Resistance Isn’t Futile: An Argument for Hybridity, Not Assimilation 

By: Clare Hunter

Louise Erdrich said that “The events in [The Round House] are loosely based on so many different cases, reports, and stories that the outcome is pure fiction."(“The Significance of Erdrich”). Her novel uses these stories to focus on the justice and lack thereof on reservations in the United States. Louise Erdrich’s novel The Round House is also the bildungsroman of Joe, the protagonist, as he seeks justice for his mother and tries to find his place on the reservation. In this work of Native American literature, Erdrich explores life on an Ojibwe reservation during the 1980s and what it means socially, culturally, and legally through Joe’s perspective and observations. Through the inclusion of incidents with justice or the lack of it paired with Joe’s observations, Erdrich emphasizes the lack of hybridity between the Ojibwe’s and America’s cultures. The Round House by Louise Erdrich argues with the use of references to Star Trek the Next Generation that in multicultural interactions there should be hybridity in values rather than favoring one culture’s values over another.  

Star Trek the Next Generation is a science fiction television series set in the 2360s and early 2370s (Dockterman). In the show, Earth is part of an interplanetary alliance which is overseen by the government referred to as The United Federation of Planets. In this alliance, there are many ships that have the mission of exploring and interacting with foreign cultures on newly discovered planets. The goal of these interactions is to learn about the discovered cultures and, if the civilization has developed space travel, to invite them to join the alliance. The goal of the alliance is to promote peace and acceptance of different cultures and their values. In The Next Generation, Captain Picard on the ship Enterprise is sent on various missions where he interacts with other planets’ cultures on behalf of the federation. 

Erdrich references the Star Trek episode “Angel One” to suggest how two cultures should approach hybridity in their first interactions. In chapter 7 Joe had to make the choice of what information to share with his father and the FBI agent based on his values. Joe has a strong sense of loyalty yet he “ratted out [his] friends in order to hide the fact of the money” (Erdrich 146) which he wanted to save for his future. He made the choice to “[give] up a lesser secret” (Erdrich 145) and betray his childhood value of loyalty to protect his value of self-preservation and future success from when he grew up overnight. In the Star Trek episode of the same name, Picard and his crew are interacting with a matriarchy that is starting to crumble due to the previous contact with the federation. In order to maintain peace, Picard and his crew come up with a compromise that saves the lives of their people and enables the matriarchy to slowly change into a different society. With these examples, Erdrich is arguing that hybridity should not be immediate or forced. Joe was forced to grow up quickly and take part in adult culture because his parents were too preoccupied to take care of him. The reference to Star Trek suggests that allowing hybridity to be limited and to slowly develop respects the separate identities and differences in values between cultures as they start to work together.  

Erdrich builds on this argument in chapter eight of The Round House by emphasizing the need for natural rather than forced hybridity. In this chapter, Sonja’s relationship with Ojibwe and American culture is emphasized. Sonja is a white woman who has a romantic partnership with Whitey, an Ojibwe man. When she was a young adult, she was a stripper “stuck in that life” (Erdrich 222) and managed to leave when “Whitey started protecting [her…and] asked [her] to quit” (Erdrich 222). When Sonja moved onto the reservation she abruptly adopted Ojibwe culture and values because of the relative safety it, through Whitey, offered her compared to her life as a stripper and its abuse.  In chapter eight Joe brings her the money he found in a baby doll which she helps him save at first but then takes a majority of it. This could be seen as a second sudden culture shift prompted by her newfound wealth and freedom that results in her ability to return to a life-based in American culture and values without the harassment, she previously experienced.  The episode “Hide and Q” also focuses on sudden wealth but with power rather than money. In this episode, Riker is suddenly given the power of a Q which puts him outside of his community. The resulting conflict is resolved when Riker gives up this new power and returns to his old self. These examples are used by Erdrich because both commanders Riker and Sonja use their newfound abundance as a means to change their behavior and interactions with everyone around them. Rather than living within their own culture, they start living in a vastly different one: Sonja lives on the reservation as one of the Ojibwe while Riker starts seeing himself as a powerful Q, believing he is superior to his crewmates. Erdrich uses both examples to argue for hybridity in the context of compromise and a combination of cultures and their values. Rather than just choosing one culture over another, both cultures and their values should be included in the hybrid space that results from multicultural interaction. Hybridity should be the combination of both cultures rather than rigid choices of which values to favor or choosing one culture over another. This shift should also not be sudden and instantaneous; it should happen over the course of interactions between both cultures. 

