This article is the editorial introduction to the collection of essays entitled Louise Erdrich. An overview of Erdrich's literary innovations is offered in three sections that explain her relationship to Native place; the Native American historical contexts upon which her writing draws; and the specifically Ojibwe tribal contexts that inform her literary worldview. The discussions cohere through the argument that Erdrich's core theme is the Ojibwe concept of the 'good life'–mino bimaadiziwin–even though opportunities for living well, with courage, generosity and kindness are limited for her characters, many of whom are of mixed native and European descent, who live under conditions of colonization and within a history of physical and cultural genocide. The principle of tribal survivance is perhaps nowhere more evident than in Erdrich's use of Ojibwe ontology: an understanding of the world in which different forms of creation are co-existent and valued equally. Erdrich interweaves tribal Ojibwe cultural elements with the history of US-Native relations in her literary negotiations of the complexities of contemporary mino bimaadiziwin.