Medicine River

A man named David Plume comes into the studio to have an old photograph repaired. David was present at the Wounded Knee occupation and still wears the jacket he got that day. The photograph is of him and some friends holding rifles. David sits down and asks Will if he has “ever been shot at” (158). Will finds David irritating. He has a feeling that David looks down on anyone who wasn’t present at Wounded Knee and is happy when he finally leaves. A few days later, David shows up at the studio in a van and invites Will to a protest in Ottawa in response to government plans to cut funding for Indigenous education. Will declines, and David warns Will that people should do something significant in life, implying that Will has yet to find that purpose.

Will recalls a neighbor in his childhood named Maydean, who had a mental disability and was shunned by most of the kids in the area. Will and James, on the other hand, played pranks on her. One time, they tried to convince her to get inside the dryer in the basement, but Maydean refused, so James put on a helmet and got in.