MURIELLE CAYOUETTE
MOUNTAINS AND RIVERS FOR A HOME
A Study of the Cultural and Social Repercussions of the Return
to Nature in Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony and Thomas
King’s Green Grass, Running Water
Thèse présentée
à la Faculté des études supérieures et postdoctorales de l’Université Laval
dans le cadre du programme de maîtrise en littératures d’expression anglaise
pour l’obtention du grade de maître ès arts (M.A.)
DÉPARTEMENT DES LITTÉRATURES
FACULTÉ DES LETTRES
UNIVERSITÉ LAVAL
QUÉBEC
2013
© Murielle Cayouette, 2012
iii
Résumé
La présente recherche a pour but de procéder à une étude comparative du processus
régénératif au cœur de deux romans phares de la fiction autochtone contemporaine, soit
Ceremony de Leslie Marmon Silko et Green Grass, Running Water de Thomas King. Trois
volets principaux sont examinés : le rôle de la nature en tant que référent culturel dans le
processus de régénération des personnages principaux de chaque roman, l’évolution de la
quête identitaire dans un environnement post-contact, ainsi que les répercussions de la
réactualisation de l’identité de chaque protagoniste sur la communauté à laquelle il
appartient. Cette comparaison entre les procédés employés par Silko et King permettront,
en un premier temps, d’identifier des éléments de continuité entre les deux auteurs. Ces
similarités incluent la centralité de la nature dans la reconnexion des protagonistes avec leur
culture et leur identité ainsi que l’emphase sur la nécessité d’une identité hybride dans un
environnement post-contact. De plus, la comparaison entre ces deux auteurs issus de deux
contextes socio-historiques distincts permet d’isoler certains éléments du contexte propre à
chaque roman afin de déterminer le rôle de la réalité autochtone sur la fiction produite à
chaque époque. De façon plus spécifique, il sera entre autres question de l’influence de la
montée du mouvement environnementaliste euro-américain sur la valeur symbolique du
retour à la nature, ainsi que de l’importance grandissante de la classe moyenne autochtone
éduquée et de la façon dont ce nouveau phénomène est exprimé dans l’œuvre de King.
iv
v
Abstract
This thesis compares the regenerative processes at the heart of two milestone novels of
contemporary Native American literature, Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony and Thomas
King’s Green Grass, Running Water. My comparative study will be divided into three
main sections: the role of nature as a cultural referent in the main characters’ regenerative
processes in each novel, the evolution of the identity quest in a post-contact environment,
and finally, the repercussions of the protagonists’ re-actualization of identity on the rest of
their community. Through the comparative study of the processes employed by Silko and
King with respect to one’s relationship to nature, cultural identity and social relations, I will
be able to identify several similarities shared by the two novels, which demonstrate that
they belong to the same Native artistic continuum. These resemblances include the central
role of nature in reconnecting the protagonists to their identity, as well as a predominant
emphasis on the emergence of a hybridized identity in a post-contact environment.
Moreover, the comparison of two novels emerging from two different eras of Native
American Literature –that of the 1970s and of the 1990s- will allow me to isolate the
influence of the cultural context to which each particular work belongs. In doing so, it
becomes possible to determine the influence of some transformations in Native lifestyle on
the fiction produced at a given time. More specifically, the modifications I chose to focus
on include the rise of Euro-American environmentalism on the symbolic value of returning
to nature for Natives as well as the increasing presence of middle-class, educated Natives
and their representation, mostly present in King’s fiction.
vii
I would like to dedicate this thesis to the
people of Waskaganish (Waskagheganish),
Moosonee/Moose Factory and Bloodvein
(Misko-Ziibiing), who sparked my interest in
Native American culture and society. Thank
you to Thomas King and Leslie Marmon
Silko, for having provided such thoughtprovoking and life-altering works of fiction.
Also, I would like to acknowledge the
contribution of my advisor, Dr. Jean-Philippe
Marcoux, who encouraged and supported me
in all the steps of this research. By never
doubting that I could write this thesis, even
when I was no longer sure myself, he has
made all the difference. Finally, I would like
to address a special “merci” to my parents,
Benoit and Jacqueline, for having inspired
me to persevere and follow my dreams until
the end.
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Table of Contents
Résumé.................................................................................................................................. iii
Abstract ................................................................................................................................... v
Table of Contents ...................................................................................................................ix
Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 1
Context ............................................................................................................................ 4
Thesis Statement ........................................................................................................... 10
Outline of the Chapters ................................................................................................. 13
Theoretical Framework ................................................................................................. 17
Methodology ................................................................................................................. 25
Literature Review ......................................................................................................... 26
Value of the Proposed Study ........................................................................................ 33
Chapter 1 ............................................................................................................................... 35
Back to the Wild: The Role of Nature as a Gateway for the Protagonists’ Cultural
Reintegration in Ceremony and Green Grass, Running Water ............................................ 35
The Socio-Historical Context of the 1970s: A Fertile Ground for Native American
Fiction ........................................................................................................................... 37
Ceremony as a Step towards the Revival of Native Culture through Nature ............... 43
Thomas King: The Dawn of a Problematized and Fragmented Sense of Ecology....... 53
King and Water: A New Perspective on Nature ........................................................... 57
Chapter 2 ............................................................................................................................... 65
Post-Indians and Ecological Saints: Hybridization as Key to Solving Contemporary Native
Identity Crisis ........................................................................................................................ 65
Tayo as Post-Indian: The Ontological Repercussions of Reconnecting with One’s
Culture .......................................................................................................................... 67
King and the Problems of the “Ecological Saint”......................................................... 76
Occupying Space as a Political and Cultural Claim ..................................................... 90
Chapter 3 ............................................................................................................................... 97
Reaching Back: The Social Repercussions of Tayo’s and Eli’s Identity Quests .................. 97
Post-Contact Alterations of the Native American Social Structure .............................. 99
Tayo’s Progressive Isolation as a Symptom of the Social Alterations in the Native
Community and the “Lie” ........................................................................................... 109
Reaching Out from the Margins: Tayo’s Journey Back to his Community ............... 115
Thomas King and the Influence of Class and Education in Contemporary Native
Social Hierarchy ......................................................................................................... 123
Taking a Stand (Alone): Eli’s Return Leading the Way for his Community ................. 132
Conclusion .......................................................................................................................... 145
Works Cited ........................................................................................................................ 153
x
Introduction
T
3
he second half of the twentieth century has been a great period of effervescence
for Native literature. With the emergence of critically acclaimed novelists such
as N. Scott Momaday, Leslie Marmon Silko, and James Welch in the 1970s,
the Canadian and American literary world grew more and more aware of a new generation
of authors and of their use of the novel and the short story as a way to affirm their identity
as Natives and to produce literature for their own people. Through their use of cross-genre
writing –mixing poetry and prose, for instance– and their inventive recuperation of
traditional Native culture, these authors forged a new way to express contemporary Native
experiences. As decades go by, the legacy of milestone novels such as Momaday’s House
Made of Dawn, Silko’s Ceremony and Welch’s Fool’s Crow, published in 1968, 1977 and
1986 respectively, and the critical corpora that surrounds them, keep nourishing Native
Literature. Nowadays, Native authors continue to recuperate aesthetics and themes from
this era in order to provide readers with groundbreaking works, such as Thomas King’s
Green Grass, Running Water, Joseph Boyden’s Three Day Road, and Sherman Alexie’s
The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. Still, a question remains: what exactly
links the Native authors of our era with those of the so-called Native American Literary
“Renaissance”1 of the 1970s? Can one speak of a “new tradition” or of a new way of
conceptualizing Native identity and art emerging in this period, and if so, what does it
consist of?
1
The term “Renaissance” used by several critics, most importantly Marie Battiste, to define the period of
literary effervescence in the 1970s and 1980s is particularly contentious because its use implies that there was
such as thing as a Native Literary “naissance”. Moreover, it downplays the importance of earlier Native
writers such as Elias Boudinot, John Rollin Ridge or Alice Callahan, whose contribution, however less
radical, during times of major cultural oppression and population movement were crucial to the survival of
Native culture. That said, it is true that the particular context of the 1970s encouraged the production of
Native American fiction and art, including productions which explored new avenues and media to express the
Native experience. Hence, for the purpose of this thesis, the term “Native American Literary boom” will be
preferred to “Renaissance”.
4
Many critics have extensively studied Native American contemporary novels. While
scholars such as Arnold Krupat, Paula Gunn Allen, and Craig Womack were preoccupied
with the problematic relationship between Native American literature and the EuroAmerican canon and attempted to describe its processes of hybridization, others like Blanca
Schortch and David Murray tried to define the shift from traditional patterns to
contemporary fiction in terms of translation. Yet, to this day, little research has been
dedicated to the contextualization of the recent evolution of this new tradition and to the
examination of the relationship between the contemporary Native socio-cultural context
and the way it is portrayed in fiction.
Context
Contemporary Native artists of the literary boom and beyond mentioned earlier use
the written word in order to express how Native contact with Whites has completely
changed their environmental, social, and cultural contexts. Their updated and hybridized
approach was conceptualized to express the present Native reality in a way that would
encompass its complexity and problematic aspects. As these changes in Native reality
inform contemporary Native American literary aesthetics, it is important to contextualize
this period before going any further in this topic..
Contact with Whites has profoundly modified Native Americans’ relationship to
such crucial elements of their daily life as landscape, natural resources, family, and nation.
Euro-American colonization and occupation, through its mass exploitation of natural
resources, its division of the North American territory, and its transformation of fertile land
for mass agriculture, created profound changes in the physical environment of Natives.
5
Moreover, encouraged by their Eurocentric vision of the world, White colonizers took
advantage of their technological advantage and their military manpower to enforce coercive
assimilation policies on Native American populations.
These policies included the
prohibition of most Native customs and Native languages, mandatory westernized
education for children, and the invention of the official Native status, all of which
contributed to alienate Native nations from their traditional customs and social
organization.
In addition to these alterations to everyday Native American life, the trauma of postcontact assimilation and exploitation affected Native ontology and cosmology.
The
separation of Natives from their traditions, and the generational gap caused by the forced
isolation of young Natives from their community, caused Natives to lose touch with their
traditional perspective on central concepts of their culture, such as time, and with the values
at the heart of Native culture and cosmology. The cultural dominance of Euro-Americans,
who imposed their own stereotypical vision of nativeness on Natives through art and
historical revisionism, and later through academia and media, significantly worsened this
loss of Native identity.
Euro-American society spread a distorted image of Natives that has kept evolving
from the Enlightenment to period nowadays.2 Early colonial portrayals usually oscillated
between the concepts of the “savage” and that of the “noble Indian.”
The former
emphasized the differences between Native traditions and “white civility,” and justified
assimilation by portraying Natives as cruel, brutal, sexually perverse, and violent.
2
For a more detailed description of Native stereotypes and White perspective on Natives, see Terry Goldie’s
Fear and Temptation: The Image of the Indigene in Canadian, Australian and New-Zealand Literatures as
well as Dagmar Wernitznig’s Europe’s Indian, Indians in Europe: European Perceptions and Appropriations
of Native American Culture from Pocahontas to the Present.
6
Meanwhile, the latter insisted on the idea that Natives were an “innocent” people before the
arrival of Europeans, and that the fact they were living in harmony with nature
approximated their lifestyle to what Jean-Jacques Rousseau3 described as the state of nature
in The Social Contract. According to this view, their lifestyle, because of its perceived
contemplative and wholesome nature, contained a form of nobility which was somewhat
“spoiled” by contact with civilization. Other important currents, most notably romanticism
and neoclassicism,4 later recuperated the same conflicting perspective of Natives.
This highly polarized stereotype of Native Americans as noble savages was still
exploited in the second half of the twentieth century with the rise in popularity of nonNative movements reclaiming Native cultural heritage as well as in popular culture.
Several authors, including Gretchen M. Bataille and Charles L.P. Silet, Thomas King, and
Ziauddin Sardar list various instances of misrepresentation and caricatural portrayals of
Natives in Euro-American film and television, their examples ranging from early John
Wayne movies (in which Euro-American heroic figures inevitably defeat Natives) to Walt
Disney’s Pocahontas (in which the Native princess, despite the nobility of her character,
nearly causes the downfall of her nation by having a relationship with a Euro-American
soldier). In spreading these stereotypical role models and in limiting the realistic and selfdetermined representations of Natives, contemporary media (represented by the movie
industry) reinforce Natives’ lack of agency. In other words, the “Imaginary Indian,” as
3
Rousseau did not coin the term “noble savage”. This expression was first used by Marc Lescarbot, a French
explorer, to satirically describe the freedom that Natives benefited from early on in colonization. For more
information, see the chapter entitled “The Origins of the Noble Savage” in Gyrus’ War & the Noble Savage:
A Critical Inquiry into Recent Accounts of Violence amongst Uncivilized Peoples.
4
The portrayal of Natives in Henry David Thoreau’s Walden and Kathadin, as well as the visual
representations of Natives seen in the paintings of Benjamin West and William Henry Powell, are all
examples of such imagery.
7
coined by Daniel Francis, silences Natives and prevents them from reclaiming their
ancestral culture on their own terms.
In post-contact reality, the after-effects of the Euro-American invasion have
complicated and problematized crucial aspects of Native life and identity, including
environment, society, and culture. As a response to an increasingly dislocated Native
reality, several authors of the 1970s including Leslie Marmon Silko, one of the important
figures of the late 1970s in Native American Literature, tell the story of characters finding
their way back to their traditional worldview and defining their contemporary identity as
Natives. The ontological regeneration involved in Silko’s prose is multifaceted, in that the
narrative involves various levels at which change was needed in Native life. Silko’s
Ceremony, for instance, suggests a re-evaluation of the relationship between the Laguna
Pueblo and the natural, social and cultural environments which surround them. This thesis
shall explain in further detail the processes that Silko uses to establish a narrative pattern
that echoes these various aspects of the same story and how these aspects inform one
another.
Despite the important transformations in the context of Native American Literature
in the last two decades of the twentieth century –notably in terms of exposure and critical
acclaim– the day-to-day life of Natives continued to suffer from identity, social, economic
and political issues which were similar to those experienced during the literary boom of the
1970s. Accordingly, later authors, including one of the most prominent figures of Native
fiction in the 1990s, Thomas King, recuperated Silko’s interest in regenerative patterns and
for a meaningful cultural reconnection for Natives. Much as it did for Leslie Marmon
Silko, academia recognized King both for his works of fiction and non-fiction. He also
8
shares with Silko the experience of being of Mixed-blood origins5, although both strongly
identify with their Native heritage. King’s most prominent novels, such as Medicine River
and Green Grass, Running Water, were published in the 1990s, which is roughly a decade
after the end of the Native American literary boom. His fiction, due to its different context,
diverges from Silko’s, Momaday’s or Vizenor’s earlier novels in many ways, from his
more assumed use of hybridized forms of narrative to his belief that Euro-American and
Native culture blend with one another. Moreover, King’s central characters are generally
from a middle-class background, most of them being university graduates or liberal
professionals, a status which mirrors the author’s own life as a scholar. This characteristic
distinguishes them from their counterparts of the 1970’s such as Silko’s Tayo, who mostly
had working class backgrounds. However, King’s different historical context does not
prevent him from building upon some of Silko’s predominant themes, such as the
importance of oral storytelling, the depolarization of Natives and Whites as ethnic and
cultural entities, as well as the need for regeneration at all levels within Native
communities. The study of these themes in both authors’ work will allow me, I believe, to
place both King and Silko within a continuum of Native resistance and self-determination.
The interesting contrast between their separate context and their similarities in
themes and aesthetics motivates the choice of these two particular novels. While Silko’s
novel focuses on the Pueblo nation, King’s work revolves around the Blackfoot. As the
5
Jennifer Brown and Theresa Schenck, in their chapter “Métis, Mestizo and Mixed-Blood” of A Companion
to American Indian History, explain the contentious aspects of the various terms employed to define the
offspring of interracial marriages. They explain that the term “Mixed-Blood”, contrary to its predecessor
“Half-Breed”, is considered less offensive by most North American Natives. Mixed-Blood Natives are
commonly thought of as the individuals who descend from both Euro-American (mostly British) and Native
American ancestors. The terms Métis, more often used to describe the communities in which individuals of
Native and Roman Catholic French Canadian communities have had children together, and the term Mestizo,
in which Euro-Americans of Spanish descent are the ancestors of the individuals, are also considered
acceptable terms in academic writing.
9
geographical distance is significant between both these nations, the landscape features are,
of course, radically different. This in turn influences each nation’s sacred relationship to
their physical environment, which creates important dissimilarities between both novels.
Moreover, Silko’s novel was written when Native American Literature had just begun to
receive more assiduous critical attention, while King’s works appear at a time when
theories on Native American Literature had been considerably expanded, which influenced
his self-awareness as a Native author.
Despite their different origins and contexts, Ceremony and Green Grass, Running
Water both refer to the recurrent theme of cultural alienation as an issue that reaches
outside of the realm of personal experience and illustrate the positive contribution that
successful cultural regeneration has on one’s own community. Moreover, both novels can
be considered within Jeanette K. Murray’s definition of “Initiation Stories” (161), in that
both Ceremony and Green Grass, Running Water tell the story of a protagonist6
experiencing an ambivalent relationship with his respective nations and Native American
identity. Early in their lives, both Tayo and Eli leave the reservation to find their place in
the Euro-American social structure; however, due to circumstances beyond their control
(the Second World War in the case of Tayo and the death of his wife and mother in the case
of Eli), they both return home psychologically wounded and find themselves incapable of
healing and moving on. Once they are engaged in a ritual of reconnection with their Native
traditions through direct contact with nature, the characters break free from their paralysis.
6
In the case of King’s Green Grass, Running Water, the “protagonist” is in fact replaced by a community
composed of several interconnected characters belonging to the same Blackfoot nation. That being said,
every character included in this group is experiencing a form of cultural regeneration. In this sense, it can be
argued that they are all, in a way, the components of the same quest, thus making each of them a protagonist.
Eli Stand Alone, the character on which this thesis focuses, is an important part of this collective quest.
10
As both novels come to an end, the reader is left with the hints of a return to balance
between the protagonist’s psyche and his environment. Furthermore, both authors use a
protagonist who has experienced directly the effects of White cultural hegemony on their
identity, which allows them to explore the theme of identity ambivalence in a profoundly
divided community. Both King’s and Silko’s novels are therefore comparable in their
general thematic structure despite the contextual differences mentioned earlier.
Thesis Statement
By means of an analysis of the identity quests of Tayo in Ceremony and of Eli Stand
Alone in Green Grass, Running Water, this thesis aims to demonstrate that despite the
different approaches and contexts of Leslie Marmon Silko’s and Thomas King’s, both
novels illustrate the progression of Native American literary tradition in redefining Native
identity and ontology. I intend to show how King has further developed and adapted to his
own historical and cultural context some thematic patterns that Silko used a quarter of a
century earlier. More specifically, I focus on the common pattern of departure and return
of Tayo and Eli, the protagonists of each novel.
Using their alienation from their
community and their traditional culture as a point of departure, this thesis follows the
progressive acceptance of their identity as cultural hybrids, which results, in turn, in their
healing from personal trauma and in their return to their communities as agents of change.
Throughout this transformation, nature plays a central role. Because myth is so
closely associated with the landscape where it was created, nature serves as an initial
gateway to the protagonists’ understanding of the central myths of their cultures, such as
that of the Sunman for the Laguna Pueblo and that of Coyote’s rain dance for the
11
Blackfoot.
Moreover, the analysis of Tayo’s and Eli’s encounters with natural elements,
such as the sun, the rain or the wind, will help me assess the progress of their cultural
reintegration. From a trigger for post-traumatic memories to a reminder of the need for
balance in both individuals and communities, nature is present in all steps of Tayo’s and
Eli’s reintegration process.
I will also analyze how reintegrating their community is another crucial step in the
protagonists’ cultural regeneration.
Much like with nature, Eli and Tayo’s awkward
interactions with society are initially a reminder of their difference from their peers. This
lack of meaningful contact with their peers causes them to suffer and sink deeper into
isolation. Upon their return to their respective reservations after the loss of a loved one, the
characters feel self-hate: their cultural hybridity makes them feel inadequate both in
mainstream Euro-American social hierarchy and in what is left of their traditional
community, whose structure has been disrupted by years of occupation and assimilation
policies. However, as they progress in their cultural regeneration, this same hybridity, I
will argue, is revealed to be an asset. Their role as intermediaries between Euro-American
and Native culture becomes their purpose within the community. Since the transformations
in the relationship between the protagonists and their community are simultaneous to their
return to nature and to their reintegration to traditional Native cosmology, it becomes clear,
I contend, that each of these processes are in fact three aspects –environmental, cultural and
social– of the same broader regenerative process.
In addition to exploring the links between nature, culture, and community in Tayo’s
and Eli’s return to their traditions, I will also study how such a process relates to the
particular context of contemporary Native American society.
I will analyze how the
12
evolution of issues such as repressive education, false portrayals of Native identity in media
and abusive use of natural resources between the publication of Ceremony and Green
Grass, Running Water is responsible for some of the discrepancies between Silko’s and
King’s style. The persistence of these environmental, social, and cultural problems in the
everyday life of Native communities accounts for the fact that they are central elements to
both novels.
Because they have consequences for the very identity process of
contemporary Natives and on their way to relate to both Whites and other Natives, these
issues remained at the core of the contemporary Native literary tradition throughout the
second half of the twentieth century.
This thesis proposes to compare two novels that share these similar thematic
features not to prove that King merely imitates Silko, but rather in order to better
demonstrate how these two novels are located along the same continuum of identity and
cultural reclamation while they each respond to their respective socio-historical contexts.
My approach is threefold: each of the three chapters of this thesis will focus on a particular
step of the regenerative process of the novels studied: re-acquaintance with the traditional
landscape and environment of the protagonist’s nation, acceptance of cultural hybridity as a
way to reaffirm identity and return of the protagonists to their communities to share their
healing experience. Throughout this thesis, I analyse and compare the particular episodes
of the novels which belong to each of these three steps towards regeneration, thus showing
that King and Silko belong to the same continuum in contemporary Native literature. In
addition, I establish connections between each author’s context and their particular way to
approach each step.
13
Outline of the Chapters
The first chapter of this thesis, “Back to the Wild: The Role of Nature as a Gateway
for the Protagonists’ Cultural Re-inscription in Ceremony and Green Grass, Running
Water,” explores the relationship between Natives and their natural environment in both
novels. The argument focuses on how various natural phenomena and features of the
landscape in Ceremony and Green Grass, Running Water have a double role as symptoms
and as cure of the Native American cultural malaise described in each of the works. The
authors use natural elements such as the sun and water as indicators of the characters’
psychological distress and cultural alienation.
In each novel, natural elements are
introduced as potentially helpful for the protagonists to heal from their respective trauma.
However, Tayo and Eli are initially incapable of recognizing these signs and feel
oppressed, rather than comforted, by nature. This difficult relationship with nature not only
demonstrates the depth of the protagonists’ psychological distress, but also the distance that
separates them from their traditions. In both novels, it is the direct contact with nature –
Tayo’s ascension of Mount Tayor and life in the cabin at the foot of the Duplessis dam for
Eli– that leads the protagonists to face their problems and reclaim their culture.
In
inhabiting the landscape that defined the cosmology of their people, the protagonists also
see how the exploitation of natural resources represents a Euro-American transgression
perpetrated upon nature, which echoes the trauma they experienced personally. Drawing
upon the theories of Paul Beekman Taylor on the sacredness and the secrecy of Native
traditions, as well as on Susan J. Scarberry’s ideas on the cultural significance of the
landscape for Natives, this chapter argues that Natives can access their traditional culture
14
only if they retrieve their original relationship with nature, for it is nature that dictates the
Native worldview.
In Ceremony, the analysis of Tayo’s psychological healing and identity quest
through his return to nature will contribute to an understanding of Silko’s broader argument
regarding Native cultural empowerment and social recovery. In reclaiming the myths and
the collective memory contained in the landscape he visits, Tayo allows nature to redefine
his identity and, later on, his role in the community. However groundbreaking, Silko’s
association of myth to nature and contemporary Native identity had to be revisited by her
literary successors in order to remain relevant through time. The final sections of the
chapter are dedicated to explaining how the evolution of the Euro-American
environmentalist movement between the 1970s and the 1990s encouraged Thomas King to
use a more nuanced approach. I will illustrate my argument using his portrayal of the link
between nature –more specifically water– and the characters, using the pools of water
accumulating around Blossom as a multifaceted symbol of both inertia and potential
regeneration.
The second chapter, “Post-Indians and Ecological Saints: Hybridization as a Key to
Solving Native Identity Crisis,” analyzes the acculturation that both protagonists experience
at the onset of each novel as well as their progression towards the resolution of their
identity conflict. I am particularly interested in how this process is influenced by the
interference of mainstream Euro-American culture with traditional myths, causing a
difficult relationship between contemporary Natives and their tradition. As they retrieve a
traditional Native cosmology and regain a lost sense of ontology through their experience
of nature, Tayo and Eli also realize that they cannot return to a past without Whites.
15
Consequently, they must embrace hybridization to rebuild their identity in their
contemporary, post-contact context. For both authors, once the protagonists are able to see
how alienation from Native tradition in the hopes of gaining approval from EuroAmericans contributes to their self-hate, they begin to distance themselves from their
projected identity and begin to define their identity outside of the constraints imposed by
White hegemony. Through a ceremonial ritual and a re-interpretation of ancient stories,
Tayo and Eli find a way to perceive reality in the regenerative perspective of Native
worldview, which, I contend, is at the heart of the entire regenerative process of each novel.
Once again, even though both authors promote hybridization and cultural regeneration
through nature as ways to avoid stereotyped and polarized visions of Native identity, major
changes in context between Silko’s and King’s eras influence the specific means through
which the characters’ return to their traditions is performed. This chapter will examine how
late twentieth century transformations of Native identity related to ethnicity and Natives’
relationship to nature influenced Silko’s and King’s style and inform some of the
discrepancies in their approach to hybridization.
Once the protagonists of each novel have re-established a healthy relationship to
their past and have found meaning in their Native traditions, their regeneration extends to
the rest of the community. The final chapter of this thesis, entitled “Reaching Back: The
Social Repercussions of Tayo and Eli’s Identity Quest,” analyzes the initial break of the
characters from their community and how their return home catalyzes regeneration for
other members of the nation. My argument is that Tayo’s and Eli’s social alienation is not
only a result of the general deconstruction of Native social fabric that the imposition of
Euro-American social standards upon Native communities has caused, but also of their
16
personal context. Indeed, to fulfill better the expectations of success that Euro-American
society and their peers impose on them, the protagonists have to leave a part of their Native
cultural heritage behind, including, most importantly, their conception of the world as
collaborative and circular. Despite these sacrifices, neither of them is fully accepted in
Euro-American society, which leaves both characters in a liminal space; thus, they are
prevented from relating to others and accessing the potentially helpful social network of
their community. Tayo’s mixed-blood origins, which make him a visible outcast, as well
the taboos of his mother’s abandonment and his cousin’s death, two sources of shame and
suffering for his aunt7, complicate this situation and make his cohabitation with his family a
constant struggle. Eli’s situation is different: his isolation is not caused by mixed origins;
rather, it is his voluntary escape to Toronto and his achievement of a higher socio-economic
status than his Blossom peers that cause his isolation. Incapable of relating to either Whites
or Natives, the protagonists initially choose to avoid social contact altogether and to flee to
deserted places in the wilderness, which triggers their regeneration process. Once the
characters successfully redefine their identity and retrieve the traditional Native ontology,
this deeper connection to Native culture allows them to transcend their difference and to
relate to their community.
