F I C T I O N was actually the agent of the bishop, not the federal government, and he maligned Father Tomazin. The Catholic natives on the reservation defended the mission priest and united to resist the arbitrary authority of the agent and the policies of the federal government to designate a minority religious functionary. Father Ignatius Tomazin, in February 1879, accompanied a delegation of five principal native leaders, Wabanquot, or White Cloud, the head chief, Mashakegeshig, Munedowu, Shawbaskung, and Hole in the Day, the younger, to discuss the crucial issues of native liberty on the White Earth Reservation with federal officials in Washington. Father Tomazin was eventually removed from the White Earth Reservation because he rightly goaded the federal agents and chosen Episcopalians. The feisty priest protected native political liberty. Some thirty years later he served as the pastor of a church in Albany, Minnesota. Tragically the nasty parishioners of that mingy and disagreeable community challenged the priest, beat and cursed him in the parish house, and chased him out of town. Father Tomazin, then in his seventies, was badly wounded in spirit and, deceived by his own resistance, wandered to Chicago and “jumped to his death from the sixth floor of a hotel,” according to the New York Times, August 27, 1916. Ignatius, our coy, courteous, and elegant cousin would not survive the saintly names or priestly patronage. He was born premature, so tiny as an infant that he was swaddled in an ordinary cigar box. Partly to overcome the constant teases and tedious stories of his hasty birth and chancy presence he became a fancy dresser on the reservation. He wore smart suits, ties, and a dark fedora, but his courage and costumes were not enough to survive the horror of the First World War. Ignatius was killed in action on October 8, 1918, at Montbréhain, France, and buried in Saint Benedict’s Cemetery on the White Earth Reservation. Aloysius revealed his visions in the creative portrayals of blue ravens, and the abstract ravens became his singular totem of the natural world. He was convinced that his totemic associations were original, and there were no other blue raven totems or cultures in the world. Aloysius forever soared with ravens and never wholly returned to the ordinary world of priests, missions, communion of saints, the strains of authenticity, newspapers, manly loggers, salt pork, or the mundane catechism, recitations, and lectures on civilization by lonesome missionaries, teachers and federal agents. He became a blue raven painter of liberty. My brother actually inspired me to become a writer, to create the stories anew that our relatives once told whenever they gathered in the summer for native celebrations, at native wakes, and funerals at the mission. Our relatives were great storiers, and natural leaders with many versions of stories and reservation scenes, and for that reason they were associated with the crane totem, the orators of the early Anishinaabe. Frances Densmore, the musicologist and curious explorer of native cultures, recorded native songs and stories on the reservation. She was mostly interested in the translation of the songs and oral stories. My inter-
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