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Eau Sauvage. The woman sprayed a little on a Kleenex, waved the tissue in front of their noses. Waited. The smell was green and dry. Faintly licorice. Maybe a hint of cloud. A trace of fresh-cut wood? Crushed grass. A rare herb in a rare forest. Nothing dark, nothing hungry. Something else, too.
THE ABERDEEN SATURDAY PIONEER, 1888 BY FRANK BAUM . . . the nobility of the Redskin is extinguished, and what few are left are a pack of whining curs who lick the hand that smites them. The Whites by law of conquest, by justice of civilization, are Masters of the American continent, and the best safety of the frontier settlements will be secured by the total annihilation of the few remaining Indians. Why not annihilation? Their glory has fled, their spirit is broken, their manhood effaced, better that they die than live as the miserable wretches they are. 1891 BY FRANK BAUM . . . our only
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The entire first family—babies, mothers, uncles, children, aunts, grandparents—had passed around tuberculosis, diphtheria, sorrow, endless tea, hilarious and sacred, dirty, magical stories. They had lived and died in what was now the living room, and there had always been a LaRose.
At the last AA meeting he’d confided to the group that Bush reminded him of all the things he hated worst about himself: weasel eyes, greed, self-pity, fake machismo. In this nation of self-haters, Bush could win.
That he called her Flower made her uneasy. Girls were not named for flowers, as flowers died so quickly. Girls were named for deathless things—forms of light, forms of clouds, shapes of stars, that which appears and disappears like an island on the horizon.
No, food wasn’t why Landreaux had run away. It was more to do with living smothered by alien rules, and with his grandparents who had loved him but maybe no longer existed, and with that thing he had seen in the old woman’s face—fighting to keep herself. Landreaux was reminded of Bowl Head’s know-better smile when he did something Indian. And Landreaux felt the other part of it powerfully, too, the way the woman’s son treated her, her desperation over which reality to choose.
Bowl Head was more than she appeared to be, even supernatural. Much later on, when Landreaux first got high behind the water tower, he saw again that he was right, that she was the spirit of the boarding schools. She meant well and her intentions were to help him be a good boy, but a white boy.
It was clear they would all possess the energy and sleek purpose of their mother, the steady capability and curiosity of their father, variations of the two combined.
In English there was a word for every object. In Ojibwe there was a word for every action. English had more shades of personal emotion, but Ojibwe had more shades of family relationships.
disappeared for days. But always, it surfaced again. The tattered ears, like oars, pulled Mackinnon laboriously against treacherous currents that surged in eddies and rapids.
She heard everything. An epic battle between light and darkness. Forms passing through the material of time. Character subverting space. The gathering and regathering. Shapes of beings unknown merging deeply with the known. Worlds fusing. Dimensions collapsing. Two boys playing.
Father Travis finally dozes thinking of all the trees, all the birds, all the mountains, all the rivers, all the seas, the love, all the goodness, all the apple blossoms falling on the wind, then the dust of the world swirling up and falling, the stillness on the waters before it all began.
THERE ARE FIVE LaRoses. First the LaRose who poisoned Mackinnon, went to mission school, married Wolfred, taught her children the shape of the world, and traveled that world as a set of stolen bones. Second, her daughter LaRose, who went to Carlisle. This LaRose got tuberculosis like her own mother, and like the first LaRose fought it off again and again. Lived long enough to become the mother of the third LaRose, who went to Fort Totten and bore the fourth LaRose, who eventually became the mother of Emmaline, the teacher of Romeo and Landreaux. The fourth LaRose also became the grandmother of
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some places he is known as Wishketchahk, some as Nanabozho, and he has other names. He was kind of foolish, but also very wise, and his little brother the wolf was always by his side. He made the first people, Anishinaabeg, the first humans.
But there’s lots more that happens, including a little muskrat who makes the earth. And our Nanabozho, he’s like their Jesus, said Malvern. Kind of like Jesus, said Ignatia. But always farting. So the rolling head’s like his mom, Mary? And this whole story is like the first story in the Bible?
A vicious rolling head, said Ignatia. We are so cool, said LaRose. Still, getting chased like that. Maybe caught. Maybe slammed on the ground. Getting your wind knocked out. It is about getting chased, said Ignatia, with a long suck on her oxygen. We are chased into this life. The Catholics think we are chased by devils, original sin. We are chased by things done to us in this life. That’s called trauma, said Malvern. Thank you, said Ignatia. We are chased by what we do to others and then in turn what they do to us. We’re always looking behind us, or worried about what comes next. We only have
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Condoleezza Rice and knowing, as nobody else but Romeo knew, that this was a hungry woman who strictly controlled her appetites. This was a woman so much more intelligent than any of the men around her that she played them with her concert hands like chopsticks on her piano. Even Bulgebrow Cheney with his frighteningly bad teeth—and he must have millions so why could he not get new teeth—even Cheney was her mental slave. Didn’t know it, but he was.
If he’s giving you love, he gotta wear a glove, said Snow. Above or beneath, he gotta wear a sheath, said Josette. If he’s spoutin’ crude, he gotta cap his dude! If you’re gonna rock, make him wear a sock!
A well-made book is the best technology for books. It’s not expensive. If you throw it in the river, you’re not going to lose a lot. You can carry it anywhere, give it away. I love them.
Gourneau later became the tribal chairman of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians in North Dakota, of which Erdrich is a registered member. The daughter of two teachers who taught at a boarding school, Erdrich grew up in Wahpeton, a small town straddling the North Dakota–Minnesota state line about three hundred miles southeast of Turtle Mountain. Though Erdrich has lived in Minneapolis for more than twenty years, she travels back to her hometown to visit family there every four to six weeks.