INDIGENOUS CONTINUANCE THROUGH HOMELAND:

AN ANALYSIS OF PALESTINIAN AND NATIVE AMERICAN LITERATURE

______

A Thesis

Presented to

The Honors Tutorial College

Ohio University

______

In Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements for Graduation

from the Honors Tutorial College

with the degree of

Bachelor of Arts in English

______

by

Alana E. Dakin

June 2012 Dakin 2

This thesis has been approved by

The Honors Tutorial College and the Department of English

______

Dr. George Hartley Professor, English Thesis Advisor

______

Dr. Carey Snyder Honors Tutorial College, Director of Studies English

______

Dr. Jeremy Webster Dean, Honors Tutorial College

Dakin 3

CHAPTER ONE

Land is more than just the ground on which we stand. Land is what provides us with the plants and animals that give us sustenance, the resources to build our shelters, and a place to rest our heads at night. It is the source of the most sublime beauty and the most complete destruction. Land is more than just dirt and rock; it is a part of the cycle of life and death that is at the very core of the cultures and beliefs of human civilizations across the centuries. As human beings began to navigate the surface of the earth thousands of years ago they learned the nuances of the land and the creatures that inhabited it, and they began to relate this knowledge to their fellow man. At the beginning this knowledge may have been transmitted as a simple sound or gesture: a cry of warning or an eager nod of the head. But as time went on, humans began to string together these sounds and bits of knowledge into words, and then into story, and sometimes into song. These stories and songs, each unique to the people and the land that produced them, became not just a manner in which to relate important pieces of information within a family, community, or tribe, but in fact became a way of life, a culture. As products of the land, these cultures are inherently tied to the places of their Dakin 4

origins and bind the people of these places not only to each other, but to their

environments as well.

One can then imagine the distress and devastation that would occur when an

indigenous population is severed from its land. Their culture begins to break down

when it is separated from the proper contextual environment; stories and practices that

were in tune to a certain region of the world, sometimes specific even to a particular

grove of trees or ridge of a mountain, become meaningless when placed in an

unfamiliar terrain. Wisdom built up over centuries from learning the essence of a

locale slowly unravels despite the best efforts to imbue its meaning upon exiled

generations. This kind of destruction and cultural erasure is no stranger to modern day

indigenous communities across the world, a vast majority of whom have suffered at

the hands of European imperialism and colonization. As various European nations

began imperial expeditions around the 15th century in search of desired natural resources and cheap, servile labor, indigenous peoples were faced with a variety of horrors, from mass slaughter via guns, disease, or unsafe working conditions, to

“civilizing” methods such as the suppression of native language and cultural and religious practices and displacement or complete exile from native lands. Colonial violence is not just limited to the realm of gunpowder. The taking of the land itself, even if it does not cost a single life, is perhaps the most violent act of all because not only does it literally uproot an indigenous people from their home, but it also impedes them from carrying out their cultural practices in the context and manner that is necessary to preserve tradition and maintain cohesion within the community. Dakin 5

When one takes into consideration the importance of the land to a people’s culture and identity, it becomes easy to understand why so many indigenous communities faced with the horrors of imperialism find it imperative to reclaim their homelands to preserve their cultures and communities. In his seminal postcolonial work The Wretched of the Earth, Franz Fanon asserts that “For a colonized people the most essential value, because the most concrete, is first and foremost the land: the land which will bring them bread and, above all, dignity” (44). Fanon’s quote is useful because it reminds us that the land provides a people with its most basic needs such as food and shelter as well as more abstract but no less necessary needs such as culture, identity, and self-worth. In the spirit of Fanon’s statement, in the following chapters I will attempt to illustrate the connection of indigenous colonized peoples to their homelands through literature. I will look at the poetry and prose of two separate indigenous communities: those of the Americas, specifically of the current U. S.

Southwest, and the Palestinians. I will be investigating the poetry of Simon Ortiz and the prose of Leslie Marmon Silko, two authors from two distinct Pueblo regions of

New Mexico, as well as the poetry of Palestinian author Mahmoud Darwish and

Palestinian-American author Suheir Hammad. In addressing the fundamental relationship between an indigenous population and its land and the manner in which colonization distorts that relationship, I will investigate the unique connection of the indigenous Americans and the Palestinians to their lands, the history of both communities’ subjugation, the nature and consequence of living in disconnect or exile from one’s homeland (both when still physically present on the land and when outside Dakin 6

of colonizing borders), and how connection to land is utilized by indigenous

communities to resist hegemony and foster cultural identity.

My decision to compare the indigenous peoples of the U.S. Southwest and the

Palestinians may seem arbitrary because they have markedly different histories and

experiences, and the similarities in their struggles against hegemony and cultural

violence could easily be found in most indigenous communities faced with

colonization and displacement. My basis for comparison between indigenous

Americans and the Palestinians rests not on parallels between the two communities’

cultures or their reactions to colonization, but rather those between the ideologies of

their colonizers: the Puritans of the future United States of America and the Zionists who established the modern state of Israel. When one compares the “manifest destiny” philosophy that shaped the colonization of North America with Zionism, two major similarities become apparent: one, the way the colonizers viewed the lands they were settling as “empty” despite the fact that that they were clearly populated, and two, how both the Puritans and the Zionists used (and continue to use) Judeo-Christian justifications such as the Abrahamic covenant to validate their claims to these regions.

In the following pages, I will detail how both group’s colonizing philosophies rely on the Abrahamic covenant and on a view of indigenous lands as “empty” to justify colonization.

The term “manifest destiny,” coined by John O’Sullivan in 1845, refers to what was believed to be the United States’ unique mission to conquer and populate

North America (Stephanson xi). This philosophy is rooted in the Puritan colonizers’ Dakin 7

belief that they were sent to North America in order to establish a community distinct from Europe where “universal righteousness will return and the world will be regenerated” (Stephanson 4). The “discovery” of the Americas by the European imperialist powers during the 16th century happened to coincide with the Protestant

Reformation, and it was one of the most radical Protestant communities—the

Puritans—who took advantage of this newly-conquered land in order to create the

“true” Christian society that Europe had been unable to develop or support due to papal corruption. Significantly, not only did the discovery of this “New World” occur during the time of the Reformation, but the Puritans who emerged from the

Reformation also believed that they were nearing the end of days. As Anders

Stephanson explains in his book Manifest Destiny: American Expansionism and the

American Right, the Puritans saw it as their duty to “master the Bible as an epistemic code of revelation” and believed that “current events were fulfillments or reenactments of the Scriptures” (8). Prophecy consequently became a crucial aspect of Protestantism because it was necessary to understand one’s destiny and conform to divine will. The

Reformation was interpreted by the Protestants with the Book of Revelation in mind; they believed that they were on the brink of Armageddon or perhaps had already reached it, and it was their duty to cut themselves off from the corruption of the papacy and the failures of Europe in order to establish a new and purified order

(Stephanson 8).

The “New World” seemed to be the perfect place for this new order. Deviating from other Christian colonizers of the Americas, the Puritans believed that not only Dakin 8

was their colonizing mission sacred, but the land itself was sacred (Stephanson 6).

This is because the Puritans saw their mission in the framework of the Abrahamic

covenant; they believed that New England was the Chosen Land and they the chosen

people destined to inhabit it. The Abrahamic covenant of the Hebrew tradition is the

agreement between God and the Hebrew people that they were chosen by Him to

inherit and rule over the land of Canaan. God’s command to Abram is found in

chapter 12 of Genesis, where He states, “Get thee out of thy country, and from thy

kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will show thee: And I will

make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great”

(Newcomb 38). As Stephanson points out, this covenant is merely a promise and has

all the potential to fail if the Israelites do not adhere to God’s law. So true is the case

of the Puritans, who understood their mission in New England, the New Canaan, to be

one wholly reliant on their ability to live in accordance with divine will (7).

An intriguing aspect of the Puritan’s appropriation of the Promised Land-

Chosen People narrative discussed extensively in Steven T. Newcomb’s Pagans in the

Promised Land: Decoding the Doctrine of Christian Discovery is that this narrative is itself a colonial story. God instructs Abram to “Get thee out of thy country…unto a land that I will show to thee” and promises that He will bless Abram and his comrades and build them “a great nation” in the new country (Genesis: 12). Abram, his wife

Sarai, and the rest of the community of Ha’ran follow God’s orders and travel to

Canaan, which is the land God promised Abram. As Newcomb argues, “this begins a

colonial adventure story: Abram, Sarai, and the people accompanying them may be Dakin 9

accurately understood as colonial settlers moving forward into a ‘new land,’ which,

for them, had the potential to become a ‘new world.’” As Genesis 12:6 states, the land

of Canaan is already occupied by indigenous peoples such as the Canaanites,

Moabites, Hittites, and others, and it is Abram’s duty as decreed by God to subdue and

banish these peoples from their native lands. Genesis 12:6 -- “And the Canaanite was then in the land”-- suggests that the Canaanites only inhabited the land, but were not

the rightful owners, much how the Puritans view the indigenous Americans. In the

Puritans’ minds they were the rightful owners because this land had been revealed to

them by God, just as Abram and his followers saw themselves as the rightful owners

of Canaan because the Lord had told Abram “Unto they seed…will I give you this

land” in the manner of a “conquering leader of a colonial expedition” (Newcomb 38-

39).

