“You cannot know where your people are going if you don't know where your people have been.”
Little Tree’s grandparents spend majority of their time teaching him of their history, heritage and ancestry. As he comes of age he has his own struggles with his identity, attempting to reconcile his Cherokee side and the White American side. In the assertion, Little Tree reiterates what his grandparents often tell him in regard to his Cherokee culture. Thus, he is in touch with his Native American identity, as he has been made aware of their past and what it means to be Cherokee.
“I felt totally bad about it, and empty. Granpa said he knew how I felt, for he was feeling the same way. But Granpa said everything you lost which you had loved give you that feeling.”
Familial love is a motif the reader encounters all through the narrative, expressed through the protagonist and his grandparents. Once they become his guardians they make sure to instill the importance of love in Little Tree be it through expressing it or teaching it. In the statement, he is taught about the impact of loss particularly of things or people you loved. In that, there is an emptiness that comes with a loss of a loved one, of which we see as Little Tree loses his grandparents and later his dogs. However, Grandpa explained that it is better to feel this way rather than not love at all because the emptiness will constantly loom.
“Granma said that when your body died, the body-living mind died with it…the spirit mind was all that lived when everything else died.”
Moreover, the grandparents teach him about the significance of the spirit and how it molds an individual. In the quotation, he is taught about mortality and how the human body dies but a person’s spirit still persists even in death. They aim to teach him that their spirits will always be with him as spiritual companions throughout his life. Henceforth he should nurture his body-living mind as much as the spirit mind.
