Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Brașov [613344]

Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Brașov
Series IV: Philology and Cultural Studies • Vol. 11 (60) No. 1 – 2018

Regaining Cultural and Linguistic Status in the American
Literary Context

Anca B ĂDULESCU1, Oana -Andreea P ÎRNU ȚĂ2

This paper describes major cultural and linguistic aspects in Louise Erdrich’s novel entitled
“The Antelope Wife”. One of the main issues i s the female characters’ search for identity.
Their spiritual power on the living and the dead and their ways of shaping human destinies
as well as their use of words and names constitute the main concerns of the present study.
The conclusion drawn after analyzing the Ojibwa culture and language of the novel is that
this Native American cultural group is in great danger of fading away.

Key-words: Ojibwa, culture, language, identity, names

1. Introduction

Ojibwa people or the Chippewa stand for an Anishinaabe group of the indigenous
peoples in North America. They are known as the Turtle Island people. They have
spoken the Ojibwa language which is part of the Algonquian family of languages.
‘The Chippewa’ or ‘Ojibwe’ refer to the same people. “The Chippewa s tand for one
of the most populous Native American cultural groups in North America” (Pirnuta
and Badulescu 2011, 22).
For the Native Americans, the communion with nature represents the most
important aspect of life: “Over the generations, different tribes learned to
coordinate their activities with the forces and entities of the natural world, and
they produced an amazing knowledge of how the larger world functioned” (Deloria
2006, 125).
As in any culture, the origin of language and literature is closely c onnected to
the ways of an exclusively oral communication: “North American tribal peoples
evolved without written languages, as oral cultures living mouth to mouth, age to
age, passing on a daily culture” (Baker 1982, 88).

1 Transilvania University of Brașov, [anonimizat]
2 Transilvania University of Brașov, [anonimizat]

Anca BĂDULESCU, Oana- Andreea PÎRNUȚĂ
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2. ‘The Antelope Wife’ – A Native American Novel

Louise Erdrich is a mixed -blood just like most of her characters from the novel
entitled The Antelope Wife . Her father is German American and her mother is
French Ojibwa:
Some bloods they go together like water – the French Ojibwas : You mix
those up and it is all one person. Like me. Others are a little less
predictable. You make a person from a German and an Indian, for
instance, and you’re creating a two -souled warrior always fighting with
themselves. I’m nondescript, I think (Erd rich 2002,110).

Erdrich’s work is a famous Native American novel highlighting ways of life of Native
American families throughout several generations facing ever changing social,
financial and cultural patterns. The novel starts with the depiction of the first
generation of strong Ojibwa female characters, illustrated by the Antelope Wife
and Blue Prairie Woman, moves on towards Rozin as a representative of half Native
American half modern American, and concludes with Cecile and Cally as perfectly
adapted characters to the new white American ways.
The round female characters are counteracted by flat male figures: Frank
and Klaus Shawano as well as Richard Whiteheart Beads, in opposition with the
women characters. The male characters do not undergo changes, that is they
hardly evolve or adapt to the new living conditions.
One of Erdrich’s main issues in the previously mentioned novel is the search
for the self. The struggle for identity is highlighted by the way in which the Ojibwa
culture with its multifario us customs and traditions is passed from one generation
to another. Erdrich is a Native American writer who creates through culture,
language and consciousness.

3. Strong Beading Female Characters

Louise Erdrich has portrayed many complex characters in her work The Antelope
Wife . The whole novel stands for a bridge across Native and non -Native cultures,
human and animal worlds, past and present, tradition and modernity. Throughout
the novel, they are presented as being either mixed/blended or split and the issue
of identity is discussed in terms of being Native American or white American,
human or not. The novel stands for a story focused upon three families which are
interwoven throughout several generations: the Shawanos, the Whiteheart Beads
and the Ro ys.

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63
Native American women are very strong characters. By means of their
powers, they create an intricate pattern of the world: they have great spiritual
assets and give life as well. According to Dean J. Franco, “the older women have a
long cultural memory of tribal customs and experience with the vast territory of
North America” (Franco 2006, 1).
The original Blue Prairie Woman is a strong character. She divides her spirit
into two different parts – one part is dedicated to her lost daughter and the other
part to her husband. She longs for Matilda, her lost daughter, and is described as
being half spirit/antelope, half human standing for a special kind of people:

The antelope are a curios kind of people. They’ll come to check anything
that they don’t unde rstand. You flick a piece of cloth into the air where
you’re hiding, a flag. But only every once in a while, not regular. They’re
curious, they’ll stop, they’ll notice. Pretty soon they’ll investigate (Erdrich
2002, 27).

