408 Erdrich, Louise
ERDRICH, LOUISE The Bingo Palace
(1994)
Published in 1994, The Bingo Palace was Louise
Erdrich’s fourth novel set on the Turtle Mountain
Chippewa Reservation in North Dakota. Like the
other installments of what is known as the Little No
Horse Saga, The Bingo Palace portrays the tensions
between reservation life in the 1980s and Native
American tradition through the intersecting lives
of the Kashpaw, Nanapush, and Lamartine fami-
lies. The novel moves chronologically but weaves
in the past of each character through story and
reminiscence.
The main character of The Bingo Palace is Lip-
sha Morrissey, who returns to the reservation from
Fargo, North Dakota. When he goes back to the
place of his upbringing, Lipsha struggles to reconcile
his past with his present and future. On his personal
journey, he feuds with his entrepreneurial uncle,
Lyman Lamartine; falls in love with Lyman’s girl-
friend, Shawnee Ray Toose; feels manipulated by his
aunt, Zelda Kashpaw; sees the ghost of his mother,
June Morrissey; and becomes enlightened by the
elusive Fleur Pillager. Through these encounters,
Lipsha seeks spiritual awakening, but at the same
time he is blinded by money, possessions, and sex.
His quest includes themes such as fate, commodi-
fication/commercialization, identity, family,
love, and tradition.
The Bingo Palace is a novel that is both universal
and specific. Erdrich (b. 1954) centers on the uni-
versal discovery of oneself, a complex intersection
of family, memory, culture, and personality, but she
also focuses on the specific experiences of Native
Americans struggling to maintain tradition in the
modern world.
Erica D. Galioto
cOmmOdiFicatiOn/cOmmercializatiOn
in The Bingo Palace
On the Turtle Mountain Chippewa Reservation,
the residents featured in Louise Erdrich’s The
Bingo Palace experience the conflict of living in
two worlds: the world of Native American tradi-
tion and the world of modern American culture.
They want to preserve history, but the families also
need to survive financially, and real want quickly
supplants fiscal desires. The circus-like appearance
of the Bingo hall represents the difficult balance
between the traditional and modern worlds. While
the structure is erected on tribal land, it stands for
commercialism, greed, and excess. Run by Lyman
Lamartine, the reservation’s most noted business-
man, the Bingo Palace emphasizes winning money
to pay for worldly goods as opposed to deepening
spirituality. Lyman’s determination to build an even
more elaborate casino on ancestral land shows that
desecrating his history means little in relation to
financial gain.
By emphasizing commercialization as a theme,
Erdrich illustrates how the desire for money not
only drives the characters away from tradition but
also leaves them unsatisfied and empty, financially
and spiritually. Though Lyman and Lipsha share
many differences, they are similarly focused on
material gain. Lyman, as the Bingo Palace owner,
and Lipsha, as a maintenance worker/bartender, are
equally influenced by money. For Lyman, enough is
never enough, and he willingly trades tradition for
access to funds. His salary and bingo games leave
him unsatisfied, and so he gambles everything away
in Reno after the Indian Gaming Conference. His
exchange of his father Nector’s sacred pipe for $100
at a pawn shop permits him to lose a few more
rounds of blackjack, but the ease with which he sells
his history is difficult for readers to accept. Blind to
his own shallowness, Lyman plans to erect a casino
on ancestral Pillager land, but it will undoubtedly
fail to satisfy his greed.
Similar to Lyman, Lipsha is also driven by
material gain. His fixation with the bingo van as
his ultimate prize signifies his emphasis on worldly
goods. While he does, in fact, win the van with the
assistance of his dead mother’s intervention, his sat-
isfaction is short-lived. An idiotic fight with some
white teenagers results in the van’s destruction and
represents the eventual deterioration of all commer-
cial goods. Lipsha, however, continues to play his
lucky cards and racks up winnings. When he fails to
spend every cent on booze, food, and nonessentials,
he uses his mattress as a bank. He eventually trusts
his uncle to open a joint account for them but is
fleeced by Lyman and again finds himself penniless.
Through Lyman and Lipsha, the negative effects