The Round House
Louise Erdrich was born June 7, 1954, in Little Falls, Minnesota, She is an American writer of novels, poetry, and children's books featuring Native American characters and settings. She is an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, a band of the Anishinaabe (also known as Ojibwa and Chippewa).
Erdrich is widely acclaimed as one of the most significant writers of the second wave of the Native American Renaissance. In 2009, her novel The Plague of Doves was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. In November 2012, she received the National Book Award for Fiction for her novel The Round House.
Louise Erdrich's award-winning novel The Round House tells a story of brutal rape and a boy's coming of age on a Native-American Reservation.
"During the old days when Indians could not practice their religion - well, actually not such old days: pre-1978 - the round house had been used for ceremonies. People pretended it was a social dance hall or brought their Bibles for gatherings." [pg. 59]
How to determine if someone is of Native American ancestry has always been a subject of debate and discussion, the U.S. Government eventually stepped in and dictated these terms, as Louise Erdrich mentions in her novel.
" From the government's point of view, the only way to tell an Indian is in Indian is to look at that person's history. There must be ancestors from way back who signed some document or were recorded as Indians by the U.S. government, someone identified as a member of a tribe." [pg. 30]
Typical Native American Round House
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