Finding the Distant Drummers

REVIEWED BY SARA

WHITE.

Ritta Baker, a 15-year-old
Lakota Sioux, is at the center
of Doe Tabor’s turbulent com-
ing-of-age story that takes
place at the close of the 1960s.

Ritta flees her home on a
South Dakota reservation after
tribal police beat and rape her
and murder her elderly men-
tor. Hitching a ride from a bus-
load of hippies, she sets out to
find a safe place to hide.
Along the way, she makes new
friend, learns about ignorance
and prejudice, and begins dis-
covering the world outside the
reservation.

Eventually, she ends up in
Berkeley with her dog, sharing
a tiny apartment with two
activist college students
involved in the Red Power
movement. She watches with
exhilaration as history is made
with the occupation of
Alcatraz, and begins to under-
stand that she as an individual,

 

and her people as a group,
have the power to claim their
land and their rights.

The novel is well written
and engaging, and Ritta is
easy to like.'Her easy, non-
judgmental reactions to new
people and situations make
seeing the world through her
eyes a pleasure. Ritta’s sexual-
ity is a theme throughout the
story as she discoveres her
own desires in the wake of the
brutal attack at the opening of
the novel. A beautiful young
woman, she is the object of
interest for many, and we see
her as she works through the
fear from her earlier trauma.
Her first desires are for men,
but after a few tense scenes,
her interests shift to women.
She hardly seems to register
this shift in attraction as
unusual. Her desires clearly
become a part of who she is,
but she does not struggle with
or claim a lesbian identity. She
becomes only coincidentally

involved in gay or lesbian
community. Her group-identi-
ty politics are Indian, and
everything else seems purely
personal.

The author weaves histori-
cal events through the novel,
educating without being over-
whelming. She soberly depicts
the dishonesty of the U.S.
government and the resulting
corruption on the reservations.
Her account of the Alcatraz
occupation brings the histori-
cal event alive. She visits the
violence of unmoderated
power again and again,
almost, at times, to the point
that it becomes predictable
and tiresome.

The novel critiques power
and the corruption that comes
with it, and provides a mes-
sage of hope and empower-
ment to those who are margin-
alized. Ritta’s survival is a tri-
umph, particularly because
she has kept her sense of
power and hope intact, which
keeps the overall effect of the

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