Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
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and Narrative
Storytelling, Melancholia,
Structure in Louise Erdrich's The Painted
Drum
Jean Wyatt
Occidental
College
To say that the story of Louise Erdrich's The Painted Drum (2005) is
subtly told would be an understatement; I argue that the transformation
of the protagonist, the process central to this novel, is not described at all.
Rather, the narrative structure, with its unexplained breaks and juxtaposi
tions, conveys the means of the protagonist's change. The novel sets the fol
lowing puzzle for readers: Part One is narrated by Faye Travers, a woman
whose
tenacious
siblings
on
the
same
reservation.
But
we
know
nothingor
almost
The cure is built directly into the narrative structure; the mechanism of
change is dramatized, not described. Because the plot of The Painted Drum
is undertold, because the process of Faye's transformation is not narrated,
the reader has to do work ordinarily accomplished
by plot; to understand
the change that takes place in Faye, a reader has to imagine the effect of
MEI.US,
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WYATT
Bernard's
puts the reader in the position of listener to oral storytelling, in the sense
that the text requires the reader to adopt a way of thinking akin to that of
a listener to traditional storytelling. Kimberly Roppolo says of American
Indian philosophy,
by exposition" (268).
leave out explanation
leaves it to us to discern how they affect Faye. As in the oral tradition, "the
hearer/listener must infer cause and effect" (Donohue
68).'
in a particular way
Moreover, the reader must make connections
through what Paula Gunn Allen calls an "accretive technique" (Sacred
95-96). In order to understand how Bernard's stories influence Faye, read
ers have to make associational
incorporation
that precede
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NARRATIVE
STRUCTURE
melancholic
Melancholia
The traumatic event in Faye's life, the buried memory that surfaces
only at the end of her long opening narrative, is the death of her younger
sister, Netta, when Faye was nine (92-94). Faye is now in her fifties, and
only now can she put the event into words. Her mother was absent, leav
ing the two girls in the care of their father. Playing in the family orchard,
the girls had climbed high into an apple tree when their father came to tell
them to come in for the night. As they defied him by climbing higher, he
told them to jump down into his arms. Netta shook Faye's branch, and
Faye fell, hitting the ground as her father stepped aside. Netta looked at
her sister lying there, then stepped off the branch and fell to her death.
After the father rushed off with Netta's body in his arms, Faye realized that
the death would be blamed on her: "I knew how my mother and my father
would regard me from then on. ... I knew I'd lost them both, or all three
of them. I knew that now 1 was alone" (93). The trauma of the beloved sis
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WYATT
elaborate
identification involves
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NARRATIVE
STRUCTURE
as if it were some
sister. It is against
such incursions
redouble and thus fortify the walls of the internal crypt. With
her mother, Faye has created a temporal cocoon of daily routine, a "web"
of everyday acts"[o]ur
breakfasts and dinners. . . . [o]ur net of small
doings"which,
always the same, deny the passage of time and thus pre
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WYATT
serve the status quo, the suspended life of Faye and the dead sister. Faye
is adamant about "preserving what Elsie and I have made between us.
. . . Our web. Our routine" (79). The "web of our safe behavior" (263) is,
it is made up of time, of temporal acts daily
however, fragile. Because
enclosure
is vulnerable to the contingencies time
this
protective
repeated,
inevitably brings.
The spatial enclosure
it back"
spirit. When Krahe overrules Faye and chops out the deadwood,
Faye spends a long afternoon sitting in the orchard: "I want to remember
the orchard as cold, sleeping, wrecked, and still mine, before it happens"
(73). Faye's adjectives betray her fantasy: cold and sleeping are but figu
sister's
rative images for the dead; the orchard is not dead, but only suspended
in a seeming death. Only so long as the orchard retains this status is it
part of her self even though it is technically a part of nature, a
living-dead reflection of the psychic crypt that holds the living-dead figure
of the sister. In a melancholic energetics, the cost of keeping the other in
Faye'sa
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NARRATIVE
STRUCTURE
A Collective
Therapy:
Bernard
Shaawano's
Storytelling
Part One ends with Faye describing Netta's death (92-94). The buried
traumatic memory makes its way into narrative, after some forty years of
silence and ninety-two pages of text. According to contemporary Western
trauma theory, putting a dissociated traumatic experience into the form of
a chronological narrative effects a cure by enabling the trauma survivor to
transform trauma into narrative memory and thus integrate it into personal
history.5 The end of Part One, then, seems to be moving toward a resolu
tion of Faye's melancholia.
