| dc.description.abstract |
Leslie Marmon Silko is an important Native American writer who writes to revive and
preserve the Native American culture. Silko’s works highlight the distinguishing
characteristics of the Native American culture and endorse it as a preferable alternative
to the Western culture. Her fiction offers quasi-ethnographic accounts of the
indigenous communities native to America. The present study undertakes an analysis
of Silko’s narratives to demonstrate how these texts counter the Western discourse that
undermines the indigenous way of life and denigrates the Indian traditions. Silko’s
novels and stories partake of the oral traditions and even rely on beliefs, rituals and
symbols patent to the indigenous communities. The study finds that Silko’s fiction is
able to effectively contest the stereotypes and misconceptions touted through
‘historical’ accounts sanctioned by colonial discourse and upheld by colonial regimes.
Employing a distinctive narrative inspired by Pueblo and other indigenous traditions,
Silko offers counteracting pictures to the mainstream Western discourse. First, she
points out that while the ‘White culture’ espouses the merits of individualism, for the
Natives, the wealth and property belong to the whole community since the whole tribe
acts like an extended family. Second, the Whites seek to dominate Nature and believe
that human beings are the most superior creation, while the Natives seek to live with
nature and believe that man is just a part of the ’sacred hoop,’ which involves all other
creatures as well. Silko asserts through her narratives that man is not in any way
privileged in this culture that values co-existence. Silko’s fiction suggests that the
White philosophy has led to extinction of species while the Natives have tried to
preserve them. Third, Silko’s works draw attention to the limitations of the
Enlightenment ideals and the misuse of Darwinian theory of evolution in support of
imperial quests and formulation of the modern racial myth as people of the West
became self-declared champions and sole owners of ‘reason’ and the rational faculty.
The notions, ideas and learning of the West were recognised as ’knowledge’ and
premium was placed on what mattered to the West to the exclusion of others. Silko, in
her works, projects an alternate reality. In her novels, she makes clear that ‘White
epistemology’ or knowledge possessed and valued by the White man is not the only
valid form of knowledge, rather, the knowledge created by her Native American
Pueblo Indian ancestors remains equally valid. Silko clarifies that a recognition of the
value of the indigenous knowledge is an essential part of the ’decolonisation’ of the
native way of thinking and living that is ultimately more desirable since it is in
harmony with nature. In the works of Silko, the limitations of ’androcentric’ and
’anthropocentric’ Western discourse become visible. Silko effectively conveys that the
contemporary environmental crisis is the outcome of the relegation of wholesome
native knowledge. Through her writings, Silko has made considerable contribution to
narrative and discourse belonging to the niche space of indigeneity that has been
carved out from and many ways even against the original domain of postcolonial
literature. The indigenous fiction of Native America where Silko prominently features,
emphasises the continuation of Settler colonialism and attendant issues that continue
to operate as a consequence of that reality. Silko’s narrative is an important and
significant intervention into the colonial discourse. Silko’s fiction is representative of
indigenous concerns and offer an effective critique of the dominant Western discourse. |
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