  In addition, Erdrich argues for the hybridity of cultures through the distribution of information. In chapter nine “The Big Goood-bye” Joe is confronted with Sonja’s reality and how his behavior made him “another gimmie-gimmie asshole” (Erdrich 223). Up until this point, Joe was always “sneaking a good look at [Sonja’s] tits when [he] thought [she] didn’t know” (Erdrich 222) and viewing Sonja as beautiful in a sexual context rather than viewing her as the loving aunt she was to him. In Star Trek, the Next Generation episode 12 of season 1 Captain Picard on the virtual reality holodeck reveals to a few holograms that the world is a simulation in a room of a starship. This information turned the world of one hologram upside down when he realized that his existence may not have been real or might have had no meaning. This episode and chapter both share the title of “The Big Goodbye” as part of Erdrich’s argument for hybridity with cultures. Both these stories have a moment where new information from another culture drastically changes their own perspective. This shift in perspective accounts for the exposure to another culture and results in an environment that is more amicable to the new culture in future interactions. Erdrich portrays this through Joe’s souvenir of the tassel which he kept as a “[reminder] of the way [he] treated Sonja and… about how [he] threatened her and all that came of it, how [he] was just another guy” (Erdrich 223). This reminder represents how Joe’s exposure to Sonja’s experience as a woman and her values impacted his perspective. His guilt about how his relationship with Sonja ended has prompted him to modify his behavior in future interactions with women. Similarly, the hologram’s interactions with Captain Picard and members of his crew before the program closed changed due to the information he learned. Rather than seeing them as the colleagues, he was programmed to see he instead saw their differences and respected them for who they really were rather than who he assumed they were. These examples are used by Erdrich in her argument for hybridity because the shift in perspective enables these characters to modify their behavior in such a way that is inclusive and eases communications with the culture or similar people following the newly received information.  

Edrich references The Next Generation episode “Justice” to emphasize the results of multicultural interactions without hybridity of values. In this episode, Wesley breaks the law while visiting another planet. This situation is resolved by Captain Picard when he chooses to ignore his government’s value of other cultures’ laws. This value originates from the beginning of the federation when a few species from different planets and cultures decided to become allies. This value was created into a law called the Prime Directive which requires the federation to follow the laws of the culture(s) on other planets. In this situation, Picard refuses to follow the law that justifies the requested execution of Wesley which breaks the planet’s value of justice and the federation’s value of justice and respect for different values. He also fails to come up with a compromise that honors the planet’s value of peace and strict punishment of crime in order to maintain peace. In The Round House’s chapter 3 titled “Justice”, Joe and his father Basil pored over the old tribal cases to look at precedent and to try to find potential suspects. Yet even once they find the rapist “they (the authorities) let him go” (Erdrich 226) due to jurisdiction issues stemming from conflict over cultural values. In both examples, the interactions between two cultures lack respect and acknowledgment of values belonging to each. In both circumstances, the two cultures value justice yet the disagreement over what justice should result in the lack of any sort of justice at all. Through these examples, Erdrich argues for hybridity in multicultural interactions rather than choosing which culture’s values to respect depending on the place and circumstances or choosing to respect neither culture’s values. These are examples of the lack of hybridity and why it is so important in multicultural interactions.  

Hybridity in multicultural communication is vital for healthy relationships between any two cultures. Without hybridity, the values of each culture are disregarded which runs the risk of each culture losing what makes them distinct. This conflict often centers on the idea of assimilation which emphasizes one culture at the expense of the other. In order to avoid this, cultures involved in multicultural interactions should over time come to share some values while retaining their own beliefs. There have been some attempts to address the current lack of hybridity. One significant attempt is the 2010 tribal law and order act which enabled tribal courts to increase the length of sentences in criminal cases. Yet even with progress such as this, there is still a lack of hybridity due to a cultural clash between indigenous peoples and the United States. This conflict is visible in the countless stories, whether told or silenced, that when retold “loosely… [create an] outcome is pure fiction” (“The Significance of Erdrich”) yet true. 

                                                                             Works Cited 

Dockterman, Eliana. “How Picard Fits into the Star Trek Timeline.” Time, Time, 29 Apr. 2021, https://time.com/4952491/star-trek-timeline/.  

Hooley, Matt. “The Significance of Erdrich.” Chicagotribune.com, 5 Jan. 2013, https://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/books/ct-prj-0106-round-house-louise-erdrich-20130104-story.html.  

Erdrich, Louise. The Round House, Harper Perennial, New York, 2013.  

 
Works Referenced 

“Angel One” Star Trek, the next Generation. Season 1. [United States] :Paramount Pictures, 1987. 

“Hide and Q” Star Trek, the next Generation. Season 1. [United States] :Paramount Pictures, 1987. 

“Justice” Star Trek, the next Generation. Season 1. [United States] :Paramount Pictures, 1987. 

“The Big Goodbye” Star Trek, the next Generation. Season 1. [United States] :Paramount Pictures, 1987. 

 

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