American Indian Culture and Research Journal

Ojibway (Chippewa/Anishnabeg) myth and ceremony in relation to Louise Erdrich’s fiction has been the subject of seminal literary study of her works. James McKenzie’s tracking of “the traditional Chippewa trickster hero and powerful spirit, Nanabozho,” or Nanapush, in Erdrich’s Love Medicine was written in evident distress at the lack of comprehension by early reviewers. McKenzie concludes, The pattern of the novel’s development in the June-Gerry-Lipsha stories suggests not only the survival but also a renewal of Chippewa culture “in the wake of the catastrophe,” as Erdrich so aptly describes the case . . . . The novel knows and celebrates the human wealth of each of its separate characters as well as the collective wealth of the Chippewa nation, a culture still present in the face of several centuries of murderous opposition. Ann Braley has documented Ojibway myth and ceremony in Love Medicine (1984), Ojibway Mother Earth characters, a Weendigo (the insatiable one), Odaemin (the culture’s first medicine man), Geezhig (a voyager to the Land of the Dead), Sky Woman, widespread water imagery reflecting Ojibway myth, and turtle and deer myth. Moreover, McKenzie and Lydia Schultz have written about Erdrich‘s use of oral storytelling in Love Medicine.