I'm on page 124, and I am really, really starting to fall for this book. I've enjoyed the read so far, but only now did everything click for me. I had been aware of the time shifts and of the multiple generations playing out simultaneously since the beginning (the back cover of the book says a lot), but once I read this, everything made sense:
"It was why he'd been remembering another's life.It was his punishment, to become Blackfeet, to be Piegan. To live on the reservation he'd created, the situation he was already leaving behind. To replace his own life with an Indian one, and thus know firsthand the end result of his policies. An end result generations away from last Winter, just so he could see the scope of what he'd done, that it still had traceable effect. So that, in a sense, he could be inflicting it upon himself." (pg 117)
Wow.