Storying Escape from Settler Enforcement: The 'Rolling Head' in Louise Erdrich's LaRose

Abstract: This article discusses the deployment of the Ojibwe/Cree story "The Rolling Head" as a structuring framework in Louise Erdrich's novel LaRose . Erdrich's sprawling and complex work features multiple iterations of this figure that cross temporalities and demonstrate the ongoing relevance of oral tradition in connecting the past, present, and future. A uniquely malevolent presence in orature, the Rolling Head is manifested in characters that illustrate the persistent threats to Indigenous survivance posed by settler colonialism, including gendered violence and the cultural genocide found in residential schools. Building from Leanne Betasamosake Simpson's work on grounded normativity and Mark Rifkin's conceptualization of Indigenous temporal sovereignty, this article examines how the Rolling Head story cycle offers characters pathways out of the trauma and chaos of colonialism. Ultimately, the Rolling Head story animates Erdrich's perceptual landscape in the text, centering Ojibwe/Cree cultural production as a "living alternative" to Eurocentric conventions of genre and form.