The Round House

Afterword

This book is set in 1988, but the tangle of laws that hinder prosecution of rape cases on many reservations still exists. “Maze of Injustice,” a 2009 report by Amnesty International, included the following statistics: 1 in 3 Native women will be raped in her lifetime (and that figure is certainly higher as Native women often do not report rape); 86 percent of rapes and sexual assaults upon Native women are perpetrated by non-Native men; few are prosecuted. In 2010, then North Dakota senator Byron Dorgan sponsored the Tribal Law and Order Act. In signing the act into law, President Barack Obama called the situation “an assault on our national conscience.” The organizations highlighted in boldface below are working to restore sovereign justice and ensure safety for Native women.

Thank you to the many people who advised me as I wrote this book: Betty Laverdure, former tribal judge, Turtle Mountain Reservation; Paul Day, Gitchi Makwa, former tribal judge, Mille Lacs, and executive director of Anishinabe Legal Services; Betty Day, wisdom keeper and doulah; Peter Meyers, Psy.D., forensic psychologist; Terri Yellowhammer, former child welfare consultant for the state of Minnesota, and technical assistance specialist and associate judge for White Earth Ojibwe; N. Bruce Duthu, Dartmouth College, author of American Indians and the Law; the members of Professor Duthu’s Native American Law and Literature class; the Montgomery Fellow Program at Dartmouth College, and Richard Stammelman; Philomena Kebec, staff attorney for the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians; Tore Mowatt Larssen, attorney; Lucy Rain Simpson, Indian Law Resource Center; Ralph David Erdrich, R.N., Indian Health Service, Sisseton, South Dakota; Angela Erdrich, M.D., Indian Health Board, Minneapolis; Sandeep Patel, M.D., Indian Health Service, Belcourt, North Dakota; Walter R. Echo-hawk, author of In the Courts of the Conqueror: The Ten Worst Indian Law Cases Ever Decided; Suzanne Koepplinger, executive director of Minnesota Indian Women’s Resource Center, who gave me the report she coauthored with Alexandra “Sandi” Pierce, “Shattered Hearts: The Commercial and Sexual Exploitation of American Indian Women and Girls in Minnesota”; Darrell Emmel, TNG consultant; my copy editor, Trent Duffy; Terry Karten, my editor at HarperCollins; Brenda J. Child, historian and chair of the American Indian Studies Department at the University of Minnesota; Lisa Brunner, executive director of Sacred Spirits First Nation Coalition; and Carly Bad Heart Bull, attorney. Additional thanks are due to Memegwesi; chi-miigwech to Professor John Borrows, whose most recent book, Drawing Out Law: A Spirit’s Guide, helped greatly in my understanding the process of wiindigoo law, as did Hadley Louise Friedland’s 2010 thesis “The Wetiko (Windigo) Legal Principles: Responding to Harmful People in Cree, Anishinabek and Saulteaux Societies.”

My cousin Darrell Gourneau, who died in 2011, gave his eagle feather, his songs, and his hunting stories. His mother, my aunt Dolores Gourneau, gave me his quilt for my writing chair.

Finally, thank you to everyone who got me through 2010–2011: first of all, to my daughter Persia, for her many thoughtful readings of this manuscript, her honest, valuable suggestions, and her loving care for me especially during the uncertain weeks of my diagnosis. Everyone rallied wonderfully during my treatment for breast cancer: thanks to Drs. Margit M. Bretzke, Patsa Sullivan, Stuart Bloom, and Judith Walker for matter-of-factly saving my life. My daughter Pallas advocated for me, drove me to treatments, and provided her own treatment—Battlestar Galactica, music, and food with mysterious powers of restoration. She kept the family together. Aza fought her own difficult battle and won it for us all with her art. She was also a consultant on the manuscript and a close, discriminating reader. Nenaa’ikiizhikok brought laughter and courage. Dan stayed the center of gravity for us all with his patience and good heart.

The events in this book are loosely based on so many different cases, reports, and stories that the outcome is pure fiction. This book is not meant to portray anyone alive or dead and, as always, any mistakes in the Ojibwe language are mine and do not reflect on my patient teachers.