Instead, the narrative breaks off abruptly and Chapter One of Part Two,
of a stranger, Bernard, an
"The Visitors," plunges us into the consciousness
on
a
reservation
in
North
Dakota.
Through his eyes, we see Faye
Ojibwe
and her mother as they come to the reservation to restore the ceremonial
drum Faye found in a New Hampshire house to its place of origin. From
this chapter, we know that Faye, her mother, and Bernard's Ojibwe neigh
bors form the circle of listeners for the stories Bernard tells in subsequent
chapters. Setting up the specific audience for Bernard's stories, this fram
ing chapter constructs the oral context of the stories that follow. Like a
traditional storyteller, Bernard tells stories told him by his elders in a voice
that is at once singular and collective.
Even the most flexible reader feels the shift from Faye's narrating voice
as a break, even perhaps as a loss. One might well object that a reader
familiar with some of Erdrich's earlier works would not be surprised that
the text presents a multiplicity of narrators. A novel such as Love Medicine
(1984), for example, sets up the principle of polyphony from the beginning
by moving from one narrative voice to another. The Painted Drum, on the
contrary, subscribes to the conventions of the traditional novel throughout
the extended length of Part One. The unbroken stretch of a long narra
tive given unity by a first-person narrator gives us no reason to doubt that
we are in the familiar territory of the psychological
novel: lulled by the
in
that
immersion
we
the narrative will
long
Faye's consciousness,
expect
continue to respect the conventions, continue to deliver a singular voice
order. We are after all reading a
narrating events in linear chronological
novel, a genre permeated from its beginnings by assumptions about the
central importance of the individual. It is partly because of our generic
expectations of a novel, partly because the break occurs so late in the text,
that we experience the abandonment of Faye's singular voice as a shock;
that shock has the potential to shake up a Western-trained reader's cultural
assumptions about the primacy of the autonomous individual. This formal
break with individualist
discourse
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WYATT
is
In order to understand the process that changes Faye, the reader must
enter into a logic of cyclical time. According to indigenous understand
ings of time, events repeat in successive historical periods. Knowledge of
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NARRATIVE
STRUCTURE
(109);
across the frozen snow, wolves attacked the sledge and the mother threw
her daughter to them, saving herself and the new baby. The stories that fol
low trace the anguish over this loss that haunts the next two generations:
first the father who blamed himself for his passivity in not protecting his
daughter; then the brother who was broken at the age of five by the loss of
his sister and remained broken as an adult, so that he physically abused his
own son, Bernard. So far, the stories reflect Faye's experience: a mother
fails to protect a child because she is off seeking her own erotic adventure;
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WYATT
a beloved
child is lost; and the survivors cannot live full lives because they
are caught up in a never-ending cycle of grief and guilt. The key to Faye's
healing is that the stories also offer a different perspective on the dead.
In the story of Anaquot, the dead daughter warns her mother repeatedly
of the threats to her life and the life of the baby from the jealous wife of
her lover; her warnings save the lives of her mother and sister. In the fol
lowing story, the dead girl's father, Old Shaawano, "unable to unfreeze the
pictures in his brain" of his daughter's death and his own faint-heartedness
(154), remains riveted to his loss until the dead daughter returns to show
him her love and give him the task of making the ceremonial drum of the
novel's titlea task that prevents his suicide, "keep[ing] him here upon
the earth" (155). Later, the dead girl asks that her bones be put into the
drum to give its voice timbre. And later still, in the next round of time, in
the anonymous narrative that follows Bernard's stories (Part Three), the
drum sounds (by itself) to awaken another nine-year-old girl, Shawnee,
from death, enabling her in her turn to bring her two siblings out of the
death-grip of hypothermia. In a redoubling of the original story, the daugh
ter's spirit, now inhabiting the drum, once again protects life.