The Puritans’ belief that they were carrying out a divinely-mandated Exodus to a newfound Promised Land has several important implications for how the indigenous peoples of the Americas were viewed and treated. For one, it was the established belief of Christian Europe at the time that any land that was not controlled by a

Christian nation was free for the taking (Stephanson 6). This topic is discussed extensively by Newcomb, who points to the fact that Chief Justice John Marshall,

when ruling on the land dispute Johnson v. M’Intosh in 1823, asserted that Great

Britain did not distinguish between truly empty lands and lands occupied by the

indigenous Americans because “from a Christian European perspective, peoples who

were unbaptized were regarded as lacking ‘those rights which a true jural [sic] Dakin 10

morality considers inherent in each human being” (108). American Indians in the eyes

of the British were “heathens,” ”pagans,” or even less than human, and as such were

not capable or worthy of having dominion over the land they merely inhabited; this

was an authority reserved only for Christian nations (Newcomb 109-10). The “law of

Christendom,” as asserted by Judge Catron of the Supreme Court of Tennessee in

1835, means that “discovery gave title to assume sovereignty over and to govern the

unconverted natives of Africa, Asia and North and South America.” This is the

foundation of the belief that European colonizers had the right to dominion over the

Americas and its inhabitants; if the law of Christendom were faulty, asserted Judge

Catron, it would mean that the original colonizers would have been “unjust usurpers,” and that all non-indigenous inhabitants of the United States have no authority in this land and should “return to Europe, and let the subdued parts again become a wilderness and hunting ground” (Newcomb 117-118).

Related to the law of Christendom is the tradition of natural law, or vacuum domicilium. The eighteenth-century Swiss legal thinker Emerich de Vattel, well- known for his writings on natural law, argues that men have an “obligation to cultivate the earth,” and that if European colonizers happen upon land that “in which there are found none but erratic nations” that are not able to “people the whole,” then the indigenous peoples of that land have no true legal claim to it and the conquering forces have not only the authority but perhaps even the duty to subdue and make use of the land; doing so provides the conquerors with full legal title. Because the indigenous

Americans had not “subdued” the land and did not live up to the European Dakin 11

understanding of “productivity,” in the Puritans’ minds they forfeited their claim to it.

This forfeit occurred even when indigenous peoples did in fact meet the Europeans’ notion of “civilized,” as was the case with the Cherokee Nation, which had a written language, constitutional rule, the notion of personal property, and other so-called

“civilized traits.” In this instance, the colonizers still managed to find a legally manipulative means by which to deny the Cherokees’ legal claim to their lands

(Stephanson 25).

By establishing the indigenous peoples’ claims to their native lands as null and void on the basis of vacuum domicilium and the law of Christendom, the Puritans now viewed themselves as having free reign to continue their Western expansion under the banner of spreading Christianity, civilization, and prosperity. As one can easily conclude, the indigenous peoples of these lands were seen to be obstacles to this progress because they resisted relinquishing the lands that the citizens of the newly- established United States of America meant to use to build their country. As

Stephanson asserts, “the Americans wanted land to exploit, not people to assimilate,” and although there were some attempted assimilation projects that continued until the

1820s, the main method for clearing indigenous land was through “resettlement” or extermination (Stephanson 26). This colonial philosophy puts the Puritans in the category of “settler-colonialism,” which differs from traditional colonialism in that the land is the most important resource to be obtained by the colonizers as opposed to natural resources or cheap human labor, although both of these things may be exploited in the process. The ultimate goal of settler-colonialism is to rid the land of Dakin 12

its native population until it is empty and waiting for the settler-colonizers to build a new society. Zionism in Palestine is another prominent example of the settler-colonial phenomenon, which makes the comparison relevant and fruitful.

Before delving into the specific similarities of Christian Zionism and Jewish

Zionism, I first would like to establish Zionism in Palestine as a colonial phenomenon.

Many supporters of the Zionist movement have argued that Zionism is not a colonial

movement because the Jewish rebellion against the British in Palestine proved that

they were anti-imperialist, because Palestinian Jewish settlements were socialist and

therefore did not fit the capitalist-colonial mold, because the Yishuv of the Mandate

period did not exploit Arab labor (Smith 206), or even because the land that was

acquired by the Jews during early settlement was purchased legally, not seized.

However, ultimately these refutations of the colonial nature of Zionism do not

hold water. For one, the fact that Jews in Palestine rebelled against British authority

during the Mandate Period does not negate the fact that Zionism was dependent on

and instigated its own form of colonialism; as I. F. Stone points out in his article “For

a New Approach to the Israeli-Arab Conflict,” this rebellion “is no more evidence of

[Zionism] not being a colonial implantation than similar wars of British colonists

against the mother country, from the American Revolution to Rhodesia” (207).

Crucially, Zionism depended on and benefitted from Western imperialism. Because

the world was dominated by the European imperialist powers during the late 19th and

early 20th century, it was necessary to garner not just the consent but the support of

these powers in order to achieve any kind of political transformation, particularly one Dakin 13

as significant as the establishment of the Jewish state in the Levant. The creation of

the state of Israel would not have been possible without British support, and this

support was necessary because of Britain’s imperialist influence in the Middle East.

Theodor Herzl, author of The Jewish State and father of Zionism, was well aware of

this fact and knew that he had to propose Zionism to the British in a manner that

would convince them it was in the best interest of British foreign policy to establish a

homeland for the Jews in Palestine. One of Herzl’s arguments to foster support among

the British was that Jewish settlement in Palestine would “constitute a bulwark against

Asia down there, we would be the advance post of civilization against barbarism.”

This argument fit squarely in line with the current European imperialist mindset,

because “colonization at the time was essentially taken to mean the spreading of

progress, civilization, and well-being” (Rodinson 42-43).

British support for the Zionist project was solidified in 1917 with the Balfour

Declaration, which asserted that “His Majesty’s government view with favour the

establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people” (Rodinson 46).

Without the political and military support of Great Britain, the creation of the Jewish state would have been an impossibility. For one, without the protection of the British on the ground there is no way that the high level of Jewish immigration into Palestine during the early 20th century would have been possible, and this increase of the Jewish

population from 85,000 Jews in 1914 to 539,000 Jews in 1943 (31.5% of the

population) was a necessary element in legitimizing the notion of a Jewish state in

Palestine (Rodinson 56). Before this large community of Jews was established in the Dakin 14

land, it would have been relatively easy for the Palestinians to uproot the colonizers

had it not been for the British police and the military (Rodinson 69). The fact that

Zionism meshed with the ideology and political motivations of the world’s greatest

colonial power is a testament to the imperialist nature of the Zionist movement.

Another reason that I have decided to compare Zionism to manifest destiny is the Zionist’s view of Palestine as an empty land. This fact is enshrined in the famous phrase coined by Israel Zangwill used to encourage Jewish immigration to Palestine in the early years of Zionism: “A land without a people for a people without a land.” This view goes back to the very beginnings of Zionist thought, evidenced by the fact that

Theodor Herzl makes absolutely no mention of the Arab inhabitants of Palestine when he discusses the possibility of Jewish emigration to the region in The Jewish State.

According to I. F. Stone, in the eyes of the Zionists “the Arab was the Invisible

Man…Psychologically he was not there” (208). The majority of the Jewish immigrants to Palestine in the early years believed that the region was a desolate and barely inhabited place; it was not until after their arrival that it became very apparent that Palestine was not a “land without a people.” Even then, the Jewish immigrants paid little to no attention to the Arabs and their concerns, focusing primarily on the

Turks who were in control of the region (Rodinson 51). Furthermore, even when it quickly became apparent to the Jewish immigrants that the land was undeniably populated, the early Jewish settlements made very little effort to interact with or support their Arab neighbors; in fact, much of the Yishuv established policies of using Dakin 15

only Jewish labor and supporting Jewish businesses and enterprises in their attempts to

build a successful Jewish economy in Palestine built.

This initial ignorance of the presence of and continued disregard for indigenous Arabs in Palestine and their aspirations for their native land reveal the imperialist nature of early Zionist thought and practice. Hans Kohn speaks to this blindness in his essay “Ahad Ha’Am: Nationalism with a Difference,” stating, “To

their eyes the land of their distant forefathers appeared empty, waiting for the return of the dispersed descendants, as if history had stood still for two thousand years” (31).

However, as is more than apparent now, history did not stand still, and a vibrant people and culture had taken the place of the ancient Jewish inhabitants over the course of the past two millennia. Zionism’s reaction to this fact continued down the colonialist vein: when the Jewish settlers did acknowledge the presence of the indigenous people, many characterized them as a backwards civilization that would ultimately be benefitted by Jewish immigration. In his seminal book Altneuland (“Old-

New Land”), Theodor Herzl finally made mention of the Arabs, but he did so in a wholly 19th century imperialist way, suggesting that the indigenous population would

ultimately accept their subjugation and benefit both socially and economically from

the prosperity that the colonizing population would bring to the region; he imagined

that a future Jewish state “was full of thriving Arab cities and villages with a highly

contented population that had profited and increased as a result of the coming of the

new settlers” (Kohn 33). The notion of Palestine as an empty land harkens back to the

concept of vacuum domicilium exhibited by the Puritans. Many Zionists came to Dakin 16

Palestine with the belief that they had a superior mission to establish a Jewish

homeland in Israel that superseded any rights or aspirations of the indigenous Arabs,

and that that superiority was rooted in the assurance that they would bring European

“prosperity” to the region, that they would “make the desert bloom.”