This renewed bond encourages each of the characters to
contribute to their community by sharing their own experience and by taking a stand to stop
the cycle of self-hate that the linear worldview imposed by Euro-Americans has initiated.
7
Tayo’s aunt is his closest living relative upon his return from war. She became his legal guardian after
Tayo’s mother had abandoned him at a young age.
17
Theoretical Framework
One of the most challenging aspects of this thesis was the construction of a
framework that would be relevant and complete enough to support my comparison of Silko
and King in terms of the environmental, cultural and social facets of the regenerative
pattern they feature in their novels. In this section, I shall explain and justify more in depth
the terms and theories I chose in order to ground my arguments.
Building a valid framework for this project was complex for a number of reasons.
First, one of the most problematic aspects of this research is the authors’ unclear
relationship to the American literary canon. In fact, not only is the inclusion of Native
American literature under the umbrella of American literature one of the most debated
topics in Native American criticism, but the choice of King and Silko complicates the
situation in dividing the said canon between American and Canadian literature.8 While
Silko, a Laguna Pueblo woman born in New Mexico, is quite unanimously associated with
Native American literary movements, King’s relationship to the United States is less clear.
Despite his American citizenship, King chooses to use Alberta and Ontario as the backdrop
to his stories and is referred to as a Canadian author in most anthologies. This ambiguity
adds to the already existing debate on whether Native fiction is too culturally distinct to be
considered as a branch of American literature and, even, whether the literary production of
each nation shows enough similarities to be analyzed as a single entity.
8
For examples of diverging perspectives on this debate, see Arnold Krupat’s The Voice in the Margin: Native
American Literature and the Canon, Elvira Pulitano’s Toward a Native American Critical Theory and Craig
Womack’s Red on Red: Native American Literary Separatism.
18
For the purpose of this thesis, I chose to base my terminology on King’s own
recurring argument that borders are irrelevant to Native culture and to consider both King
and Silko as “North American Native” authors.9
For practical reasons, however, North
American Native literature, authors and culture are referred to as Native American in this
thesis –American referring here to the continent, not the country. This choice is in no way
an affirmation that Native Canadian and Native American cultures are one and the same.
Legislative, historical and cultural differences distinguish both countries with respect to
their interaction with local Native populations.
The rationale behind this common
terminology is based, rather, on the fact that most elements of context studied in this thesis,
namely the importance of the landscape in Native culture and the transformations of Native
social structure due to Euro-American acculturation policies, are shared experiences for
both the Laguna Pueblos and the Blackfoot. For similar reasons, I chose to use the term
Euro-American as short for North American of European descent. This term encompasses
Whites of both Canada and the United States. In addition to practical considerations of
length, this term helps me focus on the European cultural heritage of both American and
Canadian Whites, which is most important to my analysis of their influence in Native
cultural definition.
Several terms have been used to describe the power dynamics involved in the
cohabitation of Natives and Whites in the same territory, many of them deriving from postcolonial theory. This borrowing from post-colonialism is problematic because, as Elvira
9
The theme of disappearing boundaries is a renowned favourite of King. For instance, he evoked it in some
of his short stories, including “Borders”, where boundaries are more political and cultural, as well as “One
Good Story, That One”, where he transgresses the imaginary divisions between creation myths from different
religions. King uses border crossings as a way to illustrate his views on the political and the cultural
containment of Native American culture. In King’s opinion, such boundaries are absurd and inhibit the
development of Native identity. For more information, see Border Crossings: Thomas King’s Cultural
Inversions, by Arnold E. Davidson, Priscilla L. Walton, and Jennifer Andrews.
19
Pulitano briefly points out in Toward a Native American Critical Theory, contrary to what
transpired in African and many Asian countries, colonizers never left North American
territory, which makes the term “post-colonial” inappropriate for describing the Native
situation. Thomas King, in “Godzilla vs. the Postcolonial”, makes a more extensive and
more conclusive argument on the problematic aspects of including Native American
literature in postcolonial studies. In Red on Red: Native American Literary Separatism,
Craig Womack abandons altogether the term of post-colonialism that other authors, such as
Louis Owens and Arnold Krupat, had previously employed, and instead proposes the
concept of “post-contact”(5), which adequately portrays the changes emerging from the
encounter between Europeans and Natives without effacing the cultural heritage that they
each carried before their contact. Following King and Womack’s point of view, I chose to
use the term “post-contact”, as it will help me express the altering character of the Natives’
encounter with Euro-Americans without downplaying the pre-contact Native heritage and
its importance for contemporary Native culture or negating the continued presence of
Whites on Native territory.
As I will show in my review of the literature, the theoretical framework of an
important number of works of criticism on Native American Literature draws upon
ethnocriticism.10 A methodology based on the use of ethnographic data to understand
works belonging to a particular cultural group, ethnocriticism has proven to be helpful in
the study of the importance of traditional storytelling in Native American literature,
including in Ceremony and Green Grass, Running Water. However, the critical role of
myth to the analysis of Native American Literature has, in my opinion, occulted some other
10
For a more detailed definition of ethnocriticism as well as a comprehensive analysis of the implications of
applying the principles of ethnography to literary criticsm, see Arnold Krupat’s Ethnocriticism.
20
important aspects of Silko’s and King’s novels. As such, while still acknowledging the
relevance of some elements of great importance in the current body of criticism of both
authors, such as that on myth and oral tradition in their work, I wish to focus my analysis
on how regeneration is manifested in both novels in the portrayals of environment, social
interaction and culture. As a result, I will distance myself from the theories of ethnocritics
like Arnold Krupat to adopt a more multidisciplinary approach.
Because of the importance for my argument to properly contextualize Native
American context for both authors, the scope of my theoretical framework reaches far
beyond literary theory. More specifically in the sections contextualizing Silko’s and King’s
zeitgeist, data issued from Social Science is very important for making a detailed
exposition of the context from which each novel emerged.
More specifically, historical,
social, and anthropological research on the evolution of the environmentalist movement
and on the commodification of Native spirituality will be employed. My argument, for
instance, will recuperate the term “Ecological Saint” coined by William Young in Quest for
Harmony: Native American Spiritual Traditions, as to illustrate the idealization and the
misappropriation of Native Americans’ sacred relationship to nature by Euro-American
environmental lobby groups. This concept will, in turn, help me contextualize Eli Stand
Alone’s ambivalent feelings about his return to his homeland. This greater attention to
elements that belong outside of pure literary analysis allowed me to observe better how
Silko’s and King’s use of imagery responds to particular elements of their contemporary
context.
While the term “ecological saint” allows me to consolidate my analytical framework
for Eli Stand Alone’s relationship to nature and identity, I use another term, that of “post-
21
Indian,” to examine Tayo’s identity quest. Coined by Gerald Vizenor, post-Indian is a term
which aims at defining Native Identity in the context of post-contact North America. As
such, post-Indian is distinct from the concept of Native American in that the former focuses
more pointedly on the emergence from the shared traumatic experience of European
invasion common to all Native nations in North America. Vizenor justifies the use of the
term post-Indian by arguing that “Indians” and “Natives” have been co-opted by EuroAmerican culture. Post-Indian therefore offers an alternative terminology generated by
Natives themselves and emphasizes the revival of their own culture without altering its
fundamental collaborative characteristics. This term is relevant to my research because
post-Indian identity is consolidated by a desire to update Native heritage, a central
preoccupation in Silko’s novel. I use Vizenor’s term in the second chapter of this thesis to
suggest that Tayo reconstructs his own identity as a post-Indian, that is, as a Native who is
conscious of both the foundations of his own cosmology and of the cultural alterations
caused by White occupation and acculturation.
This thesis also uses archaeological and historical data to represent the changes that
occurred in the relationship between natural symbols in traditional Native culture and the
way contemporary Natives interpret them. For instance, I use Michael Zeilik’s research on
the importance of the sun in Laguna Pueblo culture as a point of departure to describe
Tayo’s cultural alienation, as he initially proves unable to use the celestial body as a helpful
symbol. Similarly, Lisa Aldred’s explanation of the commodification of Native reverence
for nature by Euro-American interests in "Plastic Shamans and Astroturf Sun Dances: New
Age and Commercialization of Native American Spirituality" provides me with helful
22
insights on how this phenomenon reverberates in King’s purposefully problematized
approach to nature images.
To complement my multidisciplinary framework, I will also employ a perspective
focused on the impact of the landscape on human imagination, borrowed from ecocriticism,
in order to explain the role of nature in Tayo and Eli’s identity quest. Eco-critics, such as
Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm, explore the links between the physical landscape and
its effects on people’s perception of the world and of their own identity.
Their edited
collection, The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology, most specifically its
introduction, in which Cheryll Glotfelty aptly describes the focus of eco-criticism, will
therefore support my contention that a return to nature and a physical occupation of the
land leads to a more balanced sense of self and a clearer perception of the world for the two
protagonists. Glotfelty and Fromm do not comment extensively on Native American
literature; they prefer to provide a more general overview of the different perspectives
found in ecocriticism and leave the specific analysis of Native American issues in ecocritism in their collection to other scholars such as Paula Gunn Allen or Leslie Marmon
Silko. However, their more general approach is important to my thesis, as it demonstrates
the determining role of the surrounding natural features including climate, landscape and
wildlife on an artist’s perception of the world and human beings’ role in the ecosystem.
Such a link is essential to support my explanation of the central role of Tayo’s and Eli’s
journey back to the wilderness in their broader regeneration process.
Thomas King’s The Truth About Stories, based on his 2003 Massey Lecture at
University of Toronto, is also a crucial source for this thesis. King’s speech emphasizes the
notion that the reappropriation and update of Native stories by Natives themselves is at the
23
heart of their culture’s salvation.
More specifically, the author’s idea that Native
stereotypes interfere between contemporary Natives and their roots, as well as his argument
about the role Euro-American authorities played in endangering Native identity through
status, will be central to my explanation of identity in both Silko’s and his own fiction.
Moreover, his insistence on the need for Natives to take an active part in their selfdefinition and in the defense of their culture will lead to an understanding of the
significance of Tayo’s and Eli’s progressive journey from passive observers to active
members of their communities.
To define more specifically the details of their journeys towards empowerment, my
theoretical framework will also use the work of Paul Beekman Taylor on the notions of
secrecy and the sacred. Indeed, in order to support my contention that the regeneration
found in both novels is intrinsically linked to the protagonists’ inclusion in the traditional
Native worldview, I intend to base my analysis on the findings of Beekman Taylor’s
“Silko’s Reappropriation of Secrecy.” In this 1999 essay, he observes that the reintegration
of contemporary Native novels within the secret and sacred context of oral tradition and
ceremonies can act as a way to revitalize tradition rather than weaken it. In fact, far from
representing a threat to Native culture, the reintegration of modern Natives into the
sacredness of the land and culture of their ancestors could be an effective way to mobilize
Natives for the defense of their political and cultural rights.
Beekman Taylor’s theory on secrecy is central to this research for several reasons.
Obviously, his use of Silko’s work to illustrate his argument about the importance of
updating and reappropriating the sacred and protected secrets of the Laguna Pueblo oral
tradition directly applies to my discussion of Tayo’s journey to Mount Taylor and back. In
24
addition, Beekman Taylor’s essay presents hybridity as an unavoidable step in the process
through which a contemporary Native individual can achieve cultural and social
reintegration and contribute positively to her environment. Without an update of Native
myth and an acceptance of post-contact alterations of Native communities, Beekman Taylor
argues, Native culture is bound to remain a static, dead artifact (49).
Both Silko’s and King’s novels greatly emphasize the importance for Tayo and Eli
to revive their roots even if contact with Euro-American culture and society has
transformed the world in which they live. To this end, they portray the mentor figures of
Old Betonie and the Four Elders as performing acts of cultural syncretism and they use
stylistic devices, such as the blending of myth and contemporary narrative, to stress the
importance of the re-examination of Native tradition. Because embracing hybridity as
described in Beekman Taylor’s essay is a recurrent theme and an important facet of the
regeneration process that unites both novels, I place his arguments at the heart of my own
discussion of Silko’s and King’s approach to the question.
In addition to King’s and Beekman Taylor’s theories, I base my reflection on both
novel’s discussion of regeneration on N. Scott Momaday’s explanation of the levels of
narration, published in his essay “Man Made of Words.” Momaday’s work is an important
component of the framework for my explanation of the interactions between nature,
history, myth and personal drama. He notes that Native American stories, inspired from
traditional oral tradition, tend to shape several narratives as concentric circles. This trait,
common to several contemporary Native authors, is crucial to understanding how the
protagonists’ direct contact with the landscape that witnessed the suffering of a Native
nation and that helped define the same nation’s folklore can act as a facilitator for an
25
individual to access his traditions and find means of communicating his personal
experience to the rest of the community.
Methodology
For this study, I wish to compare and contrast both novels from three
complementary perspectives: environmental, cultural and social. For each chapter of my
thesis, I intend to establish first a framework that is specific to each perspective, and then to
explain how a particular perspective interacts with the others in the overall regeneration
pattern of the novel.
By showing how the processes of regeneration function in a
multifaceted fashion in both novels, I will build my argument that Ceremony and Green
Grass, Running Water fall within the same thematic continuum.
I want to apply already existing theoretical frameworks on cultural hybridization
and affirmation to both novels. In more concrete terms, my methodology will involve close
readings of crucial scenes of the novels, in particular those related to descriptions of natural
elements, to the self-perception of the protagonists as outcasts, and to the interference of
Native myths with contemporary Native reality. I will also examine the regenerative
patterns of the two novels to isolate their phases of inertia and psychological distress,
destabilization and return to nature, and final return to a stable identity and to the
community.
In opting for a comparative approach, this study will allow me to better assess the
elements of thematic continuity in these novels by Silko and King, both important
representatives of their generations of Native American authors. As such, this type of
comparison has great potential, in that it helps synthesize the thematic development of
26
Native American literature since the boom of the 1970s; therefore, the comparative
approach provides a comprehensive method for analysing both novels.
As mentioned in the previous section, I chose to adopt three distinct perspectives to
analyze the concept of regeneration in Ceremony and Green Grass, Running Water:
environmental, social and cultural. So far, several critics have already explored some
aspects related to one or many of these perspectives in either Silko or King’s novels, but
they have not yet been studied together.
The following section will present a brief
overview of the most important critical studies of both novels and their particular contexts.
Literature Review
As mentioned in Connie Capers Thorson’s essay “Leslie Marmon Silko and her
Work,” a great deal of the initial body of criticism dedicated to Ceremony focused on issues
of gender, on the relationship between the protagonist and the landscape, as well as on the
simultaneous contemporary and ancestral rituals undergone in the novel. Edith Swan, one
of the most influential early critics of Silko’s work, covers several of these topics. In her
article “Feminine Perspectives at Laguna Pueblo: Silko's Ceremony,” she explains that
although the protagonist of Ceremony is a man, the novel revolves around a matrilineal
social structure. Moreover, she argues that the myths to which the author refers support a
feminocentric conception of the narrative, especially since the story is said to be told as
Spider Woman imagines it. This supports the traditional Laguna concept that “thought and
the word emanate from a woman” (310). In another article, “Laguna Symbolic Geography
and Silko's Ceremony,” Swan comments on the relationship between the symbolic value of
the landscape in Silko’s stories, and on how the natural environment that surrounds her
27
protagonists also tends to be associated with a feminine entity. Other authors, such as
Laura Coltelli, Robert Nelson, and Daniel White, also mention Silko’s particular
attachment to various elements of the landscape surrounding the Laguna Pueblo
reservation, notably in Silko’s later monograph Sacred Water. Using a perspective that
discusses Native authors more generally, Lee Schweninger confirms the importance of the
relationship between Natives and nature. In his essay “Writing Nature: Silko and Native
Americans as Nature Writers,” he draws from the writings of authors from various fields
related to Native American Studies (history, ecology, theology, etc.) and makes a
convincing case for the respect of Native populations for nature.11 While Swan’s articles
on gender issues in Ceremony will most likely remain peripheral to my study, I am
expanding some of her ideas concerning the sacredness of the Laguna landscape.12 In the
first section of my thesis, I examine Tayo’s journey to Mount Taylor and explain how
Silko’s reclaiming of Native land and the traditional relationship between Natives and
nature is portrayed as a mean for Tayo to reaffirm his Native identity.
In the aforementioned bibliographical essay “Leslie Marmon Silko and her Work,”
Swan also mentions that another crucial feature of Silko as a writer is her capacity to create
a narrative in which traditional oral myths and modern Native reality coexist and inform
each other. In his article “Indians in Indian Fiction: The Shadow of the Trickster,” Alan
Velie explains how Silko draws parallels between mythical figures of Laguna Pueblo
stories and the problems affecting the community in contemporary times. Susan Scarberry,
11
These authors include William Cronon, Vine Deloria Jr., Karen J. Warren, Christopher Vecsey, and Wilbur
R. Jacobs. See Schweninger’s article for a complete bibliography.
12
The centrality of feminine gender in Silko is an important feature of her work, and its contrasting character
to the patriarchal system of Euro-American society can be interpreted as an act of resistance. Yet, this
characteristic of Silko’s writing and its equivalent in King’s work will only be one of many elements
discussed in my chapter on the social analysis of the two novels.
28
in her article “Memory as Medicine: The Power of Recollection in Ceremony,” argues that
the transition from traumatic experiences to immemorial times is an important part of the
healing process that Tayo undergoes.
Much like Velie, she explains that it is this
reconnection to the traditions of the Laguna Pueblos that allows Tayo to heal truly from his
experience in the Second World War and to find a balance between the destructive and
constructive power of memory. Similarly, Pauline Morel emphasizes how the recurrent
trope of circularity in the mythical narrative patterns of Storyteller, a later collection of
short stories written by Silko, also highlights the author’s preoccupation with tradition and
myth.
This connection between Silko’s fiction and myth is very important, but has also
been criticized by authors such as Paula Gunn Allen and Jana Sequoya for their ambiguity.
In her article “Special Problems in Teaching Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony,” Gunn
Allen, Silko’s contemporary, explains how the author’s recuperation of traditional Laguna
mythical figures and references paradoxically profanes the sacredness of traditional
storytelling. Thus in retelling the stories of her people and reviving them in novel form,
Silko, according to Gunn Allen, challenges the secrecy that normally surrounds them.
Sequoya makes a similar point by raising ethical concerns about Silko’s direct recuperation
of sacred story cycles. She explains, for instance, that there is a contradiction in the fact
that Native American authors represented in the American literary canon are precisely those
who contribute to “blur[ring] the differences between secular and sacred uses of story”
(cited in Beekman Taylor 27). This attitude causes in turn a greater misinterpretation of
myth by Euro-American literary critics and Natives themselves.
29
Paul Beekman Taylor, in his essay “Silko’s Reappropriation of Secrecy,”
acknowledges Gunn Allen’s and Sequoya’s arguments, but he also nuances them
significantly, explaining how the breaking of tribal secrecy can also be a way of reclaiming
and reappropriating a cultural vitality which had been lost after Native contact with
Europeans. Helen Jakoski, in her essay “To Tell a Good Story,” agrees with Paul Beekman
Taylor’s idea that Silko’s use of myth and sacred elements of Pueblo culture is not
necessarily as problematic as Gunn Allen and Sequoya suggest. She uses Silko’s short
story “The Man to Send Rain Clouds” as an example of the dynamic character of myths:
The Man to Send Rain Clouds offers, in contrast, a sense of culture not as a
monologue whose purity must be maintained regardless of the cost, but as a
dynamic process, a matter of strategic negotiations, respectful deliberation
and consultation, a sensitivity to nuances of communication, and above all a
sense of proportion regarding which things are matters of principles that
must be maintained and which are secondary means that may be adjusted to
suit the occasion” (Jakoski 94).
Thus in allowing myths, such as those about the retrieval of the rain clouds and the
encounter between Yellow Woman and the Sun Man, to materialize in contemporary
contexts, Silko does not profane her own culture, but instead contributes to its perennity
and livelihood. This concept will be crucial to my thesis, as it supports the idea that
hybridization and reappropriation by contemporary Natives of Native culture is a normal
process rather than a loss for the community. Linda Krumholz, in her essay “Native
Designs,” also isolates interesting characteristics of Silko’s relationship with traditional
Native narratives using Storyteller, her collection of short stories, as an example. Drawing
30
upon the work of Arnold Krupat and Hertha Wong, she explains that Silko, in her use of a
narrative style inspired by collaborative storytelling, denies the existence of one particular
narrative authority. This style, diametrically opposed to the focus on the narrative “I,”
typical of Euro-American culture, highlights the sense of fragmentation and diversity that
can be found in the book. In this thesis, I argue that the permeability of the myth to cultural
hybridization and its capacity to be revitalized by contemporary Native experience is one of
the main traits of continuity between Silko and later Native American authors such as
Thomas King.
In Border Crossings: Thomas King’s Cultural Inversions, Arnold E. Davidson,
Priscilla L. Walton and Jennifer Andrews use King’s recurrent themes of trespassing and
the pushing of boundaries as a way to theorize the author’s approach to culture and
hybridity. They contend that the “border crossings” performed in his novels at various
levels (culture, literary genre, identity, medium) act as a way to subvert the very notion of
boundary and division within the context of post-contact North America.
Davidson,
Walton, and Andrews also explain that King’s “trickster effect” supports this subversion.
Not only does he use the figure of the trickster to create a counter-discourse to the grand
narratives of Euro-America, but he also tricks, the authors argue, the reader himself into
deceitful narrative strands. In trumping the reader and making them feel like they are not in
control of the story they are reading, King thus reverses the power dynamics between
reader and fiction. The subversive character of the trickster relates to Linda Krumholz’s
analysis of Silko’s Storyteller, mentioned earlier, in which she explains that the reader
himself undergoes an initiation to the ways of Native storytelling: “Leslie Marmon Silko, in
her book Storyteller, resists appropriation by initiating the reader into a Native American
31
reading practice that defies and subverts the Master Narratives. Rather than offering us a
new ‘Native Design’ for commodification, Silko has designs on her readers (63).” In my
thesis, I shall explore this deconstruction of boundaries as another manifestation of the need
for hybridization in both novels of both authors.
Another element of particular interest in the current body of criticism on Thomas
King is the clash between the “day-to-day Native” versus the commodified image of the
Native that Euro-American society created. This commodified image, as mentioned earlier,
is often derived from the concept of the “noble savage” dating back to the early phases of
colonization in America. George R. Healy, in his article “The French Jesuits and the Idea
of the Noble Savage,” explains how the representation of Natives as “noble” because of
their deep connection to the cycle of nature was propagated early in the eighteenth century
by philosphers of the Enlightenment, such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Baron de
Lahontan, as well as by religious communities, which were actually in contact with
Natives, such as the Jesuits.
This concept of the “noble Indian” was later recuperated and commodified by EuroAmerican currents such as the New Age movement. Laurie Anne Whitt, in her essay
“Cultural Imperialism and the Marketing of Native America” explains how this
decontextualized and idealized appropriation of the traditional values and customs of
Natives, an extension of the concept of noble Indian, became a new form of oppression that
was both problematic and harmful to Native culture. She defines this new form of EuroAmerican oppression as follows:
When the spiritual knowledge, rituals, and objects of historically
subordinated cultures are transformed into commodities, economic and
32
political power merge to produce cultural imperialism.
A form of
oppression exerted by a dominant society upon other cultures, and typically
a source of economic profit, cultural imperialism secures and deepens the
subordinated status of those cultures (171).
Hence Whitt demystifies what could have been interpreted as a positive sign of interest in
Native American culture by New Age aficionados as a mere extension of the oppressive
colonial dynamics between Whites and Native Americans. Rebecca Tsosie also describes
the ethical and cultural problems caused by this partial appropriation of Native culture in
her article “Reclaiming Native Stories: An Essay on Cultural Appropriation and Cultural
Rights.”
Drawing upon the theories of Lenore Keeshig-Tobias, Tsosie explains the
potential dangers of cultural appropriation, which she describes as “taking, from a culture
that is not one’s own, intellectual property, cultural expressions and artifacts, history and
ways of knowledge (300).” Her analysis, which focused primarily on the legal impact of
such cultural appropriation, is interesting as a contextual complement reinforcing Whitt’s
argument.
The omnipresent commodified Native imagery described by Whitt and Tsosie, King
himself argues in The Truth about Stories, has the perverse effect of imposing an identity
that entered in conflict with traditional Native culture. Because of the dominating voice of
Euro-American media, these false images too often supplant Native identity, both for
Whites and Natives themselves: “to give [Natives] identities, to reveal them to be actual
people, would be, I suppose, a violation of the physical laws governing matter and
antimatter, that the Indian and Indians cannot exist in the same imagination” (The Truth
About Stories 36). As a way to oppose resistance to an inaccurate and potentially harmful
33
Native caricature, King and many contemporary Native artists are reclaiming traditional
culture on their own terms. However, as discussed earlier, the post-contact context of the
twentieth century challenges this quest for a new identity in which any attempt to isolate
the Native American experience from the influence and the attention of Euro-Americans
would be absurd.
King, as such, speaks of a tension between Native tradition and
perception that is similar to his 1970s predecessors.
Value of the Proposed Study
This study is of particular interest in that it combines the study of two important
novels of the Native American corpus which are thematically similar in many ways but yet
also very distinct in terms of context. I aim to highlight the similarities between the two
novels in order to better define the socio-historical gap which separates them and to
hypothesize on the correlation between persistent issues in Native communities and their
representation . Considering the relatively short history of academic attention given to
Native American contemporary fiction, it is not surprising that this type of longitudinal
study seems to be lacking in the current body of criticism.
Far from having the pretention to complete an extensive description of the evolution
of recent Native American Literary tradition with this study, my main contribution to the
field shall reside in the construction of a framework for more extensive studies of this kind.
Moreover, as mentioned earlier, my pragmatic framework will, I hope, help draw more
attention to the links between real-life conditions of Native Americans and their artistic
production, thereby orienting criticism away from extensively debated questions of
34
authenticity and legitimacy13. Furthermore, this study will allow for a better understanding
of the interactional dynamics between the various levels of regenerative patterns in both
novels thanks to its use of a structure which encompasses three different perspectives and
calls for an interaction between various parameters of the socio-historical context of
Natives.
These parameters include, for instance, the representation of Natives in media,
the trauma of the destruction of traditional social structure and the hybridization process
caused by contact with Euro-American culture. In using such a diverse framework, this
thesis will allow a more thorough appreciation of the multifaceted themes of regeneration
and reintegration in all their complexity.
13
For more information, see Deborah L. Madsen’s essay collection Native Authenticity: Transnational
Perspectives on Native American Studies.
35
Chapter 1
Back to the Wild: The Role of Nature as a Gateway for
the Protagonists’ Cultural Reintegration in Ceremony
and Green Grass, Running Water
36
37
The Socio-Historical Context of the 1970s: A Fertile Ground for Native
American Fiction
As a result of the debates on identity politics and the groundbreaking social changes
of the preceding decade, the 1970s in the United States represented an important transitory
phase in many aspects of daily life for minority groups. Indeed, the rapidly evolving sociopolitical context of the 1960s14 contributed to establishing new social norms15 in which
minorities were hoping for equality of rights and opportunities.
During this period,
American citizens of diverse backgrounds attempted to redefine their identity and their
place in the more complex and fragmented society in the wake of the Civil Rights
movement. Such redefinition processes contributed to a general climate of questioning,
doubt and uncertainty about the future.
