Friday
In honor of Indigenous People’s Day, which in some states has already occurred and in others takes place this coming Monday, I share a poem from Leslie Marmon Silko’s superb novel Ceremony. I do so in part because it deals with the devastating impact of white colonialism on America, a fact that a number of jurisdictions have recognized by replacing Columbus Day with Indigenous Person’s Day. But I am more interested in how Silko foresees extreme weather events in our future. To be sure, she has drought in mind while I am thinking of Hurricane Ian, whose impact climatologists tell us was supercharged by warming gulf waters. But Silko clearly sees our abuse of the environment resulting in devastating consequences.
If you’re worried that she’s just out to guilt-trip White people, however, rest assured. Silko isn’t interested in victim narratives, and she even criticizes Indians who blame Whites for all their problems. In fact, the book’s chief villain, a full-blooded Laguna Pueblo, does just this. For Silko, by contrast, our problem is more a case of noxious Whites encountering noxious Indians and the two together destroying both the environment and human society. In the poem I’ve chosen, the noxious Indians are witches, who represent the dark forces at play in Indian society.
These witches show up in a story that a wise shaman (Betonie) tells protagonist Tayo. Talking about Indians who have lost their bearings, he says 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 the machines and their beliefs.
As Betonie sees it, Whites and Indians are not separate but exist in the game together. Rather than feeling helpless and passively surrendering to environmental destruction, therefore, Indians should be proactive. Unlike White society, which believes it is living in a world filled with dead objects, Indians have a rich tradition of honoring the Earth. If White society could only see this vision, Betonie believes, it would reject the sterility of contemporary life and collaborate with Indians in charting a positive path forward. Betonie’s view is not unlike that articulated in the Lucille Clifton’s poem “after kent state”:
oh people
white ways are
the way of death
come into the
black
and live
For healing to occur, however, we must first acknowledge that we are sick, and Silko’s poem lays out multiple instances of White alienation. These instances are presented in a conference attended by Indian witches that seek to undo each other in evil. The evil includes
Dead babies simmering in blood
circles of skull cut away
all the brains sucked out.
Witch medicine
to dry and grind into powder
for new victims.
The witch that wins, however, foregoes such clichés, choosing instead to tell the story of the European conquest. For these invaders, the earth is a dead object to be exploited:
Caves across the ocean
in caves of dark hills
white skin people
like the belly of a fish
covered with hair.
Then they grow away from the earth
then they grow away from the sun
then they grow away from the plants and animals.
They see no life
When they look
they see only objects.
The world is a dead thing for them
the trees and rivers are not alive
the mountains and stones are not alive
The deer and bear are objects
They see no life
They fear
They fear the world.
They destroy what they fear.
They fear themselves.
The wind will blow them across the ocean
thousands of them in giant boats
swarming like larva
out of a crushed ant hill.
They will carry objects
which can shoot death
faster than the eye can see.
They will kill the things they fear
all the animals
the people will starve.
They will poison the water
they will spin the water away
and there will be drought
the people will starve.
They will fear what they find
They will fear the people
They kill what they fear.
Entire villages will be wiped out
They will slaughter whole tribes.
Corpses for us
Blood for us
Killing killing killing killing.
and those they do not kill
will die anyway
at the destruction they see
at the loss
at the loss of the children
the loss will destroy the rest.
Stolen rivers and mountains
the stolen land will eat their hearts
and jerk their mouths from the Mother.
The people will starve.
Evil though they may be, the other witches are horrified by such depravity. Even as they award first place to the witch, they ask him to take the story back:
So the other witches said
“Okay you win; you take the
prize,
but what you said just now–
it isn’t so funny
It doesn’t sound so good.
We are doing okay without it
we can get along without that
kind of thing.
Take it back
Call that story back.”
The witch informs them, however, that the story, once set in motion, the “can’t be called back”:
But the witch just shook its
head
at the others in their stinking
animal skins, fur and feathers.
It’s already turned loose.
It’s already coming
It can’t be called back.
Although Silko’s novel was written in 1977—in other words, before we were aware of climate change—she sees other ways that humans are destroying the earth. These include pollution, habitat destruction, and “spin[ning] the water away.” Since uranium is being being mined from Indian land, she also includes nuclear holocaust, which is particularly timely as Russia’s Vladimir Putin seeks to unnerve Ukraine with nuclear saber rattling:
Up here
in these hills
they will find the rocks,
rocks with veins of green and yellow and black.
They will lay the final pattern with these rocks
they will lay it across the world
and explode everything.
In short, humans represent a clear and present danger to the Earth’s future. Silko’s novel, however, concludes on a hopeful note by assuring us that it doesn’t have to be this way. Tayo, who as a World War II veteran suffering from PTSD has been feeling alienated himself, reconnects with the earth through his tribe’s rituals, and Silko brings that vision to the rest of us through her novel.
In other words, she would tell us that to celebrate Indigenous People’s Day by looking forward, not back. In 1977, when she wrote Ceremony, the novel played a role in the Native American and environmental movements and helped prompt President Jimmy Carter to put large swathes of wilderness under government protection. In the current environment, although we have witches manically working to destroy the Earth, we also see (for the first time in our history) Native Americans in Congress, and these have been part of the push for a Green New Deal.
All is not lost.