Considering this evidence, it is difficult to deny that the modern state of Israel

is a direct product of the European imperialist project. This fact only became further

entrenched after Israel seized and became an occupying force in the West Bank

(previously controlled by Jordan) and the Gaza Strip (previously controlled by Egypt)

during the 1967 War. In his conclusion to Israel: A Colonial-Settler State?, Maxime

Rodinson argues that while Israel does not fit every definition of a colonialist project, its occupation of Palestine through superior political, economic, and military force undeniably squares with traditional European imperialism because “one can speak of colonization when there is, and by the very fact that there is, occupation with domination; when there is, and by the very fact that there is, emigration with legislation” (92). Both of these criteria match with the creation of the state of Israel.

Furthermore, in the decades after the official establishment of the state in May 1948,

Israel began to take on even more traditional characteristics of European colonialism.

For example, although the Jewish settlers did not initially use Arab labor, they quickly learned the benefits of exploiting indigenous labor as have so many colonial projects before them, and soon became reliant on it in order to maintain a high standard of

Jewish living; as Amos Kenan argues in “Between Gaza and Tel Aviv, De Facto, We

Already Live in a Bi-National State,” “this is the first condition for colonialism” (187). Dakin 17

Having established the colonial nature of the Zionist movement, I would like to address the religious framework that has molded Zionism and the state of Israel. First and foremost, Zionism is a secular, nationalist enterprise that, as Norton Mezvinsky explains in “The Zionist Character of the State of Israel,” is not a “valid theological or philosophical expression of the religion of Judaism” (248). Zionism developed in response to the pervasive global discrimination against Jews as minorities and the belief that this anti-Semitism would never dissipate. The only solution to the Jewish

Question, apparent to the Zionists, was to build a Jewish nation state that would ensure majority rule and consequently a future for the Jewish people. Zionism was influenced heavily by 19th century European nationalism and in fact clashes with religious

Zionism in many respects, since “much of prophetic Judaism had taught the principles

of ethics, justice and mercy in contrast to the alluring temptation to imitate other

nations and to crave for might and power (Smith 12). In this way, Jewish Zionism

differs starkly from the Christian Zionism of the Puritans in America, which was

definitively motivated by the Puritans’ strong conviction that they were carrying out a

divinely-ordained mission in the “New World.”

Although Zionism is undoubtedly a secular nationalist movement, it has been

justified by religious ideology and the presumed legitimacy of the Jewish state in

Palestine is tethered to the historical, religious connection of Jews to the land. Initially,

succeeding in building a Jewish state was more important than its location, and both

Argentina and Uganda, to name two prominent examples, were considered as

possibilities. However, in the end it was difficult to deny the strong pull that Palestine Dakin 18

would have for Jews, as Herzl recognized: “Palestine is our unforgettable historical

homeland…Its name alone would be a powerfully stirring rallying cry for our people”

(Rodinson 42). Over time, the Jewish connection to their historical homeland

developed from an effective means by which to promote Jewish immigration to

Palestine into a foundational justification for Jewish presence in the region. For

example, in the Churchill White Paper of 1922, which was issued in an attempt to

clarify the meaning of the term “Jewish homeland” employed in the Balfour

Declaration of 1917, the British government asserted that “it is essential that [the

Jewish community] should know that it is in Palestine as of right and not on

sufferance” (Smith 35).

However, it is not sufficient to say that because the Jewish people lived as a

nation in Palestine two millennia ago they have a contemporary claim to this land. As

I. F. Stone points out, “the whole earth would have to be reshuffled if claims 2,000

years old to irredenta were suddenly to be allowed” (206). It is obvious that other

elements have caused the community’s connection to Israel to become so entrenched

that it is nearly impossible to identify as Jewish without asserting an allegiance to the

Jewish state. One of the primary justifications for the establishment of a Jewish state

on indigenous Palestinian land is the assertion that these foreign nationals are not

foreign at all: they have an ultimate claim to the land based on religious belief and

tradition. Religion was not always the primary means of legitimating Zionist colonial

activity in Palestine; in the early years of Zionism, Kenan argues, socialism was used as the “moral alibi” for Zionism’s many ethical failings and reprehensible colonial Dakin 19

methods. However, as socialism began to lose momentum a need arose for a new

moral alibi. Religion ultimately began to fulfill this role, because as Kenan argues,

“there is no real Zionism except that founded on religion…aside from the Divine

promise there is no other alibi for expropriation and expulsion” (189). As Kenan

recognizes, this shift to religious justification is not a result of the devout religious

belief of the majority of Zionists, but rather because they recognize the effectiveness,

as have many before them, “how to cite religion in support of their policies of building

their power and expropriating the property of their victims” (190).

In present-day political discourse, religious allusions are regularly used to

assert Israel’s right to exist and to reaffirm Jewish connection to and legitimacy in the

land. For example, in his speech before Congress in May 2011, Binyamin Netanyahu

asserted, “This is the land of our forefathers, the Land of Israel, to which Abraham

brought the idea of one God, where David set out to confront Goliath, and where

Isaiah saw a vision of eternal peace. No distortion of history can deny the four

thousand year old bond, between the Jewish people and the Jewish land”

(“Transcript”). This statement blatantly invokes religious parables in order to justify

modern-day colonization of the Palestinians and occupation of their indigenous lands.

The allusion to the covenant between God and Abraham (Abram) establishing the

Jews as the Chosen People and the land of Canaan as their sole rightful homeland cannot be overlooked. The use of religious allusion, particularly to the Abrahamic covenant, to justify Jewish claim to the land of Palestine over that of the indigenous

Palestinians is a crucial aspect of Zionist ideology that has defined the Zionism Dakin 20

movement and continues to critically influence Israeli political discourse and policy today.

Given the common ideologies with which these two settler movements legitimate their presence on colonized land and their shared perceptions of the indigenous peoples they have subjugated, the parallels between the indigenous’ situations in the United States and Israel become evident. As Tarak Barkawi illustrates in his article “Manifest Destiny and the ‘Wild West Bank,’” when Americans look to

Israel they see “a lone, devout and free people on the edge of a vast continent full of dusky, hostile natives,” and just like the Puritan settlers of North America, “the destiny of this free people is to build a ‘city on a hill’ on virgin land, a beacon of freedom and civilisation in a tragic world.” Recognizing the overlaps in technique and ideology between these two movements is an important step to understanding the nature of settler-colonialism and how it can be resisted by indigenous populations. By coming to a better understanding of the settler-colonial methodology of manifest destiny and Zionism, indigenous Americans and Palestinians can grapple with the painful histories of their subjugation and develop methods to resist further colonization, preserve their cultures, and strive for self-determination. In the following chapters, I will look to the poetry and fiction of the indigenous American community and the Palestinian community in order to analyze how settler-colonialism has disrupted indigenous connection to their native lands, how this disconnection has crippled indigenous cultures, and what methods indigenous Americans and Dakin 21

Palestinians are using in order to assert their claims to their native lands and preserve their cultural heritage.

Dakin 22

CHAPTER TWO

I would like to begin by taking a more in-depth look at the way that indigenous cultures, especially oral ones, are shaped by and connected to the people and lands that claim them. I will look first to how the philosophical discipline of phenomenology provides a foundation for this belief, subsequently turning to my four authors for evidence of this reciprocal relationship in their literature. In his book The Spell of the

Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-Human World, David Abram defines phenomenology as a discipline that aims to “describe as closely as possible the way the world makes itself evident to awareness, the way things first arise in our direct, sensorial experience” (35). Edmund Husserl, the father of phenomenology, began his study of the phenomenal world by arguing that it was a wholly subjective realm, but after accusations of solipsism his theories evolved to recognize how the physical body mediates the subjective field and allows the self to interact with other subjectivities, which also have physical bodies. This development revealed that “the phenomenal field was no longer the isolated haunt of a solitary ego, but a collective landscape” (Abram 37). Phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty took Husserl’s Dakin 23

assertions one important step further by rejecting the notion that the ego was somehow separate from the body, instead arguing that the self and the body were one and the same. He asserted that the body is in fact “the true subject of experience” (Abrams 45) because the self could not interact with the world if it were not for the senses, which are facilitated by the body. One notable argument that Merleau-Ponty makes is that perception is a reciprocal act that is never completely passive on the part either of the self which is perceiving and the self which is being perceived. Abram illustrates this idea by stating that when one touches a tree, he or she is also being touched by the tree at the same time, and that such “exchanges and metamorphoses…arise from the simple fact that our sentient bodies are entirely continuous with the vast body of the land” (Abram 68). Husserl and Merleau-Ponty’s theories establish the notion that the body, and therefore the self, are fundamentally a part of their environment and that in many ways it is difficult to even distinguish where the body begins and ends because it is “ceaselessly spreading out of itself as well as breathing the world within itself”

(Abrams 46). This understanding of the body as being in a reciprocal, sympathetic relationship to the environment is critical to comprehending how indigenous, oral communities and their cultures rely on their native lands.

