On Sacred Ground: Medicine People in Native American Fiction.
Burke, Brianna.
2011
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Abstract: On Sacred Ground: Medicine People in Native American
Fiction "On Sacred Ground" argues that the contentious representation of
medicine people and religion in Native-authored fiction reveals the complex politics
surrounding cultural and religious vitality in Native American communities. N. Scott
Momaday writes in The Man Made of Words that "what most
threatens the American Indian is ... read moresacrilege, the theft of the sacred"; he calls this a
"subtle genocide" that deprives Native peoples of "spiritual nourishment." Although aware
that providing religious information in fiction is risky, all of the authors I
discuss--Susan Power, James Welch, Sherman Alexie, Anna Lee Walters, Louis Owens, Leslie
Marmon Silko and Louise Erdrich--include medicine people and ceremonies in their work and
therefore must negotiate the ground between commercial success and tribal duty. These
writers disagree about the role of the artist as a spokesperson for his/her people and
about how to treat a mainstream, commercial reading audience. In the work of each writer, I
argue, the representation of medicine people and ceremonial practices reveals divergent
cultural values and political ideologies that ultimately affect cultural survival. Chapter
one, "A Religious Education in Susan Power's The Grass
Dancer," shows how Power radically alters mainstream readers' perceptions
of the world by confronting them with material incomprehensible in a Western, scientific
context. Using Anthony Appiah's theory of "thick translation," Reed Way Dasenbrock's ideas
about what constitutes intelligibility and meaningfulness in multicultural literature, and
Louis Owens's frank discussion of the perils of writing for two audiences simultaneously, I
argue that The Grass Dancer performs a profound act of
cultural translation. Through relentless repetition and careful teaching, medicine figures
become naturalized in the novel and their role in tribal life comprehensible to non-Native
readers. Power's novel performs a transformative act that challenges dominant ideology by
walking a fine line that illustrates it is possible for Native writers to write about
religious beliefs without betraying sacred information. My second chapter, "Commercial
Concessions in James Welch and Sherman Alexie," demonstrates how two incredibly popular
authors--James Welch and Sherman Alexie--fall victim to the stereotypes dominant society
perpetuates of Native American religions even while working to undermine them. In
Fools Crow, Welch, trapped by the historical frame of his
novel, portrays medicine people and Blackfeet religious beliefs as belonging to a lost
romantic past. Alexie in Reservation Blues attempts to
undermine the readers' expectations by creating a medicine person who breaks all
stereotypes but who, as a result, is emptied of any religious values. Both of these novels
traffic in what Renato Rosaldo calls "cultural nostalgia," and lend credibility to false
constructions that undermine the struggle to protect Native religious beliefs. Chapter
three, "Deliberate Silences in `Bicenti' by Anna Lee Walters and The
Sharpest Sight by Louis Owens," examines writers who believe religious
matters should remain sacred. Both Walters and Owens include medicine people as well as
events or pieces of reality that cannot be absorbed into any EuroAmerican frame of
reference while refusing to explain religious ideology, a political statement in itself.
This is particularly poignant in "Bicenti," which has an unseen medicine person who causes
all of the events in the narrative, thereby disrupting "semiotic and epistemological
boundaries of defining Indian and non-Indian realities," according to Catherine Rainwater.
Owens, in The Sharpest Sight, includes two medicine people
who drive the narrative, yet never explains their beliefs and how their medicine works.
Both Walters and Owens withhold tribal cosmology, declaring to mainstream readers that
there is some information too sacred to disclose in fiction, and create narratives that
argue Native artists should begin writing for their own people. My final chapter, "The
Danger in Misappropriation: Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony
and Louise Erdrich's `Love Medicine,'" deals with two extremely popular, well-known writers
and their vociferous argument about how Native American fiction should treat spiritual
material. Silko and Erdrich disagree about how to portray religious figures, what medicine
people are capable of, and the boundaries that they operate within. Published seven years
after Ceremony, "Love Medicine" is Erdrich's sharp retort to
Silko's postulation that ceremonies can be altered to fit circumstance and her rejection of
the idea that Ceremony itself is a healing ceremony. "Love
Medicine" argues that this view is naïve and incredibly dangerous, resulting in disastrous
consequences for those who meddle in medicine without having the proper assent and
training. What is most important to understand about these texts is how meaning is
"refracted by cosmology"--to use indigenous scholar and fiction writer Thomas King's
words--whenever a medicine person appears. Throughout my work, I emphasize that medicine
people in modern Native American fiction are surrounded by controversy that shows cultures
returning to indigenous roots while negotiating the space between cultural values and the
realities of capitalistic American life. How the texts I discuss negotiate this terrain
shows the various approaches Native artists use to interact with dominant ideology and
define new identities that are both urban and traditional, all the while working for
cultural revitalization.
Thesis (Ph.D.)--Tufts University, 2011.
Submitted to the Dept. of English.
Advisor: Elizabeth Ammons.
Committee: Modhumita Roy, Christina Sharpe, and Melanie Benson.
Keywords: American literature, Native American studies, and Religion.read less - ID:
- 6395wk70q
- Component ID:
- tufts:20753
- To Cite:
- TARC Citation Guide EndNote
