A Little History...
American law is supposed to protect the people of the nation, but in Native American history it has acted more like the source of injustice. Louise Erdrich turns this haunting reality into a human story in her novel, the Roundhouse. In this book, a Native American woman is raped somewhere in the area of a sacred round house, and seeking justice becomes almost as difficult as getting over the crime that was committed. The main location or setting of the story is centered around a sacred roundhouse. The round house itself stands on reservation land, where tribal courts are in charge. However, since the leading suspect is white, and tribal courts can’t prosecute non-Native people. In this case, Federal law would have to apply, but the rape may have taken place on various places with different people in charge of those specific regions. The history underneath all of this is that the law usually does not go in favor of the Native Americans. The reservations they were placed in have not brought them justice as there are many things that may go wrong. Also there are 1 in 3 Native American women who are raped and there is an 86% chance that the men who had raped them should have no fear of getting caught. In this story, when the boy hears that the judge who was dealing with his mother's case was not sure whether or not the accused man can be charged at all, Joe pursues his own quest for justice. “The Round House” represents something for Erdrich. It represents the injustice of the law towards Native American tribes and the harassment that these women have gone through with no justice for the people who caused this whatsoever. Here, Joe is the only narrator, and the urgency of his view shows how an innocent young boy had turned into a murdering young man. Erdrich has also talked about her own Yoknapatawpha, a North Dakota Indian reservation and its surrounding towns, with their intricately interconnected populations. This tale ,however, is completely fictional that the author specializes in. By delving extremely deeply into one person’s darkest and haunting episode in life and into a story of the past and present, Erdrich shows the entire truth about the injustice going on in a whole community and the ignorance of the people surrounding this particular injustice. The time period runs from 1967 to present day, as the narrator has already been through the events that take place in the story and is simply reminiscing about what had happened. The time period is significant to understanding the plot of the story because back in the 1960s Native Americans did not have as many rights as they do now.