One of Abram’s primary goals in The Spell of the Sensuous is to break down the Western, industrialized world’s belief in a hierarchy that puts humans on top of and distinct from the natural world. First, Abram questions the uniqueness of human language by pointing to Merleau-Ponty’s discussion of its carnal nature. Merleau-

Ponty asserts that “linguistic meaning is not some ideal and bodiless essence that we Dakin 24

arbitrarily assign to a physical sound or word and then toss out into the ‘external world,’” but rather is fundamentally tied to the body’s interaction and resonance with its environment and the other bodies that inhabit it (Abram 74-75). The notion that language is something wholly abstract is therefore rejected on the basis that language not only relies on the human body to be utilized, but also because language is the primary mode by which humans communicate and interact with other humans and even other non-human bodies. The importance of this realization rests on the fact that our notion of language as we know it must be expanded to recognize that the physical, verbal communicative interactions of other animals are their own kind of language, that “language as a bodily phenomenon accrues to all expressive bodies, not just to the human.” Rather than serving as a marker between what is and is not human, language actually blurs that line and connects humans even closer to the animate world (Abram

80). Abram even goes so far to suggest that we cannot stop at animals, but must also recognize that we are constantly interacting with and being perceived by the surrounding landscape of soil, rocks, and flora. While those phenomena obviously have no capacity for language in the sense that humans do, they nevertheless have their own level of expression than cannot be overlooked (Abram 81-82).

The work of Husserl and Merleau-Ponty is an invaluable aid for understanding why and how the landscape is a core factor in the development and preservation of indigenous cultures. By recognizing the fundamental role of the body in the active interaction with the “sensuous life-world,” coupled with the realization that language cannot be limited to an abstract, human-only definition, human beings’ intimate, Dakin 25

egalitarian connection to our surrounding landscape becomes increasingly apparent. In her essay “Landscape, History, and the Pueblo Imagination,” Leslie Marmom Silko rejects terms such as landscape all together because such words depict humans’ surroundings as if they were something separate from a person, something which a person lives within or among but of which he or she is not directly a part. “Viewers are as much a part of the landscape as the boulders they stand on,” asserts Silko; we were born of the land, live off of it and nourish it throughout our life, and then return to it in death (32). This belief is further enforced when an indigenous people has lived on a piece of land for generations or even millennia. For the indigenous American communities who have lived on this land for some thirty thousand years (and according to their own traditions, since the Emergence), as well as for the Palestinians who have inhabited their land for centuries, their lifestyles, languages, cultures, religions, and identities are first and foremost a product of the land. N. Scott Momaday references the importance of a people’s tenure on their land in his essay “A First

American Views His Land,” asserting that the land of the Americas is the undeniable home of the American Indian explicitly because of the length of their inhabitance and that this fact is “one of the most important realities of the Indian world, and it is integrated in the Indian mind and spirit” (Smith 22). Indigenous homeland is not just home in the literal sense, for the land also houses a people’s history, their culture, and their very essence as a community.

Land is particularly important when considering oral indigenous cultures, which most indigenous cultures are, because location is a critical aspect of oral Dakin 26

storytelling. Oral storytelling is a constantly evolving process which adapts to the needs of each new generation. The oral stories of a people are an accumulation of knowledge passed down from generation to generation, “gradually incorporating new practical knowledge while letting that which was obsolete fall away” (Abram 104).

Oral storytelling is a living history that is maintained because it is taught to and remembered by the community as a whole so that if a chief member of the community were to die unexpectedly, nothing would be lost. Repetition of these stories is crucial for the preservation of oral history, but perhaps even more important to the retention of oral stories is the land of the people who tell them. The specific place that an event occurs is just as important as the story itself for a vast number of oral, indigenous cultures because without a link to a certain locale the tale and its lesson are rendered meaningless. For example, the Apache community often associates certain locations with particular ancestors, and they believe the land mediates the actions and morals of the community. Therefore, even after the ancestors die their teachings and guidance are preserved and enforced every time someone visits the mountain or arroyo to which an ancestor is linked. The stories are in effect a part of the landscape, and to move away from those locations in therefore to disconnect from the stories as well (Abram

160-61). This belief is discordant with the linear Western notion of history which

“formulates experience outside of nature and tends to reduce place to only a stage upon which the human drama is enacted” (Abram 181). Western history separates events from their location in a way that oral culture does not, which no doubt Dakin 27

contributes to European colonizers’ inability to comprehend the importance of land to native peoples and their cultures.

Another argument for why white European colonizers do not hold respect for the environment and the importance of native homeland to indigenous cultures is the fact that they have rejected their own “nativeness” to the land. This belief is reflected in the ideology of some of the Western world’s most revered figures such as Socrates, who once asserted in the Phaedrus that “I’m a lover of learning, and trees and open country won’t teach me anything, whereas men in the town do” (Abram 102).

Throughout Western thought there is an established belief in the mind’s transcendence from the body and the association of the body with that which is base, animalistic, and non-human. Following Merleau-Ponty’s logic, this disconnection of the mind from the body would inevitably result in a disconnect from one’s surroundings because the oneness of body and self is what enables an individual to interact with and perceive one’s surroundings. In a selection from his essay “A Native Hill,” Wendell Berry asserts that the Europeans’ rampant destruction of the environment, which contrasts starkly with the indigenous peoples’ symbiotic relationship with their native land, resulted because they were a “placeless people” who had no sense of place in their new surroundings and therefore were incapable of valuing the land or understanding it.

This unrooted habitation of the land in combination with rejection of the body has resulted in European colonizers’ violence towards their newly-seized lands as well as their disregard for the importance of land to indigenous cultures. Dakin 28

The importance of land to cultural preservation is frequently expressed in the contemporary literature of indigenous populations who have faced the horrors of colonization, and the American Indians and the Palestinians are no exception. One of the authors who speaks most strongly to this connection is Aacqumeh hanoh poet

Simon Ortiz. Ortiz’s homeland is the Acoma Pueblo region of what is now known as

New Mexico; historic Acoma Pueblo lands once totaled approximately 5 million acres, but currently only about ten percent of these lands are still held by the people of

Acoma (Pritzker 6). Ortiz’s collection of poetry Woven Stone directly deals with the notions of indigenous connection to land, the manner in which land shapes and supports culture, and how separation from or loss of land can damage an indigenous community physically, mentally, culturally, and spiritually.

One of Ortiz’s poems which speaks most beautifully to the connection between land and indigenous history is “A Story of How a Wall Stands,” which centers around a 400-year-old graveyard in Aacqu built on a steep hillside that is only held up by what looks like an unstable wall. In the poem, a father explains to his child how the intricate and meticulous weaving of stone and mud has made the wall strong despite its appearance; the loose part is “just the part you see, / the stones which seem to be / just packed in on the outside” (2-4), because underneath this loose stone the woven stone is built so that the stones will “hold / together for a long, long time” (17-18).

This wall speaks to the role of land in indigenous continuance in many ways. For one, the wall is a physical representation of the land of the Acoma Pueblo people literally supporting and protecting the ancestors of their community: the stones which were Dakin 29

quarried and selected for the wall and the mud which was carefully mixed to the perfect consistency are keeping the centuries-old bones of the ancestors from falling down the steep cliff side and being lost, much like how the people of Acoma Pueblo maintain a relationship to their homeland so that they can preserve their cultural heritage and indigenous identity. The father teaching his child these lessons is indicative of the importance of passing on ancestral knowledge from generation to generation so that indigenous heritage will not be lost in contemporary times. He shows his son or daughter that even if it seems on the outside that indigenous identity is fragile or could slip away at any moment, in reality there is a tightly woven core underneath that will stand for “a long, long time.” The wall also serves as a physical reminder of the ancestors every time that a woman, man, or child of Acoma Pueblo passes by it; this fact harkens back to Abram’s discussion of the role of physical elements in the landscape in reinforcing oral tradition and indigenous culture.

However, one of the most important images in the poem is how the father uses his hands to mimic the woven nature of the stone. As he explains the craftsmanship behind the wall, “He ties one hand over the other, / fitting like the bones of his hands / and fingers” (8-10). This act symbolizes the connection between land and body, interweaving the two in such a way that the body becomes a part of, or is in a sense made up of, the land itself. Again we are reminded of Abram’s philosophy of how humans are very much a part of the animate landscape in which they live. “A Story of

How a Wall Stands” is a critical poem in Woven Stone because it lays the foundation for how land is vital to cultural and historical preservation, the importance of land in Dakin 30

passing on cultural knowledge, and how the body and land are fundamentally intertwined.

