LOVE MEDICINE by Louise Erdrich (HarperPerennial:...

LOVE MEDICINE by Louise Erdrich (HarperPerennial: $12; 367 pp.) and TOUCHING THE FIRE: Buffalo Dancers, the Sky Bundle and Other Tales by Roger Welsch (Fawcett: $10.; 271 pp.). Louise Erdrich won the National Book Critics’ Circle Award for “Love Medicine” when it appeared in 1984; nine years later, she has added five short chapters, deepening her account of life on a Chippewa Reservation in North Dakota. Three generations of the rival, interrelated Kashpaw and Lamartine clans grapple with poverty, alcoholism and the need to restore their shattered tribal identity--stresses that complicate the everyday existence of these disenfranchised people. Erdrich limns their plight with rare grace: When one of the Kashpaw girls realizes how frail her grandfather has become, she reflects, “Age had come to him suddenly, like a storm in fall, shaking yellow leaves down overnight, and now his winter, deep and quiet, was on him.” An adopted member of the Omaha tribe, Roger Welsch writes about the fictional Turtle Creek Nehawkas, whose experiences embody the tragedy of the Plains Indians. The sharpest stories in this collection focus on the renascent pride of the Nehawkas and their efforts to regain control of their ancestral remains and artifacts, especially the Sky Bundle, a collection of sacred objects. Welsch leavens his angry tales with sardonic humor: During the debate over the possession of the artifacts, Quintan Man-Elk proposes setting up a sample “white folks’ home” as a tourist attraction/educational center for American Indians.