Assimilation In Louise Erdrich's Tracks

As in life, throughout Louise Erdrich’s novel, Tracks, the Anishinaabe people suffer myriad violations inflicted upon them by the brutality inherent in settler colonialism: forced relocation to ever-shrinking land, environmental annihilation, depletion of life-sustaining fauna, rampant disease, taxation, bureaucracy, residential schools, false and racist narratives, the Catholic church, alcoholism, and so on. Hence, to suggest the book’s characters operate within a framework of trauma is an understatement. Amid the evolving disaster, although narrators Nanapush and Pauline Puyat often occupy the same spaces and share some characteristics, such as being talkative, sexual, and prone to visions, they perceive their worlds through disparate lenses, and develop along divergent trajectories. While Nanapush is nurturing, community driven, and generally life-affirming, Pauline is self-serving, opportunistic, and energized by death and violence. Whereas Pauline is the face of assimilation,

For her, it is the path of least resistance, and she comes to represent the force of assimilation through the damaging effects of the church on native religion, failure to accept Johnston 5 responsibility for misdeeds, rationalization, and internalization of racism against her own people. In her vision, for example, she imagines that God tells her she is “wholly white” and that she is to discover the habits and hiding places of His enemy (137). She also only speaks English, referring to the language of the Anishinaabe as “strong and vulgar” (147). In the end, reflecting white racism, Pauline frames the Anishinaabe people as hapless savages: “They could starve and fornicate, expose their young for dogs and crows, worship the bones of animals or the brown liquor in a jar. I would have none of it”