“Leslie Silko: Nuclear Landscapes, Environmental Catastrophe, and the Power of Indigenous Storytelling" (original) (raw)
Related papers
Literary Geographies, 2018
Narratives of climate change place it alternately as an environmental justice issue, a national and global security issue, an apocalyptic threat to life on earth, an opportunity for social change, and more. In this article, I aim to bring critical geographic work on climate narratives into conversation with contemporary poetry, through close readings of specific poems. I argue that the work of contemporary poets, and in particular the work of Indigenous ecopoetics, is rich in poetic texts that offer imaginative practices for recalibrating climate change narratives. I look particularly to works by Craig Santos Perez, Kathy Jetn̄ il-Kijiner, Allison Adelle Hedge Coke, Joy Harjo, and Linda Hogan. I approach the poems as both a critical geographer and as a poet, thinking through and with their form and content in relation to climate narratives, and in relation to a description of Indigenous ecopoetics by Perez. I meet these poems as stored energy, as actors themselves in a human and more-than-human collective. A close reading of the craft of creative texts—particularly to the level of the line in poetry—highlights the inextricable connection between form and content in how a poem acts and means in the world. As a non-Indigenous reader of texts by Indigenous poets, my goal is not to perform a 'master' reading or analysis of these texts, but rather to learn from the poems and in doing so attempt to decolonize my own thought, a process that is a constant practice.
Caring for Country: Indigenous and First Nations Learning About Survival, Resilience and Resistance
Hope and Courage in the Climate Crisis, 2021
Decisive, just, emergency speed actions to reduce emissions, draw down CO 2 and strengthen resilience are all essential priorities for sustaining a world in which human beings and all other species continue to thrive and flourish. At the end of the working day, in the stillness of the evening the activists and artists, researchers and writers, entrepreneurs and policy makers leading these actions will also sometimes share the fears and spectres that appear in the quiet darkness of the night. The following chapters therefore explore a range of broader conversations about insights and wisdom from diverse philosophical, theoretical and spiritual traditions which I and others who I know and respect have found helpful in sustaining meaning and purpose in the face of mounting evidence and stories and images of damaged, drowned and burning worlds. My decision to begin this journey with a series of reflections on learning from four Indigenous and First Nations climate change writers whose work I have found particularly insightful is predicated on respectful acknowledgement of the traditional owners and elders of the country on which I have been fortunate to be born. It is also informed by increasingly sharp awareness of my responsibilities as a descendant
文学与艺术研究 英文版, 2013
The recent devastation caused by natural calamities in the Philippines has prompted the government to initiate programs that might not altogether prevent but at least minimize the dire effects of future disasters. Among these programs are the information campaigns to promote awareness among the communities in calamity-prone areas. Several symposia that provide venue for the discussion of environmental "bads" have been conducted, but none yet has explored the perceptions of the indigenous peoples, staunch "defenders" and protectors of the environment who themselves are victims of such calamities. This paper seeks to highlight the perceptions of the indigenous people on the causes and impact of environmental "bads" through literature inspired by their experiences. When Gods Cry is an unpublished anthology of fiction inspired by the author's interaction with indigenous communities in southern Philippines while doing research on oral traditions. Three works of fiction are discussed in this paper, namely: The Old Man and the Mountain (2012), Loom of Dreams (2012), and Waterfall (2012). Each of these works highlights the indigenous people's struggle to protect their ancestral domains and the environment, their home, against external factors. Thematic literary analysis is used in the discussion of the contents of each work.
The Ocean on Fire: Pacific Stories from Nuclear Survivors and Climate Activists - Introduction
Duke University Press, 2024
Bombarded with the equivalent of one Hiroshima bomb a day for half a century, Pacific people have long been subjected to man-made cataclysm. Well before climate change became a global concern, nuclear testing brought about untimely death, widespread diseases, forced migration, and irreparable destruction to the shores of Oceania. In The Ocean on Fire, Anaïs Maurer analyzes the Pacific literature that incriminates the environmental racism behind radioactive skies and rising seas. Maurer identifies strategies of resistance uniting the region by analyzing an extensive multilingual archive of decolonial Pacific art in French, Spanish, English, Tahitian, and Uvean, ranging from literature to songs and paintings. She shows how Pacific nuclear survivors’ stories reveal an alternative vision of the apocalypse: instead of promoting individualism and survivalism, they advocate mutual assistance, cultural resilience, South-South transnational solidarities, and Indigenous women’s leadership. Drawing upon their experience resisting both nuclear colonialism and carbon imperialism, Pacific storytellers offer compelling narratives to nurture the land and each other in times of global environmental collapse.
