Repairing Historical Trauma in Louise Erdrich's The Plague of Doves

Abstract

Abstract: Louise Erdrich's The Plague of Doves fictionalizes an historical account of three Native Americans who were hanged without trial by a white mob for the murder of various members of a white family. These acts become foundational traumas, part of patterns of colonial suppression that are transmitted intergenerationally and play out in repetitive dysfunctional relationships in the fictional white small town of Pluto, North Dakota, bordering a reservation. In order to unravel the complex threads of Erdich's narrative of repressed and displaced traumas that entangle different generations, races, and families, social and culturally oriented theories of trauma must be put in conversation with Native American studies' concepts of historical trauma and Native American/Ojibwe culture-specific healing strategies.