Native Americans were no exception to these social transformations. After they
obtained new status and rights in 1968 with the “Indian Civil Rights Act,”16 they
radicalized their demands and organized their resistance movements more thoroughly in the
1970s with the creation of the American Indian Movement (AIM) and with widely
broadcasted actions, including the occupation of Alcatraz in 1969 and the siege of
14
While minority groups such as African Americans, Mexican Americans and Native Americans were
beginning to claim more actively their civil rights, the discontent about the Vietnam War was deeply changing
the relationship between the State and its citizens. The introduction of the birth control pill and the
liberalisation of many aspects of women’s lives such as marriage and professional work are also good
examples of the changes in the United States over the 1960s.
15
These opportunities included the growing interest for the perspective and the voice of ethnic “others” in the
academic world as well as in art, a set of judicial modifications aimed at ending overt discrimination and
segregation towards minority groups, etc.
16
The Indian Civil Rights Act granted Native American citizens with similar rights to those in the American
Bill of Rights. According to Matthew M. Fletcher’s entry in the Encyclopedia of American Civil Liberties,
“The main differences include the absences of an establishment clause, a right to counsel at the government’s
expense, and the lack of a right to a jury trial in civil cases. Also, the ICRA prohibited Indian nations from
sentencing convicted criminals to more than six months in prison and $500 in fines (later amended to one year
and $5000) (Fletcher 1)”. These differences were claimed to have been established by White authorities in
order to respect some aspects of the Native tribal system and the Native context.
38
Wounded Knee in 1973.
However, in reaffirming their culture and their political
independence, Natives also had to cope with the alterations that post-contact17 reality had
caused in their daily lives, including the mass displacements of Native populations into new
territories, the loss of contact with traditional stories because of the devastating effects of
assimilation and acculturation process, as well as the proliferation among Natives of
modern devices, such as cars and rifles. Native Americans, while agitating for their rights,
thus also experienced a phase of cultural redefinition.
Generally speaking, the lifestyle of most Native nations prior to the arrival of
Europeans was considered to be ecologically sustainable:18 not only were they using
resources in a way that ensured the continuity of the species they depended on, but their
spiritual and cultural life was also intricately linked to the landscape, the natural cycle of
nature and seasonal changes.19 That being said, like many other aspects of their lives,
Natives’ relationship to the environment was greatly complicated once they came in contact
with Europeans. The integration of Native populations into the mercantilist system of
European colonialism encouraged them to use resources for a commercial purpose rather
than for self-sustenance, which completely changed the relationship between Natives and
17
For this particular section as well as for the rest of this thesis, I wish to refer to a concept coined by Craig S.
Womack in order to describe the power dynamics involved in the cohabitation of Natives and Whites on the
same territory. In Red on Red: Native American Literary Separatism, the critic abandoned altogether the
problematic referents of colonialism employed by other authors and instead brought forth the concept of
“post-contact”(5), which adequately portrays the altering character of the encounter between Europeans and
Natives without understating their previous respective cultural background. This particular term will be
important to my framework, as it will help me express the altering character of the Natives’ encounter with
Euro-Americans without downplaying the pre-contact Native heritage and its importance for contemporary
Native culture.
18
That said it would be inaccurate to consider that all Native populations lived in harmony with nature.
Archeological research demonstrates that some civilizations as advanced and as prominent as the Mayas in
the Yucatán Peninsula collapsed in part because of their unsustainable lifestyle, which included
monocropping and an abusive use of resources (Santley, Killion and Lycett, “On the Maya Collapse”).
19
For more details on the links between natural elements and Native spirituality, consult William Young’s
Quest for Harmony.
39
the natural resources available. Moreover, as explained in Joy Porter’s “Historical and
Cultural Contexts to Native American Literature,” the progressive appropriation of land by
Whites forced Natives to relocate into areas in which natural resources were either
inappropriate for their traditional customs or simply too scarce to ensure the survival of all
members of the community (51-53).
With the arrival of the Cold War and the rise of consumer society, more problematic
issues related to the management of natural resources and land property between Natives
and the environment began to appear.20
The philosophy of post-World War II
consumerism further encouraged the overexploitation of resources and the linear
conception of production chains.21 Native American populations were unfortunately much
more than simple observers in this process. For instance, the destruction of Native territory
in order to exploit power resources, such as rivers and uranium, an essential component for
warfare and consumer goods production, significantly changed the landscape, which
traditionally defined local Native populations’ identity and customs.
Hence the
popularization of consumerism had the double consequence of altering Natives’ lives with
respect to both their physical surroundings and the significance of the landscape for local
nations.
These changes in nature and in the traditional way of life of Native populations also
introduced another problem: because of the population displacements and alterations of the
environment imposed on them, Natives were confronted with the fact that they were no
20
For more information on the important events of Native American history during the era between the major
Native population displacements in the United States and the Cold War, see the contextual essays contained in
The Cambridge Companion to Native American Literature.
21
Concrete examples of the effects of post-World War II consumerism on American society and culture,
including the rise of suburbia, the growing importance of television and the democratization of cars can be
found in Consumer Society in American History: A Reader, edited by Lawrence B. Glickman, as well as in
The Consumer Society, edited by Neva R. Goodwin, Frank Ackerman and David Kiron.
40
longer able to sustain themselves while respecting nature as they did before. In order to
survive, they increasingly relied on the rations Euro-American authorities supplied and
some even adopted a consumer lifestyle. Considering this important change in customs,
Native claims to ancestral rights, such as fishing and hunting, became particularly
ambiguous when taken out of their historical context, for the very notion of “ancestral
lifestyle” is difficult to grant to an individual who owns modern devices, such as
snowmobiles or motorized fishing boats.
As a result of the post-contact reality,
contemporary Natives had to revisit and update their reclaiming of traditional Native
lifestyle and beliefs, especially since a return to the traditions of the past seemed
unattainable.
As an example of this process, Leslie Marmon Silko had to employ a new way to
approach narration in order to express a perspective on contemporary Native American
culture that was accurate in the fragmented and ambiguous context of the late 1970s. Far
from being a mere adaptation of traditional Native stories, Ceremony follows the same path
as some other milestone works of the Native American literary boom, including N. Scott
Momaday’s House Made of Dawn, and Gerald Vizenor’s Darkness in Saint Louis
Bearheart, in placing contemporary Native life at the heart of the narrative.
Silko’s
characters evolve in a fragmented reality in which war, technology, and Euro-American
cultural dominance profoundly affect Native American identity. It is only once Tayo
engages in Old Betonie’s multifaceted ceremony that he begins to find meaning in the
foundations of traditional Native American culture, which include circularity, community,
and storytelling.
41
Circularity is a central concept in Native American culture. For most Native
American nations, including the Laguna Pueblos (Leslie Marmon Silko’s nation), the world
and the concept of time are considered to be a series of polycentric cycles. According to
Barton Wright’s Pueblo Cultures, the world in the Pueblo cosmology is conceptualized as a
series of concentric quadrangles. He also explains that “Human life follows a cyclical
movement from one plane to the other returning again and again” (9). This interpretation
of the world dominated by cyclical and circular patterns opposes the sequential
organization that dominates Euro-American linear philosophy, in which the notion of
progress is central.
Such an opposition is visible when comparing Native and Euro-
American interpretations of concepts such as time and human relationships. In Betonie’s
ceremony, the sand patterns and the sacred hoops that he uses represent circularity by
symbolizing the cyclical patterns of nature and the equilibrium that must be retrieved both
on the reservation and in Tayo’s psyche.
The predominance of circularity in Native culture also influences the social
structure of Native communities; they organize society in collaborative patterns, or circles
of people, rather than in a rigid hierarchy. Typically, most Native populations functioned
within a tribal system, which was, most of the time, locally-based and gave great
importance to family kinship. Tribal systems often had a considerable influence on family
issues. As pointed out in Duane Champagne’s Social Change and Cultural Continuity
among Native Nations, their foundations were rooted in the nation’s spiritual views, most
specifically in preoccupations with balance and both social and individual autonomy.
Accordingly, “each individual in the social community must be respected as an autonomous
power being, and therefore each individual has the right to provide input into any decision-
42
making process” (Champagne 14). The author also insists on the fact that the Native sense
of community was not limited to humans, but rather that it included all living beings. In
forcing Tayo to reconnect to natural elements and, eventually, to his peers, Betonie’s
ceremony reaffirms the importance of community for Native Americans.
Pauline Morel’s master’s thesis “Circularity, Myth and Storytelling in the Short Fiction
of Leslie Marmon Silko” points out that the concept of circularity is also intimately linked
to the way Native populations relate to oral storytelling. Oral tradition is characterized by
its dynamic nature and its constant evolution. Narrative circularity lies within the idea that
each new storyteller initiates a new cycle, a new season, as it were, for the narrative. As
new people tell different stories in evolving contexts through time, the oral tradition
absorbs current events and outsider interference, which, in turn, triggers transformations
within the existing body of stories. This addition of new elements can help the cycle to
update itself and, in so doing, allow the stories to remain relevant in a contemporary
context. In other cases, as in the “lies” in Ceremony, they act in an invasive fashion and
conceal the foundations of the system, thus making it dysfunctional. Tayo, through the
stories he accesses during Old Betonie’s ceremony, becomes more aware of the world he
lives in and of the origins of his problems. Once he knows the stories that preceded him, he
can, in turn, tell them to the rest of the community while adding his own experience to it,
thus becoming a storyteller himself and perpetrating the cycle of stories.
Circularity, community, and storytelling are central concepts in the redefinition of
modern Native American culture because they remain relevant to contemporary Natives
despite significant changes in their socio-historical context.
In Ceremony, Silko
emphasizes their importance by showing how Tayo’s long journey towards healing from
43
war trauma echoes his progress towards a deeper understanding of these cultural constants.
Both in form and in the recurrent themes of her novel, the author employs these three
elements as a way to reclaim the Laguna Pueblo traditions without ignoring the
consequences of the post-contact context of the 1970s.22
Ceremony as a Step towards the Revival of Native Culture through
Nature
Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony was praised for its ability to revive the traditional
Native worldview and storytelling style while still acknowledging the new reality that
contemporary Natives face every day. Far from taking her protagonist back to a past
devoid of Euro-American presence, Silko prefers to show that the mythical world of her
ancestors continues to exist beneath the surface of modern life. What Tayo needs to do to
access its meaning is to learn to decode the signs that surrounded him all along. In Tayo’s
progressive construction of his identity, nature plays a vital role by serving as a gateway
towards fundamental Native myths and values.
The ecological balance of nature
simultaneously exemplifies circularity, community and storytelling. Consequently, the
understanding of nature as a system of interrelated and dynamic elements eventually allows
the protagonist to understand his own culture.
Tayo’s initial hostile relationship to natural elements, like the sun, illustrates Silko’s
use of nature as an indicator of her protagonist’s alienation and despair. In their cultural
22
Silko’s use of form as a way to illustrate the Native world view is a crucial aspect of her fiction. Several
critics of Ceremony have commented on her simultaneous use of various levels of narrative voice, thus
recuperating the concept of the four levels of narration explained by N. Scott Momaday in his seminal essay,
“Man Made of Words.” For more information on Silko’s use of form as a means of expression, see “Circular
Designs in Ceremony” by Robert C. Bell and “Tradition and Narrative Form in Leslie Marmon Silko's
Ceremony” by Claire Keyes.
44
traditions, the Laguna Pueblo considered the sun as an irreplaceable agent in the balance of
life: not only is the character of “Sun Man” one of the most important mythical figures of
their oral tradition, but their calendar, according to Michael Zeilik, was also based on astute
observations of the sun’s progression across the sky.23 Considering the Laguna Pueblo’s
reverence for the sun, it would be logical that Tayo, in a time of particularly acute
psychological distress, would turn to such symbols of it for comfort and meaning.
However, Silko’s imagery represents the exact opposite in the novel. For instance, in
the first scene featuring the character, the light of the sun that infiltrates through the
window of the ranch becomes an automatic reminder of past memories. The yellow dawn
light evokes Tayo’s time spent with Josiah tending to the spotted cattle. As both his uncle
and the cattle went missing during his absence, the sun triggers a feeling of loneliness
despite its warmth and golden colour. Silko’s allusion to “memories tangled up with the
present” (Silko 6) reinforces Tayo’s feeling of restlessness before his incapacity to
transcend these memories. As the color scheme and intensity of the sun changes, the
associations between the sun and a sense of emptiness become clearer: “The sun was
climbing then, and it looked small in that empty morning sky. He knew he should eat, but
he wasn’t hungry anymore” (9). Here, the perceived smallness of the sun in comparison to
the empty sky mirrors Tayo’s hunger, a physical sign of emptiness that he seems reluctant
to change. This repressed hunger, in the perspective of the entire novel, foreshadows a
hunger for memory and for genuine desires for identification and re-inscription in Native
culture that are still dormant within the character.
23
See Zeilik’s article “The Ethnoastronomy of the Historic Pueblos, 1: Calendrical Sun Watching” for a more
complete analysis of the importance of the sun in traditional Pueblo culture.
45
At this point in the novel, Tayo’s association of the sun with negative emotions remains
relatively vague despite its recurrence. It is only a few pages later, when the reader
discovers how the light of the sun is intimately linked to Tayo’s feeling of guilt about the
death of his cousin Rocky, that the source of his emptiness is clarified:
He stood outside the train depot in Los Angeles and felt the sunshine; he saw palm
trees, the edges of their branches turning yellow, dead gray fronds scaling off,
scattered over the ground, and at that moment his body had density again and the
world was visible and he realized why he was there and he remembered Rocky and
he started to cry.” (15)
In closely observing the interaction between the appearance of natural elements and Tayo’s
behaviour in this passage, it is possible to state that the sun and the drought that it caused
“shed light” on Tayo’s traumatic experience at war. Silko’s overuse of the word “and”
contributes to expressing the haunting nature of Tayo’s associations of the sun with the
past, as the repetition of the conjunction evokes the cadenced rhythm of an unstoppable
march or the sound of a machine. This strong rhythmic effect echoes both the coercive and
technological character of the army, two elements that have no equivalent in Native
American culture. They thus contribute to Tayo’s alienation. The trauma of being a war
prisoner in the Philippines and the trauma of leaving his life behind to join the army blend
together and become difficult to distinguish from one another. This type of confusion
between war and life on the reserve is repeated later in the novel when Tayo mixes the
distress of nuclear attack victims in Hiroshima and Nagasaki with the suffering caused by
the exploitation of uranium on Native land.
46
Tayo’s feeling of oppression at that moment is repeated several times in the first
scenes of the novel. As soon as the sun is mentioned in memory or in actuality, the
protagonist is immediately brought back to vivid memories of his experience as a war
prisoner, which culminated with the death of his cousin/brother Rocky in the Philippines.
This phenomenon is recorded as a diagnostic symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder
(PTSD) in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV). PTSD is
described as “intense psychological distress at exposure to internal or external cues that
symbolize or resemble an aspect of the traumatic event” (American Psychiatric Association
428). In Tayo’s case, the sun functions as a “cue” that continually brings him back to the
key moment when he lost hold of Rocky’s blanket and proved unable to save his life. The
re-enacting of this particular scene is , for Tayo, inescapable, as it is the sun, an
omnipresent symbol, which triggers it. Tayo, incapable of avoiding sunlight completely, is
constantly forced back into the past, which prevents him from progressing in any way.
Silko’s association of the sun with trauma and paralysis is powerful. First, it contributes to
illustrating how Tayo and the forces of nature are at odds; second, her use of the sun as
signifier of trauma suggests that it is his cultural alienation, rather than his experience at
war, that causes and maintains Tayo’s psychological distress.
In Ceremony, nature is initially portrayed as a contributor to Tayo’s post-traumatic
paralysis. Because of Tayo’s incapacity to connect with potentially helpful cultural cues
such as the sun, Ku’oosh’s medicine proves to be insufficient to heal him from his trauma.
To break out of his psychological and cultural paralysis, Tayo must undergo a new, more
complex ceremony, one in which he will come in direct contact with nature and with
himself. Upon Ku’oosh’s recommendations, Tayo meets Mixed-Blood medicine man Old
47
Betonie, who leads him through a ceremonial journey aimed at curing the protagonist’s
incapacity to recognize nature as part of his own self.
The process, consisting of a
collection of half-traditional, half-modern steps, involves travelling to Mount Taylor as
well as to other sacred sites of the Laguna Reservation.
The transforming effects of Tayo’s return to nature are exemplified in the section of
the novel describing the protagonist’s quest to free Josiah’s Mexican cattle. Guided by Old
Betonie’s visions and instructions, Tayo finds himself enduring the hardships of the
landscape, the cold in particular, in a quest for the stolen spotted cows. Ts’eh, a freespirited woman, helps Tayo and offers him hospitality when he approaches Mount Taylor.
The woman’s independent and warm behaviour incarnates the opposite of the other women
in Tayo’s life, especially Auntie.24 As their relationship develops and their intimacy grows
more intense, Tayo starts genuinely caring for the woman.
In this combination of
rediscovery of the landscape of his ancestors and of positive human contact, Tayo finds the
strength to face his duty to free the cattle.
Silko emphasizes how Tayo grows closer to nature with each step of his journey.
For instance, after spending the night with Ts’eh, Tayo notices that “sunshine from the
window made a big square on the floor, and something in the silence of the room was warm
and comfortable like this sunlight” (Silko 184). In this scene, the same sunrise that had
carried such negative connotations at the onset of the novel becomes a synonym of warmth
and happiness. Through the changes in the protagonist’s interpretation of the sun from
24
For more information on the role of women and on feminist readings of Ceremony, see Lisa Orr’s article
“Theorizing the Earth: Feminist Approaches to Nature and Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony.”
48
oppressive to welcoming upon meeting with Ts’eh, Silko shows the links between positive
human contact, nature, and Tayo’s progression towards healing.
Silko also hints at the crucial importance of nature in Tayo’s quest to Mount Taylor
through the use of the recurrent pattern of the guiding constellations. This pattern is
replicated in the image of the pollen on the mountain lion’s pawprints, on the yellow dots
on the snake’s skin, as well as on the speckled coat of the missing cattle. The coherence of
these symbols demonstrates how nature, as a system which includes animals, plants,
minerals and celestial bodies, points Tayo in the right direction. The ecosystem as a whole,
united by recurrent symbols, calls for Tayo to join it. It is via those signs that he can
complete his own quest for healing.
Tayo’s direct experience of the difficult physical conditions of life in the wilderness
is interlinked with his healing process.
Throughout his trip to Mount Taylor, the
protagonist is often described as touching, hearing or seeing various natural elements.
Whether it is when he encounters the mountain lion, when he digs the ground beneath the
fence with his bare hands, when he hides in the bushes or when his face is resting against
the snow, Tayo’s senses are placed in direct contact with nature. The journey to Mount
Taylor allows Tayo to become reacquainted with the physical setting of his community so
that the landscape is no longer made of “unrecognized hills” (7). During this reacquaintance with nature, the story of White appropriation of the mountain and the legends
of the hunters that inhabited Mount Taylor centuries ago are simultaneously retold in
Tayo’s head. Revisiting the mountain also means revisiting difficult childhood and
adolescence memories as an unwanted Mixed-Blood. As his journey progresses, Tayo
slowly realizes that the mountain was not only the backdrop of his own personal tragedies,
49
but its sacred character also makes it a space of memory for the entire Laguna Pueblo
community.
Direct confrontation with nature therefore leads him to see beyond the
elements which prompted his personal trauma and to discover the land’s intrinsic spiritual
and social significance.
The description of Tayo digging under the fence illustrates this revelation with vivid
imagery: “After the first ten feet of cutting and bending back the wire, his knees went
numb; he felt the cold air on his skin and knew that his Levis were worn through at both
knees” (190). The destruction of Tayo’s brand-name jeans as he digs in the ground and
feels the cold symbolizes the separation between his consumerist lifestyle represented by
the Levis and his search for meaning, represented by the digging. In other words, Tayo’s
physical encounter with the soil not only brings him closer to his cultural roots and to
healing, but also allows him to free himself from the oppression of Euro-American
mainstream culture. In addition, the symbolism of the Levis jeans is a particularly clever
choice in Silko’s description of the scene. Levis, a cult brand in American history and a
flagship of the Euro-American working class, encapsulates the All-American ideal
projected on Tayo and the other veterans. Like the cattle, Tayo was “branded” by his EuroAmerican jeans, condemned to remain captive in the standards of a culture whose standards
he cannot meet. Considering the significance of Levis in American culture, the rips in his
jeans become a powerful symbol of the changes that begin to occur in Tayo’s identity at
this point in the story. The alterations that nature operates on the physical integrity of the
protagonist thus represent the first steps of his reconnection with his homeland, and with
his traditional culture. To gain access its history as well as its stories, Tayo has to engage
in a direct dialogue with the land of his people.
50
Tayo endures the cold, the wind, and the sun on the mountain in a way that
resembles his memories of the rain, the heat, and the mud in the Philippines. This time,
however, these contacts, rather than oppressing him, purge him of his suffering and
alienation. It is the major differences in context and significance between both settings that
cause this major discrepancy. As opposed to the tropical forest of the Philippines, Mount
Taylor is a land that is meaningful for Tayo both personally and culturally. Moreover,
since his mission to free the cattle is aimed at liberating creatures from an unnatural
captivity rather than at killing innocent civilians as he did in the war, the difficulties
imposed by the wilderness trigger a process of re-acquaintance instead of psychological
suffering.
Susan J. Scarberry, in her article “Memory as Medicine: The Power of Recollection
in Ceremony,” theorizes the changes that Tayo experiences on Mount Taylor using the
concept of levels of memory.
She argues that Tayo’s contact with the myth in the
mountains during the ceremony, allows him to shift his memories from an immediate,
personal past to a communal, shared experience of remembering. This, in turn, contributes
to his healing: “Under the influence of Ku’oosh and the Navajo medicine man Betonie,
Tayo’s interests begin to shift from barroom stories to the ‘long ago time immemorial
stories’ (Silko 95). Tayo begins to care about himself and his surviving friends and
relatives” (Scarberry 22). Scarberry’s explanation of this shift from individual to collective
memory allows us to understand how the rediscovery of traditional stories, prompted by
direct contact with nature, helps Tayo to free himself from his crippling war memories.
Once liberated from this trauma, the protagonist can associate his homeland with
meaningful narratives rather than recurring war flashbacks. Such stories include that of Fly
51
and Hummingbird’s quest to retrieve the rain clouds or the Sun Man’s encounter with
Spider Woman. The metaphorical power of these narratives accelerates Tayo’s healing
from his personal struggle and encourages him to take action so that he can integrate and
accept the negative elements of his past.
Paul Beekman Taylor proposes a theoretical approach that is related to Scarberry’s;
however, rather than using the concept of memory, he focuses his analysis on Tayo’s shift
in ontological perspective after the completion of the ceremony. Taylor suggests that once
Tayo has understood the secret cultural codes of his people and the sacred significance of
particular locales, he becomes able to communicate with the other members of his
community: “Secret places and secret things contain story, but only the instructed–those
who have achieved ‘self-actualization’ by reconnecting themselves to the earth–can enter
into vital story and its making” (Beekman Taylor 40). Beekman Taylor’s idea of “secrecy”
is particularly relevant, for it emphasizes the importance of the changes that occur when
Tayo is reintroduced into the ways of his people.
As he deciphers the secret codes
generated by his nation’s heritage, Tayo completes his reintegration to the culture of his
ancestors. This process allows him to see beyond the prejudices against his Mixed-Blood
identity and his negative experience at war and to integrate truly into the community he
belonged to all along. It is only once Tayo sees beyond those scars of the past and takes an
active part in the regeneration of the Laguna Pueblo culture that he is able to understand the
lessons contained in the stories of his people. Revitalized by this direct contact with Native
tradition, Tayo can then pass on the stories he uncovered to his community and hence
contribute to the restoration of Laguna Pueblo culture.
52
Given the central role of nature and landscape in the ceremonial process, it becomes
evident that memory and ontology are not the only elements informing Tayo’s quest, as
Scarberry and Taylor argue. Ecology and the environment do as well. Once Tayo sees
himself as part of the natural system in the same way his ancestors did, nature is no longer a
burdening token of guilt and alienation; it becomes a source of hope, meaning, and
strength.
In other words, Tayo’s alienation was initially rooted in his incapacity to
recognize himself as an agent of change within an ecological system that transcends the
human species. By reconnecting with nature, Tayo is able to recognize other humans as
parts of the environment and to accept the role of nature as an all-encompassing entity.
Ultimately, this transformation encourages Tayo to break out of his emotional stasis and to
get involved, as a part of a macro-network rather than as an isolated individual, to change
the world around him.
The positive effects of this change in Tayo’s perspective is
represented by the last word of the novel, “sunrise” (Silko 262), which symbolizes a new
beginning for the Laguna Pueblo. At the same time, it reminds the reader of the circularity
of time, as it re-invokes the “sunrise” (4) of the beginning of the novel.
Tayo’s change in attitude towards nature represents Silko’s desire to create
narratives that are relevant to the reality of contemporary Native Americans while
respecting the cultural codes of traditional Native American culture. The author’s use of
nature as a way for Tayo to heal from trauma and to reintegrate into his community is
central to our understanding of Tayo’s initiatic journey, but also of the author’s position
regarding the relationship between Natives and nature in Silko’s context. In the 1970s, the
protagonist’s return to nature adequately symbolized the return to Native cosmology and
values lost in post-contact America. As ecology became more and more problematic and
53
depolarized with time, it nonetheless became impossible for the following generation of
authors to reproduce Silko’s theme of regeneration through nature while remaining
historically and culturally accurate.
Thomas King: The Dawn of a Problematized and Fragmented Sense of
Ecology
In comparison to Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony, Green Grass, Running Water
was written in a context in which White North Americans were much more concerned with
ecology and preservation than a quarter of a century earlier. Inspired by the publication of
several monographs including Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962 and, less importantly,
Leo Marx’s The Machine in the Garden in 1964, groups of Euro-American citizens
mobilized to educate the population about the dangers of destroying ecosystems and natural
resources. Such groups include Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth (Sierra Club), and the
World Wildlife Fund.
Over the course of the 1980s and 1990s, more and more
environmental activist groups that were mainly dedicated to public education and
awareness programs in the early 1970s began to radicalize their actions, introducing
concepts such as deep ecology, which challenges Western civilization’s anthropocentric
conception of the world, and popularizing extreme forms of conservationism.
Environmental lobbies became powerful enough to confront governments and to demand
changes to federal legislation more aggressively, leading to an increased amount of media
exposure. For instance, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development,
54
the first conference solely dedicated to global environmental issues, was held in Rio de
Janeiro in 1992, as a response to the growth of the environmental movement.25
Some of these environmental groups believed that post-war capitalism, because of
its abusive exploitation of resources and its hazardous use of nuclear energy, was leading
the planet into a permanent ecological crisis. This growing awareness for environmental
preservation, a relatively marginal cause until then, began to integrate itself progressively
into contemporary Euro-American politics. In their quest for new models of conduct that
would distinguish environmentalist practices from Euro-American mainstream lifestyle,
White environmental organizations became increasingly interested in Native American
traditions and customs, claiming that they contained the wisdom necessary to ensure a
sustainable society.
This partial recuperation of Native American tradition could be
observed in the discourse of more and more influential stakeholders of environmental
protection, including Johnson Donald Hugues:
Ecologists in recent years have been trying to get people to think of the
world in ecological terms: to see everything as connected to everything else,
to see ourselves not as the rulers of the earth but as fellow citizens with all
other forms of life ..., American Indians would have recognized these ideas
as soon as they were explained to them. Their philosophy was already
ecological (Hughes 144).
It is clear here that Hugues’ intention is to praise Native American perception of the human
race as a part of the greater system of nature. However, despite this positive portrayal of
Native philosophy, such an appropriation of Native beliefs by Euro-Americans is very
25
For more information on the rise of environmentalism and conservationism in the middle of the twentieth
century, see The Ecocriticism Reader by Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm.
