To illustrate Indigenous cultural endurance, Erdrich superimposes Ojibwe mythological narratives and images onto her characters. Owens identifies Nanabozho, a peripatetic trickster and world-creator, as a key intertextual reference in Erdrich’s text. Owens points to the first chapter of "Love Medicine": true to traditional trickster narratives, in the beginning of "Love Medicine", June Kashpaw is seen without a home and on the move. If the purpose of telling Nanabozho stories is to challenge listeners and to obversely remind them of their roots, Owens argues, then the purpose of June’s absence in "Love Medicine" is to underscore each character’s enduring place within the tribal community. Furthermore, in Owen's formulation, Just as the trickster transcends time and space, June’s death, which occurs on Easter Sunday, disrupts linear Christian time and interweaves it with cyclic/accretive time.