Transatlantic Voices: Interpretations of Native North American Literatures

11. Encounters across Time and Space: The Sacred, the Profane, and the Political in Linda Hogan's Power

yonka krasteva The Sacred, the Profane, and the Political in Linda Hogan’s Power I think of my work as part of the history of our tribe and as part of the history of colonization everywhere. linda hogan, in Wilson, Nature of Native American Poetry The one faith is expressed in different ways. . . . Not only is Christianity relevant to the Indian peoples, but Christ, in the members of his Body, is himself . . . Indian. pope john paul ii In 1994, when I was completing a research grant at the University of Arizona, I attended N. Scott Momaday’s classes. I was surprised to learn that he had visited Bulgaria twice during Communism, on invitations from the Bulgarian Union of Writers. We talked about the similarities between Bulgarian and Native peoples’ folk songs and stories, especially about stories featuring bears, Momaday’s favorite animal. In the course of our discussions, and as my knowledge of Native American traditions grew, I began to perceive a mode of reciprocity between Bulgarian traditional literature and that of Native peoples and the way the two talk to each other, encounter, and enrich each other, without for a moment losing their unique linguistic mastery and poetic beauty. Ironically, during Communism works by Native American writers were used only to illustrate the imperialist policies of the United States and to affirm, by implication, the internationalist policies of equality of Communism. Yet Encounters across Time and Space 11 yonka krasteva 207 people saw the subtext in the sacred stories, and its political message was not lost; age-tested folk wisdom and national memory survive the harshest oppressive system. In those days the works of Native American writers inspired a stronger awareness in their Bulgarian audience about the inexhaustible resources and mysterious power of their own traditions. The “ecological thinking” in the works of Native American writers now stimulates a new awareness for the pressing need for interaction with and care for the Earth that we all share (Katharine Chandler, quoted in Cook 17).1 In her 2002 interview with Barbara Cook, when asked about the unity of the spiritual and the political in her works, Linda Hogan answers that “for Native Peoples there is no difference. Decisions are made, and they may be political decisions” (11). The legal conflicts in her novels—Mean Spirit, Solar Storms, and Power—are based on actual events, yet the fictionalized form in which she renders them reveals deeper mysteries than the intricate procedures of the courts in each work are able to resolve. The political and spiritual aspects of Hogan’s narratives are inextricably connected with the process of individuation and self-perception of the main characters. Power has been defined as a “bildungsroman” by Bloomsbury Review, a critique of apocalyptic narrative” (Hardin 135), and “auto-history in the face of Amer-European hetero-history” (Weaver 163). I will argue that the book is a borderland text and an example of ceremonial literature that “contains an entire ecosystem, what is now called a textbook of knowledge” (Hogan, quoted in Cook 12). The rediscovery of the mystery of being, the restoration of the severed ties between the self and a larger and more encompassing concept of the “other,” is the basic policy that the author advocates to stop the collision course modern history has taken toward the Earth and its marginalized peoples. Nevertheless, despite Hogan’s message of cosmic healing, Power ultimately perpetuates the binary thinking of Western epistemology by using a rhetoric of good versus evil, Native versus Christian. The validation of the ancient stories in the modern time of historical progress leads inevitably to a juxtaposition of cultural values in which Christianity is perceived as the ideology of colonization, which justifies racism 208 Encounters across Time and Space and exploitation both of land and people. The “extensive critique of Christianity” in Power has been noted by many scholars (Hardin 148), and more particularly by Michael Hardin, who discusses Hogan’s criticism of apocalyptic narrative and ultimately concludes that, although she uses Christlike characteristics for her main characters, Hogan does not validate the Christian myth. In my reading of those seemingly competing theological systems, I will suggest that, in spite of Hogan’s criticism of Christianity in an attempt to attribute a sense of “exclusiveness ” and romantic aura to Native American spirituality, ultimately she cannot escape the dynamic symbiosis between cultural epistemologies and symbolism in the constructions...