55
problematic. More precisely, in allowing themselves to exploit the traditional relationship
between Natives and nature, Euro-Americans separate Native traditions from their specific
cultural and historical context. Indeed, as pointed out by Vassos Argyrou in his monograph
The Logic of Environmentalism: Anthropology, Ecology and Postcoloniality, the fact that
Native American traditional lifestyle conceived the world in terms that are similar to the
science of ecology is not necessarily enough to attribute environmentalist ideals or a desire
to achieve sustainability to Natives (69-70). In fact, Argyrou argues, the use of Natives as
ecological models is all the more difficult to take seriously in that such and attitude seems
to have a primarily symbolic rather than pragmatic value (70). In other words, White
environmentalist groups tend to exploit the idealized image of Natives’ presumed harmony
with nature as an impractical ideal rather than trying to apply literal techniques or elements
of knowledge that they actually possessed.26 As opposed to the Native re-appropriation of
cultural concepts regarding nature–as exemplified by Silko in the first part of this thesis–,
the Euro-American interpretations of Native traditions are therefore not an act of identity
affirmation. Instead, in de-historicizing Native culture and in elevating its presumed sense
of ecology to a symbol devoid of connections with Native populations’ real customs and
traditions, Euro-American environmentalists encouraged the creation of an incomplete and
idealized version of Native traditions that had the potential to interfere with the definition
of Native American identity.
In addition to endangering Native American identity itself, the co-optating of Native
lifestyle as re-imagined by Euro-Americans in the 1980s and 1990s also had an impact on
26
That being said, it would be erroneous to believe that Native techniques and customs did not inspire
contemporary scientists in their quests for more sustainable lifestyles. The monograph Tending the Wild:
Native American Knowledge and the Management of California’s Natural Resources, by M. Kat Anderson, is
an excellent example of the direct application of Native knowledge of nature on specific ecosystems.
56
the portrayal of power dynamics between Natives and Euro-Americans in fiction. While
the tension between careless exploitation of natural resources by Euro-Americans and
traditional Native reverence for nature exposed in earlier novels such as Ceremony was
clearly delimited, Thomas King and his contemporaries could no longer express this
opposition in such polarized terms, given that these two perspectives were now splitting
issues within White culture and politics themselves. To adapt to this new reality, Native
authors of the last quarter of the twentieth century must position themselves regarding their
characters’ relationship with nature in much more fragmented and nuanced ways.
In his Massey Lecture “The Truth about Stories,” Thomas King paraphrases the
section of Ceremony in which Leslie Marmon Silko explains that evil in the world
originates from a witchery contest as a way to express the power of stories over human
beings. King’s editorial choice of mentioning Silko in this prestigious lecture is significant,
because not only does it allow the reader to infer that he respected Silko’s opinions and
stories, but it also shows the author’s ability to recuperate some of Silko’s ideas in order to
construct his own. King’s ability to build on Silko’s perspective is also visible in his works
of fiction.
Green Grass, Running Water, for instance, provides us with a significant
number of elements which were already established in Silko’s work concerning nature.
These include the close association between natural elements and trauma, the
conceptualization of nature as an entity that includes human beings, and the role of direct
interaction with the environment in the resecration of nature. King, on the other hand,
stands out in his use of nature images, as he presents nature as a multifaceted set symbols
operating simultaneously in contradictory ways. This new perspective on nature represents
57
accurately the ambiguous character of Natives’ relationship to the environment in the
1990s.
King and Water: A New Perspective on Nature
Through the analysis of the scenes in which water inexplicably appears in Green
Grass, Running Water, it becomes possible to establish a consistent link between water and
the traumatic experiences of the main characters of the novel. Water is by nature a cyclical
element in that it constantly “runs” across watersheds and shifts from solid to liquid to gas
form. Conversely, the instances when water is mentioned in the early scenes of the novel
portray it as a stagnant element whose presence is undesirable and inexplicable. In a way
that imitates Tayo’s negative reaction to the sun, the characters do not initially perceive
water as the symbol of life that it should embody according to Native tradition. Instead,
water is shown as an obstacle that encourages inaction and stasis. While rain prevents the
characters from moving easily outdoors and carrying on their daily activities on several
occasions in the novel, the retained water at the dam holds up Bill Bursum’s dream cottage
project. Similarly, because of the constant menace of the dam, Eli must remain at his cabin
to prevent Duplessis from opening the gates. Water, in this sense, keeps the characters
isolated from one another and holds back their aspirations.
Paradoxically, while being synonymous with stasis and isolation, water serves as the
common element in each character’s difficulties with their identity and with their past.
Whether it is when Alberta sees her father Amos for the last time, when abusive exhusband George Morningstar calls Latisha at the restaurant or when Lionel reminisces
about his three “mistakes” while driving, pools of water inexplicably appear, creating a
58
common phenomenon that links each of these events together. These accumulations of
water are particularly meaningful when considered as miniature replicas of Parliament
Lake27, a giant pool created by the construction of the hydro-electric dam just outside of
Blossom.
Indeed, the recurrent motif of pools of water–appearing inexplicably when
characters are reminded of past events– highlights the similarities between the violation of
ancestral land by Duplessis28 and each character’s personal trauma.
Much like in Ceremony, the destruction of nature by White companies echoes the
communal and personal sufferings of the inhabitants of Blossom and its nearby reserve. In
making references to pools of water every time a character remembers a traumatic
experience, King transforms each of these moments into a symbolic addition to Parliament
Lake, whose level rises daily. As the water accumulates in the lake at the same rhythm as
trauma in the community, the dam collapses at the same time as the characters begin to
relate to one another; the breaking point is reached simultaneously. Like Silko, King thus
shows through his use of parallel imagery between water and trauma that nature is a system
in which the human community and its struggles are embedded. He takes advantage of the
reader’s encompassing vision of the narrative to highlight the interconnected network of
characters and narratives weaved in Green Grass, Running Water.
27
It is important to note that King’s Parliament Lake, an allusion to Lake Meech, also links the symbolism of
water and dams to the political struggle of Natives in the 1990s. For more information, see Jane Flick’s
“Reading Notes for Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water”.
28
The name “Duplessis” is a tongue-in-cheek reference to Maurice LeNoblet Duplessis, Québec’s Premier
from 1936 to 1939 and from 1944 to 1949. Duplessis greatly contributed to what he described himself as the
“opening of Northern territories to civilization” in Québec. The main goal of Duplessis’s operations was to
extract remote natural resources, mostly minerals. Very little resources benefited to the original Innu and
Naskapi population of the exploited territory. Ironically, Maurice Duplessis passed away from a stroke while
visiting new installations in Shefferville, Northern Québec. For more information, consult Conrad Black’s
biography of Maurice Duplessis.
59
In King’s novel, nature is far from a passive force. The author uses the magical
powers traditionally attributed to water as ways to empower the characters and to help them
relate to one another. For example, Babo’s Pinto, when sunk in a pool of water, is
transported to Blossom to replace Charlie Looking Bear’s rental car. This event influences
the outcome of the narrative by taking away Charlie’s physical evidence of his success as a
lawyer, which prepares him to face the Native identity he buried deep inside when he
started defending Duplessis. When comparing King’s use of water to Silko’s symbol of the
sun, it is clear that the former uses nature images in a much more nuanced way. In Silko,
on the one hand, the sun has a negative connotation at the beginning of the novel and the
protagonist progress towards an acceptance of the sun as a part of the natural system that he
must embrace. King, for his part, shows water as both an indicator of the paralysis of the
community and of its potential for retrieving its vibrancy and vitality from the beginning
until the end of the novel.
The title of King’s novel is mentioned directly as a quote from the Western movie
that the characters are watching:
“‘My darling’, the woman on the television was saying, ‘I don’t ever want to
leave your side.’
‘As long as the grass is green and the waters run,’ said the chief, holding her
in his arms” (King 208).
“As long as the grass is green and the water runs” is a notorious figure of speech used in
land settlement treaties between Canadian Whites and Natives29. In addition to the political
commentary embedded in King’s choice, the chief’s clichéd words conveys the idea that
29
The political implications of King’s use of treaty language have already been discussed by Jane Flick and
King himself. For more information, see King’s The Inconvenient Indian.
60
the cycle of water running and grass growing is a symbol of eternity. This metaphor thus
contains the paradoxical coexistence of stereotypical expectations about Natives’
perspective on nature and the fundamental concept of circularity so important to Native
culture. King therefore approaches nature not in terms of the re-balancing of polarized
concepts like the sun and the rain like in Ceremony, but rather as a multifaceted reality that
encompasses both corrupted Euro-American perspectives and vital Native concepts.
King’s blending of clichés and tradition is also observable in his mixing of reality
and nature myths. Silko had already used the aesthetics of blurring the limits between her
characters and mythical figures by telling several interconnected stories at the same time,
but King mixes stories in a much more obvious way, blending even isolated dialogue lines
together. Like water, mythical figures such as Coyote and the four elders thus “run” below
the surface of the narrative and connect various events both in Blossom and the creation
stories that punctuate the novel. For instance, in the following passage, the flesh and blood
character of Babo is very difficult to distinguish from Coyote:
“Canada,” says Coyote. “I’ve never been to Canada.”
“Canada,” said Babo. “I’ve never been to Canada.” (237)
Here, King’s prose employs repetition in order to blend mythical figures of traditional
Native mythology with contemporary characters. This technique is also observable when
the beginning of a particular chapter dealing with real life is using almost exactly the same
words as the last sentence of the preceding chapter featuring mythical creatures. For
instance, while one chapter ends with Ishmael, one of the four elders, asking: “Are we lost
61
again? Have we made another mistake?” (29), the following chapter begins with “Lionel 30
had made only three mistakes in his entire life” (30). In using the same wording for his
chapter transition, King visibly blurs the boundary between Lionel’s reality and the Four
Elders’ stories. Similarly, the word “yes” appears both as Dr. Hovaugh’s last word and
Lone Ranger’s first (77-78). In addition to this stylistic device, other examples of
interchanges between myth and reality can also be found in thematic patterns in the novel.
For instance, both Lionel and Eli see a dancing yellow dog as they enter Bill Bursum’s
store. This apparently isolated event foreshadows Lionel’s life-altering interaction with the
four elders; his capacity to see the yellow dog announces that both the world of mythical
creatures and the world of humans are colliding.
Coyote’s presence within the world of humans has a direct influence on the lives of
the characters. His excessive dancing presumably causes a torrential rainfall, which ruins
Lionel’s attempt at improving details of his physical appearance such as his clothing and
his hair, an aspect he believes to be crucial to becoming a successful westernized man like
Charlie. Moreover, it is the same downpour which forces Eli, Lionel, Charlie, Bill Bursum,
and the Four Elders to remain in the closed space of the television store long enough to
watch the altered version of Bill’s western movie. Authors such as Gerald Vizenor, Dawn
Karima Pettigrew and Carlton Smith have already established the cultural significance of
Coyote as a trickster figure in contemporary Native American literature. These authors
argue that the figure of Coyote, once set in a modern context, challenges the status quo
established by Euro-American society. In creating chaos around him, Coyote, because of
his self-interested and unpredictable behaviour, creates a space in which Native identity can
30
Lionel is Eli Stand Alone’s nephew. He is the central character of several chapters of Green Grass,
Running Water.
62
be redefined and via which Natives can reinvent themselves. He is, like the pools of water,
both an agent of change and an inconvenient intruder in people’s lives.
Despite the fact that this generally accepted perspective on Coyote is helpful in
order to construct meaning out of his presence in contemporary Native fiction, it is equally
important, in my opinion, to consider that Coyote belongs to a natural world with which he
is able to interact. Coyote’s rain dance does indeed have an impact on the characters of
Green Grass, Running Water, but it is also a performance of communication and
interaction with nature.
With that episode, Coyote thus demonstrates the direct link
between nature (the rain), myth (himself) and community (the people of Blossom). This
genuine harmony between the three, which both Eli and Lionel barely notice during their
encounter with the yellow dog, becomes an affirmation of Native traditional worldview. It
also serves as the first manifestations of a model designed to guide the Native characters to
a more holistic sense of identity through which they embrace the interdependency with
myth and with nature.
Hence King’s novel uses direct interaction between nature, myth and human beings
to highlight their interdependency and the need for Natives to acknowledge their
interrelations with their identity. Silko also employs this technique in Ceremony. Like
Tayo, the inhabitants of Blossom are stuck in a period of stagnation after difficult events
from the past: Lionel endures the consequences of his “three mistakes;” Alberta, haunted
by memories of her alcoholic father, struggles to find a way to produce a fatherless child;
Latisha, otherwise an independent business owner, cannot completely forget her abusive
ex-husband George Morningstar; Charlie, despite his glamorous job as an attorney, copes
with the disenchantment brought by his father’s crushed dreams of acting in Hollywood
63
Westerns; Eli, a brilliant scholar, is at odds with his departure from the reserve years ago
and is incapable of finding a sense of belonging after his wife’s and his mother’s death. It
is only once they begin reaching out to each other that they can leave their self-interested
perception behind and attain a more general awareness of the suffering affecting the entire
community.
Both Silko and King use an approach in which the characters are more or less
consciously performing a purging ceremony, whose elements seem isolated and relatively
ineffective until their interconnections are revealed. In both cases, it is the interaction
among the characters, the landscape that surrounds them (water, specific mountains and the
like) and the mythical figures of their ancestors (Sun Man and Spider Woman for Silko and
Coyote and the four Elders for King) that creates a momentum for the characters to break
out of their inertia. At the conclusion of each novel, the three elements come together as
one.
In Ceremony, this event is materialized when the rain clouds return, thereby
completing the natural cycle of rain and sun, accomplishing Fly and Hummingbird’s
mission, and relieving Tayo of his guilt concerning Rocky and Josiah’s deaths. In Green
Grass, Running Water, it is the breach in the dam, representing the re-appropriation of the
landscape by natural forces, the result of Coyote’s dance, and the end of Eli’s judicial battle
against Duplessis all at once that acts as the intersection between all three worlds.
In sum, the analysis of the interaction between the characters, myth and nature in
Green Grass, Running Water allows the reader to see how Thomas King recuperated the
role of gateway that Silko had attributed to nature in the re-inscriptive process of her
protagonist.
King, in using symbols such as water in a much more nuanced way,
successfully adapted his aesthetic choices to the contradictory significance of nature and
64
ecology for Natives in the 1990s context. In the second chapter of this thesis, we shall see
how King’s update of the Native narrative, as imagined by Silko and the authors of the
Native American literary boom, is also visible in Eli’s feelings towards his return to the
cabin of his childhood at the foot of the Duplessis dam.
65
Chapter 2
Post-Indians and Ecological Saints: Hybridization as Key
to Solving Contemporary Native Identity Crisis
66
67
Tayo as Post-Indian: The Ontological Repercussions of Reconnecting
with One’s Culture
In this chapter, we shall demonstrate how Tayo’s return to nature described earlier
acts as a trigger for his re-negotiation of identity in the liminal space between different
ethnic groups. Then, we will examine more closely the case of Eli Stand Alone in Green
Grass, Running Water in order to establish the ways in which Thomas King illustrates a
similar cultural identification while respecting the problematic aspects of Native identity in
a context of global environmentalism and Euro-American co-optation of Native culture.
Native political activism of the late 1960s and the 1970s required the mobilization
and the coordination of the efforts of various nations across the United States to increase
their influence on Euro-American authorities. White media often presented Natives as a
single political entity despite their inherent cultural and social diversity. United by wide
movements such as the American Indian Movement (AIM) and performing highly
mediatized actions31 that were broadcasted across the United States, Natives were
erroneously perceived as a unified lobby. The rise of the Native civil rights movement thus
encouraged Native Americans to broaden the group to which they identified and to redefine
their political claims to equality and self-governance in terms of their common experience
of altering contact with Euro-American mainstream culture rather than on their
identification as separate nations with distinctive sets of traditions and customs.
Another transformation which profoundly changed the reality and sense of identity
of contemporary Native Americans is the existence of a third group, namely Natives of
31
Such actions include the occupation of Alcatraz from 1969 to 1971, the siege of Wounded Knee in 1973
and Marlon Brando’s refusal of the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1973.
68
Mixed-Blood origins. Since the arrival of Europeans on the continent, Natives and Whites
have had children together, giving birth to a group of individuals that existed in the margins
of both ethnic groups. Nancy Shoemaker’s American Indian Population Recovery in the
Twentieth Century indicates that in the 1960 census, the criteria upon which the belonging
of a citizen to a group of the other shifted from sheer observation of physical traits to selfidentification. In other words, Mixed-Blood Natives were allowed to claim for the first
time their own ethnic identity as opposed to being arbitrarily told which group they belong
to. This change considerably affected the permeability of Natives as an ethnic group, and
encouraged Mixed-Blood Natives to join the ranks of the Native civil rights movement.
However, the identification of Mixed-Blood Natives with full-blood Natives has also
changed the criteria upon which Nativeness is defined, shifting this criteria from physical
appearance and ethnic background to the notion of shared experience and cultural
belonging.
In reaction to the changing paradigms that defined Nativeness and the growing
numbers of Mixed-Bloods who identified with Native culture, Gerald Vizenor, an
influential Chippewa scholar and author, coined the term “Post-Indian” as a way to
describe this new Native cultural and ethnic diversity. He also used the term to express the
shared experience of Euro-American oppression on the American territory, a trauma that
unites Natives across the continent. Vizenor argues that in order to survive, Natives must
define their identity as Post-Indians, that is, as the heirs of a traditional cultural background
that needs to be revived in the context of a modernized, post-contact world. Vizenor
proposes to recuperate the fundamental values of Native American culture described earlier
in this thesis and to recontextualize them in the twentieth century so that they become
69
relevant to Natives again and allow for the rebuilding of their sense of identity. This new
concept, closely related to Vizenor’s ideas of survivance32 and cultural identity, is of
particular importance when analyzing the context and the terms in which cultural
redefinition was discussed and performed in the 1960s and 1970s.
Indeed, Native
American artists’ desire to create a new sense of belonging to post-Indian culture in this
period is visible in many works of the Native American literary boom, such as those of N.
Scott Momaday, Leslie Marmon Silko and Vizenor himself. In their works of fiction, the
protagonists struggle to define what being Native means in a context of socio-economic
oppression and cultural assimilation into Euro-American society.
Ceremony is no exception: Tayo, as a Mixed-Blood and as a marginalized
individual in both the Native and Euro-American communities, faces the recurrent struggle
of finding one’s place in the liminal space between both cultures. His re-introduction in the
worldview of his ancestors through his re-acquaintance with the natural world that
surrounds him allows him to negotiate his relationship with both the immediate, traumatic
past of his personal life, and the immemorial past of traditional myth. Throughout his
journey on Mount Taylor to retrieve the lost spotted cattle, Tayo is able to connect with
traditional Native stories contained in the natural elements surrounding him.
These
narratives continue to develop upon his return to civilization and encourage him to accept
the loss of Rocky and Josiah and to heal from his war trauma. In addition to helping him
cope with his experience in the Philippines, this contact with Native traditions also affects
Tayo’s self-perception regarding his identity and his place in the world.
32
For more information on Vizenor and his view of the cultural re-identification process necessary to the
survival of Native culture in contemporary North America, see his monograph Manifest Manners: Narratives
on Postindian Survivance as well as Postindian Conversations, co-written with A. Robert Lee.
70
Tayo’s relationship with his cousin Rocky illustrates how the protagonist situates
himself with respect to both Native and Euro-American worlds.
The community
appreciated Rocky and his football skills were a source of pride for his peers in the Laguna
Pueblo community. His full-bloodedness and promising future at college also contributed
to making him a model, albeit problematic, for the rest of the community. Rocky’s future
acceptance within the Euro-American world as a successful, strong, and educated man was
anticipated by Auntie as a step forward for all the community: her hope was that her son
would bridge the gap between White oppressors and oppressed Natives and defend their
rights using Euro-Americans’ own weapons of westernized civilisation, such as education
and economic influence.
Tayo is in many ways the opposite of his cousin. Despite the men’s (Rocky, Josiah,
and Robert’s) attempts to include him in their family life, he remains profoundly scarred by
his mother’s abandonment and his Aunt’s mere tolerance of his presence in her
household.33 Tayo’s birth out of wedlock, considering his Aunt’s strict Christian views, is
perceived as a source of shame.
His life choices and his failures add to this initial
disappointment. For example, his inability to succeed in school, mostly because of his
incomprehension of the standards of the Euro-American education system, marks him as a
hopeless outcast.
Conscious of the indifference of his community and of his
incompatibility with both traditional Native heritage and contemporary reservation life,
Tayo cannot help but admire his cousin. In an attempt to imitate him, he enrolls in the
army, hoping that serving the United States and becoming a war hero will help him gain the
33
The importance of female characters in Tayo and the feminist undertones of the novel have been
commented on by several critics already. As doing so would lead me off topic, I shall not expand on this
aspect of the narrative in this thesis.
71
respect of his Native family and the acceptance of Euro-American society.34 Against all
expectations, Rocky dies and Tayo survives.
By outliving his cousin, the protagonist is faced with the apparent incongruity of
his own survival. Tayo feels that his perceived illegitimate presence in the family is being
reinforced by the disappearance of Rocky. Not only does he come back from the Pacific
with a psychological state that makes him even more of a burden to his Aunt, but his
presence at home constantly reminds her of the loss of the son who incarnated all her hopes
for the future. Tayo’s inability to replace Rocky as the first son is vividly represented
through imagery when he has to lie on Rocky’s bed while Auntie changes his sheets: “He
felt the old mattress then, where all the years of Rocky’s life had made contours and niches
that Tayo’s bones did not fit: like plump satin-covered upholstery inside a coffin, molding
itself around a corpse to hold it forever” (Silko 31). The hole Rocky’s body has left in the
mattress symbolizes his absence in the family; as Tayo is forced against the physical and
metaphorical gap left by the death of his cousin, it becomes clear that he will never be able
to soothe his Aunt’s loss. The negative connotations of this confrontation with Rocky’s
absence are evoked symbolically through the comparison of the sheets with the inside of a
coffin. By representing the protagonist in the position of a dead body, the narrator is
suggesting that it is Tayo, not Rocky, who should be buried.
34
In Double V: The Civil Rights Struggle of the Tuskegee Airmen, Lawrence P. Scott and William M.
Vomack explain that during World War II, the African American community (and eventually other ethnic
minorities) joined the war effort in a rhetoric of “Double V” campaign, standing for “double victory.” This
campaign promoted the idea that once democracy was restored in Europe, America could concentrate its
efforts on obtaining civil rights for all American citizens, including minorities. Upon the soldiers’ return
home, African Americans and other ethnic groups like Natives, were met with the bitter surprise of going
back to their previous state as second class citizens without any real intention from Euro-Americans’ part to
allow them to improve their status. In Ceremony, Tayo, like the other veterans, experiences the
disappointment caused by the realization that the Double V campaign was a deceitful concept. For more
information on the Double V campaign, its context and its consequences see Michael L. Cooper’s The Double
V Campaign: African Americans and World War II.
72
The following scene, in which Tayo’s aunt visits him after his return home,
illustrates once more how the sun’s oppression described in the first chapter of this thesis
forces Tayo into hiding and into feeling undesirable. Unlike the dark room in Auntie’s
house where Tayo could momentarily forget what happened to Rocky and his family, and
make himself disappear, the sunlight shining through the open blinds prevents Tayo from
disappearing and forces him to face his guilt. The emotional shock is so strong that the
protagonist becomes physically sick from his exposure to the light. This incapacity to hide
when in contact with sunlight is expressed metaphorically in the idea that his “body [has]
density again” (9). As mentioned in the first chapter, Tayo is incapable of finding meaning
in his traditional Native heritage upon his return from the war.
This situation is
complicated by his inability to fulfill the expectations of his Aunt in assimilating himself to
Euro-American standards like Rocky did, which leaves him in limbo between two
unattainable identities, an extension of an already existing identity crisis. Because coping
with this ambiguous sense of self is particularly difficult, especially considering the major
trauma he experienced in the Philippines, Tayo’s immediate reaction is to try to disappear
and become invisible.
Old Betonie’s ceremony helps Tayo to accept his trauma as a part of himself and to
regain his psychological balance, thus mimicking the natural equilibrium of rain and sun
described in the first chapter of this thesis. However, in order to access the helpful wisdom
contained in traditional Native narratives, the protagonist must first understand that his
mixed-blood origins and the rejection of his community do not prevent him from
connecting with stories. Reclaiming heritage, as Silko illustrates, is not a matter of one’s
73
bloodline or of virtue, but rather a question of perspective.35 Regardless of his presumed
illegitimacy as a Native, Tayo, once he reconnects to his culture via nature, is able to see
the world around him in terms of Native culture, which, in itself, grants him access to
cultural regeneration. This process exemplifies perfectly Vizenor’s definition of the PostIndian identity: Tayo’s Mixed-Blood ancestry has little influence on his reunion with his
Native heritage, much like full-bloodedness would not have guaranteed the success of his
quest. Instead, it is his understanding of Native worldview and the shared experiences of
oppression in the Native community that defines his sense of belonging to his nation.
Tayo’s quest leads him to understand that his marginality as a Mixed Blood and
social outcast can be advantageous. As the ceremony progresses, he begins to see that it is
precisely the fact that he is in limbo between Native tradition and contemporary White
culture that allows him to contribute positively to his community. Betonie plays a key role
in facilitating Tayo’s progression towards depolarizing Native and White cultural
influences which coexist in the protagonist’s life. When Tayo expresses his sense of
impotence about White people’s seemingly unstoppable destruction, Old Betonie answers:
That is the trickery of the witchcraft, . . . . They want us to believe all evil
resides with white people. Then we will look no further to see what is really
happening. They want us to separate ourselves from white people, to be
ignorant and helpless as we watch our own destruction. But white people
are only tools that the witchery manipulates; and I tell you, we can deal with
white people, with their machines and their beliefs. We can because we
35
It is interesting to note that Leslie Marmon Silko herself is of Mixed-Blood origins. For more information
on Leslie Marmon Silko’s biography and the links between her personal life and her work, see Robert M.
Nelson’s “A Laguna Woman”.
74
invented white people; it was Indian witchery that made white people in the
first place. (132)
Old Betonie’s comment is crucial to our understanding of Tayo’s role. According to
Betonie, the polarization of Native and White culture is harmful because it keeps Natives
from re-establishing a new power dynamic with Whites. Moreover, it encourages Natives
to waste energy hating another ethnic group instead of adopting a constructive attitude.
When he states that Natives “invented white people,” Betonie is not saying that Natives are
superior to Whites. Instead, he is affirming that Natives have to find the strength and the
tools to defend their rights and their culture within their own society rather than
antagonizing Whites, an attitude which derives from Euro-Americans’ linear interpretation
of the world. In including Whites in a collaborative paradigm and in fighting the illusion
that Euro-Americans are at the source of all evil in contemporary Native life, Natives
would not only find a more viable solution to their oppression, but they would also do so in
accordance with their traditional worldview.
Considering the importance of collaboration, Tayo’s position as a man at the
frontier of both Native and Euro-American culture becomes essential. His conversations
with Betonie and his witnessing of the old man’s syncretic behaviour regarding modern
technology and myth contribute to his development. For instance, Betonie’s interest in old
Coca Cola calendars and phone books as objects that have “stories alive in them” (121)
demonstrates both his understanding of Native cosmology and his capacity to integrate
White popular culture within Native narratives.
Inspired by the old man’s empowering
patriation of Euro-American artifacts, the protagonist shifts his self-perception from
75
unwanted Mixed-Blood to facilitator between the mythical and the modern, westernized
reality of the Native community.