As in Faye's life, the dead girl haunts, but there is a difference. In each
story the desire of the dead sister is not to infect the remaining sibling
with her own deadnessas
in Faye's casebut to preserve and enhance
the lives of the living. Far from labeling a continuing commerce with the
dead a pathology, as Western theories of melancholia
do, Ojibwe culture
that
and
dead
not
lose contact with
acknowledges
"living
persons [do]
each other" (Vecsey 67). However, the stories suggest more positive,
with the dead than melancholic
less crippling models of communication
encryptment. The change in Faye in Part Four stems from listening to
various versions of her own story of loss, thereby acquiring new mental
schemas
she envi
sions her own dead sister differently. At the end of the novel, she leaves
the child cemetery where Netta is buried:
the way
[0]n
a cliff.
There
back
to my
must
be
playing
there.
I watch
stream.
Over
and
twist
themselves
of rock.
have
Say
lived
And
isn't
have
a space
rising
and
themselves
into
soar
off, sink,
eaten
and
are
in the raven's
the girls
a form
made
in the
pines
falling
because
air
then
and
shoot
of the
sacrificed
of the consciousness
gives
the
down.
over
up again
and
aren't
share
on
are
They
the
they
above
lip
that
creatures
themselves,
we
out
ravens
fly upside
insects
graveyardthen
who
that
off a branch
the
and
the children,
their delight
I pass
bank
tumble
they
upright
they
car,
air
as they throw
over,
of the people,
an
the spirits
buried
and
here?
below
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NARRATIVE
the ground
me,
and
zipping
my hair.
and
STRUCTURE
watch
in between,
straight
I call
where
at my face,
out my sister's
the raven
. . . until
I stand,
name
she
right here?
down
One
raven
as its wings
veers
brush
toward
through
of the moment.
Then
laughs,
I turn
and
disappears. (276)
This vision concludes
release
closed-in.
soul
to transform
into
bird,
plant,
and
animal
forms
(Vecsey
60;
Barnouw
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WYATT
reader reliance
tive discourse
of melancholia
from my cousin's death. ... A huge gap in the web of our family required
the mending that only stories can do; those strands reinforce the relations
between us, remind us of our shared history, let loose the laughter that
gives us the reassurance that we can, as a family, endure" (231). Here, sto
rytelling enacts a mourning that is also a healing from loss. In The Painted
Drum, the stories of Faye's ancestors told by Bernard similarly weave her
back into the Ojibwe family web. When the narrative returns to Faye's
perspective in Part Four, Faye follows Bernard's model, using storytelling
to mend and deepen relationships
family.
The Drum
The structure of the ceremonial drum that Faye uncovers in the Tatro
attic turns out to be isomorphic with the shape of Faye's melancholia.
The drum is a hollow enclosure, created from Old Shaawano's
grieving
for his lost daughter, and it literally houses the lost object: the bereaved
the daughter's bones in the drum. However, unlike the
psychic receptacle that encloses Faye's dead sister, the drum has posi
tive effects on the people who surround it. In the past it has provided a
Shaawano
placed
centripetal force for the Ojibwe community, bringing the people together
(180). At the beginning of the novel, Faye is not the only one experiencing
unbearable loss: the Ojibwe community suffers also from the loss of their
drum. Likewise, the return of the drum revitalizes the community as well
as Faye: the healing is reciprocal.
Erdrich speaks of such Native losses and of the obligation they impose
on Native authors: "In the light of enormous loss, they must tell stories of
contemporary survivors while protecting and celebrating the cores of cul
tures left in the wake of the catastrophe" of white invasion and coloniza
tion ("Where" 48). One category of Native Americans' "enormous losses"
is the loss of their sacred objects to a Euro-American
market economy
that desecrates them by transforming them into commodities for sale. The
drum's extraction from its Native
Bernard
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NARRATIVE
STRUCTURE
dimension
Rather,
[277])."
its interactions with
tion" that she must, against professional ethics and all her former life of
probity, steal it and take it home (40). The drum plucks Faye out of the
world of commerce
wherein American
the drum replenishes Faye's spirit. (Once she has the drum, Faye learns to
care for it according to Ojibwe tradition; and the need to return the drum
to Ojibwe territory connects her with her Ojibwe heritage.) In Part Three
the drum again sounds by itself to effect another rescue, resuscitating
Shawnee and her siblings from hypothermia and guiding them to safety.
Upon its return, the drum renews Ojibwe community: "it gathers people in
and holds them. It looks after them" (180).
