A Message of Hope in Love MedicineLove Medicine, by Louis Eldridge, attempts to address popular stereotypes about American Indians. The novel generally follows the story of a family of Chippewa Indians living on and off a reservation. With a completely humanist approach, Ms. Eldrige tells each chapter with a different voice and through extremely varied characters effectively shows the diversity of the Indians. This is an important aspect of the novel, as it shows that there is no single stereotypical "Indian". The book begins with two scenes from a modern perspective, showing a turbulent family with some pretty disturbing problems. Then the author goes back to the lives of the Chippewa family two generations earlier and moves more or less chronologically to the present day. One of the major conflicts in history is the reconciliation of Native Americans with their cultural past, while still embracing the future. The words “Indian,” American Indian, or Native American, all bring to mind stereotypes of a race of people with specific stigma attached to themselves in modern American culture. The word "Indian" can evoke a multiplicity of images, from the barbaric and bloodthirsty savages straight out of a Western film, to the more romantic image of a noble, intelligent and tribal people, living in harmony with nature. These extremes in modern stereotypes of the American Indian and all its various moderations are wrong for one very important reason: they are rooted in the past. The war between European popular culture and Indian culture was over almost before it began. After the closing of the frontier, around the turn of the century, all that was left of the pristine Indian culture... middle of paper... ety.Lipsha then, in her own words, "took an evil shortcut." He purchased frozen turkeys from a store and tried to get them blessed by Catholic priests. This represents how Native Americans lean into the modern conveniences of Western society. This not only diminishes their cultural power, but turns it completely on them. In Lipsha's case, the medicine killed her grandfather. The struggle of Native Americans today, as illustrated in Love Medicine, is a struggle for cultural identity. The other problems of poverty, alcoholism, hatred and infidelity are just symptoms of "bad medicine", made easy by the omnipresence of Western culture. The message of Love Medicine is one of hope for a people who have everything to despair of in the world, who suffer from an illness that only medicine can cure.