The purpose of the law is to protect the society from injustices although it has been like a wind that fans up a fire in the context of Native American history. Erdrich expertly crafts the setting of her novel as she reveals the rich cultural history still held on reservations and carried on via knowledge and oral histories. She also brings out isolation and disempowerment experienced in day to day lives. Erdrich not only narrates a vengeful but also a compelling story. In her novel “The Round House” Erdrich brings out this harsh reality where a woman is raped within the environs of a sacred round house. It turns out that seeking justice is like committing a crime.  The round house is positioned on a reserved land and is under the tribal courts. However, the suspect is white, and these courts are not allowed to hear cases involving non-native persons. Moreover, it would be possible to apply the federal law, but the rape could have occurred on a piece of land belonging to a state park governed by North Dakota’s government. Also, it could be on land that was sold by the tribe and is thus a fee land controlled by a different tangle of statutes. On hearing that the judge tasked with the duty to hear the case is not sure if the man who committed the crime can be charged or not, Joe who is aged 13 years old decides to pursue justice on his mother who has been raped (Russo 1). Years later, after Joe becoming a public prosecutor portrays how a crime considered to be isolated many roots. Consequently, Joe experiences a tough time in his adolescent and a harsh introduction into adulthood as well as the weight of the dark past of his relatives. He states “the gut kick of our history, which I was bracing to absorb” (Erdrich 90).

The person who raped Joe’s mother is uncovered early in the book. With this revelation, the novel goes on to narrate how and if justice will be restored. The disclosure of the rapist only creates more tension as the family tries to recover emotionally and also pursue justice. Unlike Erdrich’s previous novels concerning Indian life that have a rotating cast of narrators, Joe is the only narrator in the story “The Round House.” Through Joe, the author brings out the urgency of his account and manages to maintain a tight focus on a crime novel. In the novel, Joe’s voice comes out lawyerly and ruefully and thus revealing the many legal diversities of the Native American history. Sexuality appears to be the underlying factor in move offering ecstasy and violence equally. The novel’s suspense is created as Joe, and his friends make their ventures into the mysteries of sex while they continue searching for the man who raped Joe’s mother. They seek to uncover the truth and in turn restore justice whether the law helps them or not. In the process of tracking the rapist, Joe is after finding out why people turn out violent and how society should react towards violent individuals. Mooshum gives a story of Nanapush’s mother who is believed to be possessed by evil spirits a phenomenon that occurs when people are “hungry” making them turn into animals and hence viewing their fellow humans as meat ( Erdrich192). According to the traditions, justice of this nature adheres to its own regulations but does not falter on the need of killing a real wiindigoo. Erdrich contrasts such a culture against the beliefs of Roman Catholic that all evils regardless of whether right or materi­al eventually ends up in good. She also juxtaposes it with America’s law system as having failed the Indians by breaking many oaths in what is considered to be a toothless sovereignty-Judge Coutts view it as jurisdictional issues. These legal loopholes have opened avenues for criminals to carry out heinous activities and still go unpunished. In the Novel, vigilante justice is embraced as regrettable although reasonable since it is a way of uniting with the timeless wisdom about human behavior.

Erdrich’s story shows that indigenous voices that have for a long time have been ignored are now being heard (Jimenez 15). Her decision to expose rape on the reservation also threatens colonialism and patriarchy regardless of if she purposed it or not. By using the metaphor of rot, she reverses the view that impure bodies can tarnish only white bodies. She does so by referring to erroneous beliefs as rotten and tainted in itself. Her call is that lawmakers should not be the perpetrators of corruption. Moreover, if bad laws are used to validate today’s policies, it would mean that people would continue to take advantage of the vulnerability of the American Indians. The wounds inflicted on unenlightened men many years ago and left to rot must be rectified.

As Bazil reveals, most of the Indian cases involving rape are never brought to trial. Even when brought before the U.S attorney, rarely do they end up in prosecution. It is this realization that forces Joe to use unconventional means in pursuit of justice for his mother. Erdrich in her the “Round House,” uses questionable methods to administer redemption and justice. It is not possible to achieve healing without great suffering, and violent acts lead to more violence. Moreover, loss shatters calm. However, Erdrich’s characters keep fighting for justice and are characterized by courage, determination, and resilience.

The “Round House” analyzes a slippery concept of making sure that people belonging to a particular culture that is the Chippewa culture get justice even though the legal system has been created to their disadvantage. After the rape of Geraldine, Joe and Bazil seek to ensure that justice is delivered to her a process is marred with infuriating barriers and bureaucratic ambiguities. He embraces an ancient Chippewa traditional system of justice to fill in the gap of the convention which comes at the expense of his health. Erdrich reveals the insufficiencies in both the Chippewa concept of justice as well as the American path to justice.