Indigenous Narratives - Global Forces in Motion (An Introduction)
Transmotion, 2019
In our contemporary moment, the world is seeing an increase in transnational Indigenous and decolonial activist movements. Idle No More, the BDS movement for a Free Palestine, and #NoDAPL and Mni Wiconi have all garnered international attention and trans-cultural calls for solidarity. These movements exemplify and build on long traditions of Indigenous resistance in international contexts and commitments to other marginalized groups. Mindful of these continued struggles and concerns, this special issue seeks to bring together some of the diverse ways in which Native American and other Indigenous narratives circulate to create global influences: whether through literature, historical narratives, the visual or performative arts, or digital media; irrespective of language and wherever they transpire, from public spaces to classrooms. The critical and creative pieces in this special issue attest to the necessity of thinking globally as a way to understand the connectivity and relationality that characterize Indigenous experiences and modes of resistance.
On Routes and Beginnings: 9th ASYRAS Conference, 2024
In Indian Horse, Saul, a member of the Fish Clan in Northern Ontario, writes the story of his life encouraged by other Fish Clan members at the New Dawn center for alcoholics. The novel, which was a competing title of the 2013 edition of Canada Reads, explores the resurfacing of residential school trauma and memories in manhood. The Night Watchman, winner of the 2021 Pulitzer Prize, deals with the struggle of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians in 1953 as they fought against House Concurrent Resolution 108, commonly known as Termination Bill. Simultaneously, the storyline enquires into the impact of historical trauma in the reservation and highly resonates with the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women movement. The proposed work will delve into a comparative, transnational analysis of said novels by Richard Wagamese (Wabaseemoong, Ojibwe) and Louise Erdrich (Turtle Mountain, Ojibwe). I will be examining the role of (counter)storytelling in the moulding of the discourse related to historical and cultural memory of Indigenous peoples in Canada and the USA. The acts of remembering and narrating will be explored as catalyzing powers for resilience and healing against the trauma caused by the colonization of Turtle Island and its aftermath. I will employ a series of scholarly works that will contribute to the intended interpretation of Indian Horse and The Night Watchman. Indigenous survivance (Vizenor, 2008) and resurgence (Simpson, 2011) will be presented in conversation with the concept of psychological and social-ecological resilience (Basseler, 2019; Coleman, 2019; Fraile- Marcos, 2019) to conduct my analysis. I will also draw on memory and identity studies by resorting to the works of Assmann and Shortt (2012), Halbwachs (1992), Howe (2014), and Coulthard (2014), to name a few of the main notable contributions made in these fields.
Tribalography: The Power of Native Stories
The Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, 1999
What is the power of native stories? Did they create our people, our tribes, ourselves? Are our stories "a living theater" that connects everything to everything, as we say they do? If you attended the conference, "A Celebration of Native Women Playwrights" held March 18-20, 1999 at the Miami University in Oxford, Ohio you might agree that native stories have the power to create conflict, pain, discord, but ultimately understanding and enlightenment a sacred third act. The women's conference began innocuously enough. There was a warm welcome by faculty, staff and dramaturgists at Miami University. Mimi Gisolfi D'Aponte, Professor of Theatre at the City University of New York Graduate Center and Baruch College gave a keynote address which highhghted, among other things, a new publication, Seventh Generation: An Anthology of Native American Plays. Excellent papers were given by native and non-native scholars; Rebecca Howard, Ann Haugo, ViBrina Coronado (Tus...
Toward an Ecology of Stories: Indigenous Perspectives on Resilience
This chapter shifts the focus once again. The authors, well-known researchers in the area of resilience among Aboriginal people in Canada and Australia, argue for more attention on how people cope outside the US and UK. They show that Indigenous peoples have their own unique cultures and contexts, and that their historical rootedness can help them cope with the profound disadvantages caused by colonization and the political oppression and bureaucratic control that followed. In this chapter, the authors incorporate material from collaborative work in Cree, Inuit, Mohawk, Mi’kmaq and Métis communities to explore how cultural ideologies, institutions and practices sustain processes associated with resilience.
This article examines how Native places are made, named, and reconstructed after colonization through storytelling. Storying the land is a process whereby the land is invested with the moral and spiritual perspectives specific to Native American communities. As seen in the oral traditions and written literature of Native American storytellers and authors, the voices of indigenous people retrace and remap cartographies for the land after colonization through storytelling. This article shows that the Americas were storied by Native American communities long before colonial contact beginning in the fifteenth century and demonstrates how the land continues to be storied in the present as a method of decolonization and cultural survivance. The article examines manifestations of the oral tradition in multiple forms, including poetry, interviews, fiction, photography, and film, to demonstrate that the land itself, through storytelling, becomes a repository of the oral tradition. The article investigates oral narratives from precontact and postcolonial time periods and across numerous nations and geographical regions in the Americas, including stories from the Mayan Popol Vuh; Algonkian; Western Apache; Hopi; Haudenosaunee/Iroquois; and Laguna Pueblo stories; and the contemporary poetry and fiction of Joy Harjo (Mvskoke/Creek Nation) and Leslie Marmon Silko (Laguna Pueblo).