On Syncreticism In The Last Report On The Miracles At Little No Horse

Louise Erdrich(1954-), a prolific American author, is acclaimed as one of the most significant writers of the second wave of the Native American Renaissance. Her assiduous writings on the Ojibwe Indians in a fictional "Town of Argus" have been compared to William Faulkner's "Yoknapatawpha Country". Being the sixth" of her Argus Series, The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse (henceforth Last Report for brief) highlights the spiritual vitality of the Ojibwe culture through protagonist Agnes's religious pursuit.Last Report narrates Father Damien's 87-year-preaching legends in Ojibwe reservation, the "Little No Horse". In preaching Catholicism to the Ojibwe, Agnes DeWitt, or one-time novitiate Sister Cecilia, cross-dressing Father Damien Modest, constantly rewrites Catholic beliefs under the influence of Ojibwe Shamanism. In her syncretic Catholic-Shamanic practice, the superior Catholicism negotiates and communicates with inferior Ojibwe Shamanism in a more equal way and thus blurs the binary opposition and separation between these two parties. In addition, through the process of "religious syncreticism", Agnes shifts from a colonizer to a friend of the colonized Ojibwe, and passionately advocated Ojibwe dying traditions. By applying Homi Bhabha's "Third Space Theory" and analyzing Agnes's spiritual maturity through her Catholic-Shamanic practice, this study aims to probe into the issues of religious syncreticism and its significance in cross-cultural negotiation. The thesis argues that syncreticism is not only an effective solution to dissolve culture conflicts between the oppressor, the White and the oppressed, the Ojibwe, but also an effective way to revive dying traditional Ojibwe Shamanism. The syncreticism sets an example for White-Ojibwe cultural exchange:instead of heating conflicts between the colonizer and the colonized, the two parties can'learn mutually in a syncretic way for reconciliation. Furthermore, Agnes's Catholic-Shamanic transformation also reveals her own subjectivity switching from dependence on God to herself.The present study falls into five chapters. Chapter One is the introduction, covering the writer, the novel and thesis structure. Chapter Two includes literature review and theoretical basis.Chapter Three is a contrastive study between Catholicism and Ojibwe Shamanism. It emphasizes the exclusive and imperial nature of the previous and the healing nature of the latter. Chapter Four analyzes three religious symbols in the context of Agnes's Catholic-Shamanic practice, and concludes that the inferior Ojibwe Shamanism is able to rewrite the imperial and superior Catholicism, which denies the White's depreciations on the Ojibwe Shamanism and the long-held stereotypes against Ojibwe culture. By constructing the character Agnes, Erdrich subverts and rewrites the inferior condition of Shamanism. Chapter Five is the conclusion. This chapter finds that between the White and the Ojibwe, instead of enforcing religious conversion, the two parties can learn mutually and traditional Ojibwe Shamanism can prosper through religious syncreticism. Moreover, syncreticism is advantageous in both advocating traditional Ojibwe culture and reconciling cultural conflicts.