolf" where O’Malley connects with his new assistant (Who may stick around another novel) over their shared need to seek failure which gives them an excuse to return to alcohol is the strongest of the book and possibly the series.

But as Spokane author Sherman Alexie points out in his review of Ian Frazier’s "On the Rez"; "He almost convinces us that he’s writing about the ...Sioux, about their rez, when, in reality, he’s mostly writing about himself, about his feelings, about his real and imagined pain." I find that here in Coel’s fiction about the Northern Arapaho. She is first and foremost, writing about O’Malley’s experiences among the Northern Arapaho.

A weak narrative and motive reminded me of why I had stopped reading the series, though I should have a great interest in it. It was mostly inaccurate representations of my people, the problems they face and the lives they live, and of the land we live on. It also served to remind me of the problems this series has in perpetuating these misrepresentations while serving an uninteresting plot.

It was with trepidation that I picked up Coel’s "Eye of the Wolf". First of all, I feared that because of my past experience reading the tedious plots based on the reservation I grew up and lived several years of my adult life on now seem wildly inaccurate. Secondly, because of my experience as a Northern Arapaho man who has since been awakened to non-Native representations of Native Americas in the media. I feel that more and more the Native perspective is being taken away from Native Americans who are just as capable, if not better, in doing this than the establishment.

Coming Soon: Part Two: On the Series