Traditionally, the Ojibwe dance drum has great spiritual power, includ
ing medicine power, because its maker receives the design for the drum
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WYATT
from a Manitou
vision
who
with Faye's
drum plays a central role in every ancestral story told by Bernard (with
the exception of the first story of the daughter's death, which provides the
incentive for making the drum). Beyond the perimeters of Bernard's story
cycle, the sections that flank Part Two on either side are symmetrical in
presenting the drum as an agent of change in the present: in significant but
very different ways it awakens first Faye and later Shawnee to new life.
Now, viewed from a standpoint that focuses on the renewal of Ojibwe
tradition, the story cycle that constitutes The Painted Drum takes on the
configuration of concentric circles around the sacred center of the drum's
making. The formal markers of the author's organizing vision reinforce
this circular
form that recreates in a verbal medium the round shape of the drum as well
as the circular pattern of drum dances.12
Storytelling
as Relationship:
Faye's
Renewal
in Part Four
recovery
abound.
She expresses
a marked change
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in
NARRATIVE
STRUCTURE
her orientation toward space and time. Her new attitude toward temporal
ity is condensed in the changed symbolic significance of the apple orchard.
While Faye was a captive of melancholia, the orchardmoribund,
ghostly,
and unchangingfunctioned
as a memorial to the past, to the moment of
the sister's death. Now, Faye decides to eat an apple, deriving pleasure in
the present (272); and she vows to "taste as many [apples] as [she] can"
(274) in the future, relishing the experiences to come. Faye's acceptance
and enjoyment of the changed, living orchard signals her release from
bondage to the past and her consequent openness to life's unfolding.
Faye's new construction of space shows the influence of the Ojibwe
stories on her perspective. The ecstatic vision of the raven/sister playing
in the air beyond the graveyard establishes a new space beyond death, a
fluid realm where humans can transform into birds and animals and the
dead remain in touch with the living, as in the Ojibwe universe. Before
this final moment of vision, Faye populates her New England landscape
with animal figures that recall Ojibwe worldviews.13 In addition to her
renewed
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WYATT
to tribal landsalthough
she does plan to return to the reservation to par
in
the
ceremonies
of the drumas to a homing out, a relocation
ticipate
and reconstruction of the Ojibwe landscape and its animals in the place of
model of cultural mobility seems adaptive to a time of Native
exile. Faye's
diaspora.
obsessed
ever
you
were
wolves
considered,
and
tenderhearted
only
asked
that she
brave,
hungry,
she
him,
saw
how
given
at the whole
looked
their
need
was
your
sister
was
so
She
saw
the
situation?
only
need.
She
knew
you
were back there, alone in the snow. She saw the baby she loved would not live
a mother.
without
. . . She
offer themself,
or they
think
who
you
the good
being
saw
all would
she
was,
that one
clearly
die.
And
of the old
of the people
person
in that moment
sort
my
on
the wagon
of Anishinaabeg
father,
had
of knowledge,
n'deydey,
who
to
don't
thinks
brother
of
to that
little girl, don't you think she lifted her shawl and flew? (116-17).
of realitya story of loving self-sacrifice,
the horrific story frozen in the father's
strength, even beautychallenges
mind, providing him with a new perspective on the traumatic past. Bernard
The son's
alternative
version
were
you
that day?"
...
"What day?" . ..
"The
day
she
stepped
"Jumped?"
"No,
fall.
was
she
Maybe
gone.
stepped
off a high
she thought
You
were
I was
branch.
dead.
off somewhere.
let me drop.
Daddy
I don't
know.
Where?"
She
just
She
saw
stepped
him
let me
off. The
. . .
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car
NARRATIVE
"I was
STRUCTURE
with
"You
had
She
nods
someone."
an affair?"
. . .
and
says
and
at a loss
quietly,
"I
was
not home
very
much
at all.
Don't
you
shy, "Did
you
remember?"
I'm
quiet
for a moment,
then
I ask,
suddenly
love him?"
"Of
"But
course.
. . . Inordinately,
people
should
foolishly,"
be loved"
she
whispers,
then
looks
up at me.
(263-64).
Faye understands very well that her probing threatens to destroy the
cocoon of daily routine she and her mother have spun around the unspeak
able, around the dead: "I have always been afraid of talking to my mother
on this level, of breaking through the comforting web of our safe behavior.
