Neither Wolf Nor Dog Study Guide

The Neither Wolf Nor Dog study guide questions represent a primary part of your 40% reading grade this quarter.  While some answers will be similar to other student responses the volume of questions requires you to express in your own words your understanding of the book.  Any study guides that are identical or nearly identical will receive a zero.  

Chapter 1 AN OLD MAN’S REQUEST

  1. How is tobacco significant to the first people?
  2. Who is Dan?
  3. Who is Fatback?
  4. What is To Walk the Red Road?
  5. Who is Nerburn?
  6. What is Haskell?
  7.  Who does the following quote refer to?   He was a thinker, pure and simple, who had looked long and hard at the world around him.
  8. Why does Dan want Nerburn to write his story?

    Chapter 2 BURNT OFFERINGS
     
  9. What does Dan imply when he expresses?   If the mountain can forgive the scarring and the mining, and can cover over her gashes with the fresh grasses of summer, should I not too…?
  10. Who is Grover?
  11. Whos is Wenonah?
  12. Who said, “White people don’t want real Indians, they want storybook Indians.”
  13. What is the significance of the closing passage of Chapter 2?  Now he had burned them himself.  Now I was the box.  Now he was going to fill it again.

    Chapter 3  TALKING FOR THE GRANDFATHERS

14. What is Wakan Tanka?
15. Explain the significance of each of the following:

“Yes, Silence is the lie of the good man, or the coward.  It is seeing something you don’t like and not speaking.”

“The tobacco is like our church.  It goes up to God.”

“When we make a promise, it’s a promise to the Great Spirit…”

“The something strange happened.  These new people started asking us for our land.”

“You did something we did not think was possible.  You killed us without even taking our lives.

“You had better hope that your God is right.  That is all I have to say.”

     Chapter 4 One Wily Old Indian

16. Summarize Dan’s understanding of what to call the First People.
17. What does Dan mean when he expresses, “But you’ve got to understand that we are still at war.”

     Chapter 5  A LAND OF DREAMS AND PHANTASMS

18. What does Dan think about silence?  Provide three examples from the chapter.

     Chapter 6.  JUNK CARS AND BUFFALO CARCASSES

19. Respond to the assertions, 
“Owning things is what white people’s lives are about.”

“We measured people by how they shared.”

     Chapter 7.  ROOTING FOR THE COWBOYS

20.  What does Dan think of John Wayne?
21.  What is the significance of his opinion?

     Chapter 8.  TAKING MAIZE FROM SQUANTO

22. Why does Nerburn consider going home?
23. Why does Wenonah get angry at Nerburn?
24. At the end of the chapter, Nerburn defends himself by citing three outrages against First People.  What are those outrages according to Nerburn?  (pg. 99)
25.  What new evidence about Dan’s life does Wenonah convey to Nerburn?

     Chapter 9.  JUMBO

26. Who is Jumbo?
27.  What event occurs prohibiting Nerburn from returning home as he had planned?

     Chapter 10.  PONYTAILS AND JEWELRY 

28. How does Nerburn end up traveling with Dan, Grover, and Fatback?
29. How does Dan explain why the First People wore their hair long?
30. What does Dan think about hippies?
31. According to Dan and Grover, why is selling sacred things so sad?
32. How does the quote, “You can’t buy a culture by giving it a nickel,” summarizes the theme of chapter 10?

     Chapter 11.  THE SELLING OF THE SACRED

33. What does Dan mean by If you can buy it, it isn’t sacred.”?
34. Chapter 11 is one of the most provocative chapters thus far in the book.  How does Dan’s comment “…If we don’t my grandchildren who are not yet born are already dead.” represent the importance of this chapter?

 Chapter 12.  WELCOME TO OUR LAND

35.  What is the Powow that the three men have traveled to?
36. According to Dan how do the first people differently regard the Earth from the controlling society of people?
37. Describe the importance of Dan’s comment, “The world is not an accident, Nerburn,” he said.  “Nothing is an accident.”
38. What is meant by, “The creator has given you a task, just as he gave me a task.”
39. According to Dan why does Nerburn have to write this book?  Use the following quote to help guide your understanding, “Our Earth is crying now, and we need to remove her tears.  That is what they told me.  Someone will come, they said.  Then they gave me that song.”
40. What is a wichasha wakan?
41.  According to Dan, the white settlers were always looking for something.  What was each of the following groups in pursuit of the Spanish, the French, and the English?
42. Why does Dan use sage in his ritual?


