“The End of Thinking Occurred”: Storytelling and Windigo Justice in the Round House (2012)

Published in 2012, The Round House, the latest novel of Louise Erdrich (Chippewa ), has received much critical attention in academia. All the major events of this novel revolve around Joe’s family. Joe’s mother Geraldine becomes the victim of rape which leads her husband Bazil to look for justice; however, justice is first delayed and then denied by legislatures. Joe, a thirteen-year protagonist, eventually ensures justice through hunting a white-windigo. Erdrich’s text deals with many important literary issues and devices like religious views, especially the church’s role and the church’s hostility towards women’s bodies, supernaturalism, medical ethics, law and justice, Indian and Non-Indian identity. The Round House is included even in the curricula of Law and Medical disciplines for its subject matters—a high accolade. In the first part, this article will deal with three political aspects of storytelling: i) as a process of decolonization; iii) in terms of land tenure; and iv) as ceremony and healing. In the second part, I will explain how storytelling as a cultural tool formulates the concept and execution of justice. Here in this part, I will first discuss the way Erdrich’s novel reflects an Indigenous experience of justice—how justice excludes and how justice excludes through inclusion. The analysis of three important characters—Joe, his mother, and his father—and their envisioning of legal and windigo justice will therefore be brought into the discussion.