<p>The essay studies the character Marie's search for empowerment in Louise Erdrich's <em>Love Medicine</em>. As a mixed-blood she has difficulty to find respect within the white community because she is considered Native American Indian. However, the Native American Indian community sees her as ´dirty and lowlife´due to her whiteness. She tries different strattegies to form an identity and to find love, power and respect. In the convent she wants to be the best Catholic and find respect within the white community whilst later in life she returns to her Native American Indian tribe where she searches for respect throught marriage and motherhood. The theory used is sociology of religion.</p>

Dès le XVIIIe siècle, des Amérindiens ont raconté leur vie en s'appropriant les codes sémiotiques de la société dominante anglo-américaine blanche : l'anglais, l'écriture alphabétique, la production de textes destinés à être lus.Teintées d'une hybridité générique mêlant, souvent de manière subversive, des pratiques narratives, rhétoriques et discursives issues des mondes amérindien et anglo-américain, ces autobiographies donnent à lire pourquoi et comment leurs auteurs ont abordé le thème ambivalent de l'hybridité socio-culturelle et identitaire dans le contexte tendu de la colonisation.Dans une étude en trois parties (se présenter, se raconter, se recomposer), nous montrerons comment et pourquoi des Amérindiens ont fait le choix de s'exprimer dans des textes autobiogaphiques écrits en anglais. Nous analyseronscomment le fond et la forme interagissent pour créer une « performance » narrative, une poét(h)ique de la créolisation, de laquelle émerge une identité stylistique et conjonctive valorisante à travers les textes de cinq auteurs : les textes du Mohegan Samson Occom (1765 et 1768), les deux récits du Pequot William Apess (A Son of the Forest de 1829 et 1831, « The Experience of the Missionary » de 1833), Life Among the Piutes de la Paiute Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins (1883), History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan de l'Ottawa Andrew Blackbird (1887), The Middle Five: Indian Boys at School de l'Omaha Francis La Flesche (1900). / As early as the 18th century, some Native American Indians began to give accounts of their lives in autobiographical texts using, often subversively, the semiotic codes of the white, dominant, Anglo-American society: English, alphabetical writing, texts made to be read. As hybrid compositions which combine discursive, rhetorical, and narrative practices from both the Native and Anglo-American worlds, these autobiographies also reveal how and why their authors address the ambivalent issue of socio-cultural and identity hybridity in the tense context of colonization.In a three-part rationale (to present oneself, to narrate oneself, to recompose oneself), this dissertation intends to investigate how, in these texts, the form is responsive to the content in order to create a narrative “performance,” a sort of “aesthet(h)ics” of creolization, from which spawns a valorizing stylistic and conjunctive identity. The autobiographies of five authors furnish the basis of our analysis: Mohegan Samson Occom's untitled manuscripts of1765 and 1768, Pequot William Apess's three different versions (1829 A Son of the Forest, revised in 1831, and “TheExperience of the Missionary,” 1833), Paiute Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins's Life Among the Piutes (1883), OttawaAndrew Blackbird's History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan (1887), Omaha Francis La Flesche's TheMiddle Five: Indian Boys at School (1900).

The essay studies the character Marie's search for empowerment in Louise Erdrich's Love Medicine. As a mixed-blood she has difficulty to find respect within the white community because she is considered Native American Indian. However, the Native American Indian community sees her as ´dirty and lowlife´due to her whiteness. She tries different strattegies to form an identity and to find love, power and respect. In the convent she wants to be the best Catholic and find respect within the white community whilst later in life she returns to her Native American Indian tribe where she searches for respect throught marriage and motherhood. The theory used is sociology of religion.