Farland

by Arnegard, Iver O.

Farland, a work of ontological magical realism, is based on the author's experience living and working in the badlands of Western North Dakota and explores the relationship there between White America and the Three Affiliated Tribes of the Arikara, Hidatsa, and Mandan people. In his critical introduction, “The Realism in Magic,” Arnegard argues for the need to treat indigenous knowledge systems as equal alternatives to Western thought when perceiving and explaining reality. Examining texts by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Sony Labou Tansi, and Louis Parkinson Zamora, Arnegard seeks a “new objectivity” in the connotations and definitions of the magical and the real.