Return to the River is a story about Nona Hawk, a young Indian girl whose village, just off Lake Winnipeg, is suddenly disrupted when white men come to work on a dam. The Indian and Metis degenerated fast. They drank too much and spent all night in the pool hall. The girls became prostitutes. The white men were so eager for Indian handicrafts that the women sold the clothes off their husbands' backs. The fishing that the Indians depended on for their income was destroyed by the trash thrown out by the pulp mill. Conditions came to a crux when an Indian killed his wife in a drunken stupor. Nona's parents sent her off to Winnipeg where she could live with a friend. Unfortunately the friend had moved. Nona took a room in a boarding house and got a job as a waitress in a Chinese restaurant. A motorcycle gang became frequent visitors to it. On one occasion they wrecked it and followed Nona home. They staked out her house and for two days Nona did not dare leave it. When she did go back to the restaurant it was closed. She took up with a band of Indians who danced for money. She decided this was not the life for her and went home. There she married an Indian who worked in the bush winters while she worked in a cafe at the dam. She became pregnant. She and her husband decided to go to Winnipeg where he could learn to fly and on the way there she gave birth. She thought it was a good omen that the baby had not been born in the village or in the city.

This book tells a great deal about Indians and the discrimination against them. As one character said, "In some countries it's the Negroes, in others it's the Jews, in Canada it's the Indian." I always thought I was fair minded but I find myself thinking that there are dirty, drunken Indians. Since reading Return to the River I find myself looking at the Indians on the street and wondering what they are really like and how they think. One thing this book has made me do is really look at the Indians.

This review was written by me in February 1970 when I was still in high school. We had aboriginal Canadians living in our small town but there were none in high school at that time. There were still some Indian residential schools at that time although many had been closed. However I think that most aboriginal students probably just dropped out of school and that is why there were none in high school. ( )