“As a Native American writer, Erdrich has to deal with the fact that Native Americans have been constantly underrepresented or misrepresented in traditional Western historical narratives. Tracks is, “in part an autopsy of this process, whereby place becomes property,” and thus is deeply and inherently political (Larson 1). Instead, the dominant power structure wanted to ‘assimilate’ the indigenous population by dividing what was left of native land and parceling it out in individual acreages. Having seized most of the continent, the colonizers were not content to merely confine what was left of the decimated first inhabitants on reservations and leave them to live as best they could using traditional means. Over the course of centuries, the colonizers’ sustained assault against indigenous people resulted in, “the Native cultures (being) disposed, nearly wiped out by 1900 (Lincoln 7). And as for government promises, the wind is steadier” ( T 33). Money burns like tinder, flows off like water. In Louise Erdrich’s Tracks, the character Nanapush states the dilemma thusly: “Land is the only thing that lasts life to life. Though they lacked the insatiable greed of their colonizers, the importance of land was keenly felt by those who had lived on it for generations. The story of Native American history since contact with Europeans has been one of land and the diametrically opposed conception of it held by both groups: the former saw it as a setting that supplied sustenance and belonged to everyone within a tribal range, while the latter conceived of it as a commodity that could be owned, parceled, and sold by individuals. Abuses and Allotments: The setting of Louise Erdrich’s Tracks and its importance

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