On Mount Taylor, Tayo’s contact with nature provides him with the mythical
literacy he needs to reconnect with his ancestors and to understand their worldview. Once
he has re-appropriated the narratives that defined the Laguna Pueblo culture and their
physical setting, Tayo is able to transfer this knowledge into his contemporary context. For
instance, the protagonist perceives Emo’s threats and destructive behaviour as the product
of manipulation by the mythical figure of the destroyers rather than as Emo himself being
evil. As he is aware that Emo’s aggressive actions towards his fellow veterans are only a
symptom of a greater evil, Tayo replies to Emo’s provocation and invitations to engage in a
physical fight with non-violence. The protagonist thus breaks the cycle of self-hate that
prevented him and other veterans from healing.
Furthermore, his direct, conscious
witnessing of the witchery of the destroyers at the old mine gives him the opportunity to retell his experience to the other members of his community and thus to spread his
knowledge about myth and its relationship to contemporary Native issues.
Tayo’s new connection to the myths of his ancestors and his newly acquired
capacity to share them with his community has a major effect on his identity. As he now
straddles the line between traditional narrative and contemporary reality, Tayo finds a
unique role for himself, that of acting as the connector or, in other words, the interpreter of
timeless stories in the present. This responsibility can only be filled by someone who, like
Tayo or Betonie, exists outside of the ethnic and cultural classifications established by
Euro-American society.
Consequently, the ceremony helps Tayo channel his ethnic
76
hybridity, the very feature that defined him as an outcast from both Euro-American and
contemporary Native American society.
The protagonist’s journey from desperately trying to correspond to roles and
identities that are not his own to finding meaning in what makes him unique and useful to a
community deeply affected by post-contact reality is very significant to Silko’s overall
message. The transformation described in Ceremony demonstrates the central role of
nature and the myth in the definition of a viable contemporary Native identity. Moreover,
Tayo’s return to Native culture reflects the preoccupations concerning the role of ethnicity
and relationships with Euro-American culture that were so central to the discussion of
Native identity politics during the Native American literary boom.
King and the Problems of the “Ecological Saint”
Considering the context of the 1970s in which Nativeness was often defined in
opposition to Euro-American identity, Tayo’s cultural liminality as an asset for his
struggling community was groundbreaking. A decade and a half later, Native authors such
as Thomas King recuperated Silko’s aesthetics of depolarization, updating her ideas to a
socio-historical context in which Native identity was even more fragmented than in the
1970s. While the concept of the Post-Indian remained relevant in the last decade of the
twentieth century to define Natives in a post-contact context, the initial rejection of EuroAmerican mainstream culture as a whole lost its centrality in the later stages of Native
militantism. In the 1970s, Natives emphasized the imperialist, capitalist, and individualist
aspects of Euro-American culture as facets against which they could define their own
77
traditions, which tended to oppose such values.36
However, as the Native American
community progressed on its quest to redefine an identity that was both representative and
relevant to their current situation, it became clear that defining their culture as the polar
opposite of fundamental Euro-American values was still conceding an important role to
White power structures.37 Instead, Natives of the 1990s mostly thought it preferable to try
and find Natives’ place in the world on their own terms.
In addition to illustrating how nature, via its connections to ancient myths, leads
Natives to reconnect with their traditions and other Natives, King also employs his
characters’ relationship with natural elements to deconstruct the stereotype of Natives as
“ecological saints.” Before further exploring King’s use of this concept, it is imperative to
clarify the origins and implications of the term “ecological saint.” Shepard Krech III, in the
introduction to his milestone monograph The Ecological Indian, uses an important
collection of historical and anthropological data to demonstrate that Native Americans led a
lifestyle in which nature was central. However, while Krech III demonstrates the clear link
between nature and Natives’ cultural conception of the world, he also lists a wide variety of
specific Native practices regarding nature (mostly oriented towards hunting and
agriculture), some of them sustainable and conservationist, some others showing a
destructive pattern towards natural resources.
For instance, he uses buffalo hunting
practices to exemplify both extremes of the conservationist and destructive behaviour of
certain Native nations of the prairies. He also explains that, while leaving a special place
36
See chapter 1 of this thesis for more information on the guiding principles of Native American culture.
Such logic relates to Edward Said’s seminal monograph Culture and Imperialism, in which he explains
that long after decolonization processes in the great European colonial empires, cultural imperialism and the
influence of the colonizers on the colony’s sense of identity continued to prevent former colonies from
achieving full physical and cultural emancipation from the metropolis, 39.
37
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for this animal in their mythology and expressing utter respect for its various forms, those
nations have also contributed to the near extinction of the species. Krech III argues that
general Euro-American expectations regarding Natives often undermine the inherent
diversity within Native populations, confining them to the stereotypical and monolithic role
of defenders of the environment:
The connections between Indians and nature have been so tightly drawn over
five hundred years, and especially in the last quarter of the twentieth century,
that many non-Indians expect indigenous people to walk softly in their
moccasins as conservationists and even (in Muir’s sense) preservationists.
When they have not, they have at times eagerly been condemned, accused of
not acting as Indians should, and held to standards that they and their
accusers have seldom met. (Krech III 216)
In other words, Krech established that Euro-Americans tended to overestimate and idealize
Native populations’ natural tendency towards conservationism. He explained how this
distorted perception also affected Native identity, saying that “[m]any native peoples
themselves draw on a tradition of texts promulgating noble imagery that has generally had
deeper roots in European self-criticism than in indigenous realities” (216). This criticism
was aimed, among others, at the American Indian Movement, whose activist campaigns,
Krech explained, paid selective attention to the positive portrayal of Natives and their
behaviour towards nature in History while ignoring
the more complex and nuanced
historical data. One of the most famous examples of such behaviour is Chief Seattle’s
speech, originally pronounced in 1854 , whose content has changed substantially according
to each translator or historian’s purposes ever since. The environmental aspects of the
79
speech, among others, have been accused of being overly exaggerated to serve the cause of
various environmentalist and Native activist groups.
Three years after the publication of The Ecological Indian, William Young
recuperated Krech’s arguments about the presumed conservationism of Natives and coined
the term “ecological saints” to describe the stereotypical conception of Natives as defenders
of the environment. To help clarify his new term, Young uses the example of Iron Eyes
Cody, an actor of Sicilian descent who claimed Native heritage as a way to obtain more
acting opportunities. In the 1970s, Iron Eyes Cody became the spokesperson for Keep
America Beautiful, an American anti-pollution organization. Keep America Beautiful used
Cody’s character in an ad campaign aimed at raising environmental awareness amongst
American families.
In the most famous scene of the campaign’s television commercial,
the actor is portrayed as shedding a tear while gazing at a highway covered in litter.
In
addition to its ironic use of a fake Native for aesthetic and political purposes, this
commercial is problematic for its use of a contemplative and passive Native American
being personally hurt by the disrespect of Euro-Americans for the earth. This image
reinforces the already existing stereotypes that Krech III and Young have mentioned in
their respective work.
Thomas King expresses his awareness of the problems of Natives as ecological
saints. He uses Green Grass, Running Water as a means to expose how both contemporary
Natives and Whites have integrated stereotypes such as that of the ecological saint. In the
novel, King presents characters that are negotiating their identities in a dual context where
their reality as Natives is very different from the portrayal of Native life and customs in the
media and mainstream Euro-American culture.
In doing so, the author is able to
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demonstrate the influence that stereotypes can have on the essential redefinition of
contemporary Native identity. The development of characters such as Eli Stand Alone and
Portland Looking Bear is an invitation for Natives to reforge an identity that is better
grounded into Native tradition and that distances itself from the influence of preconceived
ideas on nativeness.
In telling the story of Portland Looking Bear’s failure to become an actor because of
his inability to be Indian enough, King reveals that Euro-American expectations about
Natives are grounded in an imaginary construct based on works of fiction and biased
historical accounts that actual Natives are unable to fulfill. Moreover, Portland’s friendship
with C.B. Cologne, a movie star specialized in impersonating Natives despite his Italian
descent, is employed as a tongue-in-cheek reference to Iron Eyes Cody himself, thus
showing King’s interest for this particular case of misrepresentation. The references to
Cody contained in Green Grass, Running Water exemplify Euro-American society’s
expectations regarding stereotypical Natives. These expectations include wearing
traditional clothing, using metaphorical language (as seen in the first chapter), adopting a
passive and contemplative attitude and, of course, sharing an intimate relationship with
nature.38
If, in Green Grass, Running Water, Portland Looking Bear exemplifies how the
stereotype of Native appearance and behaviour pressures Natives into crushing their own
identity in order to conform to white expectations, Eli Stand Alone allows the reader to
assess the disorienting effects of the image of the ecological saint upon Natives and their
38
As the scope of this section mostly concerns Native expectations regarding Nature, I shall not develop
extensively the other aspects of the stereotypical Native as portrayed in Euro-American media. For more
information on White expectations and representations of Natives, see Daniel Francis’ The Imaginary Indian
as well as Thomas King’s The Truth About Stories.
81
reconnection to nature. Through Eli, King is able to show how a Native man of the 1990s,
alienated because of his physical isolation from his community and his ascent of the EuroAmerican social ladder, reconnects with his nation via his direct involvement with the
landscape of his childhood. In addition, the author uses Eli to show how the concept of
ecological saint can interfere with his quest for cultural roots. Indeed, through returning to
the cabin his mother built and defending his homeland against Euro-American exploitation,
Eli must determine whether he is reconnecting with his Native heritage or is simply
experiencing a modern Euro-American fantasy.
To assess this situation, it is important to consider that Eli, in many regards, is a
counter-stereotype to the image of the ecological saint. Contrary to imaginary figures of
Natives evolving in harmony with nature to the point that they are undistinguishable from
it, Eli has no innate connection to the landscape of his childhood. In fact, he is portrayed as
a primarily urban and intellectual character. Following the trend established in the works
of several Native authors of the late twentieth century such as N. Scott Momaday’s Ancient
Child, James Welch’s The Ancient Lawyer and Louise Erdrich and Michael Dorris’ The
Crown of Colombus, King makes Eli a member of Toronto’s upper middle-class through
marriage and his studies in Literature.39 In one of many ironic passages of the novel, Eli
easily identifies Herman Melville’s classic short story, “Bartelby the Scrivener,” based on
Clifford Sifton’s vague attempt at summarizing the plot of the story40. In making Eli more
39
In his essay “American Indian Literature in the Nineties: The Emergence of the Middle-Class Protagonist,”
Alan Velie explains how the emergence of middle-class protagonists became a relatively popular trend in
Native American literature in the nineties and hypothesizes on the possible reasons explaining this
phenomenon. The examples provided here were used by Velie as examples to illustrate his argument.
40
King’s choice of Clifford Sifton’s name is a tongue in cheek reference to Manitoba’s minister of interior
from 1896 to 1911. Sifton encouraged European immigration to the prairies.
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knowledgeable of Euro-American Literature than his interlocutor, King reverses the role of
the uneducated savage and the erudite colonizer.
Eli’s portrayal as a man who is better adapted to city life than to the harsh
wilderness reinforces his description as able to navigate Euro-American culture. Indeed,
before his return to the cabin, Eli had lived in the city of Toronto for most of his adult life,
a setting that is completely at odds with the wilderness of his childhood. Upon his return to
the small cabin where he grew up, he uses of radios and electrical devices with ease, which
hints that the technological literacy he acquired in the city is still present in his everyday
life. This comfort with technology is a rather unusual characteristic for a man who now
lives alone in a small shack in the forest. When Eli spends time in his cabin, he is often
portrayed more as a European settler, remaining indoors and shielding himself from nature,
than as a stereotypical Native American.41 This reversal is illustrated as Eli drives towards
Blossom to visit Lionel, thinking the following: “An Indian Thoreau. ... the precursor, Eli
supposed, to the ever popular retreat. Grey Owl was more to the point. The Englishman
who wanted to be an Indian. What had Eli become? What had he wanted to be?” (Green
Grass, Running Water 285). In this passage, Eli is clearly questioning himself on his
legitimacy as a recluse Native American defending the land of his ancestors, wondering in
what way he is different from famous White people who left the comfort of civilization to
experience the wilderness. Moreover, both Thoreau and Grey Owl contributed, each in
41
Several Canadian authors and critics, most notably Northrop Frye and Margaret Atwood, have argued that
Canadian writers, inspired by the colonial context of Canada in which wilderness was omnipresent, tend to
express what they define as a “garrison mentality”, that is, a tendency to shield oneself from the outside world
and to focus one’s attention on a closed social or physical system while always looking outward for potential
menaces or danger. The garrison mentality opposes the concept of “Frontier” coined by Jackson Turner to
express the reality of American colonization, in which civilization progresses westward, pushing out the
wilderness and without ever feeling “surrounded” by the landscape. For more input concerning the garrison
mentality and its impact on imagery in Canadian literature, see Northrop Frye’s The Bush Garden: Essays on
the Canadian Imagination and Margaret Atwood’s Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature.
83
their own way, to build a romanticized and contemplative image of the wilderness as an
object of wonder for a White audience. Despite their direct contact with Natives, both of
them used an idealized image of Native culture to promote their conservationist ideals in
mainstream Euro-American culture.
It is precisely Thoreau’s and Grey Owl’s
disconnection from Native reality for the sake of being more accessible and more
interesting to White audiences that reveals the extent to which Eli feels alienated from his
own culture.
It is important to note that Eli identifies more with Thoreau and Grey Owl than
with popular Native figures such as Sitting Bull or Geronimo, for instance. By comparing
himself to Grey Owl (285), a notorious “con-man” whose British origins were so well
concealed that they were only discovered after his death, Eli betrays that he perceives
himself to be more of a Westernized man going in the wilderness for the first time than a
Blackfoot returning home.42 Rather than finding comfort or relief in the act of going back
to Alberta, Eli initially feels like he might be unmasked at any moment, as if his return to
the reserve was undistinguishable from that of the White tourists visiting Latisha’s
restaurant.
Unlike Silko’s protagonist, Eli has so successfully adapted his everyday
behaviour to that of his Euro-American neighbours and acquaintances in Toronto that this
experience taints his worldview and his perception of his own community upon his return.
The constant feeling that he is taking part in no more than a pseudo-Native retreat so
popular among Euro-Canadian middle-class in the 1990s disrupts Eli’s desire to “surround
himself with space and silence” (285) and his hope of finding peace of mind in the
42
Grey Owl, born Archibald Belaney of British parents, claimed to be of Native ancestry, more specifically to
be half Scottish and half Apache, during all his public life. For a more detailed biography, see Armand
Garnett Ruffo’s Grey Owl: The Mystery of Archie Belaney.
84
wilderness.43 This perception, inherited from the cultural interference he experienced in
Toronto, problematizes Eli’s search for meaning in a way that was inexistent in Silko’s
work. Indeed, Tayo’s experience in Euro-Canadian society was fundamentally different in
the sense that he never achieved any sense of being a part of White culture. Instead, he
came out of the Euro-American education system and the armed forces with feelings of
emptiness and alienation. On the other hand, Eli, in becoming a respected scholar and
leading a successful life in Toronto, has achieved a much higher level of integration into
White culture. This integration allows him to adopt an outsider’s perspective on his own
nation that initially prevents him from relating to his community and his culture. As he
comes back home, Eli struggles to ensure that he is not simply fulfilling the stereotype of
what he will later describe as: “Indian leaves the traditional world of the reserve, gets an
education, and is shunned by his tribe” (286). A University professor, Eli has read enough
Native American literature to know that his own story has already been told over and over
again.
Despite the contradictions between Native and White stereotypes that Eli must cope
with, King represents his quest as leading to a sense of identity that will precisely emerge
out of the cultural struggle between both communities. Eli’s return to his mother’s home is
not motivated by an overt desire to reconnect with nature in the way that contemporary
shamanistic practices would have prescribed. His first objective is not to find a fulfilling
spiritual connection through his presence in the wilderness. Instead, Eli is driven by a very
personal need for meaning and belonging, which he lost after the death of his mother. His
43
For a more detailed investigation of the integration of elements of Native American culture and traditions in
New Age movements, consult Lisa Aldred’s essay “Plastic Shamans and Astroturf Sun Dances: New Age and
Commercialization of Native American Spirituality..
85
re-occupation of the landscape of his childhood is thus not intended to defend the
environment per se, but rather to bridge the gap between his westernized self and his
origins. To this end, the repercussions of Eli’s opposition to the opening of the dam on the
population of Blossom become secondary. In preserving his mother’s house, he prevents
the destruction of a space of memory and identity for himself, that is, his childhood home.
At the same time, as his presence in the cabin forces him to enter in contact with nature on
a daily basis, this direct experience of the landscape surrounding the cabin revives his
relationship to nature. The location in which he grew up is no longer a distant memory; it
is part of his daily life and it defines him once again.
Eli’s return to the site of his childhood is particularly meaningful when
recontextualized in the Native American traditions concerning land occupation.
The
concept of physically inhabiting a particular space is important to most Native American
nations, including the Blackfoot, the community at the heart of most of King’s fiction. The
presence of human beings on the land integrated them in the natural environment and,
consequently, made them feel like they belong to a particular landscape. Most Native
nations conceptualized nature as a system in which the human species was included just
like any other animal. As such, humans were expected to take an active part in the natural
cycle by interacting with plants, animals, and inanimate elements. Since they were mere
elements of a greater system without any particular hierarchical relation with other species,
however, Natives were not entitled to any form of domination or overexploitation. Their
belief that nature functions in an organic way led to the idea that because of their
interconnections, the various elements of nature are able to influence each other, like the
86
inhabitants of the same meta-system.44 The sense of community with nature, in which
animals, plants, and geographical landmarks become peers rather than resources, explains
the central role of nature in Native myths and folk tales. In other words, specific features of
a nation’s homeland signified more than the pragmatic backdrop of their daily life: it is on
their intimacy with nature that Natives based their sense of cultural identity. 45
Obviously, European colonizers did not share this perspective of the land.
Europeans arriving in America had a sense of entitlement to Native territory which they
inherited from both religious and philosophical ideals. The Puritans, for instance, based
their occupation of the New World territories on the concept of predestination, which can
be defined as the belief that all events in the world, benign decisions as well as great
historical moments, are designed ultimately by God to accomplish his divine will. As an
extension of this idea of predestination, Puritans arrived on the American continent with the
idea that they had been sent to a new land by God’s hand in order to build his kingdom
upon this newfound, virgin territory. This notion vital to the Puritan theology is deeply
engrained in the American collective subconscious and, later on, gave birth to the doctrine
of “Manifest Destiny” that justified the territorial expansion of the nineteenth century.
Manifest destiny, as its name suggests, is an expression coined by John L. O’Sullivan to
44
This sense of community between various elements of nature closely relates to the concepts of circularity
and community explored in the first chapter of this research project.
45
Several authors, most notably Lee Schweninger in his essay “Writing Nature: Silko and Native Americans
as Nature Writers,” have investigated the link between nature as a central element to Native American
narratives and Nature writers such as “Thoreau, Muir, Krutch, Leopold, Abbey and Dillard” (47). Despite the
fact that this comparison is extremely relevant, especially in a context such as King’s in which references to
both Nature writers and Native American tradition tend to hybridize, the anthropocentric perspective so
typical to Nature writers, in which nature serves as the mirror of human emotion and awe, is radically
different from Native narrative style in which nature is omnipresent.
87
describe the inevitable –or “manifest”– character of American territorial expansion.46 It
was initially employed as an argument for the annexation of Texas in the war against
Mexico and relied on the premise that American democracy was a superior and virtuous
system; it was in the natural order of things that Euro-Americans spread their ideology
through the annexation of new territories on the American continent. As a result of this
doctrine, Euro-Americans appropriated the land of the so-called New World, thinking that
their actions were the result of an inevitable process towards the greater good.
The
ideological and religious motives used in colonization legitimized their occupation of
America despite the presence of other populations upon their arrival. As Natives opposed
resistance to colonization and, of course, did not approve of Euro-American’s expansionist
ambitions, Euro-Americans perceived them as devil-like savages and treated them as
obstacles to the accomplishment of God’s will. In this context, it is no surprise that the
question of their rights to the American land was blatantly ignored in most cases and that
Euro-Americans managed them as a merchandise rather than as fellow human beings.
Not only was religious ideology encouraging them to see Natives as sub-humans,
but the ideas of Enlightment thinkers and philosophers like John Locke, who argued that
private property was a natural right of man, also influenced Euro-American colonizers.
This emphasis on land-ownership motivated the ever-expanding colonization of the United
States, which ended in 1890 with the closing of the Western Frontier. The newest additions
to the American territory were often organized by way of ranches. On these properties, one
46
For more information on the origins of the expression “Manifest Destiny”, see Julius W. Pratt’s article “The
Origin of Manifest Destiny,” in which he traces the roots of the term to articles preceding O’Sullivan’s article.
However, he argues that O’Sullivan’s use of the term can still be considered as its first significant appearance
in American history.
88
person or family could own thousands of hectares of land and landowners could practice
“absentee landowning.”47
Natives struggled to understand the idea that Euro-Americans could own a land that
they did not inhabit. Since their relationship to the land was based on the effects of direct
contact with nature, they could not accept that the symbolic act of signing a piece of paper
could grant a particular piece of land to someone. Moreover, Natives were unable to
imagine the acquisition of private property as devoid of spiritual and cultural meaning; as
they were not the centre of a particular natural environment, but rather a simple component,
appropriating land without having any deep interaction with it was nonsense to Natives. In
the Native –including the Blackfoot– perspective, people were integrated themselves in a
particular territory by occupying it and making it meaningful to them, while EuroAmericans had a conception of property in which they incorporated the land in their set of
personal belongings.
This fundamental ontological difference between the way Whites and Natives
established their relationship with the land is at the heart of Eli’s return to his roots. During
the years in which Eli was in Toronto, he tried, using all means possible, to avoid returning
home to introduce Karen to his family because “he knew in his heart it was a bad idea”
(King 199). Eli’s anxiety about returning to Blossom hints at the importance for him of
remaining in the urban landscape of downtown Toronto to preserve his identity as a
Westernized scholar. As long as he keeps his Native self in Alberta and his Euro-American
self in Ontario, his identity is geographically compartmented and he can cope with the
47
For a detailed explanation of absentee landowning, see Barbara Rasmussen’s Absentee Landowning and
Exploitation in West Virginia, 1760-1920.
89
duality that inhabits him without having to face the conflict of the cultures. However, when
Karen finally visits the Sundance, Eli is forced to merge his conflicting identities; he can no
longer deny his Native culture as he did in Toronto, where the landscape did not remind
him of his ancestors. But as he approaches the site of the Sundance, his senses instantly
bring back “all the sounds and smells, all the mysteries and the imaginings that he had left
behind” (202). This moment is crucial to Eli’s acceptance of his Native self later in the
novel, as it represents his epiphany that physical space can conceal his roots and his past,
but cannot make them disappear. In this context, Karen’s innocent remark that “it’s like
going back in time” (203) has a double meaning: to her, visiting the Sundance feels like
going back to a pre-colonized North America, to a virgin land unspoiled by Europeans that
she has the unique privilege to see; to Eli, it is a return to the immediate past of his
childhood, of his own pre-contact reality.
This inescapable double identity lies latent within Eli until he decides to go back
home after his mother’s death. In re-occupying the territory of his ancestors and calling the
small cabin “home” again, Eli allows the landscape of Alberta to define him, while
maintaining some elements of the identity he acquired in Toronto, such as his technological
knowledge and his interest in Western novels. Since the landscape of the Ontarian capital
has no particular link to his education and career, his absence from Toronto has no effects
on those aspects of his personality and identity. On the other hand, his physical presence in
the Albertan backcountry is absolutely essential to his reconnection with his Native self.
Indeed, much like Tayo, Eli’s proximity to the river, the mountains, and the natural
elements that helped define the Blackfoot people lead him to rediscover their world view.
While Karen’s suggestions of books and novels, mainstream White media or the social
90
pressure of other Natives might have altered Eli’s quest, his return to the land of his
ancestors allows him to achieve reintegration into Native culture in a direct and
unadulterated way.
The protagonist’s experience of the landscape allows him to re-
establish a meaningful relationshipwith his environment and his culture despite the spectre
of the ecological saint. King thus uses Eli’s return home to illustrate the clash between
Natives and Whites regarding the significance of the land. In so doing, he creates a space
for discussing the cultural and political implications of the Blackfoot community’s direct
contact with the natural landscape.
Occupying Space as a Political and Cultural Claim
The transition back to a Native worldview and to the defense of the interests of his
community is a difficult one for Eli. Far from feeling an immediate spiritual connection
with the land upon his return, he initially defends the environment because his mother’s
home and his own childhood memories, are endangered. It is only after he witnesses the
purging ceremony at Bill Bursum’s store that he is able to shift his interests from his own
person to his community. This behaviour acts as a counter-stereotype to the typification of
Natives as ecological saints. Upon his return to Blossom, Eli’s motives are self-centered
and have little to do with his Native upbringing: his preoccupations are only centered on
protecting the traces of his own past, not on preserving the land or the river in and of
themselves.
However, once he is in contact with the land through his occupation of his mother’s
house and through the Elders’ celebration, his perspective changes.
Eli, once he
appreciates the landscape, does not turn into a weeping Iron Eyes Cody watching the world
91
being destroyed. Like Tayo, he takes concrete action and reaches out to other members of
the Blackfoot community to share his renewed sense of belonging to the land that defines
his community. Moreover, by using his body and his humble dwelling as a way to prevent
the completion of Duplessis’s project, Eli gives a new sense to his occupation of the
territory. Indeed, his refusal to accept passively the exploitation of the river that everyone
else (including the other Blackfoot) considers inevitable redefines the power dynamics
established by Euro-American history, and more specifically by narratives such as Manifest
Destiny. Eli’s resistance, however small-scaled, therefore challenges the foundations of
Euro-American exploitation and the appropriation of the North-American landscape and
contributes to breaking the paradigms at the root of his identity crisis.
Now strengthened by active resistance and emancipated from the stereotype of the
ecological saint, Eli’s identity keeps developing throughout the narrative, bringing him
closer and closer to his traditional culture. The fact that he drowns in the river when the
dam breaks at the end of the novel is particularly meaningful since the river feeds the
cottonwoods necessary for the Sundance ceremony; it shows that his communion with the
land is also simultaneously the apex of his cultural reintegration. With Eli’s death, the
author creates a very strong image, one that associates the return of running water –which,
as we have seen in the preceding chapter, represents the revival of Native culture– with the
body of Eli. The protagonist, in this context, becomes a model of resistance against EuroAmerican exploitation and an example of a man who found how to define his Native
identity outside of the stereotypes imposed by White media.
With the story of Eli’s return home, King deconstructs the stereotype of the organic
and visceral association between nature and Natives as ecological saints without
92
downplaying the importance of cultural reconnection for modern Natives. Even though he
lives in his mother’s house and, consequently, prevents the dam from opening its gates and
destroying the valley, Eli is not fully integrated to nature until the very end of the narrative.
He is never portrayed as stereotypically running swiftly through the woods, hunting wild
animals, or praying to the forces of nature. That being said, once he occupies the land, he
comes to understand the value of the cabin and its surroundings not only as a meaningful
site for him, but also as a space that has a cultural value.
This broadening of his
perspective encourages him to continue his fight for the preservation of the site.
Despite its similarities with Tayo’s use of nature to reconnect with his culture, Eli’s
development over the course of Green Grass, Running Water is distinct from earlier novels
of the Native American literary boom like Ceremony in that his Euro-American cultural
background remains an important part of him even after his relationship with the land is
restored. For example, although his physical presence on the land of his ancestors plays a
crucial role in his reintegration in his community and his forging of a new identity, Eli also
uses the Euro-American judicial apparatus, including trials and injunctions, to defend the
house. Eli is also unimpressed with Clifford Sifton’s attempt at romanticizing the dam’s
colour and shape:
It’s nice in the morning. Sort of white. Like a shell.
