James Welch's "Winter in the Blood" (1974) and "The Death of Jim Loney" (1979) are excellent examples of work that remains essentially misunderstood throughout some three decades of interpretation. Attempts to define these two books in terms of mainstream modernism notwithstanding, they represent a phenomenon not unlike aspects of American folk music that developed as a form of coded communication by which the oppressed could speak in ways that overseers could not understand. As a result, although both works are recognizable to the mainstream on the surface and although Welch is careful not to go beyond the limits of the publishing industry, the books also bother the margins of mainstream history, politics, and literature. Welch's work in "Winter in the Blood" and "The Death of Jim Loney" begins the process of mapping out the American Indian world in all its complexity, including the material and virtual spaces of capitalism that characters are forced to occupy, and going on to explore various political, philosophical, moral, and cultural issues. In this article, the author relates how these two books have allowed him to begin a process of self-reflection that has saved his life. In addition, he claims that Welch's work has achieved the universality of a genre such as law, with the attendant power to change the American Indian world. (Contains 35 notes.)