The Outside Circle

In the hallway, Pete is stopped by a staff member who tells him that his uncle Ray called, asking to pass on a message to him: He wants to know if Pete will reconsider visiting with him. Pete responds hesitantly, saying that he might consider giving him a call.

The next scene unfolds during visiting hours. Ray arrives with Joey, and when Pete expresses his surprise, Joey tells him that he missed him and “just wanted to see [him]” (85). Joey explains that Ray visited him a few times, and Pete and Ray shake hands. Once they’re sitting down, Ray announces that he wants to share with them a few things about their family history.

Ray traces their lineage back to Pete and Joey’s great-grandparents, who hailed from the Lake Cree First Nation and lived on the trapline (a hunting territory assigned by the state). He reveals that their son, Ray and Bernice’s father, was taken from his family when he was just four years old and sent to a residential school, where he met Ray and Bernice’s mother and married her at 16. The two struggled with poverty and had six children; their father often resorted to alcohol and