In Tracks Erdrich deals not only with individual American Indian lives but the loss of a tribe's land and identity during a crucial period from 1912 to 1924. In the novel Native Americans are attacked by illnesses and hunger, and annual land fees and taxes cause many to lose their land and homes.

Their ties to their ancestors are severed, and the mythic significance of the land is destroyed when loggers change its face.

While whites show ugly faces in Tracks, particularly in the rape of Fleur Pillager and her loss of home and land, the face of economic and governmental dispossession of the tribe is more Indian than white. Erdrich chooses to dramatize Native Americans undoing the lives of their kinsmen. Pauline Puyat, a mixed breed and one of the novel's two narrators, shows the terrible effects of white influence on her life, particularly...