     
Chapter 13. TATANKA

43. What is Tatanka?

Chapter 14.  SEEING WITH BOTH EYES

44.  Discuss Dan’s belief with respect to freedom and honor.
45.  According to Dan how has language been used to reduce the First People’s reputation and identity?  Support your response with a quote from the chapter.
46. What does Tunkashila mean?
47.  How does the quote, “Keepers of the fire cannot be cowards.  They are carrying the light,” act as a fitting summary of this chapter?

Chapter 15.  SHINY SOUP

48. What was the Dawes Act of 1887?
49. Describe the setting of the locale where the three men eat dinner.
50. According to Dan what was the worst thing that white man brought to his people?
51.  Why does Dan feel that the white man’s way is weaker?
52.  We listened to you.  But you never listened to us.  All you did is steal from us.  What is your reaction to Dan’s comment?
53.  Why does Dan object t beds?

Chapter 16.  THE STRANGER

54. According to Dan why was Sitting Bull so great?
55.  According to Grover what is a coffee cooler?
56.  Why does Dan detest agency Indians?
57. How does the title of the book derive from Sitting Bull?


Chapter 17.  LEADERS AND RULERS

58.  Who is Ziolkowski?
59.  What happened to Sitting Bull’s body after he was killed?
60.  Summarize Dan’s distinction between leaders and rulers.
61. Who was Gall?
62.  Who were the false chiefs?
63. According to Dan what makes a good leader?

Chapter 18.  DRUNK ON JESUS

64. How does the land compare on either side of the Missouri River?
65. What does Dan think about Jesus?
66. What does Dan think the U.S. government would have done if Jesus were an Indian?
67. What was the Ghost Dance?
68. Who was Wovoka?
69.  “You won’t even let us have hope,” Dan concludes in chapter 18.  How does this comment emphasize Dan’s bitterness towards the white man?

Chapter 19.  PUSHING

70. In chapter 19 Dan is distraught.  He exclaims, “We are struggling, and there are never any answers.  Every generation has to struggle.  Maybe we just have to leave it in the hands of the Great Spirit.”  How is this quote reflective of the theme of this chapter?

Chapter 20.  REVELATIONS

71. Who is Annie?
72. Who is Delvin?
73. Who is Danelle?
74.  What is learned about Dan’s ex-wife?
75.  Who is Bobby
75. What is learned about Dan’s son?
76. How is Danelle portrayed as an admirable character? 
77. What does Waichu mean?
78.  How does Danelle feel about Grover?
79. What is Danelle’s view of the women of her people?

Chapter 21   HALF-BREED

80. Who is Eugene?
81. Who is Myron?
82. Who is April?
83. Explain Dan’s perspective about how Indians and white people differ about races.
“You white people just seem to see race first, n matter what.”
84. How does April’s drawing appear to confirm Dan’s point?

Chapter 22   THE SONG OF HISTORY

85. What is Dan’s point about the difference between Jesus and Abraham Lincoln?
“Why can’t Abraham Lincoln come alive if you bring him into your heart?”
86.  What is Dan’s perspective about written history with respect to the first people?
Beliefs vs. Legends
87. What is meant by “You teach your children that Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves.  Why don’t you teach them that he made you all slave-freers and that you are now his children and must uphold his home?”  
88.  React to Dan’s comment, “You are still writing down our story, using your words, and you are still getting it all wrong.”
89.  React to Dan’s closing comment, “It is why you wasichu are in trouble…You have taken the power out of the Earth and the sky and the things that live there.”

Chapter 23   STORM 

90.  Describe the storm (Wiyopeyatte Wichasha) that takes place in this chapter.
91.  What does the storm have to do with Dan’s message to Nerburn?
92.  What is Wakinyan?
93. What is Waziya?
94.  Describe the Badlands and how Sitting Bull’s people suffered there.

Chapter 24  PAHA SAPA

95. What is Paha Sapa?

Chapter 25  WOUNDED KNEE

96. Explain how Dan and Nerburn get separated from Grover.
97. Where do Dan and Nerburn go?
98. What was the Chief Big Foot Massacre?
99. Who was Horncloud?
100. How many people were murdered at Wounded Knee?
101.  What is Wakan Tanka?
102. Explain what happened at Wounded Knee.
103. How does Dan use Kinnikinic (tobacco/sweetgrass) in his ceremony at Wounded Knee?
104. Explain Dan’s vision.
105. What does Grover bring to Nerburn?
106.  This chapter is full of insight as to the conflict that coexists with humanity.  Locate a passage in this chapter that best describes that conflict.  

Chapter 26  THE PROMISE

107. What does Dan think about Mt. Rushmore?
108. What is the attitude of the three men when they arrive back at the reservation?
109.  What was wrong with Nerburn’s truck?  How does he speculate that Grover and Dan were involved?
110. What does Dan give to Nerburn during their parting?