Leaving tracks: The legacy of Chippewa history in the novels of Louise Erdrich

The general history of the Turtle Mountain Ojibwe Band is an essential element of Louise Erdrich's fiction, as well as of the more specific intricacies and details found in the five chapters of this dissertation. Erdrich's works engage in historical interrogation, encouraging both Native and non-Native readers alike to explore a little-known and rarely-studied history. Using sources regarding the history of the Chippewa tribes in Minnesota and North Dakota, this work traces crucial themes of Chippewa history as they motivate the plots and characters of Erdrich's Little No Horse (her fictional name for Turtle Mountain) novels: Love Medicine (1984), The Beet Queen (1986), Tracks (1988), The Bingo Palace (1994), Tales of Burning Love (1996), and The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse (2001). Each chapter of this work involves a historical theme in Erdrich's work: the loss of land and sacred places, the coming of Christianity and the forced conversion practices of the boarding schools, the persistence of Chippewa religion---the Midewiwin, and the controversy over Native gambling and 20th century casinos. Only an in-depth look at the history behind these references in Erdrich's novels can help readers appreciate the true power of her commentary on Native American life. For like Erdrich's characters, Native Americans today are enmeshed in a past that has controlled and shaped their present and their future destiny. This dissertation demonstrates Erdrich's insight that history is a part of us we can never escape, only confront and somehow use.