Blue Prairie Woman’s story involve s both her deer husband as well as her windigo
man. Another major female character of the novel, Cally, tells the tale of the deer
husband of Blue Prairie Woman. As a young woman, she used to go into the forest
cooking meals:

She’s cooking out there. Won der what she’s making? Wonder if a little
child disappeared, we would find it in the cooking pot? Great -Great –
Grandmother ate the whole rabbit. Ears too. She wanted to eat her own
arm. So Hungry. That’s finally what they named her. So Hungry (Erdrich
2002, 56).

Thus, she is renamed So Hungry. The emphasis is laid upon the communion with
nature. Her deer husband was probably Matilda’s father. It is worth to mention
that the animal wives are common in the traditional Ojibwa culture and literature.
Being trapped in a forceful marriage to Klaus Shawano, the Antelope Wife
lives an unhappy life in the city refusing to speak or to communicate in any way
with people around her. She behaves just like a wild animal enclosed in a narrow
human space. In the end of the novel, Klaus finally understands that he owes her
liberation, freedom and lets her go:

Confused, broken inside, shaking her head, she stumbled over the uneven
ground. She began her way west, Klaus watched her going (…) Klaus
thought that she might turn a round but she kept going, kept moving, until
she was a white needle, quivering, then a dark fleck on the western band
(Erdrich 2002, 229 -30).

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Rozin struggles to understand her identity. She is Cally’s mother and her story can
be perceived as a parallel tale to Blue Prairie Woman’s. She marries Richard
Whiteheart Beads. He has a bad spirit just like the man Blue Prairie Woman
marries. But her first love story was that with the deer. Just like Blue Prairie
Woman, Rozin lived a love story, a forbidden one, wit h a deer man. She finds
happiness only when she stops worrying about fate and succeeds in accepting the
love between her and Frank Shawano.
Beadwork is a well- known Native American art. It is a traditional element
found within the framework of the Ojibwa c ulture. It can be perceived as a
metaphor for the relationship between chance and fate. In the opening section of
the novel, beadwork keeps the single thread of life:

Ever since the beginning these twins are sewing. One sews with light and
one with dark. The first twin’s beads are cut -glass whites and pales, and
the other twin’s beads are glittering deep red and blue -black indigo. One
twin uses an awl made of an otter’s sharpened penis bone, the other uses
that of a bear. They sew with a single sinew thread, in, out, fast and
furious, each trying to set one more bead into the pattern than her sister,
each trying to upset the balance of the world (Erdrich 2002, 1).

Throughout the novel, beadwork gives hope to the characters. Thus, the beads play
an important part in the novel. They are passed down from one generation to the
other through the family line.
At the end of the novel, a very interesting question is asked: Who is beading
us?:

All that followed, all that happened, all is as I have told. Did these
occurrences have a paradigm in the settlement of the old scores and
pains and betrayals that went back in time? Or are we working out the
minor details of a strictly random pattern? Who is beading us? Who is
setting flower upon flower and cut -glass vine? Who are you and who am
I, the beader or the bit of colored glass sewn onto the fabric of this earth?
(Erdrich 2002, 240).

4. Spiritual Background

Each and every Native American cultural group has a spiritual heritage which makes
them different from all the other people. In the past, most Native American cultural
groups considered themselves as “the people”.

Regaining Cultural and Linguistic Status in the American Literary Context
65
Regarding themselves as unique, they rigorously followed the commands
of the spirits as they had experienced them over uncounted generations
and re cognized that other peoples had the same rights and status as
themselves (Deloria 2006, XXIII).

