The theme of child-parent conflict, especially as it applies to the child's developing romantic interests, is a common one, but, in the context of Sweetgrass, it is exacerbated by the swiftly changing social mores of the Blackfoot. As Hudson explains to Jenkinson, "The social idea of what you do and how and why hasn't really caught up with the economic and political reality of what's going on."

The central character, Sweetgrass, represents those who are still attempting to follow the old ways and who either do not recognize, or do not want to recognize, that Blackfoot ways have changed and are continuing to change. All around her, Sweetgrass sees fathers giving their adolescent daughters to older men in marriage. Nevertheless, she still uses an example from the past as her model and recalls that "Father wanted to marry my mother, and she wanted to...