Metaphors that blur the distinction between the human body and the land are commonplace throughout Ortiz’s poetry. Two poems in particular, “To Insure

Survival” and “Poem for Jody About Leaving,” address the life-giving nature of the land by using images from the landscape when describing situations of pregnancy and birth. In “To Insure Survival,” a poem about the birth of Ortiz’s daughter Rainy Dawn, the speaker begins with a body-land metaphor, asserting, “You come forth / the color of a stone cliff / at dawn, / changing colors, / blue to red / to all the colors of the earth”

(1-6). The way this evocative image blends body and land at the moment of birth speaks to how all humans are born from the land and that this fundamental bond cannot be severed. Furthermore, this imagery also speaks to the necessity of passing on this connection through the generations. Reverse but parallel imagery is found in

“Poem for Jody About Leaving,” in which the speaker describes the land in terms of the human body: “I was telling you / about the red cliff faces,” states the speaker, “the red and brown land / that is like a strong / and healthy woman / ready to give birth / to many children” (1-2, 7-11). The life-giving nature of the earth is again clearly asserted in the comparison of the land to the fertility and vitality of a pregnant woman. The metaphors in these two poems are also significant because the personification of the land brings it to life in a manner that speaks to Abram’s notion of an animate landscape that is expressive and capable of interaction with human beings and other non-human bodies. By calling attention to the life-giving nature of the land and by Dakin 31

describing the land in human terms (and vice versa), the distinction between “human” and “landscape” begins to break down, illustrating Silko’s earlier point that human beings are inherently a part of the landscape and cannot be separated from it.

In the same vein, several poems in Woven Stone invoke Abram’s notion of a

“spoken” land, in that non-human entities in the environment have their own mode of communication or expression that should not be made completely distinct from human language. Recognizing this fact, Abram argues, is a key step not only in breaking down hierarchies, but also in reorienting humans in their role as members of the animate, natural world. For example, in “It Was the Third Day, July 12, 1971” the speaker is meditating on the land as he hitchhikes to Colorado; he watches a hawk circle slowly across the blue sky, feels the breeze coming from the direction of the

Jemez Mountains, and smells the scent of alfalfa on the air. As he waits for a car to pick him up, he sings, “Look, the plants with bells. / Look the stones with voices” (17-

18). Like when the landscape in the previously mentioned poems “came alive” when compared to the human body, so do the plants and stones in “It Was the Third Day,” perhaps even more significantly because here they are given voices and means of expression. The image of the plants chiming and the stones speaking taps directly into

Abram’s argument about the necessity of recognizing the land’s ability to communicate in numerous ways, both bodily and vocally. The fact that the voices of the land in this poem are introduced by the singing of the speaker speaks to the connection between the numerous potential forms of expression of the animate, Dakin 32

natural world and the function of the human as an equal, not a superior, member of this world.

Land as an animate, vocal entity is discussed even more explicitly in “That’s the Place Indians Talk About,” a poem focused on the Coso Hot Springs in California, which is a sacred healing spot for the Shoshone peoples that has been fenced off by the U. S. military for weapons testing and development. When the speaker describes the importance the hot springs have for the Shoshone and how their healing powers work, he explains that part of this relationship is a conversation that the Shoshone have with the land during these rituals; “when you talk to the hot springs,” states the speaker, “you talk with it when it talks to you” (32-33). This talking is described as a

“rattling” of the stones beneath the earth as they are “moving around each other” in response to when the people sing, pray, and talk to the land. The speaker refers to this talking as “the voice of the power coming,” and it grows in intensity the more the people sing, pray, and talk to the ground, drawing the voice to the surface. “That’s the

Place Indians Talk About” speaks to connection to the land in many ways. The importance of the Coso Hot Springs to the Shoshonean peoples is evidence of how specific ancestral landmarks serve as significant cultural spaces that cannot be replicated or replaced. Even more significantly, this poem illustrates how humans and land are able to converse with each other via their respective means of vocal expression. The voice of the land also serves to represent the power and resilience of the people in the face of the oppressive actions of the United States government, and the fact that this power comes from the earth is critical. This poem shows how the land Dakin 33

is seen as a source of power that is not inanimate, but rather a living, speaking entity

that can communicate with human beings and respond to their prayers and needs. In

many ways, the land is representative of the people themselves, who will rise up like

the voice of the land rising to the surface of the earth to resist their colonial

oppressors.

As with the poetry of Ortiz, the importance of land for indigenous peoples’

cultural perseveration as well as their very survival is prominently displayed in Leslie

Marmon Silko’s Almanac of the Dead, a novel which documents the intertwining lives

of dozens of men and women from different cultural, racial, and religious backgrounds

who are all struggling to survive in white-controlled capitalist society. The action of the novel is centered around Tucson, Arizona, a city which embodies cultural breakdown and degradation due to the arms smuggling, drug dealing, organ theft, embezzling, and other crimes that occur there. Tucson also serves an intersection point for peoples of various backgrounds who fall along the spectrum of indigenous and colonizer. Some like Lecha and Zeta, twin sisters of indigenous decent who live in the

United States, are an instrumental part of the cultural preservation narrative through their work on the almanac, which was handed down to Lecha by the twins’ grandmother, Old Yoeme, who taught them the history and the importance of the almanac. The almanac was given to Lecha because like Old Yoeme, she possesses the power to make contact with the spirit world, and therefore was given the job of maintaining and decoding the old notebooks. Others are like Leah Blue, a white

American living in Arizona, who embodies the disconnect of the white American Dakin 34

oppressor through her dream of building a city of canals and fountains called “Venice”

in the middle of the arid Arizona desert. Leah’s plan for Venice, Arizona not only

shows a complete disconnect with the earth through her illogical attempt to manipulate

the landscape of Arizona from its natural state as a desert into a watery paradise, but

she also shows a complete disregard for the indigenous populations who would suffer

greatly as a result of the diversion of water that Leah would require. Then there are

characters trapped between two worlds such as Menardo, a Mexican man of

indigenous descent who rejects his Indian heritage and rises in white Mexican society

through his profitable insurance business and marriages to two white women. Trapped

between two identities and increasingly paranoid, Menardo ultimately symbolizes the

fallacy that one can be shielded from his or her history or escape the forces of the

spirit world.

Running underneath all of the action of Almanac of the Dead is the importance of the land for cultural preservation and the self-determination of the indigenous

Americans. The deep connection to their homeland that has been built over thousands

of years of inhabitance is asserted by multiple indigenous characters throughout the

novel. For example, the Mexican-Indian man Calabazas discusses how the survival of

the indigenous Americans has depended most significantly on their extensive

understanding of their surroundings. “Survival had depended on differences,” states

Calabazas, but “Not just the differences in the terrain that gave the desert traveler

critical information about traces of water or grass for his animals, but the sheer

varieties of plants and bugs and animals” (Almanac 202). Calabazas illustrates his Dakin 35

knowledge of these differences to his friends Root and Mosca, showing them how a few big rocks in the arroyo might seem the same until one notices a slight crack in one rock or the way one sits slightly higher on the ground that the other. Not only does the land provide a means of survival through its variations, but it is also the native peoples’ protector. “It was the land itself, that protected native people,” asserted

Calabazas to his wife, gesturing to the “the sun and then out at the creosote flats and rocky foothills of cactus and brush.” When the white men had come near the land of

Calabazas’ ancestors they had been too afraid to enter the desert plains of his homeland, thus ensuring the protection and survival of their inhabitants. “We are safe for as long as we have all this,” he told her (Almanac 222).

Throughout Almanac of the Dead, the important role that the land plays in indigenous continuance is revealed by comparing it to the disconnect that the white man has to his homeland and the land he has colonized. For example, in contrast to indigenous peoples’ complex understanding of the features and make-up of their homelands to which Calabazas speaks, the European colonizers are not capable of telling the unique differences of the landscape they have taken. Calabazas asserts that

“one of the most dangerous qualities of the Europeans” was the fact that they

“suffered a sort of blindness to the world” where “to them, a ‘rock’ was just a ‘rock’ wherever they found it, despite obvious differences in shape, density, color, or the position of the rock relative to all things around it” (Almanac 224). Menardo’s Indian grandfather also touches on the lack of understanding of the natural world that

Europeans seem to have, which he believes is born from the fact that they are “the Dakin 36

orphan people” whose ancestors were created by a god that was “soon furious with them, throwing them out of their birthplace, driving them away.” As a result of this banishment, the European people “failed to recognize the earth was their mother” and like Adam and Eve they are now “wandering aimlessly because the insane God who had sired them had abandoned them” (Almanac 258). The weak attachments that

Europeans seem to have both to their own homelands which they so easily abandoned and the new lands that they have conquered are highly inconsistent with the lives and the practices of the indigenous peoples of the Americas.