The universe of the Ojibwa culture is rich in all kinds of spirits. The Native American
women have the power to communicate with nature being endowed with stro ng
spiritual powers: “The women in my family are the kind to argue with the spirits.
Short, tough -minded, sinuous of thought and bold, we daughters of the
granddaughters of Blue Prairie Woman are wavy haired and lightened by the Roy
blood” (Erdrich 2002, 3 4).
The major characters in Louise Erdrich’s The Antelope Wife , either human or
animal, have windigo traits. Thus, several characters can be perceived as
embodying the windigo spirit.
The windigo is a spirit which devours everything. It can take multifari ous
forms in the case of different characters. The windigo can be associated with the
male protagonists dominating the female characters. These male characters are
sexually driven, obsessive, greedy, hungry. They are possessive and destructive.
Windigos a re connected with obsession, especially the sexual one. And
probably one of the best examples here might be Blue Prairie Woman and her deer
husband, Shawano the younger. It is through sexual obsession that they become
one: “in solitude they made love until they became gaunt and hungry, pale
windigos with aching eyes, tongues of flame” (Erdrich 2002, 13).
If we consider that twins are born from obsessive sex then many characters,
namely four different generations of twins can be perceived as windigos: the f irst
one, Zosie and Mary, the second one, Zosie and Mary, too, the third, Rozin and
Aurora, the fourth, Cally and Deanna.
The Ojibwa spiritual universe is also related to a direct connection with the
dead. After Deanna’s death, her mother keeps bringing c oins and food to her grave
and imagines her exploring the woods in the company of her sister:
Rozin chose to bury her daughter in the old tradition underneath a grave
house, built with a small shelf at one end where food and tobacco could
be placed for h er use. Sometimes Rozin goes up to the reservation on
weekends, leaves a coin or two, copper, for some still believe that the
water man exacts his price at the red stone gates. If so, she thinks,
Deanna will have enough to pay her way time and time over (E rdrich
2002, 191).

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66
After Richard’s suicide, Rozin hears her dead daughter’s voice and enters a trance
hoping to establish a close contact with Deanna’s spirit. She feverishly cooks a meal
for the dead and waits for their spirits to share the meal of wild rice and find
eternal peace:

Broth will slowly cook the onions into the rice. Before she sets the top
onto the pot she adds a tiny pinch of white pepper, but more than that
Deanna never liked – simple foods, no spices. (…) Eat it, eat it up, now,
she thi nks vehemently, heartsick, setting another smaller plate for her
daughter at the head of the stairs, then go to sleep (Erdrich 2002, 187).

5. The Power of Words

A closer look at the text of The Antelope Wife reveals a seemingly simple overt
structure and turn of the sentences. In truth, behind this apparent simplicity, an
attentive reader will easily discover hidden meanings, often dilemmas and
mysteries to be solved. “The healing power of words is inspired by the gods, and
yet it is communal, so that the sacred world is again seen as common in the mythic
origins of religious thought” (Baker 1982, 101).
The use of Native American words undoubtedly contributes to this
interesting dimension of the novel which we could name ‘refined simplicity’. These
unkn own words scattered all through the book are a challenge and, at the same
time, a constant questioning as to meaning for the reader who seeks explanations.
The very name of the Ojibwa tribe designates the Algonquian people living
along the shores of Lake S uperior. The meaning of ‘Ojibwa’ or the older
‘O’chepe’wag’ is ‘plaited shoes’ and refers to the puckered moccasins worn by the
Ojibwas. The members of this tribe are also called Chippewa or Anishinaabe,
meaning ‘original people’.
‘Windigo’ is a word which occurs time and again in the novel, most often
than not taking the shape of a dog. It turns out that ‘windigo’ is the name of a
supernatural being, a powerful monster that has the desire to kill or eat its victim.
Even humans can become ‘windigos’ if they are led by greed or weakness:

Windigo. Bad spirit of hunger and not just normal hunger but out -of –
control hunger. Hunger of impossible devouring. Utter animal devouring.
Utter animal hunger that did not care whether you were sober or brave
or had your hard -won GED certificate let alone degree. No matter. Just
food. Klaus was just food to the windigo. And the windigo laughed
(Erdrich 2002, 127).

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67
Some Ojibwa words like ‘tikinagun’ (cradle), ‘nibi’ (water), ‘anokee’ (work hard) can
be understood from the c ontext or are explained/ translated by the author. Thus,
for instance the word ‘tikinagun’ is replaced in the text by ‘cradle’: “A necklace of
blue beads hung from the brow guard of the cradle board” (Erdrich 2002, 5).
Also, when Klaus Shawano being drunk asks for ‘nibi’, Richard Whiteheart
Beads gives the English equivalent of the word: “I got no water, Klaus. Go to the
drinking fountain” (Erdrich 2002, 94). Likewise, it is not difficult to infer that
‘Gewhen’ means ‘Go!’ or ‘ogitchida” warrior, as the wo rd occurs in the text a few
lines further.
Other words have significant meanings as they make the difference in the
understanding of the whole. Thus, for example, ‘Gakahbekong’ is encountered
several times in the text, and every time it could be interpreted in a different way.
The closest the reader can come to its real meaning is towards the very end of the
book, and it might be translated as a vision of the world: “Gakahbekong. That’s
what she saw. Gakahbekong. The city. Where we are scattered like beads off a
necklace and put back together in new patterns, new strings” (Erdrich 2002, 220). A
keyword which overarches the whole structure of The Antelope Wife is
‘Daashkikaa’ which appears in the beginning of the text when it is uttered by the
Indian woman gr atuitously stabbed by Scranton Roy, the very moment when she
passes away: “Daashkikaa. Daashkika. A groan of heat and blood” (Erdrich 2002, 4).
However, we do not have a clear representation of the meaning until it is
actually explained in the last part o f the novel. When Cally keeps hearing in her mind
the word and asks her grandmother Zosie about its meaning, we are finally given the
key: ‘Cracked apart’. It seems that even if they try hard to be happy or even to survive,
the Ojibwas are defeated by inim ical external factors but also by their own
weaknesses and mistakes. This is why most of them are cracked or torn apart .

