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.
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