"The Bingo Palace" by Louise Erdrich. A quick analysis...

The Bingo Palace takes place over the course of roughly a year, from one winter to the next. In relation to events within her previous novels and with regards to the Indian Gaming Act we can place the novel around the late 1980s. There is a strong difference shown between the present actions of the characters, and the past which continues to haunt and affect them now. For example Fleur’s age does not add up, having cheated death three times prior to this novel it would make her at least 100 years of age. It seems that Erdrich creates a present story that is filled with undertones of previous characters, plots and places from earlier novels. The Bingo Palace is also one of the first novels by Erdrich that does not have a date at the start of a chapter, making this novel feel even more ambiguous in terms of time. By having a text that has no definite time frame means that Erdrich’s storytelling will be continuous because there are no grounding factors that force the tale into a certain period or place. We know that everything happens on the reservation, but even the reservation is not clearly defined geographically, instead as a reader we are given hints at towns in the surrounding areas, but nothing more than that. As a result The Bingo Palace places you within a fluctuating time frame on a fictional reservation which causes the reader to have a sense of dislocation with the world Erdrich is attempting to describe.

From the very opening of The Bingo Palace by Louise Erdrich we get the sense that Lipsha is not a character welcomed back to the reservation. He is recalled as a troublemaker, smart but hopeless, he does not bring anything good back to the tribe. It seems that Lipsha is representing the role of the Native American in a modern American society as a whole, he does not fit with his tribe and their constant surveillance of each other yet he does not fit in with the world outside of the reservation either. From his birth Lipsha has lived in a liminal space, stuck under the mud he does not die, instead Misshepeshu maintains him in a form of limbo between life and death, waiting for Zelda to find him. One of the main reasons that he pursues Shawnee Ray is because she recognizes him; she talks to him and even holds his hands. She brings him out of his liminal position within the tribe, making him a proper member through his connection to her. Although Lipsha’s return can be seen as a homing plot, the reservation itself is stuck in a liminal position within America, with the way its bordered away from the rest of America and the restrictions put upon it, effectively the liminal character is returning to the limbo in which he has grown up.  

"House Made of Dawn" by N. Scott Momaday. A quick analysis...

Both Francisco and Abel are strongly connected to the past in this novel, each paragraph of the present is contrasted against one of the past despite the fact that there is a generational gap between the grandfather and grandson. The past is strongly linked with better times, Francisco recalls “that year he killed seven bucks and seven does” (p.8) reminiscing over better times of his youth, before the problems of the present arise again, haunting him more than any past could. There seems to be a strong disjunction between Francisco and the present world he inhabits; he is supposed to be a respected elder figure, indeed Abel remembers better times with his grandfather on page 10, however with Abel turning up drunk he is forced to “laugh and turn away from the faces” staring. The pervasive flashbacks between both grandfather and grandson unite them and accent the repetition and handing down of events through generations. Contrasting both these men on the reservation is the arrival of Mrs. Martin St. John, new and different, and almost instantly upon hiring Abel she feels she lacks a place “she was aware of some useless agony” (p. 32). It’s interesting that this woman who seems to have no past also watches the skies for “the birds that hied and skittered” (p. 32) and feels the same sense of foreboding as Abel; a sense of being “empty again and eternal beyond all hope” (p. 32). It seems that despite the backgrounds and pasts of these characters, there is an overriding relationship with nature, the past and the present.

The albino at first appears to be a white man to Angela observing the riding contest held for Saint Santiago, riding on a black horse the contrast between the man and his horse is clear. However she soon realises that there is something “unnatural” (p. 43) about the man. Abel’s inability to properly compete in the riding contest is shown through the crowd’s jeers and his wariness. His inability to perform the ritual well and courageously “leaning sharply down on the shoulders of [his] mount” (p. 42) means that the sacrifice to the Saint Santiago is not met, therefore it is not only himself he is letting down, but the village as a whole who relies on the sacrifice to maintain the good will of the Saint. It takes a complete outsider, and one that is uncannily a white man, to successfully snatch the rooster out of the ground, in turn saving the villages crops for that season. In terms of his place within the tribe Abel is an outsider, however in being beaten by an albino, who is far more of an outsider than Abel, means that socially the hierarchy has been upset and symbolically a white man has strived over the Native American again.

"Fools Crow" by James Welch. A quick analysis...

