Chippewa Woman Case

The “Chippewa Woman” poem portrays a Native American woman stranded in the wilderness by a storm trying to keep herself and her sick baby alive.

She is so desperate for survival that she resorts to using her own flesh for fish bait. This is a small enough price for the Chippewa woman to pay for the life of her sick child. She faces a long and difficult journey and cautiously braves the perils of the wolves that surround her on her way to safety or home.

In “Bwalla The Hunter” there are no comparable language examples with the “Chippewa Woman” poem. They both have their own unique language to represent a tone for the poem. “Bwalla The Hunter” Speaks in native tone and uses phrases like,

“All proper hungry long time now”.

This poem also uses Rhyme with its rhythm at the end of each sentence, for example, drought and walkabout, plain and rain, seed and feed, slow and below.

This poem is in first person, for example.

He dropped his boomerang. “Now I climb”.

This shows a story being told by someone in that situation, whereas “Chippewa Woman” speaks in third person where someone is telling a story but is not the woman in the poem.

Duncan Campbell-Scott starts the poem,

“Once in the winter”

Which suggests that this is an event that happened in the past and he is retelling the story.

Both poems skillfully paint vivid pictures of the respective scenes and they both portray a sense of survival in the wild.

The tone and rhythm of the short pungent lines in “Chippewa Woman” help to convey the urgency of her situation