Novel Winter In the Blood, illustrated by James Welch, talks about daily life of Native Americans who live in an advanced culture in the middle of twentieth century. The story is told from the perspective of a nameless 32-years-old man. 

In the beginning, when the Narrator finds out that Agnes, the women who lived with the Narrator, had stolen his gun and electric razor and ran away. He decides to forget her by helping at home for her mother’s remarriage. However, the Narrator still sets off to find Agnes. He didn’t find Agnes at once, but meets Agnes’ brother Dougie in Malta, who persuaded the Narrator to rob a passed out white man at a bar. Then he goes to Havre, but still finds nothing. He gets the news about his grandmother’s death after he goes home. His grandmother was the youngest wife of the Blackfeet tribe’s chief. When she was very young, the cavalry attacked the tribe and caused the destroy of Blackfeet. Narrator’s grandmother lost his husband during a winter of starvation and death. But it turns out that an old man Yellow Calf who lives alone is the Narrator’s grandfather. The Narrator falls into the memory of the death of his brother Moses 20 years ago. When the Narrator was 12 years old, one of the calves ran away when Moses and the Narrator were taking the herd across the highway. They couldn’t control the calf and got hit by a car. Moses dead and the Narrator got injury that is still influencing him after years. 

This novel is shows two obvious social problems. 

The first issue is the relationship between the whites and Native Americans. The conflict between these two social groups had began when Europeans first arrived the continent of America. Hundreds of years ago, Native Americans were savage and wild in European’s eyes, and forced them to dig gold. On the other hand, the Native Americans looked upon all whites as enemies because they robbed all gold from tribes, caught native men as slaves, and massacred all natives who were dared to stand up to them. After whites developed cities in the east coast of America, they started to move west. Natives in the east of Mississippi were forced to move west, thousands of them dead during the first winter they’ve lost their houses on the way west. Government also announced that no one is allowed to go in or out of Native American’s regions without permission, or they will be executed as traitors. This is very possibly because of fierce of the governors of cities. Native Americans were relatively having lower technologies, especially the weapons. The governments had to prevent them from rebellions by cutting all possible sources of natives to reach whites’ technologies. Cities of whites kept their hostility and wariness against Native Americans for a long time. With the exploring of the west and the hope of reaching the Pacific Ocean, whites had to accept Native Americans, and the diffusion of their cultures as allies started the first time. However, there were still a great amount of Native Americans were chased out of their land because of different reasons, such as the building of train tracks or highways. The tribe of Blackfeet might be attacked because they didn’t want to give up their territory. These actions are absolutely breaking the relationship between whites and Native Americans, and it makes a great damage between both sides especially at the time when they just started accepting each other for only decades. The death of native civilians caused resistance of tribes of the west. 

The conflict between whites and Native Americans were not only between governments, but also among individuals. Discrimination of the natives was a common idea in 19th century, and this thought kept influencing people for a long period of time. In the novel, the Narrator got attacked by Dougie and his companions in Malta, and there were people tried to fight with the Narrator in bars. This series of events shows hostility of whites against Native Americans looking men, even though the Narrator is trying to be infused in the whites’ culture. The author of this novel himself is a decedent of Blackfeet, he might had experienced the same situation. In my opinion, all discrimination should not be happened. As a politician, ideologist, the third American President Thomas Jefferson had state in the Declaration of Independence that “all people were born to be the same”.  No matter who someone is and where he was born, he is equal to anyone in this world. It is not humane and ethical to discriminate anyone. 

Another important problem is that people contempt ones that has exactly the same social background. In the novel, the Narrator’s stepfather Lame is a rich decedent of Native Americans who owns wide fields and great herds. However, once he tried to cheat a boy from a tribe in the mountains by asking him to do heavy works in his fields, without paying the boy anything. Even though the Narrator persuades Lame to pay 20 bucks at last, Lame is still unhappy about it. Maybe in his opinion, he is a hard-working man who earned a lot, but these tribe men are only “uncultured” ones who should stay in the lower social class, which means they have no rights the same as himself. It is a very interesting appearance but may affect people deeply. This kind of idea is not only from characters of a story, but also in real life. The author is Intentionally or unintentionally reflecting this common issue by his book. Now matter in what period of history, no one want to be in the lowest class of their society and be mocked and ordered by ones standing higher then them. But there have to be ones to stay in that position so that the society can keep its progresses steadily. In reality, not only the rich decedents of Native Americans despise poor people, this happens in any societies in the world. Feudalism and slavery are also caused by that. 

In modern society, even though the idea of equality of human being had been popularized, severe caste differentiation in some area is still a serious problem waiting for people to solve that. In most of conditions, a society is divided into three classes: top class which contains rich and potentates; middle class that has the most amount of people, and the last class which is formed mostly by the beggars and vagrants. They are vulnerable groups, who are having the least chance to uphold justice for themselves. Last years, there were a lot of reports personal abuses against homeless people, and some were even been bullied to death. But why did this happened? It is a question of moral. Even though people in this group don’t have much privileges, they are still ones and they want to make contributions. Some of them donate money to schools, churches and people in disasters; some of them can fight against robbers without thinking about themselves, to protect others. They’ve sacrificed themselves for somebody, but the world is not as kind as them. Instead of treating them as rabbles, they should be respected—not only to pity them, but also to help them with actions. For instance, our school send turkeys to difficult families every Thanksgiving for nearly thirty years. This is absolutely a right thing to do, and I believe there are others doing that. With the progressing of the society, the distance between people are getting closer and closer. 

To sum up, this novel leaves us a deeper question about nations and society, which is close to the reality. As a story of Native Americans’  life with whites, it shows more author’s thoughts than the plots of story itself. Maybe the situation of the society is irreversible, we should keep a positive view of the world, and always remember that equality of people is the origin of peace.