“I kept waving even after we went around the sagebrush-covered hill and I could no longer see them waving back at me, my father with his back straight and his hand held high, my mother with one hand pressed to her lips while the other floated as gracefully as a butterfly. I did not know it, but it would be quite some time before I saw my home again.” 

As six-year-old Ned Begay, then still known by his Navajo name Kii Yázhí, leaves home at the outset of the book, he faces many unknowns. He leaves behind his parents, his grandparents, and all he’s familiar with. In this quote we are reminded of how young and anxious he is when he goes to boarding school.

“It was no good to speak Navajo or be Navajo. Everything about us that was Indian had to be forgotten.” 

Ned and the other Navajo children who arrive at the mission school are instructed in no uncertain terms to abandon their Navajo ways and their language, in favor of assimilating into white culture. The culture they love is denigrated, and the punishment for lapsing back into their old ways—even as a means of seeking comfort—is harsh.

“Some students in that school, especially after being beaten enough times for talking Indian, reached the point where it became hard for them to speak Navajo, even when they wanted to. But it was not that way for me.” 

Ned clings to his native language, even though administrators at the mission school inflict beatings on children who speak Navajo. Consequently, Ned resorts to speaking Navajo in secret. This defiance reflects how important Navajo is to him and provides some foreshadowing for how he will use his language skills in the future, having maintained his Navajo fluency long after he was supposed to abandon it.