Tracks by Louise Erdrich

It is easy to forget within the pride of patriotism that the United States is a post-colonial culture. Through the devaluation and near extinction of the cultures that once thrived within the confines of what some now consider the greatest country in the world is the story of so many colonized people from all over the world. Though not the only theme within Louise Erdrich's Tracks, the postcolonial reality of the U.S. can clearly be seen as an assumed reality within the limited and often challenged existence of the Native American culture of the Chippewa.

Rather early in the post-colonial phase, "Tracks chronicles the lives of Ojibwa people living in North Dakota between the winter of 1912 and the spring of 1924." (Stookey 1999) Scholarship on the issue of colonial native America has recently headed toward the interdisciplinary approach and has learned to embrace narrative fiction....
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