We have knitted it daily and well." "[W]e must go deeper now, and per
haps apart. We must see what each of us is made of, what differing stories"
To listen to the other's story is to recognize the other's difference.
Faye invites difference, even separation, by asking her mother to tell her
story: she abandons the safety of sameness and accepts that the mother's
(263).
adherence
to the dead
it, shaking up and turning around one's fixed ideas. Again, Erdrich draws
on Ojibwe tradition but gives it her own twist. In the traditional wisdom
by Paula Gunn Allen and Leslie Marmon Silko, tribal storytelling
comforts and heals through similarity, as a listener is assured that "no
voiced
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WYATT
Notes
I am
to the following
grateful
to strengthen
my
Susan
argument:
Forrest
Flavens,
readers
but also
the writing,
Todd
Layton,
who
not only
their own
Cristina
Bernardin,
Lynne
of this essay,
contributed
Escobar,
ideas
ways
and
enrich
Doreen
Forter,
Greg
Frances
McGowan,
suggested
to extend
Fowler,
and
Restuccia,
Victor
Wolfenstein.
1. In this essay
I use
in Susan
torynotably,
of names
imposition
Bernardin
"Native
"Native,"
of these
Each
changeably.
terms
Bernardin's
by the
for a discussion
"issues
words,
culture
Indian"
of identity
issues
of resistance
of the
and
advantages
"American
with
freighted
dominant
of the
and
American,"
comes
United
his
to the colonial
States"
drawbacks
inter
and
(156).
See
of the various
des
ignations.
2. At
the
time
lished
on
The
have
novels
as
storytelling
health"
D.
writes
the figure
in order
to capture
"the
by both
modernist
literary
oral
traditions
and
associational
(such
the
narrations
by
Nanapush
to his
"Ojibwa
story
a communal
into Love
and
recursive
a storyteller's
(87).
storyteller
use
James
Nanapush
granddaughter
Lulu
elements"
in Erdrich's
cycle
an
as
(1-3).
two
which
("Mediation"
notes
oral
restores
Hertha
231).
structure
that are
narrative
informed
and
voices)
recurrent
that
storytell
narrative
of stories
multiple
of repetition,
Flavin
Love
"uses
of "a traditional
nature
instance,
in her
Erdrich
Louise
Medicine's
pub
Drum
of Burning
ceremony
Medicine
for Love
(for
strategies
structure)"
as healing:
been
Painted
techniques
of Tales
characteristics
of a web
cyclical
as
...
lists several
The
storytelling
In her reading
has
Stokes,
in
storytelling
of storytelling
of salvation
Karah
by
on
of traditional
use
incorporates
uses
Wong
essay,
essays
discussed.
Ruppert
Erdrich's
a means
James
(127).
No
widely
Rosenberg
one
only
Drum.
been
has
Roberta
(1996),
writing,
however,
appeared;
earlier
er's
of this
Painted
development,
Tracks
constructs
the
addressed
communication
Elizabeth
Gargano
novels
for children,
by
the
emphasizes
The Birchbark
Elvira
and
interpreting
tural
dialogue.
what
Ruppert
the
essays
on
Pulitano
Native
They
calls
find poststructuralist
American
explore
the
works
and
argue
convergence
a "mediational
postmodern
and
approaches
discourse"
to Native
theories
postcolonial
for hybridity
of Native
("Mediation"
literature
and
and
useful
cross-cul
Western
voices
229-30).
See
collected
by
in
also
Gerald
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NARRATIVE
Vizenor.
work
STRUCTURE
American
lectual
Indian
and
traditions
Indian
intellectual
tribal
sovereignty.
critic
and
cultural
This
sovereignty.
work
Heath
for an
and
on
is a tribal-specific
ethic,
kinship
to American
aimed
at building
criticism
"Tribal-specific
with a political,
community
intel
indigenous
that contributes
notes:
frame
interpretational
carrying
framework
Justice
to a living
call
contexts
epistemologiesa
Daniel
his/her
critics
Nationalist
in indigenous
grounded
the
links
cultural
and
historical specificity" (211). From a nationalist perspective that asserts "the right
of Native
retical
(Womack
frames
in Fire
nationalist
119,
4. The
box
one
with
labeled
Mother's
Faye
and
Funeral,"
5. Trauma
today,
essay
and
contributors'
cure
in that volume
for traumatic
ory and
symptoms
subside
(Van
important
Sarris
for a Western
Kolk
how
McKay's
Womack
(37-39).
extend
recounts
Alexander's
performance
of the
is "part
story
aspects
building
constitutes
narrative:
7. Catherine
ciples
form
(99).