6. The Imprint of Names

Still more interesting and significant is Louise Erdrich’s choice of names in The
Antelope Wife . Closely lin ked to the novelist’s preoccupation with symbolical
names is naming new -born babies in the Ojibwa/ Native American tradition.

Native Americans seem to believe that words make things happen…The
primacy of language interfuses people with their environment: an
experience or object or person is inseparable from its name. And names
allow us to see, as words image the spirits of things (Baker 1982, 92).

Zosie Roy, Cally’s grandmother tells her granddaughter how she came to be called
Ozhawashkwamahkodeykway, a name given by the spirits. During the naming

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68
dream Zosie gambles with the Pembina woman and wins the two names which are
meant to be those of her twin daughters and granddaughters: Other Side of the
Earth and Blue Prairie Woman. This is how they get their Ojibwa names.
As a consequence, their personalities will bear the marks of previous bearers
of these names: “Our spirit names, they are like hand -me-downs which have once
fit other owners. They still bear the marks and puckers. The shape of the other life”
(Erdrich 2002, 217).
Names are crucial to the destiny of those who get them from the spirits but
they are also inextricably linked to the blue beads: “The name goes with the
beads….. because without the name those beads will kill you” (Erdrich 2002, 217 ).
When she gives her daughters ‘urban’ names – Cally and Deanna – Rozina
Whiteheart Beads breaks Ojibwa rules and is punished because of her pride: “I named
my girls Cally and Deanna. Bad choice. I broke more continuity, and they suffered for
it, too. Sh ould have kept the protection. Should have kept the names that gave the
protection” (Erdrich 2002, 35). Lacking protection Deanna dies in a terrible accident
caused by her suicidal father. Cally herself falls ill and almost loses her life.
The first Blu e Prairie Woman of the story possesses the name of many
powerful mothers. After losing her baby -girl in a raid she is no longer herself. Her
suffering cannot be appeased by anyone and in no way. She is withering away
when the elders decide to change this exquisite old name into a new one – Other
Side of the Earth – as she is incessantly gazing in the distance, where her daughter
has been carried away.
After giving birth to twin daughters she leaves in search for her first born lost
child. When they are reu nited, the girl wants to know her name, and the dying
mother gives her the name: “Blue Prairie Woman’s daughter. Other Side of the
Earth. Nameless” (Erdrich 2002,19).
Soon she will be given other names: she will be called the Antelope Wife and
Sweetheart Calico, too. But these names will be imposed on her after Klaus
Shawano kidnaps her and forces her to live his life, makes her his prisoner by tying
her wrist to his own by a strip of sweetheart calico. This is also why she loses her
identity, only to reg ain it in the end of the novel when Klaus finally decides to let
her go, escape into wilderness, the land of the antelopes where she will become
again Other Side of the Earth or Blue Prairie Woman.
Klaus and Frank Shawano as well as Richard Whiteheart Beads have mixed
names, partly Ojibwa, partly urban. On the one hand, their names bear the imprints
of their Ojibwa ancestors, on the other, the new names will condemn them to
hesitate between two worlds: the world in which names mould destinies, and the
world where they are anonymous and confused, despite the urban names they
carry along.