By placing Fools Crow in the late nineteenth century, prior to the invasion of the white colonizers, it is in effect a pre-colonial text. Through the use of language and images Welch shows the reader something which they won’t have encountered before and as a result there is a feeling of dislocation. However, there is a paradox wherein Welch goes back to a pre-colonial time, yet he uses a language that was derived from colonizers. As a result Welch is forced to use a language that is not natural to the pre-colonial time in order to communicate to the modern world. This results in the reader becoming both a translator and reader, because there are still aspects to the text that a western reader cannot easily understand. It confronts the ideas of names, territories and culture so that Welch creates a world that is dually alien and similar, affecting a sense of déjà vu. The reader is forced to re-assess their position in respect to the text as it is presenting to them a foreign world and history that the western reader has not been taught to understand. In this respect Fools Crow then forces the reader to re-assess not just their position towards the text, but towards the world in which the text exists in comparison to the modern day world. Fools Crow therefore presents a pre-colonial world that affects everything the reader knows and accepts as the norm within their western world.

Within James Welch’s novel Fools Crow the names of people, animals and objects is very reflective of their position within the world. Everything is names figuratively: animals are “ears-far-apart”, guns “many-shots” and even people “Rides-at-the-door”. The argument then is whether Welch is creating this language as a way of forcing the reader deeper into Native American culture, or whether it is simply the case that the names for these things just do not translate into English and as a result they are short, descriptive and connected words. Personally, knowing that Welch does not speak the native language it is difficult to believe that all these names are true to the language. At points in the novel there is a sense of disjunction with the naming, it does not seem to totally fit. This shows the most with the “Napikwans” or “white men” who are referred to as both these names. It seems odd that for everything else only the native name applies, however the white man is referred to in both senses. It gives the idea that it is potentially a purposeful authorial slip-up that allows the reader to constantly readdress the issue of names within the text. It represents the people they know in dually a foreign sense and a similar sense. This gives the reader an idea as to where their loyalties lie within the text, it is genetically most likely with the western invaders, yet the native name allows them to distance themselves from their settler ancestors.

George Bird Grinnell wrote in 1892 that Blackfeet’s “are firm believers in dreams” and a powerful dream within Fools Crow by James Welch must be shared with the fellow tribe. From the outset the importance if dreams is shown through Fast Horse’s one on the horse raid, the failing of his dream mission leads to the failure of the horse raid and the loss of Yellow Kidney. Dreams are prophetic, seeing the fate of his people on the dress of Feather Woman; Fools Crow awakes knowing that his tribe is doomed to eventual forced assimilation. However, dreams are not just figurative images, they invade reality. This is shown through the joint dream of Fools Crow and Kill-close-to-the-lake; both are left with a perfect white stone with which to remember their dreams and the consequences had this have happened in the real world. All the events which Fools Crow sees on Feather Woman’s coat come to pass, however this can also be a result of the authors hindsight. It is this hindsight that leads many critics to argue that Fools Crow is magic realism, a text that can be both fiction and fantasy, because Welch presents the dreams as accurate through his storytelling and historical knowledge. However this has been denied on the basis of what Welch is presenting to us is not so much the story, but the insight into Native American, and specifically Blackfeet, culture. Although the story is integral to this insight, it is not what is most prominent within the book. As a result the dreams are as vital to both the story and the culture and this makes the argument of magic realism irrelevant when thinking about what Welch is trying to present to a western readership. 

"Plains of Promise" by Alexis Wright.

Wright's debut novel of 1997 is the story of a mother and daughter who never meet. The first part of the novel deals with Ivy Koopundi, a child who is born to St. Dominic's, a missionary in the Northern Territory that her mother was sent to. Shortly after her birth her mother commits suicide, sparking a range of suicides all over the missionary and causing the tribe to believe that little Ivy is cursed and needs to be returned to her own people. When Ivy herself has a child, the result of an overindulgent priest, the newborn is taken away under the pretense that it is ill. Years later Mary Koopundi, Ivy's daughter, returns to the camp in an attempt to find her place and a home for her daughter which forms the second part of the novel.
Throughout the novel there is this overriding sense that no-one wants Ivy Koopundi or even knows what to do with her. She is haunted by this idea that she is cursed,  bringing tribes, mental hospitals, women, homes, families and goats around about her and she is sent from pillar to post around Australia. Mary, as a victim of the Stolen Generation, is on the hunt for her discovered Aboriginal heritage and joins an organisation trying to bring about a pan-Aboriginal movement. Wright uses these women to show how the treatment of Aboriginal women over the span of the twentieth century has hardly changed.
This book is most certainly not an optimistic novel, when mother and daughter do finally meet it is under such circumstances that they do not know who each other is. Wright seems to be suggesting that this is a situation that needs more than just tracking down a place, people have become so isolated from their ancestry that a mother and daughter can't recognize each other. Throughout the novel there is this overriding sense that people are trying to forget the past, forget what happened and move on, but there doesn't seem to be anything for them to move on to, instead they are trapped in this place of unknown that is reflected through the loss of the mother/daughter relationship.
Although a little book, particularly in comparison to her later novel "Carpentaria", "Plains of Promise" is a beautifully written novel that tackles some huge issues with relation to Australian policies, the Stolen Generation and how the ideas relating to these issues hasn't changed very much. Definitely recommended reading.