Disempowered is also portrayed as a form of injustice especially with her character Sonja. In as much as readers may fault Sonja as weak in character, Erdrich empathizes with her woes since every man she comes across including Joe maltreats her. They view her as an object because she is pretty making her have a low feeling of self-worth.  She is portrayed as victorious for escaping with the $40,000 originating from another case of female abuse. The money that was meant to better the life of another maltreated woman lands into the hands of another woman who is also ill-treated. It is a story characterized by much injustice. The story of Sonja is an example where Erdrich tackles moral and legal issues as well as the history of abuse.

Joe lives in a reservation although he has to adhere to laws that are not upheld by his community’s elders. In as much as Bazil makes it clear that it is only the state that is supposed to punish wrongdoers and bring justice, Joe’s grandfather introduces another idea. One of the grandfather’s stories informs Joe that a killer should be punished by being killed by a relative of the deceased. The family member who kills the killer should not be judged but should be commended for not allowing crime go unpunished. Joe ends up killing Linden and then views himself as a hero in the story. Nevertheless, since he lives in a society of divergent opinions about fairness and justice, he ends up being remorse with different feelings of what he did. On the contrary, the adults surrounding him are proud of him for killing the killer and do not see anything wrong with him. The novel brings out the different approaches through which legal issues are handled in the context of the tribe and how the state negatively altered racial matters.

The character of Joe evolves on realizing that legality and justice do not always accompany one another. He chooses to terminate the problem at its roots by being ready to use non-conventional approaches including killing. In his view, Lark is a Wiindigoo a person who is viewed by the tribe as one possessed by an evil spirit and “sees fellow humans as prey meat” (Erdrich 192). According to the tribal beliefs Lark is to be killed since he has the potential of infecting others. Joe decides to make use of his ancient tribal practices since common law does not prosecute Lark. Even though laws are supposed to protect people, it is not so in “The Round House.” In this case, the law of nature, that is decay, appears to be the perfect solution. After killing Lark Joe speaks to himself, “the noodles became a carcass…the human, the buffalo, the body subject to the laws” (Erdrich 310).

Evil is viewed as contagious that is responsible for propagating corruption as it advances through contact. Joe and Cappy consistently refer to Lark as the skin of evil.  For some time, Lark appears to be untouchable as he gets away with Mayla and Geraldine attacks. Anytime a character comes in contact with Lark it seems that his evil is passed on to them. In the same manner that a Wiindigoo puts its spirit in a person, Joe thinks that the evil in Lark can be transferred in a similar way (Erdrich 192). Once Joe has killed Lark, he keeps wondering if he will turn into a wiindigoo infected by Lark (Erdrich 310). In fact, Lark’s evil continues to pursue his killers even after they have already killed him. At one point, Cappy cries in his dreams while Joe calls for Cappy in his troubled sleep. Joe ends up admitting that he was not very safe from Lark just as Cappy. He also acknowledges that he tormented them in dreams (Erdrich 324). Even though the death of Cappy was not directly caused by coming to contact with Lark, the author demonstrates that the views that communities hold about wiindigoo are highly detrimental.

Governor Yeltow and the U.S government can also be viewed as people who consider other persons as prey meat in the same manner as Lark from how they abuse the Indian land and women (Erdrich 192). Joe, his family, as well as his community, are not yielded from this attitude because it is the same outlook that is used to make the laws which are supposed to protect them.  As a result, they are left without options except “best-we-can-do-justice” (Erdrich 323). Even though murder is not the best approach, it promotes justice that that cannot be achieved through conventional truth (Erdrich 323). On realizing that evil is further propagated when right individuals fold hands as if nothing is happening Joe tried to erase the lousy wound from his society. His move into moral ambiguity is neither observed in a critical nor in a triumphal manner. In his pursuit of vengeance, his close friend dies. Joe does not get prosecuted for his crime while Cappy ends up being the human sacrifice that Joe purposed to himself to be.

The native women suffer from sexual violence an act perpetrated by non-locals since they know it is impossible for such women to get justice due to the nature of the law governing people on the reservation land. The prevailing situation is a depiction of how institutional racism and oppression has continually threatened the safety and well-being of the natives more so the women. Their lives have been bullied since criminals do not have consequences to face as the law is weak. Legal rights are violated when Lark rapes Geraldine and kills Mayla since the legal systems fail to prosecute him. Lark’s fury towards Mayla is contributed to by his sense of racial superiority as a white man. It is on the same basis that he hates Indians to the extent that he utters a word that Geraldine cannot repeat (Sevillano 145). Moreover, other native and non-native men also including Curtis Yeltow, Whitey, and Joe himself maltreat women. Erdrich does not give suggestions as to why men are brutal towards women, but some clues come out as Linda talks to Joe concerning her twin brother. Linda mentions that some men are more violent than others because they are also exposed to violence in their upbringing just as Linden Lark. She, however, notes that how to control such feelings is what matters.

