Description
Reservations tells the story of U.S. Indian Service teachers Will and Mary Parker, both of whom are banished with their son Davey to Red Mesa -- an isolated day school on the big Navajo Reservation in northern Arizona and New Mexico -- for their opposition to the pro-boarding school policies of the Hoover Administration in far-off Washington. In their exile, Will and Mary encounter Hosteen Tse, a great Navajo leader and bunt of tribal lore who pleads for aid for his starving people. Will and Mary do what they can to help, which is little in a time when banks are failing and old friends are turning to thievery. Just when things look darkest, Franklin Roosevelt and his New Deal programs bring both hope and new tensions. Mary becomes the mentor of a group of young women as they struggle to make their way as teachers in the newly expanded but still male-dominated Indian Service. Will gets to try a daring scheme to boost day-school enrollment by using powerful buses to transport students in a mostly roadless region. Nevertheless, tensions persist between the outsiders who people Reservations -- the Parkers, Washington bureaucrats, Indian traders, and bootleggers -- and the Native Americans they hope to help or exploit. Will is drawn into conflict when Joe Garlen, a skilled mechanic who antagonizes everyone, seduces the niece of Franklin Begay. Franklin, Will's Navajo assistant and only close friend, seeks revenge, and he makes Will an unwitting accomplice. And the troubles just keep mounting, as one teacher barricades herself in her cottage out of fear of the Navajos, and a talented young athlete known as "the Navajo Jim Thorpe" sees his dreams of a career in professional baseballtragically shattered by Jim Crow laws.