Womack,
or ceremonial
on
Creek
time:
Love
dialogue
responses
story,
an interdependency"
essay
to the listening,
her stories
insisting
Nationalist
for example,
nationalism
the cultural
as well
and
Sarris
Thus,
Sarris
his
critics
writes:
describes
mind
elder
own
stress
"Their
is created
as to
Womack
listener's
to the Creek
that
more
even
therapeutics.
frames
in the
mem
presentation
stories
Both
has
re-enactments,
Drum's
McKay
the
as
or narrative
and
is led to examine
(19-24).
internal
his own
also"
survival.
brings
van
narrative
communal
Turtle
story
of storytelling.
Rainwater's
of cyclical
at length
of the
an art of Creek
the two
into
of the
Mabel
worldview
narrative
to others'
of the listeners
stories
Painted
collec
Onno
for Caruth's
linear
into normal
an alternative,
he or she
of a Pomo
and
model
as flashbacks
listening
is domi
edited
Kolk
sequential
The
176).
storyteller
a way
epistemology
the differences
Hart
of tears"
grief.
narratives,
der
care
lifetime
organized
into
each
. . . My
Caruth's
van
be integrated
provides
Pomo
in such
audience
and
own
on trauma
A.
such
see
Funeral
frozen
Faye's
the neurobiological
that makes
process
telling
Bessel
memory,
der
is a wooden
a woman's
chronologically
can
Van
one's
the responses
include
and
describes
preconceptions
encounter
trauma
goes,
healing
than
6. Greg
how
memory.
in estates
in Cathy
translation
of involuntary
der
of a collective
on
Once
the
Robert
itself,
"Teddy's
that holds
criticism
provides
emphasis
the theory
occurred,
tears:
introduced
in Memory.
For
Roppolo,
of handkerchiefs,
containing
literary
criticism.
of the debate
her dealings
L.M.B.'s
"box
and
Womack's
et al.
layers
container
framework
Explorations
der Hart's
other
This
including
theoretical
Trauma:
tion,
so on.
S.
Craig
Kimberly
accounts
Weaver
from
theo
act of colonization
on
of nationalist
For
and
that caused
to the psychic
theory
by the
nated
Womack.
of
exercise
important
or Euro-American
essay
Justice,
it contains
the event
is homologous
model
for herself
keeps
recent
Blaeser,
to the dead
"an
to be a new
appear
209-215;
as
of European
excellent
and
1; Justice
artifact
can
Kimberly
Weaver,
note
belonging
fully
(35)
Jace
Warrior,
Gamber
an
see
literature"
Camber's
John
provides
argument,
own
literature
55).
(Blaeser
Drowning
their
the imposition
29),
on Native
appropriation
Allen
to interpret
people
sovereignty"
Linda
experience
the
nation
storytelling
Creek
through
(62).
Medicine
"Ceremonial
eloquently
time
is cyclic
describes
rather
the prin
than
This content downloaded from 161.112.232.221 on Thu, 05 Nov 2015 18:43:14 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
linear,
WYATT
accretive
than
rather
incremental
that cyclic
. . . best
patterns
no articles
several
critics
on readers.
of Ojibwe
oral
strategy
integrate
the components
tains"
Kathleen
(84).
the
into
story
of Western
process
through
more
tions
Native
E.
selves
reader
are
[that]
as mutable
the
leads
this
however,
both
Native
narrative
and
toward
while
it posi
("Celebrating"
meaning"
Medicine
teaches
woven
dis
non
techniques
reader"
of Love
reading
inextricably
dis
narrativity,"
knowledge"
on
integrate
Medicine's
that frustration
(406);
and
and
finally
non-Native
perspectives
participatory
to expand
and
Medicine's
of meaning
Western
that
argues
a (Euro-American)
and
value
Love
of the implied
of narrative
changes
into
to
it con
patterns
"frustrate
insight"
Her
Medicine.
