Loss of Faith and Search for the Chippewa Gods

Throughout the story Love Medicine is this feeling of a loss of faith in a higher power.  The people on the reservation do not pray to God for miracles and they do not attempt to worship Native gods.  Instead the people come to Lipsha a finite being and ask Lipsha to lay his healing hands on them.  It is because of the Native Americans collective loss of faith that Grandpa Kashpaw “embraces his second childhood”.(5)  Grandpa Kashpaw as a tribal chairman accepts the opportunity of otherworldly journey to seek the native gods for his tribe.

As a tribal chairman “who gave them bureaucrats what for” (5) Grandpa Kashpa would have been constantly thinking about what it means to be Native American.  He would have thought about the future and where the people were heading, the present what he could do for the tribe right now and the past the place he came from and the things that had been forgotten like Chippewa gods.  When he began to enter his second childhood Grandpa Kashpaw recognized it’s potential.  He could leave his physical body behind to represent the tribe in a mystical way.  This is why he says on the first page fifth paragraph, “I’ve been chosen for it.  I couldn’t say no.”  As a leader in his community it was impossible for Grandpa Kashpaw to pass up an opportunity to represent his tribe but where he was going and to whom he would represent his people was undisclosed even to him.

 

In the second paragraph on the third page Lipsha says he sees his grandfather “fishing in the middle of Matchimanito” Lake.  Interestingly this is the same lake on which the last sighting of a Native American god, the water monster Missepeshu, was said to have occurred.  Grandpa Kashpaw was waiting in the last place any of the spirits had been seen casting his line out looking for an answer to the big questions in life.  Lipsha thought he was casting his line in search of “bigger thoughts to, say, the meaning of how we go here”(18) but I do not think this true.  Grandpa Kashpaw was simply waiting symbolically in the middle of Matchimanito for someone to answer him.  Just like in the Catholic Church when he shouted HAIL MARY FULL OF GRACE Lipsha’s grandfather has made another attempt to be heard by a higher power.

The Chippewa people living on Grandpa Kashpaw’s reservation had lost faith in a higher power but still continued the rituals.  The people go to church praying to God who cannot hear them, making love potions and seeking mystical healing from a person who may be no more mystical than they are.  When presented with the opportunity Grandpa Kashpaw left his physical body behind in order to be hear by the higher power.  He went specifically to the Native gods to try and reconnect and restore his people faith with the former gods.  By doing so he also attempted to restore the tribe’s faith in its self through finding faith and purpose with a higher power.