"Counting Coup" on Children's Literature about American Indians: Louise Erdrich's Historical Fiction

Abstract

Louise Erdrich's children's novels "count coup" on previous attempts to render American Indian life, especially those found in beloved books by Laura Ingalls Wilder and others. Through intertextual connections, she revisions stereotypical images of American Indians that have, until more recently, pervaded children's literature. Analyzing Erdrich's novels within the framework of Catherine Rainwater's counting coup paradigm suggests a way to negotiate the problems posed by classic texts rather than eradicate them altogether, allowing American Indian texts to triumph over the problematic images while celebrating more culturally-sensitive depictions, thus finding a place alongside of, not just in response to, canonical children's texts.