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| 39 CHAPTER THREE Gikenmaadizo miinwaa Gikenmaa’aan: Patterns of Identity in the Writing of Louise Erdrich If we were to call ourselves and all we saw around us by our original names, would we not again be Anishinaabeg? Instead of reconstituted white men, instead of Indian ghosts? Do the rocks here know us, do the trees, do the waters of the lakes? Not unless they are addressed by the names they themselves told us to call them in our dreams. Every feature of the land around us spoke its name to an ancestor. Perhaps, in the end, that is all that we are. We Anishinaabeg are the keepers of the names of the earth. And unless the earth is called by the names it gave us humans, won’t it cease to love us? And isn’t it true that if the earth stops loving us, everyone will cease to exist? That is why we all must speak our language, nindinawemegonidok, and call everything we see by the name of its spirit. Even the chimookomanag, who are trying to destroy us, are depending upon us to remember and to use these words. Mii’sago’iw. —Erdrich, Last Report Giishpin Anishinaabemoying (“If we all spoke Anishinaabemowin”) . . . Nanapush imagines this possibility and by doing so in Anishinaabemowin forces a speaker to choose an ending because Anishinaabemo is not a noun like “English”; it is a 40 | Chapter Three verb that requires one to say who speaks. Even the choices are unlike those in English. One can add waad to indicate a plural group of others excluding oneself, or one can speak too and then choose between yaang and ying to clarify whether ornotthelistenerwillalsobespeakingAnishinaabemowin.Thesechoicesindicate other ways of framing relationships, other ways to shift words differently, other views of translating reality through speech and story. Aanikanootaage means to translate, to speak for others, to explain something to or about a community, and Aanikanootaagekwe (a woman who translates) is a name that would suit Louise Erdrich. She speaks in circles about Anishinaabe language and identity the way a crow flies searching, the way a sunflower’s seeds spiral, the way seasons cycle—with subtle, undeniable purpose. She knows the power of family ties, the importance of language, the need to listen to voices both real and imagined, and the mimetic power of words to awaken the senses and center a soul. Like someone choosing a name, she chooses each word carefully and then creates literature that reflects Anishinaabe identity. Many of her stories also reflect other cultures and sometimes a broader American Indianness that is also worth recognizing, but it is important to also take time to examine the ways her work is specifically Anishinaabe. Her stories are related, the way she is, the way we all are, to a certain space and time that offers many avenues of exploration. She uses language the way a hoop dancer relies on thin spinning branches of willow to bend the familiar into a visionary tool. She relies on tested and familiar patterns of language and storytelling. She inserts a language that is foreign to the majority of her readers into her books to shut them out, to invite them in, to teach them about the “self” and “other” in an Anishinaabe way. She is a modern Anishinaabe author whose work reflects, among other things, the specific language and narrative traditions of the tribe in which she participates. Gaa Ezhi-bimaadizid / Life So Far Born on June 7, 1954, in Little Falls, Minnesota, Karen Louise Erdrich was the first of seven children. Her parents, Ralph and Rita Erdrich, were teachers in a school run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (Stookey 1). Her father’s German parents ran a butcher shop in Little Falls. Poems about a similar butcher shop in her book Jacklight are dedicated to her Polish step-grandmother, Mary Korll. Her grandparents on her mother’s side lived on the Turtle Mountain Reservation Patterns of Identity | 41 in North Dakota, where her grandfather, Patrick Gorneau, was tribal chair and a traditional dancer (Stookey 2). Like a network of veins and arteries, Erdrich’s family is an interdependent maze of German, Anishinaabe, and French ancestry that she continues to trace in poetry and prose. Erdrich has explained how her cultural heritage is a source of chaos and inspiration. I think that if you believe in any sort of race memory, I am getting a triple whammy from my background...

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