The three Aleut Indians in “What You Pawn I Will Redeem” by Sherman Alexie are representative of Indians who are unable to travel back to their homelands. The story relates that they are in Seattle because they were left there by the ship they came on.
Most of the homeless Indians in Seattle come from Alaska. One by one, each of them hopped a big working boat in Anchorage or Barrow or Juneau, fished his way south to Seattle, jumped off the boat with a pocketful of cash to party hard at one of the highly sacred and traditional Indian bars, went broke and broker, and has been trying to find his way back to the boat and the frozen North ever since.
The Aleuts are the majority of homeless Indians in Seattle, something that we aren’t shown in the story. The Aleuts that Jackson Jackson does come into contact with are planted; they stay sitting on a bench by the wharf. These Indians are contrasted with Rose of Sharon and Junior, both of who leave and travel. Rose of Sharon can go to her home reservation, and Junior leaves to find something else in life. The Aleuts are unable to do that because their home is too far, and they have no way to cross the ocean.
The Aleuts represent the idea of a lost connection to history. They aren’t like the other Native Americans in Seattle, and they don’t consider themselves Indians. They are stuck, as strangers in a strange land. Their dilemma represents the more significant dilemma of Native Americans in the United States. They are both citizens of the US but also not a part of American culture—and the inability of the Aleuts to get home is reminiscent of the issue of Native Americans who have lost their cultural roots—unable to go “home.”
The end of the Aleuts is as mysterious as their actions in the story. The story says,
I heard later that the Aleuts had waded into the salt water near Dock 47 and disappeared. Some Indians swore they had walked on the water and headed north. Other Indians saw the Aleuts drown. I don’t know what happened to them.
The Aleuts become the thing of legend, when the reality is probably that they drown in the water, the victims of a society that didn’t care for them. Jackson Jackson doesn’t know what happened to them, and they kept a lot to themselves, even their end. Their death or disappearance is similar to Jackson Jackson’s other friends and further demonstrates the point that many Native Americans are there one day but gone the next, and no one knows what happens to them, especially when they are homeless. The Aleuts demonstrate the larger point about Native anonymity and the careless nature of American culture when it comes to the lives of Native people—they were abandoned in a strange place, unable to find their culture, and died without a second thought to what happened to them—nearly erased from history.
"What You Pawn I Will Redeem" by Sherman Alexie tells the story of a homeless alcoholic Indian named Jackson wandering the streets of Seattle in despair. He sees Native American regalia in a pawnshop window and thinks that it might have once belonged to his grandmother. After finding out for sure that it did, he goes on a sort of quest to reclaim it. He has to raise a certain amount of money to buy it back from the shopkeeper, but every time he makes some money, he spends it on food and drink.
The Aleuts that he encounters down by the waterfront are examples of Indians whose plights are similar to his own. He calls them cousins, but he means it only in the sense that he considers all Indians his cousins. Like him, they are lost and in despair, waiting for a boat that never returns. When Jackson asks them how long they have been sitting there waiting, they tell him "eleven years." This illustrates the hopelessness of their situation, which mirrors the hopelessness Jackson feels.
Later, after Jackson has a little money in his pocket, he comes across the Aleuts again. This time he invites them to eat with him, which causes him to again spend the money he has found instead of saving it to redeem the regalia. This shows the camaraderie of the homeless Indians. Even though they have little or nothing, they share with each other. In the last mention of the Aleuts, Jackson says that they may have drowned. This brings out the ultimate tragedy of their situation, and by inference, his own.
The vignettes about the Aleuts are examples that illustrate the theme of the entire story, which highlights the sad plight of homeless Native Americans, but at the same time shows their warmth and longing for companionship and a sense of purpose.
The three Aleut Indians function as a kind of parallel to the threesome in which Jackson, the narrator, finds himself. He goes about with two other Indians, Rose of Sharon and Junior, and they both wind up deserting him. (Rose of Sharon goes home, and Junior winds up freezing to death.) Like Jackson and his friends, the three Aleuts symbolize the loneliness and dislocation of being away from their ancestral home. Also like Jackson and his friends, the three Aleuts are spiritually lost. They are waiting for their boat, which left 11 years before, and they later sing with Jackson about loneliness and loss. The Aleuts symbolize Jackson's own dislocation from his own life, his homeland, and his family. Like him, they are adrift in Seattle, and they yearn to return home.
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