In the 1880s the United States Government expanded their idea of civilizing the Indians through forcefully removing Indian children and placing them in Indian boarding schools throughout the west, where they intended to educate the children in Christianity and the white man's way. In 1887 the government built a boarding school in Keams Canyon Arizona and they began removing Hopi and Navajo children from their homes, sending them away from their families and placing them in the newly built boarding school. In 1938 Joaquin Neilsen, a young half breed orphaned Hopi boy that his Hopi grandmother affectionately called Pakwa, was taken and placed in Keams Canyon Boarding School, a school that by then was deteriorating, where conditions were less than ideal. When Joaquin was sent home to his grandmother in the middle of the school year to heal from serious injuries sustained during an episode of one of the Headmaster's harsh disciplinary actions, his grandmother decided that in order to save her grandson's life she would have to send him away from the reservation to live with his great Uncle Jake on the white man's ranch near Winslow. This is Joaquin's story as he attempts to live in two worlds, the world of the Hopi and the world of the white man.