Something Wicked This Way Comes: Warnings by Simon Ortiz and Martin Cruz Smith

Writers Simon Ortiz and Martin Cruz Smith have not tried to position themselves as prophets, yet their works are strongly laced with ominous warnings. So what are these warnings and to whom are they addressed? Why are these warnings needed in the first place? Because the land and its peoples are being destroyed. The emphasis on amassing wealth at the expense of human suffering and damage to the land by the controlling culture of the United States is rapidly degrading the American environment to the point where everyone can see that something is wrong. However, by its very nature--its ethnocentrism--this culture ignores its surroundings, secure in the belief that the accumulation of wealth will protect it from harm. That is, the elites think this way, and this system speaks from the view of its elites.

The worldview of these elites is neither particularly accurate, representative, nor compelling to anyone else. When you consider what effect this system has had upon the rest of the country, you begin to realize how all other viewpoints have been subsumed by this one specific worldview. And it is not just a worldview, but an entire system that effectively dominates the world today--global capitalism. Its keepers are in the major positions of power and control in society, and its mythology is taught to all as the "truth." Other groups have been forced to present their views and values through alternate venues--such as literature--in order to contest the domination of this system. Native American literature has been particularly effective in this effort. It is this body of literature that has forced me to question many of my own long-held assumptions about the shape of the world.

But first, in order to discuss the work of Oritz and Smith, it is necessary to describe their place within the field of Native American literature. Robert A. Warrior, in his work Tribal Secrets, separates the last one hundred years of American Indian authors into four distinct periods. ¹ These periods are:

1890 to 1916 -- Assimilationism and Apocalypticism

1925 to 1960 -- John Joseph Mathews and a Generation of Free Agents

1960 to 1973 -- The Battle to Define "Red Power"

1973 to the Present -- Diversity, Party Lines, and the Need for Generational Perspective

To place these authors within Warrior's system of analysis, the following questions must be answered: Of what time do they speak? What do they advocate in their work? And, finally, what is their "voice"? Once these questions are answered, we can draw our inferences from their works that address Native American issues.

Both of these authors place their works primarily in the present day. Ortiz places all his work within the limits of his own lifetime. Smith places his work mostly in the present also, although his first book, The Indians Won, ² is placed in an alternate present that significantly differs from the world we know today. In answer to the second question, both authors advocate an increased role for Indian cultures to provide non-Indian culture with the benefit of their thousands of years of experience so that it can avoid destroying itself and the rest of the world. As for the third question, their "voices" are quite different; Ortiz speaks of the everyday lives of the people while Smith creates a fictional world that parallels this one. Ortiz speaks from the depth of his experience, Smith from research and family knowledge. Both began writing toward the end of the third period. They both fit nicely in that period because they speak to the issue of the role of Indian culture in the world today; a representative sample of Ortiz's and Smith's works will show how. For Ortiz, Woven Stone, ³ a compilation of three of his most popular works, and for Smith, Nightwing, ^4...