The Round House

The Round House (October, 2012) A Novel by Louise Erdrich

Reviewed by Janice Riley

An Indian woman, a wife and mother, is raped on a reservation in North Dakota in 1988. The rapist is white. The question of who has jurisdiction over the crime is paramount to justice being served. In Louise Erdrich’s The Round House, we witness one family being torn apart by tragedy, seeking justice while struggling against the force of despair. The round house serves as a powerful symbol. Womb-like in its circularity, it is sacred inviolable space, offering refuge, sanctuary, and asylum. It is set apart from mundane daily activity for ceremonial use. This is the alleged crime scene. Desecration of any holy place, whether it be church, synagogue, or mosque, a round house, pristine wilderness, or body- of a man, woman, or child- is a travesty by any standard. In this, the novel tells a universally human story.

The Round House is essentially a crime novel, but this is only at its surface, at its heart it is a morality play that makes a political statement. This trilogy of themes is echoed in the triad of central characters: a father, Bazil, mother, Geraldine, and son, Joe, of the Chippewa/Ojibwe tribe. Harper Lee’s classic novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, is an appropriate analogy: the father, Bazil Coutts, an idealized Native American Atticus Finch, attorney and tribal judge, is facing an untenable legal challenge. As the story unfolds, his thirteen-year-old son Jim, the narrator, begins to see his father and the tangled skein of tribal law with new eyes, eyes that have lost the innocence of childhood.

And there was that moment when my mother and father walked in the door disguised as old people. I thought the miles in the car had bent them, dulled their eyes, even grayed and whitened their hair and caused their hands and voices to tremble. At the same time, I found, as I rose from the chair, I’d gotten old along with them. I was broken and fragile.

In order to prosecute the crime, jurisdiction over the case must be established first- by identifying the crime scene. But the victim is unable and unwilling to speak. The investigation is further complicated and delayed by boundary issues. On tribal land, the tribe has legal jurisdiction, unless a tribal allotment has been sold by Indians to whites, in which case it falls under state jurisdiction. However, if the crime scene is on tribal land, but the crime is perpetrated by a non-Native, then federal law applies. Boundaries can blur and overlap in certain areas, between land owned by Natives and whites, and state and federally owned parklands. Prosecution of crimes can often languish and disappear when jurisdiction isn’t established. This fact is not lost on the criminally minded who often act with impunity in a climate of Wild West lawlessness.

The violent attack on Geraldine Coutts has left her severely traumatized in body and spirit; her full recovery is questionable and her wounds agonizingly slow to heal. There is a deeper, troubling mystery to her silence. As Joe’s fear, loneliness, and anger mount, he instigates a covert investigation of his own, beginning with the parish priest, a possible suspect, who he later seeks out for counsel. A priest, sympathetic though troubled, is a recurring character in Erdrich’s novels. Here, Father Travis gives voice to the moral questions at the heart of the novel. Moral evil, he tells Joe, is an act done deliberately to cause another pain. God allows this because he has given us free will. “The only thing that God can do, and does all the time, is to draw good from any evil situation.” If Joe is not reassured by these words, they help redefine his purpose. The nature of free will and the corrosive influence of evil, like tribal jurisprudence, are still beyond his youthful comprehension, for the moment.

Crime, morality, and politics aside, the narrative is not relentless serious. The narrator still enjoys youthful misadventures with his friends, Cappy, Zack, and Angus. It is summer vacation, so they ride bikes, eat a lot, think about sex, and watch tv. They are obsessed with Star Trek, The Next Generation. Aunts and uncles abound in the web-like Native community: an aunt in skin-tight running ensembles, irreverent elders with “crow sharp eyes,” and grandfather Mooshum with his visions, a counterpoint to Father Travis. Everyone here is watching Joe’s back. These characters may be Erdrich’s stock in trade, but she has never created a character as straight forward as Joe, and she uses him well as her tabula rosa.

Recent news items have relevancy to Erdrich’s narrative, lest readers think that 1988 is at a safe remove. On February 22, 2013, The Atlantic magazine published an incisive article, entitled, On Indian Land, Criminals Can Get Away with Almost Anything, by Sierra Crane-Murdock. In 2010, President Obama signed into law the Tribal Law and Order Act calling the alarming incidence of sexual violence against Native American women “an assault on our national conscience.” He, like many presidents before, has reaffirmed our commitment to the 565 federally recognized tribes in the United States and has sought ways to improve upon that commitment. On March 7, 2013, the President signed legislation updating the Violence Against Women Act to provide states more power to prosecute and to grant more specific protection for lesbians and Native Americans.

Reservations, like Indians, aren’t going away. We often look the other way when it comes to both, thinking any effort to change them futile at this point in history, but we are unable to turn away completely. Media often calls attention to, and sensationalizes, the poverty, crime, unemployment, and alcoholism endemic on Indian reservations, but pays no attention at all to the strength of their cultural life, unwavering family values, and the prevalence of a well-educated populace. Native American writers such as Erdrich invite us to see that their families are not much different from our own. They are in point of fact American families. And reservations may be “sovereign nations within a nation,” but does that mean double standards apply- what nation does not reserve the right to prosecute criminals who commit crimes within its boundaries, no matter what their skin color?

Since the publication of her first book, Love Medicine, in 1984, Louise Erdrich has enjoyed celebrity as one of the most successful and accomplished Native American writers of her generation. Readers who have enjoyed her work in the past will find this novel far more linear in structure, more nuanced in emotion, and in many ways more accessible. The Round House was the recipient of the 2012 National Book Award.