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69
Klaus sins against Sweetheart Calico by robbing her of her antelope freedom,
Richard ruins his life and that of Rozin and Cally by causing his daughter’s terrible
death. W hen breaking the rules of the Ojibwa community they become outcasts,
drunkards, lost souls.
Klaus ultimately realizes that he has to allow his Antelope Wife to reunite
with the wilderness, at the same time bringing about his own annihilation: “What
scares me most is this: the simple knowledge that my Sweetheart Calico is another
person than me” (Erdrich 2002,155). Richard is tormented by the crime he has
committed unknowingly – “Richard was turning himself inside out” (Erdrich 2002,
150) – and when he unde rstands that he has lost his wife too, he commits suicide.
Frank is tormented by the powerful sexual attraction to Rozina and his
obsession with the ‘Blitzkuchen’. When he discovers that the secret ingredient
which makes the ‘Blitzkuchen’ perfect is fear, he understands that life’s mysteries
should not be questioned, and he will be redeemed.
Along with the windigo dogs and their stories Erdrich introduces Sorrow and
Almost Soup in the plot of the novel. When the dog Sorrow is breastfed and named
by Blue P rairie Woman she also decides the dog’s destiny.
By sucking sorrowful milk from her broken mistress Sorrow takes a vow of
total faithfulness no matter what: “The dog nursed on human milk grew coyote
gray and clever, a light -boned, loping bitch who followe d Blue Prairie Woman
everywhere. Became her second thought” (Erdrich 2002, 15). When Blue Prairie
Woman decides to kill Sorrow to feed her starving daughter, the dog is ready for
the supreme sacrifice.
The dog Almost Soup closely follows Cally, just as S orrow formerly
accompanied Blue Prairie Woman. The white dog who almost became soup
because of the color of her fur is named by the little girl and thus their destinies will
be linked: “The dog is bound to the human. Raised alongside the human. With the
human. Still, half the time we know better than the human” (Erdrich 2002, 81).
Almost Soup, Bungeenaboop in Ojibwa, has a human voice and speaks about the
mission of dogs in the life of Native Americans: they warn off bad spirits and ghosts , they
let their bones be buried in bark houses, they always think of humans first, and they
even offer themselves as sacrifices. They also know what beading is about: “They are
sewing us all into a pattern, into life beneath their hands” (Erdrich 2002, 83) .
When Cally falls seriously ill, Almost Soup sees the black dog, death, and is
the first to know that she is in great danger. All through her illness she watches her,
licks the sick girl’s hand hanging over the edge of the bed.
When she is taken to hospital the dog sneaks into the ambulance and waits
close by for the moment when she, Almost Soup, will “put her daughter’s life inside
her again” (Erdrich 2002, 90). When Cally saved the dog’s life and named it, their
lives and destinies were bound to intermingle: Almost So up turns into Cally’s
guardian angel.

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7. Conclusions

Interculturality? Tolerance? Solidarity? Not quite. Erdrich’s characters feel split
between cultures, languages and identities. The crack between white American and
Native American cultures, modern American English and Ojibwa language as well as
American, German and French Ojibwa cannot possibly be completely bridged over.
It is obvious that Native Americans, Ojibwa in particular, if pure blood or mixed, will
never feel at home in the enclosed space of the reservations in which they were
compelled to survive in spite of the fact that Native Americans were the first
inhabitants of the North American continent.
While at first glance we witness the way of living, customs, beliefs,
prejudices, rituals and the way of speaking and naming of the Ojibwas in a big
country where different nations share the land and a common language, and not
only, it is obvious that harmony cannot possibly be reached. Nevertheless, in this
book we definitely hear the strong voice of Native Americans, even if it comes from
a reservation. The issue of linguistically and culturally centered identity is obviously
at the core of the novel. The Native American characters are without any doubt the
very focus of Erdrich’s story whereas the w hite American identity highlight is
marginal. The novelist is mainly concerned with her characters’ evolution/
involution in a white American context, the only real representative – Roy Scranton
– concentrating on the ‘insight’ conflict of the characters.
If within the framework of the contemporary American society the white
American is considered to be the dominant figure whereas the Native American is
perceived as a marginal element, in Erdrich’s work we face an upside -down
situation. Thus, the Native Am erican female character turns into the very focus of
an intricate pattern.
Louise Erdrich’s novel stands proof for this endeavor to regain a deserved
status of the people the novelist represents. Native American literature is a strong
instrument in the ha nds of men and women of letters in their fight for equal
chances, tolerance and unity.

References

Baker, Houston, A. 1982. Three American Literatures . New York: The Modern
Language Association of America.
Deloria, Vine. 2006. The World We Used to Live In . Golden, Colorado: Fulcrum
Publishing.
Erdrich, Louise. 2002. The Antelope Wife. London: Flamingo.
Franco, Dean J. 2006. Ethnic American Literature . Charlottesville: University of Virginia.
Pirnuta, Oana- Andreea, and Anca B ădulescu . 2011. An Outline of Native American
Literature . Brasov: Transilvania University Press .