The Education of Ruby Loonfoot

Native American Times 2002 Read of the YearIn the fall of 1957, Ruby was at crossroads. Despite continual debasement of her race and culture, and sexual and physical abuse, Ruby struggles to retain her Indian identity. Sharing the story are the two central women in her life: her mother Theresa, an ardent Catholic who is determined to shed everything Indian from her life and escape the reservation, and her grandmother and spiritual rock, Cecilia Pitwoniquot, a respected Ojibwe elder. Th schism between these two generations widens when, despite Theresa's strong feeling against it, Cecilia plans Ruby's Ojibwe coming of age ceremony, hoping to solidify her Indian identity, to inoculate her against the Robes. When Ruby returns to St. Nicholas, she is the first to experience the chair, the school's latest punishment. If the madness at St. Nics is to be stopped, it will be up to her. Careful research, including interviews with boarding school survivors and the guidance of a respected Ojibwe spiritual leader, make this novel timely, relevant and haunting.

References to the consequences of intentional cultural suppression and demeaning discipline in Native American boarding schools appear in the works of numerous Indian authors, including Louise Erdrich and Paula Gunn Allen. Now Riddle brings to life St. Nicholas School: "a composite of Native boarding schools" found in Canada and the U.S. during the 1950s, and presents a clear-eyed survivor of the system, Ruby Loonfoot, a 13-year-old Ojibwe girl. Through Ruby's eyes Riddle illuminates a harsh world in which young girls are removed from their Native homes, undernourished, humiliated, and in several instances sexually molested, all part of the painful process of sacrificing their Indian identity for a mainstream education. Although Ruby's mother is a boarding school graduate, a Catholic, and desperate to leave the reservation, her grandmother is a respected elder who strives until her death to pass on to Ruby not just tribal traditions, but a sense of pride. Riddle pulls no punches in this difficult, yet engrossing, novel about a coming-of-age made torturous by institutionalized racism. Deborah Donovan
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