His eyes rolled back into focus and Sam gave a grunt. Despite the cold, he was sweating. But he knew it would be okay. He was becoming pure again. He felt it. And although part of him kicked and screamed at the thought of what that implied, that he was becoming an Indian again, a Kinchuinick shaman again, he swallowed back his distaste and embraced the cleansing in his heart.

Sam Hunting Wolf stood up, brushed the snow from his torn and ragged jacket, and started to walk towards his home. He walked across the wide street towards the bus depot and the main street that sprawled behind it. There was a driver clearing his wing mirrors of snow outside the depot. Sam walked by. The driver continued his task.

He turned into the main street, full of people as the bars and restaurants closed for the night. Couples ran to snowy cars and groups of young skiers threw snowballs at each other as they waited for one of the fifteen cabs in Silver to pick them up and bundle them back to their hotels; and there were the cops, strolling up the street like they owned it. And every one of the pedestrians, tourists going home, bar owners at doorways taking the air, cops killing time on the sidewalk, walked right past Sam Hunting Wolf as he strode up the street with his eyes fixed on the lights of Oriole Drive that twinkled above the shop-roofs.

And as he walked, Sam saw the street, his own main street, where he shopped with Katie, greeted friends, and looked in the windows of the stores at things they couldn’t afford but didn’t care, and he knew who he was.

Hunting Wolf.

The Kinchuinick shaman.

The years of self-loathing, of wishing his skin would fall away like a snake’s and be as white as Katie’s, were such wasted years. Look at these people he had believed were so much better; people so far away from the invisible roots that connected them to this earth they stood on, so sure in their understanding of the world yet understanding nothing. The spirits moved amongst them, touching them with phantom fingers in their grief at being invisible to man, and yet they saw nothing.

Savage. How many times had he heard that word fall from a white man’s lips? Hunting Wolf, the shaman, could have wept with joy when he realized that there need no longer be any shame, any horror at the Kinchuinick blood that coursed through his veins. He was no savage amongst civilized white people. It was he, and each one like him, who was civilized.