The Seed Keeper

In current times, there is an effort in many parts of the United States to remove offensive placenames or return the original Indigenous names to locations. This novel highlights the importance of names, how they designate people and places, and how they can be altered or weaponized. Once again, the author forefronts important ideas in the first chapter by having Rosalie recall lectures from her father. He provides the Dakhóta phrase from which the name “Minnesota” originated—Mní Sota Makhóčhe—and corrects the appellation given to their people by the settlers: “Some called us the great Sioux nation, but we are Dakhóta, our name for ourselves, which means friendly” (6). For the rest of the story, Rosalie claims, protects, or corrects names related to her, marking their significance.

On her wedding day, Rosalie understands that it is expected she will take Meister as her name. She nearly flees until John suggests she just add his last name to hers without a hyphen, because “Just as he could not bear the thought of losing his family’s land, I could not live without my family’s name, all that was left to me in this new life” (98). Her name—Iron Wing—is an inheritance, a reminder of who she is and where she comes from. Without other people around to celebrate her culture, she fears being erased. John’s egalitarian gesture is symbolic as well; he doesn’t dominate his wife by literally replacing her name with Meister, which means master, advocating instead for their names to be placed side-by-side. While John and Rosalie’s relationship is complicated, he honors his promise to keep her safe throughout their marriage, represented in Rosalie’s last name.

Names and the privilege of naming others become an issue when John drives Rosalie to New Ulm and shows her a monument. The privilege of the dominant culture to name others hits Rosalie hard when she reads about the “Sioux Indian War of 1862” and how “savages” attacked the settlers (117). Not only did the town use a tribal name not claimed by the Dakhóta, but it vilifies Rosalie’s people by using a racist epithet. Missing entirely is the context and causes of the war, how the Dakhóta were already dying of starvation initiated by the settlers and government agents. Reading further, she sees the name “Heinrich Meister” listed on the roll of those killed in an attack. John says that his ”ancestors had it coming” (118), but the placement of his ancestor’s name on a plaque puts Rosalie’s and John’s histories into conflict.

The couple has their own conflict about naming their yet-to-be-born son. Rosalie wants to name the boy Wakpá, but John wants to name him Thomas after his grandfather. These two names represent conflicting cultural heritages between Indigenous tradition and white patriarchy. Rosalie initially stands firm because she “knew the power in a name. [She] knew how a name would draw its strength from the child; how the child would grow into that name” (148). John is surprised she would pick such a name, for he knows how reminders of the Dakhóta bring out a meanness in their small community. He wants the boy’s name to be a shield, to protect him from the icy stares Rosalie garners. He prevails, but Rosalie calls her son Wakpá when she’s alone with him. As a boy, he goes by Tommy, and his switch to Thomas in his late teens indicates that he wants to be seen as a man, someone to be respected, and not a boy. Names can often give insight into how the author wants readers to react to a character, but so too does a character’s claiming or rejecting of a name, as Thomas does here.

The author hints at what might have happened if the couple named Tommy Wakpá when John and Rosalie go to the teacher’s conference. The teacher praises how bright Tommy is but tells them he had trouble with an assignment where he needed to write his grandparents’ names. She diligently writes down John’s parents’ names, but when Rosalie supplies hers, the teacher does not write. She seems flummoxed and sputters about it being true that Tommy is “part Indian” (184). The other children bully Tommy because of his race, showing again how the dominant culture assigns names to minorities. Rosalie is outraged, but John is stunned because he hadn’t thought much about his son’s race, and even “Knowing the history, understanding how some of his neighbors regarded Indians, had not prepared him to see his own son treated that way” (185). While much of the text’s focus on names dwells on individual identity, scenes like this show how the names chosen by others can impose identities as well.