Antelope Woman

Content Warning: This guide contains discussions of the source text’s depictions of sexual assault, domestic violence, suicide, and substance abuse disorders.

Antelope, antelope women, and the character whom Klaus dubs Sweetheart Calico are the novel’s most overt symbol. They represent connections to traditional culture that are threatened by modernity, and in particular by assimilationist government policy. The antelope woman is a mythic figure present in many oral Indigenous histories, and although her meaning is fluid and variable, her association with nature, tradition, and the transmission of cultural values emerges as a common thread. In Antelope Woman, Erdrich uses the figure of the antelope woman to engage with the themes of Traditional Ojibwe Culture in Modernity and The Impact of Relocation Policy on Ojibwe People and their Communities. Sweetheart Calico embodies traditional Ojibwe culture both through her connection to the antelope woman myth and because of the way that she functions in the story: She is rooted into the history of the Roy and Shawano families and is one of the text’s many moments of engagement with the way that culture and tradition are passed down through each successive generation, anchoring families and communities into ways of being in the world that stretch back thousands of years.