Joe is acquainted with the fundamental approaches to justice having grown up with his father who is a tribal judge. It is so since he knows about the case law for hundreds of years which is the foundation of the natives’ autonomy and rights. Bazil, for example, teaches him about the Johnson v. Macintosh case which gave the U.S government the right to seize land from the natives and that of Oliphant v. Suquamish a case that denied the locals the right to put non-locals on trial for atrocities done on the native land. Joe seems to understand the legal history of the locals until his mother is raped when his interaction with legal history is personalized. The possibility of Geraldine to obtain justice is hindered by the fact that the legal system is structured in a manner to inconvenience the native people as the rape took place on native land. Since Joe is determined to get justice for his mother with the American justice system has failed to offer, he turns to the pre-colonial Chippewa justice system which is the Wiindigoo system as narrated by his grandfather (Sevillano 150). Wiindigoo justice system is not uninformed as it may sound since there must be a consensus among the entire community as to whether an individual is truly a wiindigoo. Unlike the modern justice system, wiindigoo justice does not have a formal procedure of trial as its attention is mostly paid on community values and harmony instead of the concepts of justice, innocence, and truth. Joe kills Lark in an attempt to restore the safety and stability of his community under the guidance of wiindigoo justice. The American system holds not the person directly responsible for punishing another which is a contrast of the wiindigoo system where Joe has to live with the consequences of killing Lark. Consequently, Joe experiences nightmares as a result of killing Lark and thus becomes a wiindigoo himself. Erdrich portrays the wiindigoo system as a flawed one since it is easily overcome by a mob mentality as seen in the story of the buffalo woman (Jimenez 7).

Joe and his father are so eager to know the rapist. It is essential because to see if it is an Indian or a white man due to the reservations. Indians were only permitted to handle legal matters and judge suspects relating to their own people. If white people committed the crimes to the Indians or vice versa a court outside the reservation had to hear such a case. Joe is after knowing who the killer is so that he knows how to handle the matter. At a point, he is disappointed after knowing that his mother knew who raped her yet she does not reveal him. Joe interprets her action as covering the criminal.

Catholicism is a major religion in the community, and many Chippewas including Clemence are firmly attached to it under the leadership of Father Travis. Joe’s less committed parents also take their children through the traditions of the church including baptism and confirmation. Different from the Chippewa religion, Catholicism is firmly connected to the European way of life. Joe and his friends often mock it openly because of how it presents the European supremacy and how they have grown up resisting it. Catholicism is brought into context to portray its role in native oppression especially in the unnecessary conversion practice which at one point in history attempted to suppress the Chippewa religion. Many older natives remember being beaten to embrace Catholicism and denounce Chippewa religious practices in Catholic boarding schools. Before 1978, the Chippewa were not permitted to practice their traditional rituals and had to disguise as Christian activities. Despite all these issues, the two seem to exist as individuals choose which appears to meet their spiritual needs. For example, Joe consults Mooshum to get meaning of his dreams while at the same time he visits Father Travis hoping that he will teach him how to use a gun. Erdrich uses the positive hybrid of the two religions to show that it is possible to reconcile two traditions that have historically been at war. She tries to imply that the white man’s legal system can also blend with the native legal, judicial system just as their religions.

Considering the manner in which Erdrich brings out the two systems of justice we can conclude that none of them is ideal- both of them are imperfect. However, she uses Bazil to show that the judicial system can be transformed to serve the natives in a better manner. The reason is that Bazil explains to Joe he does all that he can to empower the natives after Joe gets frustrated that Bazil is powerless despite being a tribal judge. Bazil is prepared to argue that wiindigoo justice should be permitted on reservations should Joe be tried for the murder of Lark. Therefore, in doing so, Bazil would create an avenue for the application of both systems of justice. It is not clear if the idea is achievable or not since Joe appears to be skeptical and impatient when Bazil raises the idea. However, the fact that Joe aims at becoming a lawyer and thus part of the justice system is a suggestion that Erdrich believes that a reformed justice system can be achieved.

Works Cited

Erdrich, Louise. “Rape on the Reservation.” New York Times 27 (2013).

Erdrich, Louise. The round house. Hachette UK, 2013.

Jimenez, Laurel. “The Body Subject to the Laws: Louise Erdrich’s Metaphorical Incarnation of Federal Indian Law in” The Round House.” Access*: Interdisciplinary Journal of        Student Research and Scholarship 1.1 (2017): 3.

Russo, Maria. “Disturbing the Spirits.‖ Review of The Round House by Louise Erdrich.” The New York Times 12 (2012).

Sevillano, Laura Roldán. “From Revenge to Justice: Perpetrator Trauma in Erdrich’s The Round      House.” Revista de estudios norteamericanos 20 (2018).