Eden did not reply. There was a flap of wings above from the great bird.

‘Are you proud of a people who sit on their tiny pockets of token land, laughed at and reviled by the men who took the great plains and the mountains from them? Killing themselves and dooming their sad children to a life of despair. Why did you not fight? You and all your elders? Were you so foolish you couldn’t see that the concessions you won were in fact victories for the white man? He loves the Indian dying on his reserve, a rural prison where the Indian is his own gaoler, a prison that keeps the white man’s child from playing with the Indian child. A sweetly wicked device to keep the Indian away from the things that could be his, and should be his. To make him think he’s different, that he wants a cabin instead of a home, a horse instead of a truck, a drink instead of a job.

‘I believe the Trickster, Grandfather. It is not he who is nothing. It is we who are nothing.’

The sun darkened again. The eagle circled as though it had been listening, and then soared. Eden lifted his face to the bird and then looked back at Sam.

‘Then we are truly lost.’

Sam bent his head, ashamed. His heart was heavy with sorrow. Eden stretched out his hand and lifted his grandson’s chin. The touch was like a feather brushing lightly against skin.

‘That is the hurt child who spoke is it not, Hunting Wolf?’

Sam blinked at him.

‘Now let me speak to the man.’

‘You’re speaking to the man.’

‘No. The child is the one full of dark anger. Of hate for himself and his people. But the man is a pure thing. The man has led his life in the light. We have watched him, and he is strong and pure and good. And his life is full of love where there was none for the child. He has patched the holes in his heart where many would have made them bigger. This love is your inheritance, Sam Hunting Wolf. It is what you pass to your children and it is more precious and lasting than any land or horse or house.

‘We have kept what the white man could not take from us. We know how the earth lives. They tell us with science what the raindrop is made of. We know in the hearts of our shamans what the raindrop knows, where it has been and where its spirit lies when it twinkles in the sun and harbours its rainbow.

‘To forget our knowledge, to lose that great love of all that is alive is when we become nothing. Now look at me, Grandson and tell me that you have forgotten your shaman’s knowledge.’

Sam’s eyes were moist. He looked into the face of his grandfather’s spirit and swallowed.