Louise Erdrich - The Round House (excerpts from chapter 2 and 4) lyrics

From chapter 2, pg. 29-30: “You can't tell if a person is an Indian from a set of fingerprints. You can't tell from a name. You can't even tell from a local police report. You can't tell from a picture. From a mug shot. From a phone number. From the government's point of view, the only way you can tell an Indian is an Indian is to look at that person's history. There must be ancestors from way back who signed some document or were recorded as Indians by the U.S. government, someone identified as member of a tribe. And then after that you have to look at that person's blood quantum, how much Indian blood they've got that belongs to one tribe. In most cases, the government will call the person an Indian if their blood is one quarter—it usually has to be from one tribe. But that tribe has also got to be federally recognized. In other words, being an Indian is in some ways a tangle of red tape. On the other hand, Indians know other Indian without the need for a federal pedigree, and this knowledge—like love, s**, or having or not having a baby—has nothing to do with the government.” From chapter 4, pg. 76-77 Edward, what do we know of this priest? Not much. Think. Pour me another. He's from Texas. Dallas. The catholic martyr on our kitchen wall. Dallas. That's where this priest is from. I don't know Dallas. More correctly, he's from a little dried-up town outside of Dallas. He's got a gun and I saw him out popping prairie dogs. What? That's odd for a Benedictine. They strike me as a more genteel and thoughtful bunch. True, generally, but he's new, recently ordained. He's different from—oh, but who remembers Father Damien? And, ah, he's searching. He gives very questioning sermons, Bazil. Sometimes I wonder if he's entirely stable, or then again, if he might be simply…intelligent. I hope he's not like the one before him who wrote that scorching letter to the paper about the deadly charms of Metis women. Remember how we laughed about it? God! If only it were about God. Sometimes when I'm at the Adoration with Clemence, I see double, just like now. What do you see then? I see two priests, one dispensing holy water from a silver aspergillum, the other with a rifle. Just an air rifle, surely. Just an air rifle, yes. But he was fast with it, deadly, and accurate. Gopher count? Dozen or so. All laid out on the playground. The men paused, thinking, then Edward continued, Still, that does not make him… I know. But the round house. Symbol of the old pagan ways. The Metis women. Setting it all on fire together—the temptation and the crime all burned up as in a fire offering…oh god. My father's voice caught. Now Bazil, now Bazil, said Edward. This is just talk.” (77)