One of the most critical arguments in Almanac of the Dead is the importance of history and the ancestors, both of which are inseparable from connection to homeland. The character La Escapía, an indigenous Mexican freedom fighter, asserts that “the stories of the people or their ‘history’ had always been sacred, the source of their entire existence” (Almanac 315). This fact is corroborated by El Feo, another indigenous Mexican freedom fighter who is twins with Menardo’s driver Tacho and has the ability to communicate with the ancestors and the land. He states that the “past times were not lost” because “the days, months, and years were living beings who roamed the starry universe until they came around again.” While the European colonizers only focused on the future, El Feo recognizes that people can only have a future in a place if they also have a past (Almanac 313). This assertion is connected to

Calabazas’ belief that “each location, each place, was a living organism with time running inside it like blood, time that was unique to that place alone” (Almanac

629).The powerful connection that La Escapía and El Feo have to their homeland is Dakin 37

indicated by the language used to describe them and the stories that have been propagated over time. For example, when El Feo is having sex with La Escapía he describes her in the language of the land; her breasts reminded him of “the warmth of the darkest, deepest forest in an early-summer rain,” and he felt that he “he was burying himself deeper and deeper into the core of the earth until he lost himself in eternity where wide rivers ran to a gentle ocean that included all beings” (Almanac

522). There is also a sexual aspect to El Feo’s relationship to the land, because rumors have spread that El Feo is “married to the earth” and has “sexual intercourse four times a day with holes dug in damp river clay” (Almanac 468). The use of sexual imagery deepens the connection of La Escapía and El Feo to the land, and the nature in which La Escapía’s body is linked to the land is particularly indicative of the innate bond between an indigenous people and their homeland.

The characters of La Escapía and El Feo play a critical role in Almanac of the

Dead as proponents of the argument that all native lands must be returned through a great uprising of indigenous peoples. They argue that not only are these lands rightfully Indian lands, but that they must be retaken because without their land the indigenous peoples cannot survive. El Feo “believed in the land,” and he argues that

“with the return of Indian land would come the return of justice, followed by peace”

(Almanac 513). Conflict arises between many revolutionary tribes in Mexico, particularly over the validity of communism, but La Escapía argues that ultimately these things are not what is important, because “nothing mattered but taking back tribal lands” (Almanac 517). La Escapía asserts to her followers that “I have nothing to Dakin 38

say except every breath, my every heartbeat, is for the return of the land” (Almanac

518). The necessity of the return of tribal homelands is the one of the primary

arguments of Silko’s book, and it is based on the belief that an indigenous people’s

homeland is the backbone of their culture and identity. Almanac of the Dead is

therefore a strong testament to the connection of an indigenous people’s homeland to

their culture and identity, and how culture and identity will consequently be heavily

damaged as a result of colonization and the loss of homeland.

Like the indigenous peoples of the Americas, in this case specifically the

people of the Pueblo region such as Simon Ortiz and Leslie Marmon Silko, the

Palestinian people also have a culture and identity that was created by and is

understood through the context of their homeland. Mahmoud Darwish, who is

considered to be the “poet laureate” of Palestine, dedicated his life to the expression of

love for his homeland and the bitterness brought upon by exile through the art of

poetry. Unsurprisingly, his poems frequently deal with the connection of his people to

Palestine and the importance that their homeland plays in supporting their culture and

identity. One of these poems is “Identity Card,” which details a Palestinian man’s

impassioned response to an Israeli soldier who has asked him to provide his Israeli

identity card. While this poem is beloved by the Palestinians because of its strong

assertion of Palestinian resilience against Israeli oppression, it is also a powerful

testament to Palestinian connection to homeland. “Write down / I am an Arab,” the

man begins, “& my I.D. card number is 50,000” (Selected 1-3), identifying himself in the impersonal terms that the Israeli soldier has demanded of him. However, he Dakin 39

quickly humanizes himself in the face of this demeaning request, informing the solider

that “I work with comrades in a stone quarry / & my children are eight in number. /

For them I hack out / a loaf of bread / clothing / a school exercise-book / from the

rocks / rather than begging for alms / at your door” (Selected 10-18). The fact that the

speaker returns to the land through his job at the quarry in order to maintain his

dignity in the face of discrimination and injustice shows connection to the land as a

source for Palestinian strength and resilience.

The speaker explicitly discusses his connection to his land in the following

stanza when he states, “My roots / gripped down before time began / before the blossoming of ages / before cypress trees & olive trees /…before grass sprouted”

(Selected 27-31). The speaker equates himself with the land by describing himself as if he were a tree, his vast network of roots intertwining with the soil and sustaining life from it. Anette Mansson discusses tree imagery in her dissertation Passage to a new wor(l)d: Exile and restoration in Mahmoud Darwish’s writings, in which she states that in Darwish’s writing the tree represents resistance because of “its firm rootedness and inability to move between spheres…the tree can never be a migrant loosing [sic] its connection to its geographic place of origin” (88). The speaker’s declaration of his interconnectedness with his land through his embodiment of a tree whose roots tightly grip the ground is made even more profound by his assertion that he was there before

“the blossoming of ages” and even the grass of Palestine itself. The speaker

establishes himself as more than a Palestinian because he is someone who has been Dakin 40

here as long as the land itself, before any people held claim to the land; in this way, his claim to the land is indisputable.

The stanza continues on to detail the humble family history of the speaker and how his family has been deeply connected to the land for generations. He states that his father “is from the family of the plough / not from a noble line” (Selected 33-34), and his grandfather “was a peasant / without nobility without genealogy” (Selected 36-

37). In both instances his patriarchal lineage consists of men who worked the land they lived on and as such required an intimate knowledge of it. The speaker himself states that his house is a “crop-warden’s shack / built of sticks & reeds” (Selected 39-40), so not only is his house humble but it is also built of the land. The speaker questions the soldier, “Does my social status satisfy you?” (Selected 41) with the assumption that the solider should be pleased that the Arab man before him comes from such a “lowly” background. However, what is not spoken here is the fact that the speaker comes from poor, land-working stock provides him and his family more knowledge of and claim to the land than the Israeli soldier could ever have. His laboring over his land has made his palm “solid as rock/ scratching whoever touches it,” and to him “the most delicious food/ is olive oil & thyme” (Selected 50-53), simple foods which are also some of the most common products of Palestinian soil. At the end of the poem, he informs the soldier that even if the government takes the rocks, which are the only thing they have left after “you usurped my grandfather’s vineyards / & the plot of land I used to plough…& you left us / & all my grandchildren / nothing,” then “so be it” (Selected

62-67, 70). The speaker is steadfast in his people’s connection to their homeland, and Dakin 41

his resilience is deeply rooted in his people’s legacy on this land and the knowledge that nothing his colonizers can do will take this away from him.

Another one of Darwish’s poems which effectively establishes the significance that homeland holds for Palestinian identity is “A Soldier Dreams of White Tulips,” in which a Palestinian speaker talks to an Israeli soldier about the latter’s understanding of what homeland means to him. The poem begins with a chronicling of what the soldier dreams about: “white tulips, an olive branch, her breasts in evening bloom”

(Paradise 1). When the soldier speaks of homeland, he says that for him homeland is

“to drink my mother’s coffee, to return at nightfall” (Paradise 5-6). “And the land?” the speaker asks him. “I don’t know the land,” the soldier tells the speaker. “I don’t feel it in my flesh and blood / as they say in the poems” (Paradise 7-8), he responds, referring to nationalist Hebrew poetry written to stir the hearts of Israelis and promote love for the new home of the Jewish people. When the soldier says this, the speaker for the first time is able to see the land “as one sees a grocery store, a street, newspapers” (Paradise 9). This exchange is meant to illustrate the profound difference between the indigenous Palestinians’ relationship to their homeland with that of the

Israeli, who is a newcomer to this land though his people may have a profound historical and religious connection to it. For the Israeli soldier, his sense of “home” is not tied to the land that he inhabits, though he recognizes this is what he is supposed to feel. Rather, for him “homeland” is something simpler: the small comforts of familiarity and safety, such as sipping his mother’s coffee or coming back to his house as night. These are things which could be present for him in any place and have little Dakin 42

to do with the sentiments of nationalist poetry that says the land of Israel should feel like his flesh and blood. Though the comparison is unspoken, the implication is of course that for the Palestinian things are quite different; for the speaker, the land is his flesh and blood, and his notion of homeland is defined by this fact and cannot be separated from it. When he says that the soldier’s words make him able to see the land

“as one sees a grocery store, a street, newspapers,” he means that for the first time he is able to see the land as the soldier sees it: merely a backdrop for his life, something as common and everyday as a store down the street or a newspaper on the stoop. This idea contrasts sharply with how the speaker sees the land, which is as something that is a part of him in a very bodily and fundamental way.

When the speaker asks the soldier if he loves the land, the soldier responds,

“My love is a picnic…a glass of wine, a love affair” (Paradise 10-11). He would not die for the land, he says, because “all my attachment to the land is no more than a story or a fiery speech!” (Paradise 14). Here we see the Israeli soldier’s love for his homeland as something formulated by the words of others, and on top of that it is transient, nothing but a “love affair” that may be pleasurable at the time but will eventually end. Others have tried to teach him to love the land, he tells the speaker,

“but I never felt it in my heart. / I never knew its roots and branches, or the scent of its grass” (Paradise 15-16). Again, there is an unspoken comparison between the soldier’s temporary love of his newfound homeland that was stoked within him by

“fiery speeches” and the love of the Palestinian for his homeland, a love which was created not by nationalist narratives but rather by presence on the land for centuries Dakin 43

that has provided him with deep knowledge of “its roots and branches” and “the scent

of its grass.” When asked if his love of the land burns “like suns and desire,” the

soldier replies that he loves the land “with my gun” (Paradise 17-18). Though he dreamt that “doves might flock through the Ministry of War” (Paradise 24), in reality his love in manifested through violence.

