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The aim of this paper is to provide an analysis of Louise Erdrich’s short
story, ‘‘The Bingo Van’’ (1990) as a representative work of her long-standing
narrative attempt to use gambling as a way of addressing the possibility of change in
Native American communities. The protagonist of the story, Lipsha Morrissey is a
psychologically disoriented young Chippewa man, apparently focused on short-term
goals, which ultimately reveal themselves as a corrupt version of the illusory
American Dream. Lipsha is otherized and, as such, forced to accept the normative
stamp of the culture of dominance, in Gerald Vizenor’s terminology. His healing
power decreases as he becomes overwhelmed by the materialistic drive fueled by a
prominent van-obsession The sacred place is replaced with a pre-empted one,
which brings about a moral devastation to Lipsha His subsequent recovery progresses
within a healing narrative which enables a waking-up into a restful nothing—such
an emptiness being vital in what Erdrich shapes as a powerful potential
for recuperation.