The Round House By Louise Erdrich: An Analysis

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The Round House is a novel examining the oppression of Native Americans and the effects of that oppression on the Indian families and culture. This idea is explored when Joe discovers his mom has been raped and goes on a journey to find the rapist and punish him. However, being a Native American means a battle against many tribal restrictions that force this process to become long and arduous. Louise Erdrich illustrates how deceptive and limited the government is in regard to Native Americans through the image of the church. The church is not a place of sanctuary for Native Americans on Joe's reservations unless the accept Christ, even though they claim to accept all. They even "kept up a cattle gate that could be locked. After the gates, there were signs-no alcohol, no trespassing, no anything...it was true that we not only had a right but owned the …show more content…

Just as Joe and his friends were asked to leave the church premises, many Indians were forced off their own land regardless of the fact that they had rights to the land. An article from the Tulsa Law Review states that even though Indians may have full rights to land, such as the property of the church and its surroundings, "the first major Indian law case the United States Supreme Court decided, Johnson v. M'Intosh, makes clear that courts will never choose to restore the vast tribal land base. There, Chief Justice Marshall famously held that "conquest gives a title which the Courts of the conqueror cannot deny" (Singel). The government appears to ignore the rights of Indians and in the process, limits how far Joe can search for the man who abused his mother; if that man is not Indian, he would never be able to find him because of restrictions placed by the government on where he can travel or a neglect of the property laws originally put in place to protect Native American rights, but rarely

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