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Joseph Bruchac's The Heart Of A Chief

1543 Words7 Pages

The Heart of a Chief by Joseph Bruchac is a realistic fictional novel published in 1998. The protagonist of the story, an eleven-year-old boy named Christopher Nicola, struggles to take action when his people are divided over whether or not to build a casino on a sacred island.
Synopsis
The novel opens with Christopher (Chris) Nicola, a boy from the Penacook reservation in New Hampshire. He lives with his grandfather, great-aunt, and younger sister. They are addressed as Doda, Auntie, and Celeste, respectively. Both Doda and Auntie are aged and feeble. Chris’s mother had died from a car accident during his childhood. Chris’s father, named Mito, had left the reservation for an alcohol rehabilitation center. It is Chris’s first day in junior high school, and he is taken by bus to Rangerville Junior High, located two miles outside …show more content…

Primarily, it follows Chris’s compelling voyage of self-discovery. His willingness to help his community proves that he has “the heart of a chief.”
The novel uses the character to show the many problems faced by Native Americans, and the racial discrimination directed towards them. As Chris describes, these are all caused by the settlement of Europeans into North America, as they deprived the natives of everything they once had. And yet even in the late 1900s, racial discrimination against Indians can be found in many places, including the names of sports teams.
Despite these issues that the protagonist faces, he remains courageous and he continues life. At school, he proves to be a very good leader, and he does well in all his classes. At home, he deals with the absences of his parents very well. As a sixth grader, he is steadily maturing, and he draws from his own Indian traditions to stand up for what he believes is

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