Catholic Nuns and Ojibwa Shamans: Pauline and Fleur in Louise Erdrich's "Tracks"

Abstract

One of the central themes in Louise Erdrich's works is the role of religious and spiritual beliefs in shaping one's identity. Early in 1994, Erdrich, a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa in North Dakota near the Canadian border, completed a quartet of novels on selected Native American families in North Dakota.' Her four works-LOVE MEDICINE (1984), THE BEET QUEEN (1986), TRACKS (1988) and THE BiNGO PALACE (1994)-cover the struggles of these families on the reservation and in the nearby small town Argus. All four novels show the influence of the Catholic Church on traditional Ojibwa beliefs.2 But it is in TRACKS that she recounts the most violent clash between the two religions and the detrimental effects of forced assimilation and religious conversion through the rivalry between the two Anishinabeg (Chippewa) women Fleur Pillager, a shaman with supernatural powers, and her acquaintance Pauline Puyat, who invents a sadistic form of Catholicism. Although the lives of these two women are intertwined, they are by no means alike. Fleur upholds the traditions of her ancestors and attempts to save their land from the rapid advance of white civilization, whereas Pauline enters a cloister, denies her Native American heritage, and brings death and destruction to the reservation. Pauline is the sole survivor of the Puyats, a quiet family of mixed descent. Due to her mother's influence, who showed her half-white,3 and the fact that her skin color is lighter than that of her sisters, Pauline has always admired the white race. She dismisses the Anishinabeg on the reservation as backwards and, unlike the rest of her kin, takes great pride in her French Canadian heritage. After her mother's death, Pauline dissociates herself from her family by speaking primarily English, suggesting that her father build an outhouse, and refusing to be taught traditional arts such as beading and curing leather. Instead, she demands to be sent to the nuns in Argus to learn lace-making. Once in Argus, Pauline must work in her aunt's butcher shop, which to her mnind is as offensive as curing leather. Pauline conscientiously suppresses all memories of her family, as her ultimate goal is to assimilate into the white community. However, this attempt fails, as the white girls in Argus either ridicule or ignore her, and she cannot return to her family on the reservation either, for an epidemic has claimed their lives. Even as a child Fleur demonstrated that she would never completely embrace Christianity. She is one of the last two survivors of the Pillagers who dwelt in the dense, spirit-inhabited woods near lake Matchimanito, home of the powerful underwater manito Misshepeshu.4 According to legend, Fleur's ancestor Old Man Pillager summoned Misshepeshu to inhabit the lake's deep waters, and the spirit became the family's guardian, granting them medicinal powers, influencing the abundance of game, and protecting those who fell in its waters. For example, when Fleur drowned as a child and later on as a 15-year-old adolescent she cursed the men who had rescued her, and they died mysteriously soon thereafter as if the underwater manito claimed their lives instead of Fleur's. It is no coin-