Content area
Full Text
The Bingo Palace defines primary relationships in terms of living beings. Each action reflects interrelationships within the Chippewa Nation rather than merely defining cause-and-effect explanations of events in the Upper Midwest. Past, present, and future ties represent an unbroken unity, beyond any sense of history.
The principal characters--Lyman Lamantine, a "dark-minded schemer"; Shawnee Ray Toose, who exhibits a young woman's beauty"; and Lipsha Morrissey, who "flails in a circle with his own tail in his teeth"--are seemingly tied in a love triangle. Their story makes no sense, however, without the relations of Zelda Kashpaw, Xavier Toose, and Fleur Pillager. These beings are linked within ever more complex patterns of existence with the pipe, "Resounding Sky"; Matchimanito Lake,...