Winona LaDuke: Last Standing Woman

[bibliogramma]

Although Winona LaDuke's novel, Last Standing Woman is written as fiction, the author states in a note that "the circumstances, history, and traditional stories, as well as some of the characters, are true, retold to the best of my ability." Indeed, Last Standing Woman tells with a sometimes searing truthfulness the history of the White Earth Anishinaabe people from the 1860s to the present, through seven generations, including three women named Ishkwegaabawiikwe, or Last Standing Woman.

The story of the White Earth people's resistance to racism, oppression and attempts at assimilation is told in an episodic fashion, tracing first the loss of identity and then the struggle to reclaim it despite such obstacles as land swindling, missionaries and their boarding schools, government housing projects, and alcoholism and sexual abuse.

As if to demonstrate the survival of her people, LaDuke writes the final chapter of the book - which deals with the vision of the newest woman to be named Ishkwegaabawiikwe - in Anishinaabe, declaring to the world that despite all the years of struggle, her people's language and culture survive in the young and will survive into the future.






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