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

2013/06/01 by Michelle Pagni Stewart · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · #American literature #Art #History #Literature #Negotiation #Social science #Sociology #Themes in Literature Analysis

paper · doi:10.1353/chq.2013.0019

openalex publication_date 2013/06/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21

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.

Citations

• "The Only Good Indian": History, Race, and Representation in Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie

Cited by

• Laura Ingalls Wilder [wikipedia]

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