TOXICITY, COLONIAL VIOLENCE AND INDIAN LAW IN LOUISE ERDRICH'S JUSTICE TRILOGY

Louise Erdrich???s Justice Trilogy, published between 2008 and 2016, explores past and present experiences of toxicity and healing in the context of enduring colonial trauma. Through stories of substance abuse that highlight the ambivalent powers of the toxon as both medicine and poison, Erdrich addresses political and legal issues of injustice in Indian Country. Literal poisoning mirrors the toxic violence of Euro -American colonization, leaving physical and spiritual scars, contaminating communi-ties across generations and prompting strategies of survival and healing. Erdrich uses the toxicity metaphor to denounce social and legal injustice, through issues of sover-eignty and criminal jurisdiction. This article examines toxicity in the trilogy in its medical, colonial and legal senses, in the physiological body and the body politic. Starting with initial diagnosis (identifying the poison), and differential diagnosis (identifying the root cause of the poison), I then examine prognoses, the question of entanglement, and finally, the possibility of therapeutic justice and healing.