The speaker asks the soldier about one of the men he has killed. “He collapsed like a tent on stones, embracing shattered planets,” said the soldier, “Like a tent he collapsed and died, his arms stretched out like dry creek beds” (Paradise 37). This image is a powerful one because it shows that even in death the Palestinian still embodies the land, his arms resembling creek beds which are also lifeless like his body. The speaker asks the soldier if he felt any sadness at the man’s death, but the soldier scoffs at the apparent naiveté of the question, asserting that “sadness is a white bird that does not come near the battlefield” (Paradise 46). The soldier remarks that the next time they meet it will be in a city far away. “What about the homeland?”

Darwish asks, and again the soldier responds dismissively. “I need a kind heart, not a bullet,” he says. “I came to live for rising suns, not to witness their setting” (Paradise

56, 59, 62). On the one hand, these final stanzas of “A Soldier Dreams of White

Tulips” reveal the humanity of an Israeli soldier who wants nothing to do with wars that turn him into an “a machine spitting hellfire and death” (Paradise 48). More importantly, however, the ending of the poem reveals how easily the soldier is able to walk away from the land. “Homeland for him,” Darwish reiterates in the final line, “is to drink my mother’s coffee, to return, safely, / at nightfall” (Paradise 66-67). Though Dakin 44

the poem discusses only the Israeli soldier’s relationship to his adopted homeland, it also establishes the relationship between the Palestinian and his homeland by contrast.

The Palestinians cannot walk away from the land like the soldier, and they are not able to define homeland outside of the context of Palestine. For the Palestinians, their land is the primary factor of their identity as a people and unlike the soldier in this poem, this is not something built out of a “mad, fascist moment of triumph” (Paradise 60)

but by years of coexistence with their land that has built a defined and unshakable

sense of community and being.

As with the three indigenous authors discussed previously, Palestinian-

American poet Suheir Hammad also reflects the role of land as the shaper and preserver of her peoples’ culture and identity. One of the ways in which Hammad reflects this fact, which falls in line with Abram’s ideology and the strategies of Ortiz,

Silko, and Darwish, is to show the interconnectedness between the indigenous homeland and the indigenous body and how this connection has an impact on cultural understanding and preservations. The human body is a topic that arises frequently in

Hammad’s poetry both within and outside of the context of the Palestinian struggle.

Most often Hammad’s poetry discusses the female body and how it is talked about, looked at, and abused. Her poetry about how men view women’s bodies is often written in a language of defiance; she is unwilling to allow herself to be labeled or touched by undesired men. For example, in “Exotic” from Born Palestinian, Born

Black she rejects men’s attempts to exoticize her, telling them, “don’t seduce yourself with / my otherness my hair / wasn’t put on top my head to entice / you into some Dakin 45

mysterious black vodou” (12-15). Similar discussion is seen in “may I take your

order?” in which Hammad uses the language of food to point out men who like to

fantasize about her in othering ways: “can he soak me / in falafel oil / & drain milk &

honey outta me” (Born 44-46). She also uses food imagery to describe herself when

she rejects their obsession with her foreignness, asserting, “yeah i’m the / white boy’s

spam / to be processed…but i give it a / south of the border tang / w/ jalepeno hips &

guacamole looks” (Born 21-27). For Hammad, issues of women’s rights and agency

are intimately linked with other forms of violence endured by oppressed groups, from

Palestinian mothers in Gaza to the American Indians. In all these cases there is a

violation: a violation of body, a violation of land, a violation of sovereignty. One of

the reasons that Hammad’s poetry is so effective and powerful is because she is able to

recognize the solidarity between all these various forms of struggle which center

around the body.

Though much of the discussion of the body in Hammad’s poetry is

surrounding issues of the abuse of women or the destruction of war, she also uses the

imagery of the body in order to talk about the role of the land and the body in the fight

for cultural preservation and resistance against oppression. In “open poem to those

who rather we not read…or breathe,” Hammad speaks to a collective oppression of

minority and indigenous populations from around the world and their use of their

bodies as a rebellion against Western hegemony. “Fascism is in fashion,” begins the speaker:

but we be style dressed in sweat danced off taino and arawak bodies Dakin 46

we children of children exiled from homelands descendants of immigrants denied jobs and toilets carry continents in our eyes survivors of the middle passage we stand and demand recognition of our humanity (Born 1-9)

The phrase “we…carry continents in our eyes” is one of many phrases throughout

“open poem” that intertwines land and body in order to speak to the connection of indigenous peoples to their homelands despite colonization and displacement. The lines “we…know the willow she weeps for…her jazzy tears taste the fruit of brooklyn trees” (Born 16, 19-20) recognize the aching of the exiled woman for her homeland, but the speaker reasserts the resilience of these “children of children exiled from homelands” when she states, “our heads sport civilizations / hips velvet wrapped in music / and you can see the earth running / right under our skin” (Born 25-28). As

Carol Fadda-Conrey asserts in her essay “Weaving Poetic Autobiographies,” these lines speak to how “people of color express their individual and communal resistance to ‘fascist’ racism by literally wearing their heritage as raiment and weaving their own visual and vocal style, all the while infusing it with meaning” (165). These cultural fashion statements are put in contrast to “imperial” Western fashion and provide an empowering alternative to the excess consumerism found in many minority communities in America as they attempt to achieve greater social status, a phenomenon which Hammad critiques frequently in her work. Instead, the “we” of this poem use their bodies and their fashion to proudly display the cultures of their peoples and the homelands that were taken from them. This bodily connection to homeland is further asserted by the lines “you can see the earth running / right under Dakin 47

our skin,” a sentiment which not only speaks to the connection between human beings

and the animate landscape but more importantly asserts the fact that these children of

slaves and exiles still maintain a strong connection to their homelands, lands which are

as much a part of them as their own flesh and blood.

The connection between homeland, body, and culture takes a more intimate

tone in “the givers” from ZaatarDiva, in which Hammad, a child of refugees who was

raised in the United States, discusses the first time she saw the trees of Palestine. The

language of “the givers” personifies Palestine in terms of the human body and

resonates with Abram’s idea of the animate, vocal landscape. Hammad begins the poem by describing the trees as though they were a demure woman, saying, “this is modest beauty / a lowered gaze, muted color/ a flutter, shadows / a mumur (1-4). She

puts the modesty of the trees of Palestine in contrast with the loud vivaciousness of

Brooklyn, a place where she says she has been “looking for history.” However, in

Palestine Hammad no longer has to search for a history or build a new identity for

herself, because this land is the land of her people’s history and the place that formed

their culture and identity. Here, says Hammad, there is “under every stone a myth /

behind every branch a prophesy” (15-16). In these lines Hammad recognizes the

tremendous history present in Palestine, a history that she links with the land by

describing the myths and prophecies to be hidden under stones and behind branches.

Not only that, but she also reveals that this history is not something dead and past, but

living and present in the land to this day. History in Hammad’s Palestine is not linear;

it is animate and present in the landscape. The land is further personified when it is Dakin 48

described as giving birth, because “trees here bear fruit as / sisters bear life / as duty and beauty both / giving and rooted” (17-20). Not only is the land made animate and living by describing it in terms of human birth, but it is also intertwined with the bodies of the women of this land and is given the same purpose: creating and nourishing future generations. The living, bodily nature of the land of Palestine is further emphasized when Hammad says she must “sit / still, concentrate to hear / the blood below my / feet, the spirits in / the wind, on me” (10-14). The blood of the land below her feet is referencing the living, bodily nature of the land, but it also can refer to the blood of the many Palestinians who have died for their homeland and bled on its soil, as well as the blood of the ancestors who have lived on this land for centuries and now rest beneath its surface. Their spirits are also present in the wind, touching and interacting with Hammad’s body as she listens for the pulse of the earth. Palestine speaks to Hammad through the trees in the last lines of “the givers” where she writes:

trees here stand, roots apart, branches on trunks necks turned to god and say, girl where you been what you bring, drink some tea we got stories to tell you (21-27).

In these lines the trees become bodies with legs to stand on, necks to turn towards

God, and mouths to speak to their long-lost sister who has finally returned home. Also worth noting is the fact that when the trees do speak to Hammad and invite her in to hear the stories of her land, they speak to her in Hammad’s own Brooklyn accent, blending Hammad’s two homes and asserting the link between Hammad’s Brooklyn Dakin 49

and Palestinian identities. This scene holds great significance because it shows the

profound and meaningful experience that Hammad had when she encountered the

landscape of her homeland for the first time. This interaction is amplified by the fact

that the land comes alive and draws Hammad in like long-lost kin, showing the deep-

rooted nature of the relationship because an indigenous person and their homeland that

is capable of surviving a lifetime of exile.