Reminds me of a toilet, said Eli. (136)
Here, despite the stereotypical expectation that a Native can see nature or natural metaphors
in every aspect of the landscape, Eli’s comparison clearly shows his blunt and pragmatic
perspective of the dam.
In many of his encounters with Duplessis’ promoter, Eli is
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portrayed as the most rational of the two, thereby showing how his character straddles the
stereotypes of both Native and Euro-American behaviour.
Eli does not reject his Euro-American education under the pretext that he has
returned to the backcountry. His experience in the White world is part of him, and as long
as he no longer “wants to be a white man” (36) and embraces both sides of his identity, he
can go back to his Native roots. Eli’s sister, Norma, summarizes –and foreshadows– this
statement early on in the novel when she comments that Eli “came home . . . That’s the
important part” (63). This passage reveals that Norma is more interested in her brother’s
eventual return home than on his exile in Toronto. The fact that she prefers to focus on his
homecoming than on his absence and Euro-American behaviour shows her acceptance of
the hybridized identity that King promotes throughout his novel.
Through the character of Eli, the author demonstrates that a variety of cultures can
coexist within the same individual, as long as they are allowed to inform one another. Eli’s
malaise in Toronto and at the Sundance with Karen shows his inability to separate entirely
the different cultures he has integrated. Initially, this discovery of his multiple cultural
identities is distressing for him. However, once he accepts the fact that both his Native and
his Euro-American influences can inhabit the same space and that there is no need to
delimit them, he finds his true identity. As such, he can become a guide for Lionel and for
the rest of the community. Eli, like Tayo, exists in the liminal space between different
cultures that are in contact. Unlike Silko’s protagonist though, Eli has developed aspects of
his identity in both worlds. Tayo needs to return to Native traditions to make peace with
the trauma he experienced while in contact with Whites. For Eli, on the other hand,
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rejecting one or the other would inevitably lead to the silencing of a significant part of his
identity.
Eli’s forging of a complex and multifaceted identity acts as a way for King to
redefine Native identity and to fight back against the internalization of Native stereotypes
by the Native population. Though his presentation of a character who finds meaning and
healing through contact with nature, but who still does not correspond to Euro-American
expectations regarding Natives, King proposes hybridity as a possible way to construct the
identity of his people. Eli transcends the simplistic link between Native identity and nature
by integrating his own personal history and background to his quest. The surrounding
wilderness acts as a trigger for him to become reacquainted with the aspects of his identity
he left behind in his migration to Toronto and to retrieve the world view he inherited from
his Blackfoot ancestors. Once he is at peace with the various aspects of his own cultural
heritage, Eli is able to draw his nephew Lionel, whose experience in the Euro-American
world left him stranded and unmotivated, back to the Sundance. In doing so, Eli can
transfer his new sense of belonging to the community to his nephew without feeling like an
impostor. Thus, in both Silko’s and King’s narratives, the physical aspect of nature acts as
a first point of contact with Native culture and community.
When, at the end of Green Grass, Running Water, the flood wipes out the valley
and its contents, Eli’s identity is stable; even outside of its original landscape, he is able to
assume his hybridity. It is possible to see a strong demonstration of Eli’s will to take a
stand for his people when he defends the Sundance’s integrity against George
Morningstar’s invasive photography. Interestingly, while Eli’s defense of the landscape
relied on passive occupation of the territory, his fight against Morningstar requires a greater
95
level of physical involvement and action. King thus forces a shift from the stereotype of
the contemplative ecological saint to that of a character who is directly involved with
nature, and who extends his care for the land to the community that dwells on it. Despite
the fact that Eli ultimately perishes from having exposed himself to the elements, he
understands the significance of nature and the place of humans within it. This is what
motivates him to do everything he can to protect the territory and his community’s
integrity.
The reinvention of what it means to be Native and the new affirmation of a
modernized journey to identity are particularly significant when considering the ecological
saint as a subcategory of the vanishing “Indian.” In his Massey Lecture The Truth About
Stories, Thomas King explains how artists of the Romantic era imagined Natives on the
verge of extinction. In the Euro-American collective imagination, Natives were bound to
disappear like forests and other natural resources with the arrival of greater technology. In
other words, progress was causing Natives to die. “But in that dying,” King argues, “in that
passing away, in that disappearing from the stage of human progress, there was also a sense
of nobility” (The Truth About Stories 33). The ontological link between Natives and nature
in Euro-American culture thus contributes to the perceived inevitability of Native’s
disappearance as a people. Consequently, this misconception desensitizes Euro-Americans
to Native claims to political, social and cultural independence.
King’s Green Grass, Running Water acknowledges the existence of stereotypes
such as that of the ecological saint and their paralyzing effects on Native identity. With
characters like Eli, the author transcends this image. He demonstrates how Natives can
reinvent themselves and redefine their identity outside of the images and stereotypes that
96
Euro-American society popularized. The landscape, in this process of redefinition, serves
as a foundation that Natives can go back to regain their identity without the outside
influence of Euro-American culture. As Paul Beekman Taylor argues, nature has the
potential to inspire Natives and to help them retrieve the meaning found in traditional
nature-based ideology and cosmology. Taylor explains that “[s]ecret places and secret
things contain story, but only the instructed –those who have achieved ‘self-actualization’
by reconnecting themselves to the earth– can enter into vital story and its making”
(Beekman Taylor 40). Therefore, it is only once contemporary Natives re-awaken to this
cosmology that they can defend their land and unite as a community. Nature does not only
make it possible for Natives to heal from past trauma and to come to terms with their
seemingly conflicting roots, it is also the starting point of their own cultural revival and
empowerment.
97
Chapter 3
Reaching Back: The Social Repercussions of Tayo’s and
Eli’s Identity Quests
98
99
Post-Contact Alterations of the Native American Social Structure
We have seen in the preceding chapter that Tayo’s and Eli’s acceptance of their
hybrid identities, developed from direct contact with nature and the cultural references it
contains, incites them to come to terms with their Native origins and with the influences of
both Native tradition and Euro-American ideology on their lives. As they are no longer the
victims of conflicting identities, both characters reach out to the communities they had left
behind because of their inability to define their place among their peers. In other words,
their newfound identities encourage them to break the isolation that their inability to find
their place in society causes and to extend the cultural regeneration they have achieved to
other members of their community. In so doing, both Tayo and Eli become the catalysts
for the collective redefinition of their Native identity and Native community. In this
chapter, we shall identify how the particular context in which the novels were written, that
is, the late 1970s for Leslie Marmon Silko and the mid-1990s for Thomas King, informs
each character’s resolution of this identity crisis.
To understand the repercussions of each character’s return to his roots on his social
surroundings, it is imperative to contextualize more thoroughly each protagonist’s
relationship to his community in the post-contact environment of the second half of the
twentieth century. The authors of the Native American literary boom and beyond speak for
a generation of Native Americans who have been confronted with major discrepancies
between their traditional social model and the rigid model that mainstream Euro-American
culture promotes.
For example, Native and White cultures perceived differently the
concepts of family and community, not only as a form of social organization, but also as a
socio-affective support system. While Euro-Americans were never able to assimilate fully
100
the Native population to their own customs and worldview, their attempts still profoundly
altered the way Natives related to their own social network. Natives conceived family as a
structure that went beyond the basic nuclear unit. As Hilary N. Weaver and Barry J. White
point out, for Natives, “family includes a wide variety of people in a social network
including those not connected through biological ties. . . . Cousins, aunts, uncles,
grandparents, and other relatives are people who play significant roles in someone’s life”
(71-72). This perception of extended family ties creates a support network in which a
child, regardless of direct bloodline, can seek advice, guidance, and affection from a
broader range of individuals. Child-raising, in this context, was also often left to the
community at large rather than only to the child’s parents. In accordance with their view of
family, many nations organized their housing into communal homes in which several
generations inhabited the same space, thus making physical contact between distant
relatives more frequent.48
Traditional Native American societies also had the utmost respect for their elders,
whom they considered bearers of wisdom and experience. They were the holders of the
legends, rites and customs of the nation, a set of codes without which the community was
unable to function. As such, the oldest members of the nation played an important role in
both the performance of traditions and the transmission of traditional culture from one
generation to the other. Almost all nations on the North American continent accorded
48
The tipis of the great plains, the longhouses of the Northeastern part of North America and the Pueblo
adobe houses are all examples of multigenerational dwellings. For more information on the relationship
between architecture and Native American social structure, see Peter Nabokov and Robert Easton’s Native
American Architecture, as well as to Michelle Hegmon’s “Social Integration and Architecture – 2” for more
specific details about the Laguna Pueblo.
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importance to the decisions, advice, and recommendations of the oldest members of the
nation, who acted as social, political and spiritual leaders in the community.
The organization of Native communities followed a tribal system in which several
families joined together to form a larger community and share resources. Values such as
cooperation and harmony guided the decision-making process and the political organisation
of Native nations. While each member of the nation was granted a certain amount of
independence, important decisions concerning collective issues, such as war and resource
management, were made while keeping in mind the greater good of the entire community
rather than the profit of a particular person. Weaver and White, in their article, explain how
these values remain present in contemporary Native communities by exemplifying the
importance of generosity and sharing in the social relationships among the members of a
particular nation:
Generosity, sharing, and giving are highly valued. If one member of a
family network has a resource such as a car, housing, or food, that resource
is available to all. Prestige and security are gained through giving to friends,
neighbors, and even strangers . . . . Through such giveaways, a family earns
respect and gains the assurance that they will be taken care of in time of
need. (69)
To Natives, an organizational system in which reciprocity and the common good are central
preoccupations rules interactions in social and at political spheres. The well-being of the
collectivity is thus more of a priority than the advancement of an empowered individual.
Contrary to Natives at the same pre-colonial period, Europeans organized their
social interactions and their internal power dynamics according to a rigid hierarchy based
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on bloodline and material possessions. This system, inherited from the feudal tradition of
the Middle Ages, placed the ownership of land at the heart of the European social
hierarchy. Later, as Europeans discovered the North American continent, the newborn
Euro-American society still relied heavily on material possessions as a way to establish
one’s place in society. Moreover, landownership was a determining factor for wielding
political influence, as it was also a factor which granted the right to vote at the time.49 As
opposed to Natives, Euro-Americans prioritized the extent of an individual’s personal
belongings, rather than their contribution to the common well-being, to establish their
social status.
Inspired by the philosophers of the Enlightenment and by theorists of
liberalism, they promoted an individualistic model of social interaction which, in time, will
inform the expansionist phase of American history.
In the same way that it would be false to affirm that all Native nations were equally
respectful of natural resources, it is important to remain critical about the interpretations of
the role of liberalism and individualism in American society. For instance, one of the
seminal works on the links between American ontology and individualism, Louis Hartz’s
The Liberal Tradition in America, was later challenged by revisionist authors such as Barry
A. Shain for downplaying the importance of the common good in his interpretation of the
motives of the American Revolution. Considering the Cold War context in which Hartz’s
monograph was written, it is quite possible that the rampant fear of communism of the
1950s may have influenced his interpretation of history.
49
This remained true in the United States until 1802, when Ohio cancelled its property requirement. Virginia,
the last State to abandon property requirement, changed its legislation eighteen years later. For more detailed
statistics, see Alexander Keyssar’s The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United
States. For Canadian data, see Election Canada’s A History of the Vote in Canada webpage.
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Europeans’ individualistic mentality functioned as one of the fundamental bases of
the colonization of North-America, influencing, for instance, the landownership system,
economic development, and the crystallization of the social hierarchy. Frederick Jackson
Turner’s The Significance of the Frontier in American History demonstrates the possibility
for a nineteenth century American citizen to take advantage of the westward territorial
expansion in order to obtain a parcel of virgin land without necessarily belonging to a
powerful family. The American system, in comparison to Europe, made individuals more
upwardly mobile and significantly changed the relationship between landownership and
social status. Contrarily to the old continent, where the frontier consisted of “a fortified
boundary line running through dense populations” (Jackson Turner 1), the American
frontier was a place of “perennial rebirth,” in which a perceived empty territory allowed for
social mobility and personal gain.50 The frontier thus contributed to the establishment of a
social hierarchy profoundly linked to opportunity rather than on inheritance of status. This
mentality was reinforced throughout the entire expansionist phase of the United States, and
lasted until the closing of the frontier in 1890.
During the mass-immigration and industrialization phase which occurred between
the mid-1840s and the mid-1910s in America, several factors originating from the frontier
mentality were adapted to the new reality of post-frontier Euro-American society. In this
period, the United States represented a land of opportunity and social mobility for
immigrants arriving from difficult living conditions in Europe. The hopeful perception of
America contributed to reaffirm the belief in the possibility for an American individual to
50
The territory described as “empty” by Turner and other intellectuals of the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries was in fact populated by several Native nations. However, because of the general
disregard for Natives (see other chapters of this research for more details), the presence of Natives on the
territory was not regarded as equivalent to contact with other European nations on the old continent.
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emerge out of his personal context, including his community, and to achieve a higher social
status. This distancing from the community was very important, as it allowed newlyarrived Americans to reinvent themselves as individuals and to break their links with their
respective communities abroad.
Even if the general disenchantment following the Great Depression and the two
world wars altered the myth of progress from “rags to riches,” individualism and selfreliance remained important parts of Euro-American society throughout the second half of
the twentieth century. After the end of World War II, improvements in technology and in
the means of mass production encouraged a consumerist lifestyle in which ownership of
various industrial goods, including a car, electric appliances, and other household items
replaced landownership as an indicator of status. The context of the Cold War, in which
Americans united against a communist political other, also encouraged them to rally behind
the individualist, capitalist and consumerist aspects of their own society and to elevate them
to the rank of founding principles of the nation.
The post World War II era in the United States also profoundly affected the EuroAmerican family model, making the nuclear family the basic unit and reducing the role of
extended family in the education of children to a minimum. As mentioned in William M.
Wiecek’s essay titled “America in the Post-War Years: Transition and Transformation,” the
glorification of female domesticity and the polarization of gender roles transformed
women’s role in society from productive workers during wartime to child-caring family
members, leaving the role of provider to men (1213). This full-time dedication of mothers
to domestic tasks and the raising of their offspring contributed to making the nuclear family
autonomous from the help and support of the extended family.
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Moreover, the focus on nuclear family, defined by the family living in a particular
household rather than on an extended group of blood-related peers, tended to be reinforced
by Euro-Americans’ linear perception of time as well as by their commodification of time.
Dawna I. Ballard points out crucial features of Euro-American chronemics:
(Marx, 1977). Inherent in this equation are consequences for human
interaction.
Interaction with others takes time, so it is seen as costly
(Thompson, 1967b). In fact, any activity that impedes one’s work schedule
is seen as costly, including personal illness or family needs (Deetz, 1992).
Attaching a cost to these events and activities transforms and guides persons’
manner of interaction with others, both in and out of the workplace. The time
necessary for such exchanges becomes guarded and protected. Efforts are
made to reduce inefficient, time-consuming exchanges that detract from
one’s earnings potential without offering something of equal or greater value
in return (Buck, Dean Lee, MacDermid, & Smith, 2000). (Ballard 32)
According to this excerpt, the quest for cost-efficient, off-work time investments
contributed to the disappearance of extended family bonds in Euro-American contemporary
culture. Following this logic, even though elderly citizens were the repositories of relevant
knowledge, time invested in building a relationship with them was considered wasted.
Obviously, this characteristic of post-war Euro-American family models marks a clear
distinction with the Native concept of family.
Throughout the history of contact between Natives and Whites, the notions of
collaboration and inclusion at the heart of Native culture clashed with Western concepts
such as mercantilism, individualism, and colonial government. These cultural differences
106
created a context in which diplomatic relationships and economic partnerships between
Natives and Whites were difficult to maintain, thus impairing the colonizing process of the
American territory and, later, the management of Native populations by White authorities.
In order to have better control over Native populations and to integrate them rapidly to their
society, Euro-Americans engaged in a process of acculturation based on the destruction of
the tribal system.51 Interestingly, in spite of their disregard for their own elders, EuroAmericans rapidly targeted intergenerational contact as a pillar of Native American cultural
resistance. As such, the integration of young Natives into Euro-American society involved,
among other means, the rupture of family bonds by isolating children from their
communities in residential schools and favouring adoption in Euro-American families
rather than in other Native families.
Once distanced from their family and nation, children and teenagers were not
benefiting from the support and the heritage of their community and were thus deemed
easier to assimilate into Euro-American culture. This methodical separation of generational
groups also caused a rupture in the transmission of Native culture and language, which
were used to transfer the structural foundations of the nation to younger members. Faced
with this loss of cultural continuity, the traditional tribal structure was weakened and the
entire community lost its traditional cohesion. Residential schools and systematic family
separation peaked in the 1970s in Canada and the United States, after which the school
network began to be progressively dismantled. As a result, between the late eighteenth
51
It is interesting to note that, as mentioned in the chapter “Métis, Mestizo and Mixed Blood” of A
Companion to American Indian History, while Euro-Americans mainly believed that the full integration of
Natives into White society had to be done through a process of acculturation and while avoiding
intermarriage, some, like Thomas Jefferson, believed that Natives had to join the population through
interracial unions, stating that “[Natives] will unite [them]selves with us, join in our Great Councils and form
one people with us, and we shall all be Americans; [Natives] will mix with us by marriage, [their] blood will
run in our veins, and will spread with us over this great island” (in Brown and Shenck).
107
century and the 1980s, multiple generations of Native Americans have been educated
outside of their own nation, including the Laguna Pueblos and the Blackfoot.52
This isolation of young Natives from their community also had the perverse effect
of re-asserting the role of the American and Canadian federal governments as an entity that
had political power over Native American populations, a situation the legislation of both
countries had officialised early on in the colonization process.53 The pervasive presence of
Euro-American government authorities in the traditional Native socio-political hierarchy
contributed to decreasing the influence of elders and band councils on the younger
generations. In other words, not only did Euro-American political entities deprive Natives
of their traditional family structure, they also introduced a new parameter to the Native
community, that is, the federal government, acting as a socio-political stepfather for many
nations over several generations.
Parallel to these alterations within the tribal system, the economic and political
foundations of White culture also changed the social context of contemporary Natives. For
instance, the new political divisions between States and countries imposed upon Natives
during the settlement of inter-European conflicts such as the Seven Years War and the
American Revolution established new frontiers and forced Natives to realign their social
and economic organization. For instance, nations which had been traditionally spread over
both what became Canada and the United States, such as the Blackfoot and the Iroquois,
were suddenly divided by the 49th parallel after the signing of the Treaty of Oregon.
52
For a more complete historical account of residential schools in North America and of their effect on Native
society and culture, see J.R. Miller’s Shingwauk's Vision: A History of Native Residential Schools.
53
The first mention of Natives as ruled by the federal authorities of Canada and the United States can be
traced back to the 1867 British North America Act and to the 1787 Constitution of the United States
respectively.
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Moreover, the global economic system in which Native populations were engaged
relatively early in the colonizing process also changed the social structure of their
communities, in that the notion of class was slowly introduced within Native society.
Accordingly, a new social hierarchy based on material possessions and economic influence
slowly overtook the Native social tradition of reciprocity and cooperation.
The introduction of the concept of “status,” which created imaginary distinctions
between Native individuals based on lineage also contributed to complexify post-contact
transformations of Native society.54 Without an official recognition as a Native by the
government –which had the disadvantage of externalizing the Native identification
process– Natives without status were not allowed to reside on the reserve or to benefit from
the services granted to “official” Natives. As a result of this policy, individuals who were
not admissible to the official status were in a situation of double discrimination. As most
Native individuals, they were not only considered as outsiders from mainstream EuroAmerican society, but also in their own community for lack of “status,” thus preventing
them from obtaining a much needed psycho-affective support system through which they
could develop a sense of belonging.
The coercive transformations and assimilation policies forced on Native
communities represented a major trauma on the Native social structure. From the breaking
of tribal and family relationships to the establishment of a new hierarchy based on Euro54
The concept of status had been established early on in Native American post-contact history but, as pointed
out in Thomas King’s The Truth About Stories, the 1985 C-31 Bill in Canada and the 1990 Indian Arts and
Crafts Act in the United States significantly changed the government’s perception of which citizen could be
considered Native. Indeed, while Bill C-31 progressively causes the loss of status through marriage with nonstatus individuals, thus causing an inevitable decrease in status Natives, the Indian Arts and Crafts Act
prevents members of non-recognized nations to access status. Both these laws, despite their initial objective
to redress some injustices caused to Natives, worsened the condition of Natives in the long run, depriving
them of official recognition as Natives. For more information, see chapter V of The Truth About Stories,
“What is It About Us That You Don’t Like?”
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American models, White authorities contributed to draw Natives away from their
traditional social organization, which profoundly affected their way of relating to one
another meaningfully. However, the resilience of their traditions and the discrimination
towards their ethnic group also prevented them from climbing the White social ladder.
This created a context in which Natives were both unable to rely on their traditional social
hierarchy and marginalized as “ethnic others.”
Tayo’s Progressive Isolation as a Symptom of the Social Alterations in the
Native Community and the “Lie”
In Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony, Tayo’s existence outside of both White
society and his extended Native family illustrates the clash between the Euro-American and
the traditional Native models in terms of social organization. Tayo’s isolation has many
causes. As the son of a Laguna woman and a White man, his double ethnic background
positions him as a member of many communities, which potentially should have enriched
his sense of culture and identity. However, in a context like that of the late 1940s, in which
Natives were considered second-class citizens, the fact that Tayo is part-White prevents
him from integrating into White society as opposed to increasing his chances of “making it
in the White world”.55 The success of Rocky, whose full-blood origins do not prevent him
from better integrating into Euro-American society, accentuate the irony of this situation.
By following the advice of his White teachers not to let “the people at home hold [him]
55
While Silko’s novel was written in the late 1970s, the story itself takes place in the years following World
War II. In establishing the setting of her story in a period of extreme disenchantment regarding the American
Dream and the promises made to various ethnic groups prior to their involvement in war, Silko made even
more obvious the alienation experienced by the protagonist. It is therefore possible to consider Silko’s choice
to establish her story in the late 1940s as a way to highlight her own 1970s context.
110
back” (Silko 51) in his academic and athletic achievements, Rocky is more successful at
entering white society than his cousin.
In addition to the ethnic component of Tayo’s social isolation, the protagonist also
experiences difficulties relating to his family. Abandoned by his single mother at a young
age, Tayo is taken in by his Aunt, whose Christian upbringing encourages her to judge her
sister harshly for having had a son out of wedlock and for working as a prostitute in Gallup.
Auntie, sensitive to the peer pressure of the community and the gossip about her sister, is
reluctant to welcome Tayo under her roof. It is revealing to analyze Auntie’s rejection of
her nephew in terms of the different contexts of Euro-American and Native family
standards. Indeed, despite the fact that Auntie’s family is Native and belongs fully to the
Laguna Pueblo community, her class-conscious attitude towards extended family members
like Tayo reveals that her perception of family ties has been altered by Euro-American
influence:56
Like the night she tried to tell them not to keep the little boy for Sis any
more . . . . They could have refused then. They could have told her then not
to come around any more. But they didn’t listen to her then either; later on
though, they saw, and she used to say to them, “See, I tried to tell you.”
(Silko 34)
In this passage, Auntie’s pessimistic and negative attitude regarding Tayo betrays her lack
of attachment to her nephew. Had she perceived family according to Native traditions, she
would have included Tayo to her household and treated him like her own child since
56
Auntie’s negative attitude towards her extended family is also apparent in the frequent arguments she has
with Tayo’s grandmother, whose input regarding Tayo’s problems and the community are often overlooked
despite their insightful character. Her static position in the rocking chair also represents her lack of influence
in the family.
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traditionally extended family played a predominant role in the education of children in
Native communities.
Her hostility towards her nephew demonstrates her westernized
conception of family as a unit that includes only parents and their direct offspring.
In rejecting him and by pressuring him into a social role that he cannot fulfill,
Tayo’s family impedes his healing and maintains him in his post-traumatic state of
lethargy. This pressure not only comes from the protagonist’s family, but also from his
fellow Native veterans. While Tayo’s “brothers in arms” should, because of their shared
experience, act as a support group for him upon his return from war, the other veterans
influence him to adopt self-destructive behaviour, such as drinking and fighting, and fail to
understand his cries for help.
Tayo, initially unable to stand alone in the fragile
psychological state he is in and looking for relief, joins them at the bar despite his
awareness that alcohol and memories of glorious moments at war are only a limited
surrogate to the despair that inhabits each of the veterans. Because he is conscious of the
downwards spiral of self-destruction that he and the other veterans engage in, Tayo can
never fully participate in their meetings. Instead, he withdraws from conversations.
Tayo’s refusal to encourage Emo and the others in their collective remembering of
the good times in the army quickly sets him up as an outcast among the veterans. His
different perspective on war is complicated by his Mixed-Blood origins. This situation is
illustrated by the following excerpt, which occurs just after Tayo has explained that, despite
the temporary respect they were granted during wartime, Natives are still treated with
disdain after their return home:
Tayo got quiet. He looked across at Emo, and he saw how much Emo hated
him. Because he had spoiled it for them. They spent all their checks trying
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to get back to the good times, and a skinny light-skinned bastard had ruined
it. That’s what Emo was thinking. Here they were, trying to bring back that
old feeling, that feeling they belonged to America the way they felt during
war (43).
The mention of Tayo’s double ethnicity (“light-skinned”) is a particularly important detail
in the description of his intervention. Indeed, Silko uses this allusion to indicate that the
hatred the other Natives express towards Tayo is twofold: not only do they resent him for
exposing their subordination to Euro-Americans, but they also envy Tayo’s ethnic
background, which he claims allows him to “speak for both sides” (42).57 This comment is
ironic in this context, as Tayo, born of a mixed-blood union, should represent both the
colonizers and the colonized, and therefore should be in a privileged position to interact
with both groups. However, instead of facilitating a real dialogue, Tayo’s mixed origins
put him in an awkward position: while Natives despise him for his complexion, EuroAmericans are unwilling to recognize him as a full member of their society. This ethnicbased rejection is at the heart of Tayo’s relationship with the veterans and accumulates with
the disappointment of his adoptive family; it forces Tayo to remain alienated from his peers
and prevents him from fulfilling his role as a connector of Natives and Whites,.
These unwelcoming attitudes encourage Tayo to withdraw physically from the
Laguna community by leaving for Josiah’s ranch, where he can be alone most of the time.
Instead of allowing Tayo to find peace and tranquility and to heal from the traumatic
memories of the Philippines, however, his social reclusion freezes him in time and
57
Note that at this point in the novel, Tayo has not yet come to terms with his hybridized identity through the
ceremony as described in the second chapter of this thesis. His claiming that he can “speak for both sides”
betrays his polarized conception of identity and ethnicity, as he believes that he is half-White and half-Native
as opposed to belonging to a new hybridized identity.
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contributes to his stasis. Silko expresses this immobility through the description of the
landscape surrounding the ranch as a barren land, where “yellow rice grass [grows] in the
blow sand” (10) and where “the goat and kid had to wander farther and farther each day to
find weeds or dry shrubs to eat” (14).58 Tayo decides to go on the ranch to be alone, but
also because he associates this place with happy childhood memories shared with those
who truly loved him, like Josiah. As opposed to Auntie, Josiah, following the Native
tradition, treated his nephew like his own son and dedicated time to his cultural education,
thus creating a strong emotional bond that Tayo attempts to retrieve at the ranch.
