When we began the course in January, I found myself wondering where the authors we had studied had been all my life. Now I realize that it wasn’t so much that they were in hiding as much as the fact that I wasn’t looking for them. There was something very comforting about the idea of the Canon (a fancy English term for a collection of works which have been chosen as the greatest works in the Western Tradition), particularly the fact that as a white man, much of the Canon in its traditional guise would suggest that I have some inherent value or merit which would make my literary opinions and my literary tradition more valuable than that of other people. But the reality of the Canon is that it always reflects, in a certain degree, the bias and emphasis of its age. Considering how much anti-Indigenous sentiment has been an international pastime for colonial powers—these powers which are often the ones creating the Canonical curriculum–it’s no wonder that Indigenous writers have been excluded from the Canon as long as they have, or that they experience a difficult time finding connections with the audience that makes the Canon judgement. (This second situation is not the fault of the writers themselves–it’s the fault of readers who are unwilling to walk outside of their comfort zone unless guided there by an author or a colleague they already know and respect. It’s the fault of a reader who does not want to consider that someone else’s material reality might differ radically from their own, or that Indigenous people will not fit the stereotypes which they have created in their own headspace: a headspace into which they have also been colonized.)
I began to realize that these authors—especially female authors—were in fact readily available through the same channels in which I found much of my contemporary writing. While researching back-issues of the literary magazine Granta, I discovered a short story by Louise Erdrich (author of the National Book Award Winner, The Round House and most recently, LaRose), “The Ojibwe Week.” The story was published in issue 115: The F Word, a collection of essays and stories about feminism, featuring writers from Jeanette Winterson to Eudora Welty. Erdrich’s story reflects changing ideas about gender relationships, language and the constant reminder of the colonial situation in America.
Erdrich’s story begins with a scene of a man waking up with a woman tied to his bed. “We are codependent,” he says (99). She escapes while she’s supposed to be taking a shower. The man, Klaus, goes in search of his antelope lady, Sweetheart Calico. When he’s not tying her down, he works with Richard taking old, toxic carpets out of the mall. They store the old carpet in an unused barn, even though it’s a toxic hazard. The story shifts as Rozin finds Sweetheart five days after she ran away, in the company of a small dog. When she returns to Klaus, it is he, not Sweetheart Calico, who is tied to the bed. Rozin’s twin girls, Cally and Deanna, create a fantasy world in order to remove themselves from all of this, and it seems as though Sweetheart Calico may even be trying to join them at the end of the story, “stand[ing] very still in the leaves, believing she is invisible” (113).
These are the days of the week in Ojibwe:
Giziibiigisaginge-giizhigad=Saturday=”Floor-washing Day”
Anama’e-giizhigad=Sunday=”Praying Day”
Nitam-anokii-giizhigad=Monday=”First Work Day”
Niizho-giizhigad=Tuesday=”Second Work Day”
Aabitoose=Wednesday=”Halfway”
Niiyo-giizhigad=Thursday=”Day Four”
Naano-giizhigad=Friday=”Day Five”
The narrator of the story uses these days not only as place markers, but also as a way of commenting on the way language is a tool of colonialization. The division of time into days serves obvious purposes for a ruling power, and the language used to differentiate these days reflects the desired actions to be performed. That Saturday is floor-washing day, “tells you that nobody cared what day of the week it was until the Ojibwe had floors and also that the Ojibwe wash their floors” (100). Prayer Day also holds a specific purpose and action—prayer and prayer in a particular manner. The arrival of the First Work Day, the narrator says, has proved “that the names of the days of the week are the products of colonized minds” (102). The language of the indigenous people cannot remove the traces of their colonization from their surroundings or their mouths.
As in any occupied situation, they find ways to keep themselves and their culture together. They find reminders of their past and rituals which they can graft onto the occupying structure. On Prayer Day, Klaus takes out his pipe and smokes. He holds the thunderbird feather and promises it to Sweetheart Calico if she should return willingly. He prays and makes an offering to the Creator, but not the Creator others would like.
Halfway Day acts not only as the midpoint of the story and the midpoint of the week, but also shows the characters on the road to where they would like to be, but never quite getting there. The metaphor of half-ness begins subtlely, but takes dominance in the last paragraph.
By Day Four, the motion lacking on Halfway Day occurs. Now it is Klaus who gets tied to the bed, and Sweetheart Calico who has more ability to move. Their relationship shows the complexity of a dysfunctional heterosexual coupling within the narrative—he needs her with desperation; yet they can only work as a couple if one holds explicit power over the other. Sweetheart Calico is voiceless, perhaps representing the silencing of women under colonial infection. Complicating the issue even more, she was taken away by Klaus, abducted into his van at a powwow and kept under conditions which resulted in her apparent Stockholm-syndrome attachment. The abduction and attack of indigenous womanhood comes not from the outsider, but from within the community. But left to the reader is the question: How much does Sweetheart feel for this man? She escapes—yet she comes back. And when she comes back, she holds the rope. Yet even as she holds power, we leave her standing in the leaves and pretending that she is invisible.
So if we believe the dictum that every force yields an equal and opposite one, how long until these positions reverse again? The colonized can never fully escape the colonizer—the injury always remains.
The narrator marks this clearly in their analysis of the Ojibwe days of the week. Even behind the blandness of Day Four, the narrator finds an analysis which subverts the everydayness of the word at hand:
At least Day Four is about four, the number that the Ojibwe love best of all. Every good and sustaining thing comes in fours—seasons, directions, types of people, medicines, elements. There are four layers of the earth, four layers of the sky, four push-ups to a song, four honour beats, four pauses of the great Megis on the spiritual migration to Gakahbeleong and hereabouts. (108)
There is a solace in interpretation here. Being able to reclaim a word, being able to take the emphasis and shift it so that the order and implication of the word from the power structure of the “other” can become something one associates with the thriving spirit rather than the dying present is a form of liberation on a deeply personal level. The commentary makes it clear that behind every meaning there is yet another meaning. Nothing exists within a single moment, devoid of connection. The context shifts, as do the roles, as do the carpets, as do the ropes; as do the days of the Ojibwe week.
Indigenous Ambiguities 