Resistance of Cultural
Ghettoisation through Indigenous Cosmology in Louise
Erdrich’s The Night Watchman
Dhanisha K. S.
ABSTRACT
Louise Erdrich’s The Night Watchman embeds
Chippewa/Ojibwe cosmology into a 1950s political struggle over
Indian termination. Spiritual presences, land and non-human beings
make visible an indigenous world where kinship and sovereignty
extend beyond the human and beyond linear history. The Pulitzer
winning novel is based on the life of her grandfather, the titular
character of the novel, who lives in Turtle Mountain Reservation,
North Dakota. Erdrich presents a worldview where “the mythical and
the rational coexist,” with ghosts, talking animals, and visionary
powwows appearing as ordinary parts of reality rather than fantasy.
These indigenous people lived in perfect harmony with Nature and
successfully guarded their secret of cosmology from the outside
world. Indigenous cosmology in the novel appears through ghosts and
vision, land-as-kin, more-than-human community, and a non-linear
sense of time. These cosmological elements are not merely decorative
but serve as the epistemological and ethical foundation for
resistance, identity, and survival in the face of colonial violence.
This article shows how indigenous cosmology helps in their
resilience and reacted against their cultural ghettoisation.
Key words: Indigenous Cosmology, Indian termination, Chippewa
People, Turtle Mountain Reservation, Cultural ghettoisation
