Debra Magpie Earling Is Reclaiming Native Women’s Agency
For the past two decades, novelist Debra Magpie Earling has revived the stories of Native women who forge their own paths. In her novels Perma Red (2002) and The Lost Journals of Sacajewea (2023), the heroines search for identities outside of brutality and self-preservation. In poetic prose bristling with compassion and intelligence, Earling invites us into the hearts of her characters, relaying the unique perspectives of Native peoples and untaught histories of the West.
In the bitter chill of a Western winter, I spoke with Earling—who is Bitterroot Salish and a member and citizen of the Confederated Salish & Kootenai Tribes—about the larger context of her work, the need for Native women’s agency, and the responsibility of fiction writers looking toward the past.
Emily Collins: Themes of agency and transformation are present in Perma Red and The Lost Journals of
