A POSTCOLONIAL READING: SIGNIFICANCE OF LAND AND HISTORY IN NATIVE AMERICAN IDENTITY IN LESLIE MARMON SILKO’S ALMANAC OF THE DEAD

Year 2020, Issue: 64, 165 - 184, 26.06.2020

Filiz Barin-akman

Abstract

Abstract

Almanac of the Dead shows how a disrupted relationship to land and history results in fragmentation of identity, cultural disorientation and societal degeneration for Native Americans. From a Postcolonial perspective, Almanac of the Dead is a novel which emphasizes the importance of land and history in Native American identity. In order to criticize colonialist-capitalist practices forced on the Native American cultures and societies, the author Leslie Marmon Silko, creating degenerate and alienated characters who are gripped by the realities of capitalistic neo-colonial structures, intends to draw attention to corruption and disintegration taking place in individual and societal levels. Through dramatic episodes offered in the novel, Silko suggests that the main culprits in Native Americans’ cultural degeneration and aliniation are first and foremost oblivion of ancestral history/past and a loss of traditional connection to land and nature. Therefore, the novel becomes a manifesto of resistance against the imposed Euro-American culture and its narratives. As Postcolonial critic Frantz Fanon would advise, Silko maintains that the cure lies in understanding one’s history and regenerating ties to nature and the land.

Keywords

Native Americans, Almanac of the Dead, Postcolonialism, Comparative Literature, Land and History

Bir Kültür Mirasının Direnişi: Leslie Marmon Silko’nun Almanac Of The Dead Romanında Toprak/Yurt ve Tarih/Geçmişin Amerikan Kızılderili Kimliğindeki Önemi

Abstract

Almanac of the Dead romanı Amerika’nın yerlileri olan Kızılderililer için toprak/yurt ve tarih/geleneklerle olan ilişkideki kopukluğun kimlik parçalanmasına, kültürel yozlaşmaya ve toplumsal dejenerasyona yol açtığına işaret eder. Sömürge Sonrası Araştırmaları perspektifinden incelenecek olursa, roman Amerikan Yerlilerinin kimliğinde toprak ve tarihin önemini vurgulayan bir metindir. Kızılderili toplumları ve kültürleri üzerine empoze edilen sömürgeci-kapitalist uygulamaları eleştirmek için yazar Leslie Marmon Silko, kapitalist neo-sömürge yapıların gerçekleri tarafından esir alınarak yozlaşan ve yabancılaşmış karakterler yaratır ve böylece bireysel ve toplumsal düzeylerde çöküş ve parçalanma süreçlerine dikkat çeker. Romanda sunulan dramatik hikayelendirmeler sayesinde Silko, Kızılderililerin kültürel dejenerasyonundaki ve soyutlanmasındaki temel etkenlerin her şeyden önce ataların tarihine / geçmişine kayıtsızlık ve toprak ve doğa ile olan geleneksel bağlantının kaybı olduğunu ileri sürer. Bu nedenle roman, empoze edilen Avrupa-Amerikan kültürüne ve anlatılarına karşı bir direniş manifestosu haline gelmektedir. Sömürge Sonrası Araştırmalar eleştirmeni Frantz Fanon'un önereceği gibi, Silko, kültürel iyileşmenin kişinin tarihini anlamada, doğa ve toprakla olan ilişkileri yeniden oluşturmada yattığını savunur.

Keywords

Kızılderililer/ Amerikan Yerlileri, Almanac of the Dead, Toprak/Yurt, Tarih/Gelenek, Postcolonialism

References

• Bell, V. (2000). Counter-Chronicling and Alternative Mapping in Memoria del fuego and Almanac of the Dead. MELUS, 25(3/4), 5-30. Retrieved from www.jstor.org/stable/468235
• Blackbird, A. J. (1887). History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan: A grammar of their language, and personal and family history of the author. Ypsilanti, Mich., The Ypsilantian Job Printing House.
• Brigham, Ann. (2004). Productions of Geographic Scale and Capitalist-Colonialist Enterprise in Leslie Marmon Silko's Almanac of the Dead. MFS Modern Fiction Studies 50(2), 303-331. doi:10.1353/mfs.2004.0021.
• Dulik, M. C., Zhadanov, S. I., Osipova, L. P., Askapuli, A., Gau, L., Gokcumen, O., … Schurr, T. G. (2012). Mitochondrial DNA and Y chromosome variation provides evidence for a recent common ancestry between Native Americans and Indigenous Altaians. American Journal of Human Genetics, 90(2), 229–246. doi:10.1016/j.ajhg.2011.12.014
• Fanon, Frantz. (1963). The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press.
• Jameson, Frederick. (1991). Postmodernism, or, The cultural logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke University Press.
• Libretti, Tim. (2001). The Other Proletarians: Native American Literature and Class Struggle. MFS Modern Fiction Studies 47(1), 164-189. doi:10.1353/mfs.2001.0005.
• O'Meara, Bridget. (2000). The Ecological Politics of Leslie Silko's "Almanac of the Dead". Wicazo Sa Review, 15(2), 63-73. Retrieved from www.jstor.org/stable/1409463
• Romero, Channette. (2002). Envisioning a "Network of Tribal Coalitions": Leslie Marmon Silko's Almanac of the Dead. American Indian Quarterly, 26(4), 623-640. Retrieved from www.jstor.org/stable/4128505
• Said, Edward W. (1978). Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books.
• Sandoval, C. (2000). Methodology of the Oppressed. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
• Silko, Marmon Leslie. (1991). Almanac of the Dead. New York: Penguin.
• Silko, L. M. (1997). Yellow woman and a beauty of the spirit: essays on Native American life today. 1st Touchstone ed. New York: Simon & Schuster.
• Spivak, Gayatri. (1988). ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg,eds. London: Macmillan.
• St. Clair, Janet. (1996). Death of Love/Love of Death: Leslie Marmon Silko's Almanac of the Dead. MELUS, 21(2), 141-156. doi:10.2307/467955
• Teale, Tamara. (1998). The Silko Road from Chiapas or Why Native Americans Cannot Be Marxists. MELUS, 23(4), 157-166. doi:10.2307/467833