Unfortunately, instead of being comforted by this familiar setting, Tayo finds himself
haunted by the recurring memories of better times with his uncle. Tayo is incapable of reliving his happy memories at the ranch with Josiah and Rocky without immediately
associating them with his feeling of guilt about their deaths. In explaining that “he could
get no rest as long as the memories were tangled up with the present” (6), Silko illustrates
that even the positive social interactions of Tayo’s past torment him.
Silko inscribes Tayo’s isolation within a greater theme of Ceremony: the profound
alterations of Native American culture and ontology due to contact with Euro-American
oppressors and their linear worldview, described as the “lie”.
In Ceremony, the
individualistic and linear aspects of White culture are represented by the metaphor of the
lie. In the context of Euro-American cultural, social and political domination of Natives
that characterizes post-contact America, the lie illustrates how contemporary Natives’
attempts at fitting into the Euro-American model are harmful because they deter Natives
58
It is important to keep in mind that this desolation originates from the severe drought that has been affecting
the reservation since Tayo’s departure. This drought is generally recognized as the symbol of the cultural
dead end in which Tayo and the Laguna Pueblos find themselves and as a reminder of Tayo’s guilt for
wishing away the rain in the Philippines.
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from finding a meaningful sense of identity based on the founding principles of their own
culture. In her novel, Silko insists that the lie is a cause of suffering for both Natives and
Whites: “The liars had fooled everyone, white people and Indians alike; as long as people
believed the lies, they would never be able to see what had been done to them or what they
were doing to each other” (191). Here, the author indicates, through Betonie’s words, that
the lie should not be seen as the conscious oppression of White society, but rather as the
result of ignorance and of a disconnection between Natives and their own culture. This
nuance is important because it shows that despite their history of oppression, Natives can
be re-empowered by reconnecting with their own roots, a process that can be achieved
independently from Euro-American invasion.
Another important facet of Silko’s “lie” is its power to create imaginary boundaries
between time and people. Indeed, as a result of the linear worldview that Europeans
brought to America, the lie conceives the human community as a single “ladder,” in which
pre-determined categories of people (the rich and the poor, Natives and Whites, etc.)
occupy a specific hierarchical position in relation to the others. In addition to preventing
people from focusing on their similarities rather than on their differences, another effect of
the linear conception of time is that the past is conceived as an obsolete and alien element
that is far less relevant than the present. Contrary to most Native American nations, for
whom communication with the past is fundamental, Euro-Americans view the past as a
monolithic and static entity that grows more distant as history progresses. In this context,
the lie diminishes the importance of the past and its relevance to the present for Natives, a
process which inevitably worsens the cultural alienation of contemporary Natives.
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The lie contributes to Tayo’s social reclusion by distancing him from the cultural
referents that could potentially help him out of his emotional and identity crisis. As
explained in the first chapter, the disconnection with the past that the lie promotes is at the
root of Tayo’s inability to relate to his culture. This isolation from the community is
harmful in that it prevents Tayo from finding support and comfort.
Indeed, Tayo’s
loneliness and lack of meaningful interaction with his peers prevent him from sharing the
trauma he experienced both as a neglected Mixed-Blood child and as a soldier in the
Philippines.
Communicating his experience would simultaneously free him from his
emotional burden and enrich the community. In other words, as long as the lie prevents
Tayo from connecting with his community and his past, he is bound to remain in a
permanent state of psychological and cultural paralysis. As the dry and hostile landscape
surrounding the ranch reminds the reader, Tayo’s psyche is barren and cannot heal or
progress on its own.
Reaching Out from the Margins: Tayo’s Journey Back to his Community
In Ethnicity and the Post-Modern Arts of Memory, Michael Fisher states that “it is Tayo
in the end who represents the path out of the mixtures and confusions of the Indian and of
modern America” (226).
Fisher is right in arguing that it is the protagonist alone,
encouraged by his interactions with Betonie, who ultimately completes the last steps of the
ceremony and finds how to integrate the lessons learned in the myths within his
comtemporary life. However, what Fisher fails to mention is that Tayo’s healing journey
does not end at his retrieval of inner peace, but rather marks the beginning of Tayo’s
progressive return towards his community. The ceremony on Mount Taylor and at the
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mine with Emo changes Tayo’s perspective on his social environment. In learning how to
communicate with his ancestors and seeing how he is connected to other humans around
him through a collective history and a set of shared myths, Tayo no longer sees those who
have rejected him as contributors to his psychological distress, but instead as various
manifestations of the same collective suffering.
Tayo’s understanding that he is connected to the other members of his community is
incorporated gradually in the second half of the novel. After his encounter with Ts’eh in
the mountains, the protagonist progressively understands the links that unite his physical
surrounding, his community, and himself. One of the early manifestations of Tayo’s
awakening to his community occurs when he climbs Mount Taylor in search for the lost
cattle: “The loggers shot the bears and the mountain lions for sport. And it was then the
Laguna understood that the land had been taken, because they couldn’t stop these white
people from coming to destroy the animals and the land” (Silko 186). As mentioned
previously, Tayo’s journey to Mount Taylor sparks his understanding of the links that unite
the landscape with the myths of his people. However, one can also see through this
passage that in witnessing directly the damage done to Nature by Whites, Tayo is better
equipped to relate to the collective suffering that Euro-American exploitation of the land
imposed on the local wildlife and on the Laguna Pueblos.
Here again, the divisions of the Native narrative suggested by N. Scott Momaday in his
essay collection “A Man Made of Words” help us understand the multiplicity of narrative
stratum at which novels such as Ceremony operate. Momaday’s argument revolves around
the idea that Native American stories, contrary to traditional Euro-American narratives, are
organized as a set of events happening simultaneously at different levels. As a result, an
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event or a symbol can reverberate in various interconnected narratives while remaining
distinct in terms of time and space as conceived by Euro-Americans. For instance, as
Momaday explains, an old legend can directly influence the life of an individual or a
nation. Conversely, the actions of a single member of a nation can be echoed in the
collective story of the nation or reify an already existing myth. Tayo’s journey aptly
illustrates Momaday’s model of interaction between various sub-stories. As he progresses
through the ceremony, his bond to the landscape develops into a more elaborate sense of
belonging. Once contact with nature enables him to see the connections between
environment, community and myth explained by Momaday, Tayo is able to understand that
he is intricately linked to his surroundings.
Silko’s use of language supports the change in Tayo’s perception of his community.
For example, when Tayo is hit by Harley and Leroy and he comes to realize that they
intend to kill him, Tayo begins to cry. However, “[h]e was not sure why he was crying, for
the betrayal or because [Harley and Emo] were lost” (Silko 242). In this passage, one can
see that Tayo feels sadness both for his desperate situation and for the veterans’ selfbetrayal. This is made possible by Tayo’s re-acquired capacity to understand human and
natural systems as a network of interrelated elements onto which a sense of physical,
cultural and psychological equilibrium and suffering can be transferred. In turning on
another member of their nation, Harley and Leroy are excluding themselves from the
community. The physical and psychological suffering they cause Tayo thus has a direct
impact on their own sense of belonging to the social network of the reservation. In the
same way as damage on any element of an ecosystem necessarily influences the others and
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affects the general natural equilibrium at large, their actions toward other human beings,
both positive and negative, have direct consequences on the well-being of their community.
This episode with Harley and Leroy marks the first major step in Tayo’s awakening
consciousness of the connections between society, nature, and himself.
In fact, his
understanding of the interconnections between the members of the community comes to its
peak later in the novel, more specifically after he is running away from Harley and Leroy.
At first, it is mostly the interdependency between the negative aspects of the relationship
between men that appears most clearly to Tayo:
From the jungles of his dreaming he recognized why the Japanese voices had
merged with Laguna voices, with Josiah’s voice and Rocky’s voice; the lines
of cultures and worlds were drawing flat dark lines on fine light sand,
converging in the middle of witchery’s final ceremonial sand painting. (Silko
246)
The narrator’s description of various cultural groups drawing “flat lines” refers once again
to the linear worldview of Euro-American culture, in which ethnic groups are
compartmentalized into different categories rather than being shown as various facets of the
same human race.
As explained in Robin Patric Clair’s “The Changing Story of
Ethnography,” the colonialist’s understanding of other cultures strongly inspired the
approach to ethnographic divisions, which tainted their perspective: “Ethnographers have
been known to create or construct the Other as primitive. Certain Western scholars
evidenced arrogance through their judgmental interpretation of Others” (4). As such, it took
until the late twentieth century, with the development of post-structuralist schools of
ethnography, before Euro-Americans were considered as a culture among others, rather
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than as one that implicitly dominated more primitive forms of culture. It is precisely the
Euro-American structuralist approach to the interpretation of the relationships between
cultures that Silko criticizes in this passage.
Tayo’s understanding of this imaginary and the unnecessary stratification of cultures
completes his earlier observations on Mount Taylor.
As he sees the pattern of the
“witchery’s final ceremonial sand painting” (246), Tayo becomes able to see that the
“lines” are in fact all part of the same pattern of suffering and mutual misunderstanding.
This then leads him to see connections between the destroyers’ actions, his own war
trauma, and the power and identity struggles of the members of his own community. In the
ultimate phases of his quest, Tayo begins to see that the patterns of the systems he belongs
to also exist in the realm of positive forces. His own story, those of his ancestors, and those
of the natural environment which surrounds him are all linked; they are flowing into one
another. The shift from negative to positive systems of interconnected events and beings is
absolutely crucial to Silko’s message, in that it becomes an illustration of Robert Nelson’s
idea that it is via the understanding of the harm that has been done in the past that Tayo can
gain access to knowledge of constructive patterns to heal in the present (3).
The most revealing impact that this epiphany has on Tayo is his understanding that, as
he navigates a dialectic system of destruction and compassion, his behaviour and his choice
to act upon others provides him with a broader range of positive and negative action on his
surroundings. For instance, in his final confrontation of Emo, Tayo feels that “he had
arrived at the point of convergence where the fate of all living things, and even the earth,
had been laid” (Silko 246). In resisting the urge to kill Emo with the screwdriver –a choice
of weapon that reminds the reader of the destructive character of that which is estranged
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from nature – Tayo deliberately chooses not to act his part in the witchery ritual, therefore
preventing its completion and sabotaging its potential success.
In fact, Silko has chosen to focus on the relationship between Natives like Tayo and
their surroundings instead of on the consequences of Euro-American disrespect for nature
on Natives. This is not to say that the effect of Whites on the natural system surrounding
the reservation is ignored in Ceremony.
Silko spends a good portion of her novel
commenting on the various effects that the arrival of White colonizers had on the landscape
and on the Native nations inhabiting it. The presence of Euro-American exploitation is to
be detected everywhere in the novel, from uranium mining to the appropriation of the
Mexican cattle to the very existence of the reservation. That said, what is important to note
is that on several occasions in Ceremony, the author does not position Euro-Americans as
the ultimate cause of environmental destruction.
Instead, she opts to present Euro-
Americans as products of witchery: that is to say, Silko depicts them as being under the
negative influence of their own non-regenerative worldview. The perspective chosen by
the author is particularly significant, in that it is aimed at identifying ignorance and selfhate as the source of the Native crisis rather than associating the presence of EuroAmericans with all the problems experienced on the reservation.
In doing so, Silko
promotes a constructive and collaborative approach and focuses on how Natives can help
themselves by reverting to their own traditions rather than on blaming White authorities
and perpetrating post-contact hate, as Emo did.
Upon the completion of the ceremony, Tayo’s newfound connection to those who
had rejected him earlier in the narrative empowers him and convinces him to break out of
his self-imposed isolation on the ranch.
Immediately after leaving the site of Emo’s
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murders, Tayo is finally able to retrieve the happy memories of his family, free from the
guilt of their death:
Josiah was driving the wagon, old Grandma was holding him, and Rocky
whispered ‘my brother’. They were taking him home . . . . He had always
been loved. He thought of her then; she had always loved him, she had
never left him; she had always been there.” (254-255).
In this passage, Tayo, despite his physical loneliness, is no longer alone because he feels
surrounded by the ghosts of his lost family. Having found his role in the community as the
one who stopped the cycle of violence and hate of the destroyers, Tayo can finally see how
love surrounded him all along.59 Strengthened by this realization, he finds the courage to
go back to the old men of the reservation and to Ku’oosh, ready to share the new story he
just completed. Now that he has been initiated to the symbolic language of his community
through his rite of passage, Tayo retrieves a sense of identity can be shared with others in
order for the whole community to be regenerated. The elders’ acceptance of Tayo upon his
return to the village illustrate his reintegration into the nation:
He looked at them sitting on the wooden benches that went all the way
around the long kiva. They nodded at him, and when Ku’oosh was satisfied
with the fire, he joined them. In the southwest corner there were boxes and
trunks with tarps pulled over them to protect them from uninitiated eyes
(Silko 256).
59
It is important to note that the “Destroyers” do not represent Euro-Americans exploiting Natives. Instead,
Silko uses them as a way to express the auto-destructive process sparked by the cultural uprooting of Natives
and the distancing from nature experienced by Natives and Whites in the post-contact context.
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The seating arrangement of the elders in the kiva evokes the circular patterns governing
Native culture as well as the ceremony Tayo just completed. His integration to the physical
circle of elders echoes his newfound place in the community and in the secrets and
traditions it beholds.
From this new position, Tayo enriches their circle with his
experience.
Tayo’s contribution to the community is a turning point in his personal quest, but it
also represents a new beginning for the Laguna Pueblo collective story. Paul Beekman
Taylor compares the transfer of Tayo’s healing to his peers to an initiation to the secret
ways of a particular nation.
In his essay “Silko’s Reappropriation of Secrecy,” he
summarizes his argument as follows: “Secret places and secret things contain story, but
only the instructed who have achieved ‘self-actualization’ by reconnecting themselves to
the earth– can enter into vital story and its making” (40). The most insightful aspect of
Beekman Taylor’s theory is that Tayo’s understanding of sacred traditions is only the
beginning of a larger process in which, as a newly initiated individual, Tayo gains power
over the fate of the community. Once reintegrated back into tradition, the protagonist has
the power to “recode sacred lore” (30) and, in so doing, to breathe new life into the cultural
heritage of the Laguna Pueblos.
In Ceremony, Tayo’s return to a state of balance with nature, his integration into the
sacred stories of his cultural community, and the regain of his psychological balance all act
conjointly and cross-fertilize to complete regeneration. As the novel concludes, the mutual
exchange of stories in the kiva becomes the ultimate example of circular patterns in Silko’s
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narrative.60
When considering the dislocated Native social context in which Leslie
Marmon Silko wrote Ceremony, it is no surprise that her protagonist’s ultimate action is to
retrieve his place within the community. As Tayo represents a typical example of a Native
lost between two ethnicities, two cultures, and two ontological discourses, his resumed
dialogue with the elders and his family becomes a powerful symbol of Silko’s hope for the
future of contemporary Native society. Like Tayo, the Laguna Pueblo must progress
towards a better understanding of their identity in order to participate to the regeneration of
their community. Through Tayo’s story, Silko suggests that in addition to making demands
for political, economic, and social equality in a world still dominated by Euro-Americans,
Natives must reclaim their community on their own terms instead of as a reaction to the
trauma instigated by colonizers. If they want to build a viable future, they must stand
together in opposition to the trauma of their shared past.
Thomas King and the Influence of Class and Education in Contemporary
Native Social Hierarchy
Silko’s politics of depolarization opened the way for later authors to express their
own positions on the renewed role of the community in contemporary Native life. The
voice of dissent in several ethnic groups including Natives in the 1960s and the 1970s
encouraged the academic world to pay closer attention to the specific issues, codes, and
means of expression employed by these groups. This increased interest for what were
known then as American minorities led to the creation of several university departments on
60
For a more elaborate analysis of circularity in Leslie Marmon Silko’s writing style, see Pauline Morel’s
“Circularity, Myth and Storytelling in the Short Fiction of Leslie Marmon Silko”, more specifically in her
sections entitled “The Circular Structure of Storvteller: A Web of Stories” and “The Associative,
Synchronistic, and Circular Structure of "Storyteller": The Stories Within the Story”.
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Black studies, Native studies, and Women studies, to name a few, which in turn produced
more and more academic work on the situations and concerns of these groups.61
In
addition to this increased interest in Natives in American universities, the pressure of the
Civil Rights movement also encouraged modifications in the education system in order to
cease overt assimilation and “Americanization” of the Native population. More and more
initiatives and programs62 such as the recent Esther Martinez Native American Languages
Preservation Act, aimed at revalorizing Native culture, language and traditions, were
created as a counter measure to assimilation.63 Finally, the creation of various
governmental programmes including the National Aboriginal Bursaries Programme in
Canada and the Catching The Dream MESBEC Program in the United States encouraged
an increasing amount of Natives to attend college.
Despite these initiatives and these important changes, it is imperative to keep in
mind that Natives in the last quarter of the twentieth century were in no way exempt from
discrimination. Indeed, while increased income and funding programmes helped Native
families to send their offspring to school and to slowly climb the North American socio-
61
In addition to ethnic groups, other minorities such as the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual (LGBT)
community and women were also benefiting from an increased exposure in the academic world.
62
For a more complete assessment of such policies, see the Winter 2003 special issue of the Cultural
Survival Quarterly entitled “Indigenous Education and the Prospects for Cultural Survival”, in which authors
such as Jason Schreiner, Ray Barnhardt, Anagayuqaq Oscar Kawagley and Bartholomew Dean explore
various aspects of cultural revalorization policies on Native culture.
63
While this progressive acceptance of Natives in Euro-American institutions took place both in the United
States and Canada, this change was framed by distinct legislative frameworks. While the American civil
rights movement is accountable for the first steps towards official social equity for minority groups in the
United States, Canadian legislation was a result of a broader political ideal. Indeed, in the specific case of
Canada, many of these policies were created subsequent to the 1971 Multiculturalism Act, a product of the
ideal of the “Canadian Mosaic”, a concept valorizing the contribution of all ethnic and cultural groups to
Canadian culture. This Canadian view of pluriculturalism opposed the “Melting Pot” ideal of the United
States, in which cultural assimilation rather than cooperation was central. The Canadian Mosaic has been
severely criticized by authors such as Kogila Moodley, Andrew Cohen and Neil Bissoondath, who claim that
Canadian multicultural policies are only an illusion that had a negative impact on Canada’s cultural
communities in imprisoning them in folklore and in a limited conception of their role.
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economic ladder, more members of this new generation chose to live off reservations, as
work opportunities in their fields were very limited at home. This demographic division
between urban, educated Natives and unemployed Natives on the reservations created a
new kind of generation gap, in which socio-economic status and higher education replaced
status and basic education as the determiners of social stratification.
In parallel to the changes occurring within Native society in the last few decades of
the twentieth century, Euro-American society also underwent particularly important
transformations in the same era. With the rise of the divorce rate, the increasing economic
independence of women, and the widespread use of birth control in the 1970s, the model of
the nuclear family established in post-World War II America began to erode and new
family structures, including reconstituted families and “DINK”64 couples, emerged. This
greater variety of family models, combined with the increase in influence of second-wave
feminist groups claiming equality of rights for women, fragmented American society’s
interpretation of traditional family values.65
Still, as the American population aged, and economy started to flounder in the
1980s, hopeful optimism was replaced by a return to conservative values (including the
revalorization of the nuclear family unit), tense political administration and American
patriotism. This phase came to its peak during the Reagan era, with a reinforcement of
traditional American social and cultural models.66 A similar return to conservative values
64
The acronym DINK, which stands for “dual income, no kids”, was coined in the 1980s to describe the
rising phenomenon of couples who chose not to have children.
65
See Stephanie Gilmore’s Feminist Coalitions: Historical Perspectives on Second-Wave Feminism in the
United States for more details on the political and social claims of second-wave feminists in the 1970s.
66
Jonathan Schoenwald includes a comprehensive description of Ronald Reagan’s conservative politics in the
1980s in his monograph: A Time for Choosing: The Rise of Modern American Conservatism.
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was observable in Canada during Brian Mulroney’s mandate from 1984 to 199367. In the
early 1990s, this oscillation between progressivism and conservatism affected both EuroAmericans and ethnic groups such as Natives. Neither traditional nor contemporary models
were accepted without criticism, which contributed to a climate of instability.
Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water is an excellent example of a work of
fiction in which the conflicting social paradigms of the 1990s find their way into the
narrative.
King recuperates the heritage of novels such as Ceremony in tackling the
reconnection to Native American cosmology and ontology and the regeneration of his
characters and their wounded community. Contrary to his predecessors, however, King
uses a more fragmented approach, which positions the characters as straddling the line
between Native tradition and Euro-American culture, which differentiates him from Silko.
In Green Grass, Running Water, the reconnection of the main characters to the community
is more complex than in Ceremony because they accomplish the double task of
reintegrating their community and finding their role in the North American world. For the
sake of analysis, it is important to consider, once more, one of the most representative
characters of the novel in terms of social reintegration, Eli Stand Alone.
The character of Eli is a typical example of a Native man emerging out of the late
twentieth century context. The second chapter of this thesis already established that Eli’s
experience in Euro-American society altered his sense of personal identity in a complex
manner. It is also true of the way he perceived himself with respect to both his Native and
Euro-American peers. In comparison to protagonists of the Native American literary boom
67
For reading suggestions concerning Mulroney’s era in Canada and its impact on both foreign and domestic
policy, see the bibliographical essay contained in Diplomatic Departures: The Conservative Era in Canadian
Foreign Policy, 1984-93, a collection of essays edited by Nelson Michaud and Kim Richard Nossal.
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such as Tayo, who, despite their alienation from their communities, still shared the same
socio-economic background as the rest of their families, Eli, a university professor of
British Literature, is more educated and better integrated to Euro-American society than
most of his Native peers.
Through the episodes describing his life in Toronto, Eli
demonstrates his ability to adopt a Euro-American upper-middle class lifestyle without
being overtly discriminated against. Another fundamental difference between Eli and Tayo
is that unlike Silko’s character, Eli willingly escaped the Native community to attend
college with the intention of integrating Euro-American society; he was not openly
ostracized by his family.68
In addition to seeking the possibility of achieving a higher social status, Eli also
leaves the reserve in the hopes of reinventing himself. Once he enters the University of
Toronto, Eli speaks little of his hometown or his past in the Alberta backcountry, deeming
these memories incompatible with his new lifestyle. As he integrates the intellectual elite
of Toronto, makes new friends, meets Karen, and develops professionally, Eli builds a new
identity that coexists with the one he had upon his departure from Blossom. Thanks to this
new identity, mostly based on his academic career and his relationship with Karen, Eli can
function in Toronto on a daily basis. However, like most Natives of his generation, Eli is
incapable of integrating completely in Euro-American life. His life in Toronto makes him a
metonymic figure representing his generation’s ambiguous relationship both with a
seemingly obsolete traditional past and a discriminatory Euro-American elite.
68
In this sense, it is interesting to speculate that, had Rocky survived the war and had he listened to the advice
of his Euro-American professors, he might have had a fate similar to Eli’s.
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Karen’s relationship with Eli illustrates the contradictions that inhabit him in
Toronto. While the character attempts to blend into Euro-American society by studying
British literature and by dressing as a westerner, Karen is charmed by his exotic character
and fantasizes about Eli being her “Mystic Warrior” (164). Karen’s attitude is problematic
for a number of reasons. First, her attempts to educate Eli about his own culture through
academic works do not help him reconnect with his ancestors. Instead, these attempts force
a third identity upon Eli, that of a stereotypical Native mediated by Euro-American culture
through academia and fiction. Second, Karen’s valorization of Eli’s ethnic difference and
her appreciation of “the idea that Eli was Indian” (163) prevents Eli from concealing his
Native ethnicity from other Euro-Americans, thus sabotaging the protagonist’s integration.
Concrete illustrations of Karen’s discriminatory attitude include her insistent suggestions of
books for Eli to read, most of them monographs on Native issues or by Native authors, in
spite of Eli’s greater interest in movements such as the New Women and Euro-Canadian
authors, such as Stephen Leacock. Through such behaviour, Karen never lets Eli forget
that he is Native while simultaneously projecting her stereotypical perception of Natives
onto him. This results in Eli’s cultural alienation from both the White world and his
original culture.
Such double estrangement is visible in Eli’s self-description upon his return home:
“Ph.D. in literature. Professor emeritus from the University of Toronto. A book on
William Shakespeare. Another on Francis Bacon. Teacher of the Year. Twice.
Indian.
In the end, he had become what he had always been. An Indian. Not a particularly
successful one at that” (262).
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In this passage, Eli prioritizes his achievements as a scholar and mentions his Native
origins as what seems to be an afterthought, which shows the extent to which his sense of
identification and self-worth is more oriented towards his academic success in Toronto.
This emphasis on White social success is deeply rooted in the context of Native American
society explained earlier in this chapter. First, it expresses the continuity of the social
pressure for “making it in the White world” to which Silko alluded in Ceremony with
Rocky and Tayo’s childhood stories. Second, it corresponds to the promise of social
opportunities in exchange for acculturation generally promoted among various ethnic
communities in North America at the beginning of the twentieth century. In addition to this
state of unbalance between pride for his Native and White identities, Eli’s perception of
himself as a Native failure reveals the self-hate that the contrast between Karen’s projected
expectations of his Native life and the reality on the reservation induced. This situation is
comparable to that of the veterans in Silko’s work, in that their inability to blend in with
Whites and their acquired disgust for their own ethnic community leave them with a
permanent feeling of inadequacy.
However, unlike the veterans, Eli’s negative self-perception involves class issues. For
instance, Karen and her family, in addition to being Euro-American, are also wealthy, an
aspect of his relationship with Karen that makes Eli particularly uncomfortable: “The flat
was simple enough and there was no conspicuous show of wealth, but even Eli could tell
that the rugs on the floor were Persians and the paintings and prints on the walls were not
the cheap reproductions that the university bookstore sold” (163). Karen’s apartment,
regardless of the subtlety of its luxury, contrasts pointedly with the cabin in which Eli grew
up, as well as with his current “fourth-floor studio walk-up” (163). Also, the mention of
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Persian rugs, an Asian product imported through the neo-colonial system, is a quiet
reminder that Karen’s lifestyle derives from the aftermath of British colonization, which
further contributes to Eli’s discomfort.
These feelings of suspicion and anticipated hostility are repeated in Eli’s encounter with
Karen’s parents.
During his first visit to Karen’s family cottage, Eli’s discomfort is
betrayed by his surprise that “Karen’s father seem[ed] like a regular guy” (163), thus
hinting that Eli expected his in-laws to be snobby and condescending towards him. Eli’s
lack of trust in Euro-American individuals is symptomatic of his own self-perception as an
“other.” Even if his actual contact with Karen and her family is friendly, Eli’s judgement is
influenced by the historical relationship of oppression and ignorance between Whites and
Natives. Instinctively, he prepares for undeserved hostility. Through this reaction, one is
able to see that despite his apparent integration into Toronto’s mundane life, Eli cannot
fully dissociate himself from the traumatic experience of his ancestors.
Upon his return to Blossom for the Sundance, Eli struggles to differentiate his own
experience in his Native family from the notions about Natives he acquired in university, in
Karen’s family, and in Western novels. Because his relationship with other Natives had not
been renewed for many years, Eli was able to maintain a fossilized perception of his
community based on distant memories, in which he was not so different from other Native
boys. As long as he kept the reality of the reserve separate from his current life in Toronto,
he did not need to update his relationship with his own community. This phenomenon
illustrates once more Susan J. Scarberry’s argument about the tight links between
geography and memory. Eli’s absence from the reserve keeps him isolated from his own
past, but also prevents him from connecting with the shared history of his collectivity. Just
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like Tayo, the processing of his own difficult memories and his re-acquaintance with the
trauma that defined his community are delayed by his lack of physical proximity with the
reserve.
