One of the oldest mythical characters in human history, the trickster has appeared in myth cycles from across the world, and for the past century he has also appeared in fiction, film, and even critical theories. But are we losing sight of the trickster’s meaning? This talk will present an interpretation of an Ojibwe trickster cycle revealing him to be not a freewheeling sign of postmodern indeterminacy but its opposite: a character in a cautionary tale.

Scott Richard Lyons (Mississippi Ojibwe/Mdewakanton Dakota) is an associate professor of English at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. His publications include X-Marks: Native Signatures of Assent and The World, the Text, and the Critic: Global Dimensions of Native American Literature. His forthcoming book is Peacemakers: Sacred Violence in Native American Myth and Literature. He was raised on the Leech Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota.