Judging from Erdrich and Broker's narratives, mothers and grandmothers seem to have played a central role in transmitting traditional values and culture to children and in adapting family ways to European-American culture. This bicultural negotiation deserves careful consideration. My primary goal is to sharpen students' critical thinking skills through the study of culture, language, and storytelling. While I orient the course from Ojibwa women's points of view, we have to consider the various historical and cultural forces at work in these women's lives. One central, ongoing concern is Ojibwa women's relationships to literary production.
Language is the most obvious literary and scholarly dilemma posed by early texts.
A book like Portage Lake decenters English by placing the Anishinabe and English words alongside one another. Narrative purpose and identity is another crucial issue in the consideration of Ojibwa women's stories. Other textual differences derived from gender and ethnicity include content and form. The content of a women's text may well focus to a great extent on domestic detail about marriage, childbearing and rearing, health, and household arrangements, rather than on more spectacular events of hunting or war. The form of the text may vary considerably from linear plots of rising and falling action.