Where the Wild Books Are: A Field Guide to Ecofiction

4. Native American and Canadian Ecofiction

69 4 Native American and Canadian Ecofiction Native Americans have a rich, ancient oral tradition. Storytelling has been revived in recent decades, there are hundreds of good to outstanding poets, and the number of fine fiction writers continues to grow. Since Indian cosmology includes humanity as part and parcel of nature, it is hardly surprising that much Native fiction is ecofiction. Paula Gunn Allen explains it well: “Essentially, Indians don’t think the way non-Indians do: this distinction is partly one of tribal consciousness as opposed to the consciousness of urbanized , industrial cultures, but it is also a distinction between new world and old world thought, between systems based on wholeness and those based on division and separation. One might argue that the distinction is one of inclusiveness and exclusiveness, and in certain ways this is a convenient generalization. One might also suggest that gynarchical systems (systems heavily influenced by the presence of powerful female god-figures and culture-bearers and engenderers) differ in fundamental ways from patriarchal systems.”1 William Brandon has described that difference as being “between a New World god who is hungry and an Old World god who is angry.”2 Please note, however, that there are distinct differences between various Native American cultures, and both commonalities and differences are reflected in the fictional mirror. Also consider that the post-Columbian history of Native Americans is a 70 where the wild books are continual series of massacres, outrages, deceptions, and economic and environmental exploitation. First, their numbers were decimated by disease and weapons as they were removed from the best lands they had inhabited. Then other land was taken for mining (primarily gold, copper, and coal and, later, uranium) or flooded for electrical power generation. Finally, some of their land became toxic or nuclear waste dumps, as has been the case with some Mexican-American and African-American communities in a phenomenon known as environmental racism. The desecration and potential restoration of native lands and cultures is at the heart of the Native American experience and related literature. Anthologies of Native American literature typically include a wide variety of literary forms. They include Spider Woman’s Granddaughters (Paula Gunn Allen, ed., 1989), A Gathering of Spirit (Beth Brant, ed., 1988), Hozho: Walking in Beauty: Native American Stories of Inspiration, Humor, and Life (Paula Gunn Allen and Carolyn Dunn Anderson, eds., 2001), All My Relations (Thomas King, ed., 1992), Dancing on the Rim of the World (Andrea Lerner, ed., 1990), The Sound of Rattles and Clappers (Greg Sarris, ed., 1994), Earth Song, Sky Spirit (Clifford Trafzer, ed., 1993), The Lightning Within (Alan Velie, ed., 1991), Sovereign Bones (2 vols., Eric Gansworth, ed., 2007), and Genocide of the Mind (Marijo Moore, ed., 2003), and Song of the Turtle (Paula Gunn Allen, ed., 1996). The selections in Family of Earth and Sky: Indigenous Tales of Nature from Around the World (John Elder and Hertha Dawn Wong, eds., 1994) demonstrate that certain themes, images, and values are very common among indigenous peoples, though the details vary greatly. The first shoots of Native American fiction emerged one hundred and fifty years ago, but the form did not truly flourish until the late 1960s. For a good anthology of early Native American fiction covering the years 1881–1936, see The Singing Spirit (Bernd Peyer, ed., 1989). John Rollin Ridge is credited with the first American Indian novel, The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murrieta (1854). S. Alice Callahan wrote the first novel by a Native American woman, Wynema: A Child of the Forest (1891), also a proto-ecofeminist novel. Simon Pokagon’s Ogîmäwkwe Mitigwäkî, Queen of the Woods was published in 1899. native american and canadian ecofiction 71 The slightly fictionalized Old Indian Legends of Lakota Zitkala-Sa appeared in 1901, while Mohawk poet and short-story writer E. Pauline Johnson had three volumes of stories published a decade later. Despite the existence of these books, some scholars still mistakenly trace the inception of the Native American novel to Mourning Dove, whose 1927 novel Cogewea, the Half-Blood is controversial since it appears to have been heavily revised by her white editor, Lucullus Virgil McWhorter. Mourning Dove’s less controversial Coyote Stories (1933) preserves existing Okanogan Indian legends while transforming them into poetic prose. John Joseph Mathews and Luther Standing Bear also started publishing in the late 1920s and 1930s. Mathews, D’Arcy McNickle, John Oskison...