Ojibwe Society In Louise Erdrich's Tracks

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In her 1988 novel Tracks, American author Louise Erdrich explores the transformational factors of Ojibwe society in the 1910s. Amid lurid tales of cultural larceny and the erosion of traditional animism, she discusses a key catalyst for social change: the acceptance of the Roman Catholic faith by many Ojibwe. Erdrich condemns those self-denying, death-rooted elements of Catholicism that divide a people caught between traditional and modern identities, selecting her troubled co-narrator, teenaged Pauline Puyat, as a vehicle through which to convey this message. A mixed-race fifteen-year-old seeking to establish a modern identity on a North Dakota Ojibwe reservation, Pauline embraces Catholicism with alacrity. Like the Ojibwe people, Pauline …show more content…

Erdrich paints this transitory approach to identity and naming as a conclusive insult to traditional Ojibwe practices. Indeed, Nanapush observes earlier in Tracks that his name “loses power every time that it is written and stored in a government file” (Erdrich 32). Shortly thereafter, Nanapush indicates his father’s rationale for bestowing upon him the name “Nanapush”: “That’s what you’ll be called. Because it’s got to do with trickery and living in the bush […] something a girl can’t resist […] the first Nanapush stole fire. You will steal hearts” (Erdrich 33). This passage evidences a strong correlation between naming, identity, and tradition in Ojibwe culture, establishing these relationships as elements of a distinct, shared lifestyle. Given that Pauline reaches so contrary an opinion after a long process of Catholicization, it is clear that much of her Ojibwe heritage has disappeared amid the erosion and reconstruction of her identity. Although such a conclusion is evident even before this passage, Pauline’s concluding discourse conveys the permanent loss of her Ojibwe identity and isolates Catholicism as its logical

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