Ecocriticism in American Indian Literature: A Comparative Study of Leslie Marmon Silko and Louise Erdrich

Abstract

This study examines the interrelationship between ecological and social justice concerns in American Indian literature. The novels of Leslie Marmon Silko Almanac of the Dead (AOD) and Ceremony, and Louise Erdrich’s Tracks and Four Souls (FS) have been analyzed through the lens of Ecocriticism theory and Environmental Justice scholarship. A comparative study of the novels has been conducted analyzing the texts on two levels. The first level of analysis reveals that the poetics of the texts encompasses environmental aesthetics, entering into and contributing to the discourse of nature writing. And, in the second level, the text posits a socio-centric approach and raises concerns of environmental justice. The narratives invoke revenge and foster resistance movements against land grabs, and against the logging industry and uranium mining. Silko’s and Erdrich’s works invite readers to experience their embattled communities imaginatively and witness their issues from within as well as to think of alternatives in the effort to end their tragedies. Silko and Erdrich demonstrate Native Americans’ loss of dwelling in all senses—including the social, material and the spiritual. American Indians have been forcibly pushed into a struggle for survival against threatening environments and colonial powers erasing their cultures. In this endless struggle they lose their identities. The authors assert that American Indians must align themselves ideologically, spiritually and ecologically with their cultures and reconnect to the land in order to survive. This study further reveals that contemporary American Indian writers demand a kind of ecocriticism which is “ecocultural”, replicating their cultural-environmental wisdom and contesting the established stereotypes for Natives such as “savages” or “nature stewards”. The authors utilize complex writing styles intentionally, to resist a Tariq 2 translation of mainstream environmentalist philosophies. They create their own environmentalism which cannot be read as a “western environmentalist utopia”. Their approach intertwines culture and nature, humans and environment in oneness. The findings I draw are that American Indian struggle is not only to alleviate American Indians from toxic exposures, but also to change attitudes towards the natural world and indigenous cultures which are themselves at odds with mainstream cultures. Moreover, the indigenous struggle is pertinent to an understanding of ecocritical debates that strive to actively recover from environmental damage and to find alternatives in indigenous cultures for sustaining environmental systems. Keywords: Ecocriticism, Environmental Justice, ecocultural, environmental wisdom, indigenous cultures