Native American's Homing-in

Louise Erdrich, the world-famous contemporary Native American writer, is enormously acclaimed for her "North Dakota" tetralogy, of which Love Medicine is the opening one.The primary task of this thesis is to investigate the chorus experience of the main characters in Love Medicine:their Homing-in as a path to the Indian community, or to the Indian culture and tradition embedded in the Indian's view toward nature and cosmos. Through Homing-in, the Native American revitalize their national spirit, which is on the brim of annihilation out of the genocide policy of the authority.Chapter One provides background materials for further discussion, such as the contemporary situation and the history of Native American Literature, the introduction of Louise Erdrich and her novel Love Medicine, the legitimacy of applying postcolonial theory to Native American genre and the overall arrangement of this thesis.Chapter Two generalizes the theoretical framework. After an in-depth literature review in both domestic field and abroad, it drives out the focus of this thesis:Homing-in, highlights the originality and justification of this thesis. Then, it classifies the main characters undergoing Homing-in into three groups, longing for assimilation, return to tradition, and hybridity of the indigenous and the western. The ensuing three chapters will discuss the Homing-in of three groups with one representative respectively. Chapter Three focuses on June Morrissey's life, death and resurrection, which could only be understood from the aboriginal cultural lenses. Chapter Four analyzes the life of Lipsha Morrissey's. He eventually achieved his quest for cultural and biological identity, and proceeded to return to the Indian tradition with his mother's spirit. Chapter Five develops Marie Kashpaw's psychological Homing-in. Standing between Christian and Chippewa Culture, and bridging the different perception on female, Marie built up gynocratic community in collaboration with Lulu, and reestablished her concept of value and identification as a mixedblood.In conclusion, this thesis explores the recurrent theme—Homing-in through an in-depth and overall examination of the three main characters:June Morrissey, Lipsha Morrissey and Marie Kashpaw in Louise Erdrich's first Novel Love Medicine. It asserts that their Homing-in was overlapped with their quest for identity which was nothing but the Indian the tradition and culture. By means of Homing-in, the three characters found their mutual self, on which they relied for survival and development, and on which they depended for reestablishing their cultural identity.