by working
that Love
marginality
that
appreciation
"to
Reid
Shelley
claims
perspective
American
continual
of a novel;
sense
"epistemological
Ruppert
readers
makes
Love
the cyclic
character
of a text-induced
epistemological
Native
81).
the reader
produces
(422).
and
of Love
the rich
incorporates
knowledge
says
yet appeared,
narratives
turn, ponder,
Rainwater
plot
have
into
that
that the
position,
(35).
of time,
experience
codes
shift "the
"a
codes
ultimately
shift
seek
to recognize
remarks
"to
whole"
which
to the reader's
Native
Sands
a coherent
ruption
location
M.
and
"Erdrich
methods
teaching
her readers
of the text
Drum
Schultz
and
that
the reader
force
perspective
A.
Lydia
demands
Painted
on the effects
traditions
narrative
to The
response
commented
have
Medicine
legacy
on reader
have
"lives
as their
together
stories"
(76).
9. The
same
has
Mitchell
237;
and
hence
been
said
of Leslie
Owens
27;
95).
Marmon
The
the performative
engages
Silko's
text of The
dimension
Drum
leaves
more
of reading
(Lincoln
(1977)
Ceremony
Painted
more
than
unsaid
Ceremony
does.
10.
Thomas
Vennum
close
with
collaboration
was
years
Tara
Vennum's
Browner
entity";
Native
attests
and
rumbles
Over
and
corrects
times
conveys
an
Ojibwe
the
proper
and
feasts
drum's
mythical
its ceremonial
drum
maker
their
uses.
who
construction
"consider
Ojibwe
in drum
. . . there's
1 ask
Vennum's
to tribe,
of the ceremonial
participate
through
when
they
and
who
down
over
details
ceremonial
Ojibwe
of such
drum
In
for fifteen
a drum.
to be a living
dedicate
themselves
to
a pow-wow
approaching
he
to the power
Americans
Baker,
respect
tribe
that present-day
show
the
of
from
William
mentor,
writes
they
details
gives
its migrations
(44-45),
origins
and
dancers
and
their
drum
of all
pow-wow
elegiac)
and
humanity.
experiences
Browner's
(87).
even
"When
powwows;
It echoes
the heartbeat
about
of its sound"
(sometimes
for contemporary
voice
itself.
representing
and
the power
ethnographic
the impression
the drumbeat
the earth,
singers
drum's
ceremonies
study
tone,
its ceremonies
updates
which
some
are vanish
ing traditions.
11. For
Melvin
a first-hand
Eagle's
oral
account
history
of the Ojibwe
of the Mille
drum
Lacs
ceremony's
drum
ceremony
power
of healing,
that cured
see
his crip
This content downloaded from 161.112.232.221 on Thu, 05 Nov 2015 18:43:14 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
NARRATIVE
STRUCTURE
The
circling
within
motion
patterns
the circling
lecture
Henry's
Native
American
Dawn)
"create
a sacred
(qtd.
that
toward
in turn
of time
and
follows
58).
the sacred
from
See
also
Pueblo
which
Louis
the
people
Sacred
150).
and
Owens's
description
wherein
"all
construct
House
of power
ripples
in
that
Made
and
of
connec
of Ceremony
orientation
evoked
live
Gordon
on to explain
goes
Medicine,
emanate
worldview
an imaginative
center,
"how
(Allen,
Love
(Ceremony,
center
the
reflect
space"
of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
novels
in Blaeser
tion"
dances
spirals
at the University
classic
work
of the
as a
is centripetal,
in the inward-spiraling
form of a ceremonial sand painting" (96). Vine Deloria, Jr., identifies a similar
in Native
pattern
American
circle,
"Its
poetry:
relate
sequences
of the
determination
to the
integrity
It encompasses,
line.
of the
it does
not
point" (ix).
13.
The
idea
England
to me
14.
that
by Susan
Karah
recreates
Faye
with
countryside
an
various
Ojibwe
animals
landscape
by
of Ojibwe
was
New
the
populating
significance
suggested
Bernardin.
Stokes
discusses
issues
of Ojibwe
in The
identity
Painted
Drum,
argu
Works Cited
Abraham,
Maria
and
Nicolas,
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Our
Fire
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the Storm:
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Leslie
Lives':
s Ceremony;
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