Historical Trauma, Sacred Geography, and Tribal Knowledge in Louise Erdrich’s The Round House
摘要
This chapter focuses on how Louise Erdrich’s The Round House (2012) gives fictional testimony to the actual sexual violence targeted at Native women as an ongoing part of settler colonialism, a testimony that serves a political function to shift readerly awareness because it reveals not only trauma but also spiritual survival and resistance. Erdrich traces the thirteen-year-old protagonist’s coming into spiritual knowledge in relation to sacred geography, and highlights the significance of the tribal ritual practices of storytelling and dreaming as a way of accessing the Old Buffalo Woman who serves as a symbol that connects past Native American cultures to present generations and current situations. Thus, Erdrich reclaims and uses Ojibwe elements and symbols that speak to spiritual knowledge and ancestral memory discredited by the encroachment of Western dualistic modes of thinking emerging from colonization. The chapter shows that Erdrich through her spiritual work unsettles the premise of American law by calling attention not only to its racist underpinnings, but also to the relevance of Indigenous people’s spiritual practices and cultural beliefs as well as a sacred connection to the land which has survived the legal violence of US federal and state law enforcement.