Main Article Content

Abstract

The well acclaimed Native American author Louise Erdrich, in her Birchbark House series, a children book series, presents the untold history of her Ojibwe clan. She started writing the series when she and her mother were researching on their family and Ojibwe history. The series consists of five books starting with the Birchbark House (1999), followed by The Game of Silence (2005) and three more novels.  The novel The Game of Silence is a story of the loss of hereditary land of Ojibwe to the lies of the white settlers. Children books by Erdrich, unlike her adult fiction, portray the history of Ojibwe, their language, their everyday living along with their hopes, fears and crises. She presents a picture of life untouched by the processes of colonization. The novel offers a Native American view of the culture prevalent in the 1850s Minnesota region of America. The Ojibwe people of the novel mingle with the white settlers calmly. The natives in the novel are not barbarians or brutal people as depicted in the classic American fictions. Erdrich display a secret culture of America which was hidden by the whitewashing of history in the works white authors.

Article Details