When he finally brings Karen to the Sundance, Eli is immediately confronted with the
differences in class and social status that separate him from the rest of the members of his
community:
And he remembered the afternoon when the men came out of the double
lodge at the center of the camp and danced for the first time, how, as they
moved in the circle, Eli began to recognize them, boys he had grown up with
who were now men. Jimmy, who had gone to law school. Marvin, who had
drowned a basketball scholarship in a bottle. Sweet, who had been sent to
prison for robbery and assault before he was out of high school. Floyd,
whose family was one of the wealthiest on the reserve and rigorously
Catholic. Leroy, who had gone to work for PetroCan and was now, as Eli’s
mother told him, a big shot (261).
In this excerpt, the division between those who left the reserve and “made it” and those
who stayed on the reserve and deperished is sharply defined. The repetitive enumeration of
men and their status in the community suggests that Eli recognizes them as they enter the
dance circle, forming a continuous string of acquaintances. As he watches the dance, Eli
becomes aware of the internal social hierarchy that subdivides the apparently unified group,
seeing the invisible cracks breaking apart the traditional tribal bonds of the Sundance. Eli
is a privileged witness, for his experience in Toronto has made him capable of detecting the
effects of socio-economic status on the collaborative event of the Sundance. However,
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much like Tayo at the bar, Eli is still too far removed from his Native culture to act upon
the fragmentation of his community: stranded between both cultures, Eli is incapable of
communicating his awareness of their distress.
However, in spite of his helplessness, Eli’s contact with the Sundance leaves him
with an altered perception of his relationship to the community. Once he witnesses the
dance, Eli is no longer able to ignore the process of destruction of his community he is
partly responsible for, an epiphany so unbearable that he chooses to flee back to Toronto
with no intention of ever coming back despite Karen’s pleas. Karen’s insistence to go back
to Alberta for the Sundance betrays her obliviousness to Eli’s internal identity struggle.
Nevertheless, King leaves the significance of Karen’s insistence open to interpretation.
Hypothetically, in seeing Eli taking part in a traditional ceremony of the Blackfoot such as
the Sundance, Karen’s perception of her lover as a “Mystic Warrior” is reinforced.
However, her stubborn requests to return to the Sundance could also be a sign that she
understands Eli’s need to return home and resolve his identity conflict.
Taking a Stand (Alone): Eli’s Return Leading the Way for his
Community
Eli’s experience at the Sundance reinforces the mental barrier he built between his Native
community and his Euro-American social life. Now aware of the tension between these
colliding worlds, Eli is more determined than ever to keep them separate, which increases
the distance he takes from his original culture and community. The rare news he receives
from the reserve reinforces his perception that he no longer belongs there: “Each year,
around May, Eli would get a letter from his mother. How was his health? How was
Karen? Were there any grandchildren? Norma was fine. Camelot was fine. She was fine”
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(264). Even if the fact that Eli’s mother writes to him can be easily decoded as a subtle
invitation to return home, its brevity and the repetitive three last sentences leave the
impression that Eli’s family in Alberta is perpetually “fine.” This vague, yet reassuring
news helps him focus on his daily activities and his life with Karen. It is only when Eli’s
mother dies and that he can no longer ignore the changes occurring at home, that Eli is
confronted with his past once again.
When Norma finally calls to announce the death of their mother, Eli feels rejected for
not having been told that his mother had passed away months earlier. Now incapable of
ignoring that life kept changing back home during his absence –a fact he had successfully
been able to contain until then– his illusion of stability is shattered. As the physical
evidence of his original identity disappears, creating urgency for him to return to his roots,
Eli decides to go home before it is too late. In this context, the relative isolation of his
mother’s home at the foot of the dam offers an opportunity for Eli to “go home” physically
without having to face the contradictions of his multiple identities.
Alone in the
backcountry, Eli can reconnect with his past without feeling the underlying class tensions
in his relationship to the community.
It is important to note that it is Eli’s social circle, especially his sister Norma, that incite
him to reintegrate into the community. Her frequent pleas to convince Eli to talk to his
nephew Lionel remind him of his role and responsibilities regarding the rest of the family
regardless of how long he has been absent from the reserve. When speaking to him in
short, straightforward sentences, such as “You can help now” (112, emphasis mine) and
“You’re a teacher . . . So teach” (264), Norma is showing her understanding of the potential
for Eli to make a positive difference in the community. For these reasons, she tries to
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convince her brother to involve himself emotionally and physically with the rest of the
community.
In this respect, Norma’s attitude differs significantly from Auntie’s in
Ceremony, whose insidious comments are meant to further exclude the protagonist and to
expose his difference from her expectations of a good son. Instead, Norma uses guiltinducing remarks to coerce Eli to return to his place in the community and to encourage
him to take his responsibilities regarding Lionel and the rest of his extended family.
Despite her good intentions, Norma’s verbal pressure on Eli has results similar as
Auntie’s passive-aggressive comments have on Tayo.
Incapable of seeing his double
cultural identity as more than a betrayal to his nation, Eli initially prefers to hide in the
cabin and withdraw from his peers. The protagonist’s isolation thus becomes a state of
arrested social development, represented physically by the dam retaining water next to his
cabin. However, like the dam, Eli is incapable of “standing alone,” as his last name
foreshadows, against his personal identity struggle: eventually, he must give in to prevent a
psychological breakdown. Like in Tayo’s case, it is nature, rather than community, that
guides this first opening to cultural acceptance.
Eli’s physical isolation from the community becomes a facilitator in the redefinition of
his identity. Indeed, his close contact with the natural and physical setting of his childhood,
which has not changed much in decades due to its isolation, creates a favourable
environment for Eli to retrieve some of the memories he had to leave behind to adapt to his
new life in Toronto: “At first, there had been the sensation of being home, of being in his
mother’s house, of reliving the memories” (262). However, his presence in the cabin
quickly becomes entangled with Duplessis’ interests, as the house prevents the company
from opening the gates of the dam. The short visit he planned on making at first is then
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compromised by the fact that if he leaves his garrison. His house, as well as all the
memories that it embodies, will be destroyed. In spite of his almost complete isolation
from his peers, Eli’s occupation of the cabin affects the whole community since his
presence at the foot of the dam stops the flooding of the entire valley, a deed that would
affect everyone in Blossom and the reserve. In this context, Eli’s last name, Stand Alone,
foreshadows his improbable role as the lone protector of the valley.
Eli’s desire to remain far from the community is therefore the catalyst of his
transformation into a defender of the Blackfoot interests in the court case against Duplessis.
Through these unusual circumstances, Thomas King uses irony to demonstrate how Eli
cannot escape his relationship with other members of his community.69
Nature,
materialized as the menacing river and as the setting of his isolated childhood years, serves
once more as a bridge between past and present. Like for Tayo in Ceremony, nature helps
the protagonist to contribute positively to his community. Of his fight against Duplessis,
Eli says: “Looking back, Eli could see that he had never made a conscious decision to stay.
And looking back, he knew it was the only decision he could have made” (263). This
passage illustrates that Eli’s decision to preserve the artefacts of his childhood transformed
into his taking a stand for his entire community.
After his involvement in the defense of the valley, Eli begins to understand his own
purpose within the community.
As such, upon the closure of the ceremony in Bill
Bursum’s store, he can accept his responsibilities regarding his peers, and more specifically
regarding his nephew Lionel, a situation he was unable to sort out hours before:
69
For a more extended analysis of Thomas King’s ironic sense of humour and of Native American humour,
see Drew Hayden Taylor’s Me Funny.
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What was he supposed to tell Lionel? Happy birthday. That’s about all he
could tell him. About all he wanted to tell him. But Norma expected more.
In the old days, an uncle was obligated to counsel his sister’s son, tell him
how to live a good life, show him how to be generous, teach him how to be
courageous . . . the least he could do was take the boy out for lunch (264).
Here, Eli is aware of his traditional role as uncle to Lionel, but is still unsure of how a man
as separated from traditional Native life as him can teach his nephew the values he doubts
he embodies himself. In an attempt to reach out to Lionel, Eli decides to take him out to
lunch. This social gesture is significant, since inviting someone for lunch belongs more to
the realm of Euro-American social customs than that of Native Americans. Eli’s choice
therefore reveals how, when in doubt, the protagonist reaches back to the relative comfort
of the social customs he learned to mimic in Toronto instead of trying to adopt Native
traditions. His attitude changes as he witnesses the Four Elders’ ceremony in the television
store and sees Lionel wearing his ill-fitting John Wayne jacket, representing Lionel’s desire
to become a successful man according to White standards. As he realizes the possibility for
Lionel to reproduce his own mistakes, Eli changes his mind and embraces his role as an
educator and as a mentor for his nephew from the vantage point of his dual identities.
By taking Lionel to the Sundance, Eli hopes that physical presence among his peers
and family will help his nephew rediscover his Native identity. Moreover, Eli hopes his
gesture will help Lionel to avoid the negative self-perception he himself suffered from
before coming back home. Eli is not particularly enthusiastic about going to the Sundance,
as suggested by his pessimistic comments about the weather (“Norma’s going to be mad as
hell if it doesn’t clear up,” 341) and his haunting memories of Karen’s death. However, he
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knows that by attending the event and taking Lionel with him, he will be able to
demonstrate to his nephew how every member of the community has his place, including
those who have ventured into Euro-American society. Eli’s hopeful attitude is echoed in
his own interpretation of the weather: “The sky was moving overhead, a gathering of
clouds. ‘Sure doesn’t look good, but you never know’” (341). Just as the scarce signs of
improvement in the weather show the remote possibility for sun later on, Eli’s chances of
significantly altering his nephew’s state of paralysis are slim; however in both cases, he has
no choice but to hope for the best.
Eli never explicitly reveals the motives for his return home to Lionel. However, the
fact that their decision to visit the Sundance coincides with Eli’s recollection of Karen’s
death in a car accident before she was able to go back to the Sundance is helpful in the
interpretation of this passage:
Eli saw the car before Karen did, a dark flash of purple and black, glistening
as it came, plunging through the intersection.
At first, Lionel thought that Eli had seen the Indians, but as he looked
around, Lionel saw nothing but empty streets: Eli leaned over the steering
wheel, and for a moment Lionel thought his uncle might be sick. Or worse.
“You okay?”
Eli nodded.
“You sure?”
“Just thinking,”Eli said . . .” (344)
At this point in the narrative, Eli’s experience, much like Tayo’s at the uranium mine, can
finally make sense of his own experience in Euro-American culture and transforms his
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trauma into a positive life experience. The inside of the car’s cockpit acts as a physical
setting creating a transition zone between Eli’s guilt about his past betrayal of his Native
community –symbolized by Karen’s death before she could see the Sundance– and his
opportunity to teach Lionel how to avoid a similar fate.
As suggested by Lionel’s
supposition that Eli must have seen the four Indians, Eli is experiencing an epiphany of his
own in the car.
While not as elaborate as Lionel’s in Bill Bursum’s store, Eli’s
discombobulated attitude reveals more than him “just thinking:” the memory of Karen’s
tragic death helps him realize that he can act upon his nephew’s lost identity and regain his
own at the same time.
This epiphany is a pivotal point in the larger ritual performed by the Four Elders.
Suddenly, Eli knows that he must take his nephew back to the Sundance: “Tell me,
nephew. If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go?” (341). In offering
to take Lionel back to the Sundance, Eli can complete the ceremony he left behind years
earlier with Karen. Simultaneously, he can guide his nephew towards making different
choices and embracing his own hybridity rather than trying to repress it. The helpful
insights which he provides his nephew while narrating his own return home and his
supportive attitude during Lionel’s return to the Sundance are Eli’s first concrete gestures
to bringing his family and community back together. Moreover, his reaching out to a
younger generation of his community helps to bridge the gap that the destruction of
traditional family structure had created generations earlier.
Through this first experience as a mentor for Lionel, Eli gains the confidence to
continue reaching out to his peers. To this end, he engages more actively in the defense of
the members of his community and shows them the way out of inertia. Eli’s confidence
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materializes in the incident between George Morningstar and him, Latisha’s abusive exhusband, when he uses physical force against the White man to prevent him from taking
pictures of the Sundance for a magazine. The confrontation between Eli and George is
important for a number of reasons. This event replicates the childhood memory of his
father and the other men of the community chasing away a family of tourists taking pictures
of the ceremonial dances. In revisiting this past event, Eli is able to connect with both his
personal past on the reserve and with the community at large and defend the integrity of the
Sundance. Moreover, during his confrontation with George, Eli is not fooled by the latter’s
statement that the film that was still in his suitcase was “[u]ndeveloped film. Just blank
film” (King 386). Instead of believing George, the protagonist ridicules him, saying that
ten dollars should suffice to cover his loss, a comment which emphasizes the
ineffectiveness of George’s lie.
Through this particular exchange of words, Eli uses his experience in the White
world to empower his own community in the face of Euro-American cultural appropriation.
As such, Eli’s dual identity shifts from a source of internal conflict to a vantage point that
allows him to “talk back” to Euro-Americans, using their own cultural codes against them.
Eli’s protest against Morningstar’s trivialization of the sacred character of the Sundance is
an act of resistance against George’s commodification of his culture and condescending
attitude. His defense of Native culture inspires his community to support him and, in turn,
to confront Morningstar:
“You can’t believe in this shit!” George shouted after Eli. “This is ice age
crap!”
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Lionel moved forward, and George fell back several steps. “Probably time
to go,” said Lionel.
“Come on,” said George. “Come on” It’s the twentieth century. Nobody
cares about your little powwow. A bunch of old people and drunks sitting
around in tents in the middle of nowhere. Nobody cares about any of this.”
“Go away, George,” said Latishia. “Just go away”.
. . . Lionel and Alberta and Latisha and Harley and the old Indians and
Coyote stood their ground and watched George throw the case into the trunk
and climb into the car. (386-387)
Here, the calm and firm response of the Native characters seems to unite as one voice
peacefully asking George to leave.
The combination of real and mythical characters
“standing their ground” against Euro-American exploitation at the end of this scene is
powerful; it shows how embracing traditional culture reinforces the community and helps it
resist stereotypes. The confrontation between Eli and George is thus a turning point in the
narrative, in that Eli’s resistance inspires his family and community to defend their
traditions and express their culture with pride. In acting as a leader and standing against
George’s disrespectful behaviour, Eli not only bridges the gap between his conflicting
identities: he also acts as the catalyst to the entire community’s awakening.
Eli’s confrontation with George Morningstar can be interpreted as an affirmation of his
re-inscription as a cultural hybrid into the community.70 Both Eli and George are examples
70
It is also interesting to consider the symbolic value of George Morningstar and Eli’s names in this
confrontation. Indeed, Morningstar is a name often associated with the devil, while Eli derives from the name
of an important priest and counsellor in the Old Testament. The biblical references contained in both names
thus add to the great number of references to Christian tradition and religious syncretism contained in Green
Grass, Running Water, all of which highlight King’s position on the importance of cultural hybridism in the
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of members of a given ethnic and cultural group who come in contact with a cultural other.
However, their approaches differ radically: Eli went to Toronto in an attempt to improve
his social situation and discover new possibilities, while George was attracted by the exotic
character of Native culture and arrived in Blossom with a condescending and inflexible
attitude towards the Blackfoot. As a result of his stereotypical perception of Natives,
George imposed his vision on the community, more particularly on Latisha, and used his
fabricated sense of superiority to gain power over others. When he physically fights
George, Eli shows that despite the knowledge and the social customs he acquired from
Euro-Americans while in Toronto, he still belongs to the Sundance because he understands
its symbolic significance as an event through which Natives unite despite their different
lifestyles. King thus uses the fight between Eli and Morningstar to illustrate how ethnic
background and cultural behaviour are not the sole indicators of community identification.
Morningstar’s pseudo-Native name and appearance, as well as his knowledge of Native
history were arguably “more Native” than Eli’s academic career. The protagonist’s victory
against Morningstar therefore demonstrates that it is one’s awareness of the links between
the members of a community and their concrete actions to protect their peers that truly
show one’s belonging to the Blackfoot. How stereotypically “Native” one looks and
behaves has no effect on this sense of belonging.
The destruction of the roll of film and the victory against George Morningstar do not
only defend the community at a cultural level. In fact, considering George’s history of
psychological and physical violence against Latisha, Eli also takes a stand to protect his
niece and her children from a tangible form of danger. In combining Morningstar’s abusive
vitality of Native culture. For more information on this topic, see Laura E. Donaldson’s article “Noah Meets
Old Coyote: Intertextuality in Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water”.
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relationship with his disrespectful behaviour vis-à-vis the customs of the community, King
cleverly emphasizes the social situation he had symbolically put forth using the pools of
water throughout his novel.
Indeed, the individual suffering each member of the
community endures is one and the same with that of the Blackfoot nation. Consequently,
because the Blackfoot were focusing on their personal problems, they were unable to see
the greater issues that concerned them all. Eli’s gesture, in this context, contributes to
breaking the illusion of isolation and communal fragmentation.
Paul Beekman Taylor, without directly referring to King’s work, speaks of this
empowering reappropriation of Native culture by Native communities. Using Silko as an
example, he explains that she “developed an ideology of secrecy that serves to distinguish
Indian identity in the story from lies that have imprisoned the image of the Indian and his
sacred lore in Eurocentric secular frames” (41). Beekman Taylor’s analysis of Silko’s work
is relevant to understanding Eli’s newfound purpose in his community. As a hybrid
individual, Eli can confront Euro-American culture and use his knowledge of its cosmology
to end oppression and ignorance. At the final Sundance, the protagonist is literate enough
in his own culture to understand the mechanics of his own oppression and is comfortable
enough with White culture to “talk back” and denounce the stereotypes imposed on his
people.
The new sense of partnership with his community that Eli initiates at the Sundance
finds a second wind after the earthquake that provokes the destruction of the dam. Indeed,
the water being in movement again and the river finding its natural course in the valley
oppose the dead pools accumulating throughout the story. Moreover, the tragic death of Eli
unites the symbolism of the water to the cultural renewal of the community. As Eli’s body
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is washed away in the river that will eventually fill the cottonwoods, a tree essential to the
Sundance ceremony, his death creates a strong symbol of both closure and renewal for the
community. This new beginning is illustrated by the reconstruction of the cabin by Eli’s
family after the flood. Once again, the family can unite around a common project that they
build based on their traditions, but one that also decidedly looks onto the future.
In the analysis of the pattern of breakage, isolation and bond that punctuate the journeys
of both Tayo and Eli, one is easily able to see a sense of continuity between both works.
In both cases, the quest of the characters flows naturally between reconnecting with the
cultural codes embedded in nature, embracing their hybridity as a vantage point rather than
as a social handicap and returning to their community with a new sense of empowerment
that they are able to communicate. In each of the novels, this progression exemplifies Paul
Beekman Taylor’s theory of secrecy, in that the characters had to become literate in their
own traditions before being able to establish a connection with nature and with their peers.
However, in Green Grass, Running Water, Thomas King builds on Silko’s heritage
while adapting it to the context of doubt and questioning of both Native and White
traditional models that defined the 1990s zeitgeist. More specifically, in the final scenes at
the Sundance, King allows the reader to see not only the underlying connections between
the wounded community, but also what such interconnected beings are able to do when
they unite against self-hate, ignorance, and oppression. Considering the context of social
fragmentation for both Natives and Whites in which Thomas King published his novel, this
emphasis on solidarity and acceptance comes as a relevant and culturally meaningful
antidote.
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Conclusion
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This research can be summarized as a humble attempt at describing the evolution of
the socio-historical and cultural contexts from which Ceremony and Green Grass, Running
Water have emerged. Upon the analysis of some of the most important aspects of these
contexts, it becomes obvious that questions such as Natives’ relationship to the
environment, the definition of contemporary Native identity and the belonging of a
hybridized individual to a traditional Native social structure are central preoccupations for
both Silko and King.
Considering how the environment has been of a crucial importance to the definition
of Native American culture and traditions, it is not surprising that the changes and the perils
that nature faced during the second half of the twentieth century inspired the imagery and
the themes employed in Native American novels. From Silko’s denunciation of the
exploitation of natural resources such as uranium by Euro-American corporate and military
interests in New Mexico to the strong image of Eli Stand Alone facing the Duplessis dam,
the protection of the environment is most definitely a major theme in both King’s and
Silko’s works.
Moreover, the journeys of both characters exemplify Paul Beekman
Taylor’s theory of secrecy, in that it is their return to nature that allows them to reconnect
with their past, both historically and culturally. From a context in which the protagonists
have lost touch with their traditional culture, Tayo and Eli progress towards an
understanding of nature as more than a mere physical environment and the source of
hardship. Step by step, they decode the hidden meanings in the landscape and become able
to use nature as the key to understand their own identity.
However, the rise of the Euro-American environmentalist movement in the 1970s
and beyond had an impact on King’s way of approaching the cultural significance of nature
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in his characters’ process of personal identification and reintegration into their community.
In the 1990s, returning to nature was no longer only meaningful for Natives, but also for
Euro-Americans who began to experience the effects of pollution. To this end, King had to
adapt his perspective of nature accordingly. While in Ceremony the sun clearly evolves
from an oppressive reminder of post-traumatic memories to an empowering symbol for
Tayo, water in Green Grass, Running Water is an ambiguous symbol of both past trauma
and hope for change from the very beginning of the novel. By using water in such a
nuanced way, King was able to express the ambivalence of Natives in the last decade of the
twentieth century regarding the meaning of nature as a cultural referent, for it inspired both
traditional myth and current militantism. Because Euro-Americans –and, more specifically,
Euro-American environmentalist lobbies– had come to idealize and commodify the
presumed “traditional” relationship between Natives and nature in the 1990s, King’s more
complicated approach to a pattern present in Silko’s novel indeed represents more
accurately the problematic relationship between Natives and nature during this era.
Similarly, the progression from the self-hate the protagonists experience regarding
their hybridized cultural background to their acceptance of their double cultures as strength
became increasingly complex between Ceremony and Green Grass, Running Water. Tayo,
on the one hand, progresses steadily towards an understanding of his own culture and of his
own role as a “Post-Indian,” that is, a Native who has experienced contact with EuroAmericans and who must find new meaning in his cultural and ethnic duality. Through his
ascension of Mount Taylor and his quest for the lost cattle, Tayo discovers that his role is
precisely to act as a link between Native and Euro-American culture. His hybridity, in this
way, becomes an asset rather than a weakness. As difficult as this cultural regeneration
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may be, Tayo continues to progress through the ceremony without ever looking back
nostalgically at his past in White society.
Eli, on the other hand, is disturbed in his progression by the interference of EuroAmerican media and environmentalist groups. Afraid of becoming an “ecological saint,”
Eli is initially incapable of telling whether his re-introduction to his own culture is
replicating the commodified image of Natives defending nature seen in movies and
commercials. Nevertheless, as his occupation of the land becomes a concrete gesture to
prevent further violations of the integrity of nature, he begins to see his role as a defender
of the environment and of his culture. With Eli’s journey, King responds to the growing
interference of mainstream Euro-American cultural discourse in Native identification in the
late twentieth century. Despite these additional obstacles, the protagnonist reaches the
same result as Tayo: Eli’s identity quest, however problematized, remains successful in that
he finds his place in his community and finds inner peace in spite of his hybrid identity.
This thesis suggests that we consider Natives’ return to nature, the definition of a
hybrid Native identity and the reintegration of Natives into the community as three steps of
the same regeneration process. While context informs the structure of each step of this
pattern, it is in the protagonist’s return to their community that one can see its influence the
best. While the environmentalist movement and the changes in the exploitation of the
natural resources surrounding Native land have clearly evolved in the last decades of the
twentieth century, the social conditions and the social structure of Native populations have
been altered in an even more profound and multifaceted way. Silko’s era was marked by
the generational gap between older members of the community, who had been educated in
a traditional way, and the younger members of the nation, who were encouraged by Euro-
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American authorities to dissociate from their traditions to integrate into the White
education system.
This schism prevented the community from uniting and resisting
cultural assimilation. Despite encouragements to integrate into Euro-American society,
Native youth had to face disenchantment and rejection upon their return from the front,
realizing that the promises of equality for ethnic minorities made during the Second World
War would never materialize. This situation is central to Silko’s novel: Tayo, incapable of
connecting either to the older generation or to his bitter fellow veterans, must isolate
himself from their influence in order to connect with the foundations of his culture. After
this retreat, he can come back with a redefined identity that allows him to contribute to the
community rather than suffer from their rejection.
Eli’s experience, however, contrasts with Tayo’s in several ways. First, contrary to
his 1970s counterpart, Eli has attained a certain level of notoriety within Euro-American
society despite the fact that he is never considered as undistinguishable from his White
peers. As such, he is confronted simultaneously with a lukewarm resentment from the
members of the community he left behind when he moved to Toronto and to the stereotypes
that Euro-Americans impose on him at university and in his wife’s family. Contrary to
Tayo, who faces a hostile reaction from both communities, Eli’s alienation is more subtle
and is complicated by the discrepancies between his lifestyle and that of his peers in
Blossom. In addition to this more nuanced position in the social hierarchy of both cultures,
King recuperates the idea of Tayo’s reintegration into the community and develops it
significantly, showing not only Eli’s return to his nation, but also his active role in the
reunion of other members of the community. In addition to being a cultural facilitator like
Tayo, Eli uses the Sundance to confront his peers and break their collective inertia, forcing
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members of the community to re-examine their own place in the nation and assess their
own identities.
Eli’s involvement in the community’s fate responds to the changes in context
between Silko’s and King’s eras, such as the growing percentage of Natives acquiring a
college education and the feeling of betrayal they experience upon returning to their
reserves.
Moreover, King’s characters show multiple generations affected by the
assimilation programs that have estranged them from their traditional culture. As such, it
becomes logical that King would feel the need to emphasize the need for Natives to return
to the foundations of Native traditions in order to reconstruct traditional community bonds.
The identification of the three-step regenerative pattern described in this thesis is, I
believe, an important step in the definition of a comprehensive, comparative frame for
analysis of contemporary Native American fiction. In addition, it allows us to accomplish
the second main objective of this thesis, that is, to help us understand how each author
adapted this same regenerative process to his own cultural and social context, making the
interactions between nature, culture and society increasingly complex and nuanced. One
can only admire the accuracy with which both Leslie Marmon Silko and Thomas King have
represented the issues that were at the heart of the cultural and social malaise of their
Native American contemporaries. Even more admirable was their capacity to tap into the
regenerative pattern that could ensure cultural continuity while including current issues that
would speak to their contemporary audiences in a historically relevant way.
As a potential next step to this research, it would be interesting to validate this
framework with a broader range of authors from the same periods as Silko and King, such
as N. Scott Momaday and Sherman Alexie for instance. Moreover, the use of other Native
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American novels would allow me to confirm whether what was assumed to be the influence
of social and cultural contexts on the two novels can be detected in the prose of other
authors of the same era. If such a link between context and fiction could be established,
this research could become the beginning of a whole new perspective on the comparative
study of Native American fiction.
We can only assume the unresolved need for a renewed sense of identity among
Natives justifies Silko’s and King’s insistence on the theme of regeneration. However, as
we examine how much Silko’s novel has influenced other authors to express their
perspective on the update of Native tradition and how, some twenty years later, King has in
turn recuperated Silko’s journey towards regeneration to encourage action within
communities, we can hope that their message will continue to inspire future generations.
As Native authors of tomorrow produce more inspiring and uplifting works, Native
American novels will help materialize their hopes for regeneration in the everyday life of
Native communities, creating a new circular pattern between fiction and reality, a concept
which has existed since the beginning of Native oral tradition.
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