Through the poetry and prose of Simon Ortiz, Leslie Marmon Silko, Mahmoud

Darwish, and Suheir Hammad, we can see how homeland is a fundamental part of

indigenous identity and culture and one of the primary means by which indigenous

peoples fight back against colonial oppression. Inhabitance of and interaction with

their respective homelands developed the cultures of the American Indian and

Palestinian communities over centuries until the land was an inseparable part of their

communities’ identities. Consequently, as David Abram points out, “it should be easy,

now, to understand the destitution of indigenous, oral persons who have been forcibly

displace from their traditional lands” (178). The settlement of indigenous lands by the

Puritans in North America and the Zionists in Palestine that led to the displacement

and subjugation of the indigenous populations profoundly impacted the indigenous

communities’ relationship to their lands and consequently their identities. As will be

seen in the subsequent chapters, literature has played a fundamental role in grappling with colonization and expressing necessity of homeland for these indigenous communities. Dakin 50

CHAPTER THREE

For most indigenous peoples, their homelands are the souls of their communities because they have nurtured their people for hundreds or thousands of years, cultivated their cultures, and shaped their identities. Exile from one’s homeland is therefore one of the most destructive consequences of colonization because it uproots an individual from everything that has created their indigenous identity and keeps it intact. An exiled indigenous person is not only faced with the suffering that anyone might feel from being removed from their normal surroundings, but they are at great risk of losing their very sense of self. Physical exile from homeland can occur for a multitude of reasons. In the case of the indigenous Americans and the

Palestinians, forced exile was the reality for many individuals, but just as often people found themselves exiled out of necessity resulting from various economic or political factors. Furthermore, as postcolonial scholar and Palestinian-American Edward Said points out in his essay “Intellectual Exile: Expatriates and Marginals,” it is a common

“but wholly mistaken assumption that being exiled is to be totally cut off, isolated, hopelessly separated from your place of origin” (Said 370). As Laguna novelist Leslie

Marmon Silko and Palestinian-American poet Suheir Hammad will illustrate in their Dakin 51

poetry and prose, the greatest pain of exile comes with “living with the many

reminders that you are in exile, that your home is not in fact so far away, and that the

normal traffic of everyday contemporary life keeps you in constant but tantalizing and

unfulfilled touch with the old place” (Said 270).

Leslie Marmon Silko’s Almanac of the Dead is an in-depth discussion of the significance of homeland to the continuance of indigenous peoples and how centuries of entrenched colonization threaten to strip indigenous peoples of their land, their sense of community, and ultimately their identity. As a part of this conversation, exile is inevitably a topic of discussion. The enslavement of millions of indigenous peoples beginning in the 1500s in what is now known as the Americas violently removed native peoples from their lands and communities, and the clearing of land for mining

and agriculture further displaced native peoples and destroyed their ability to continue

their traditional, subsistence methods of living (Hill 15-16). The Europeans’ forced

removal of indigenous peoples from their homelands is a widely-established fact, and such acts have had a devastating impact on those communities. However, colonization of American Indian lands has also caused exile in numerous more subtle ways, such as when destruction of communities and traditional ways of living force indigenous peoples to leave their homelands for better economic prospects elsewhere so that they are able to support themselves and their families. In the case of Almanac of the Dead, such incidences are some of the most prominent examples of physical exile from native lands, although without ever forgetting the long history of forced exile and Dakin 52

genocide that decimated indigenous communities across the continent, the effects of which are still heavily felt to this day.

One aspect of colonization that Silko brings up frequently in Almanac of the

Dead and which is highly relevant to exile is the notion of borders. In a conversation with Root and Mosca, Calabazas argues that the borders established by the United

States and other colonial countries in the Americas have no legitimacy in the eyes of the indigenous people and are nothing more than imaginary lines. “We don’t believe in boundaries. Borders. Nothing like that,” asserts Calabazas. “We are here before maps or quit claims. We know where we belong on this earth” (216). The topic of borders is an important one for understanding the effects of colonization. Modern borders were imposed upon the indigenous populations without their consent and are not based on the location of indigenous communities and their homelands, but rather on what sections of the continent were conquered by the various colonial powers.

Because these lines were drawn without the consideration of the indigenous people, they had the potential to sever indigenous communities, limit those communities’ natural movement through their own lands, and cut off contact between other indigenous communities with whom they may have previously interacted. National borders are therefore an important factor in the lives of native people not only because they are prominent physical manifestations of the colonial nations that were imposed upon them and their ancestors, but also because they create divides through indigenous homelands that have the potential to exile indigenous peoples from family members

and certain regions of traditional tribal lands. Dakin 53

Freedom of movement is a critical part of understanding the effect that borders

have on indigenous peoples. As Calabazas continues to discuss the white man’s imaginary lines, he asserts that “we have always moved freely. North-south. East- west. We pay no attention to what isn’t real…And we carry a great many things back

and forth. We don’t see any border” (216). Calabazas is pointing out a crucial fact of

the indigenous American psyche, which is that the imposed colonial borders which

crisscross their native lands and serve as legitimizing markers for colonial nations are

only real in the minds of the colonists; for the indigenous people, they have no

legitimacy and are overridden by thousands of years of native inhabitance which knew

no such foreign colonizing lines. Several indigenous figures take active measures to

undermine the validity and authority of these borders, such as Zeta who sees her

“illegal” smuggling activities across the U.S.-Mexican border to be an act of resistance

against colonial hegemony. “The people had been free to go traveling north and south

for a thousand years,” asserts Zeta, “then suddenly white priests had announced

smuggling as a mortal sin because smuggling was stealing from the government”

(133). Zeta has little concern for the borders and laws of the Mexican or United States’

governments because according to her there is no such thing as a “legal government”

established by the Europeans anywhere on indigenous American land “because no

legal government could be established on stolen land. Because stolen land never had

clear title” (133). Therefore, Zeta sees each act of smuggling across the border as a

direct rebellion against the illegitimate colonial laws and boundaries forced upon Dakin 54

them, laws and boundaries which must be “blasted” away for the sake of the survival of the indigenous peoples.

National borders are an important factor in understanding the effects of

European colonialism in the Americas and the many manifestations of physical exile that occurred as a result of colonial hegemony. On the one hand, borders disrupt indigenous freedom of movement through lands that they have inhabited for thousands of years, which not only has a physically restrictive effect of barring native peoples from certain areas of their homelands and limiting intertribal relationships but also has the effect of diminishing agency and self-determination. Furthermore, borders also serve the function of legitimizing colonial powers and their legal systems, both of which have instigated genocide and physical displacement of indigenous peoples in the Americas for centuries. Silko’s frequent mention of borders, in particular the U.S.-

Mexico border around which so much of the action centers, shows the importance of understanding the consequences of colonization and how experiences of exile have been a critical factor in the suppression of indigenous Americans.

Almanac of the Dead is rife with characters who are displaced, searching for something, or otherwise disconnected with their identities and heritage, but the character who most effectively embodies the experience of exile is undoubtedly

Sterling. Sterling is an Indian from Laguna Pueblo who has been exiled from his homeland by his own tribe and has relocated himself just outside of Tucson where he works as a gardener for the twin sisters Zeta and Lecha. Sterling’s banishment from his tribal homeland was issued by the Tribal Council of his Laguna Pueblo community Dakin 55

because of his failure to keep the Hollywood movie crew that was filming on their

tribal lands from entering areas that are off-limits to non-tribal members. The Tribal

Council had appointed Sterling to ensure that the film crew did not enter any of these sacred spaces. At first, Sterling thought that his job would be relatively easy, but as time went on it became increasingly difficult for him to keep track of the many crew members and their locations. One fateful day, Sterling was not able to stop the

producer, the director, and the cameraman from driving into the restricted area of their

tribal lands and photograph the giant stone snake that had appeared there. The snake was interpreted by the Tribal Council as being an ominous symbol of the pain they would suffer for allowing the government to mine uranium on their land. The viewing

of the stone snake by outsiders was particularly wounding to the tribe because of a

past event when two treasured stone idols that had always been in possession of the

tribe had been stolen and displayed in a museum. Sterling’s failure to protect his

people’s sacred land was deemed unforgivable by the Tribal Council, and as a result

Sterling was sentenced to exile.

The physical exile of Sterling from his homeland was not a direct act

undertaken by European colonizers, but it is undeniably a result of white hegemony

over indigenous lands and past actions taken by the colonial state. One of the reasons

that Sterling did not keep the Hollywood film crew from entering the restricted areas

was the fact that he was not fully convinced of the significance of protecting those

sacred spaces from outsiders. “They had banished him forever, just for that one

incident?” Sterling thought to himself. He had argued to the Tribal Council that Dakin 56

because nothing had been removed or stolen, unlike with the stone idols from seventy

years ago, such a severe punishment was inappropriate. He did not even recognize

how significant the theft of the stone idols or the building of the uranium mine on their

land had been to his people, arguing that “the other things hadn’t really been much”

(35). Sterling’s disconnect from his land and its importance to his people is confirmed

by the fact that he was not able to see the giant stone snake when it appeared, meaning

that he was not able to understand the disastrous fate that would strike Laguna Pueblo

if they allowed the destruction of the land to continue.

One reason that Sterling may not recognize the importance of protecting his ancestral homeland from outsiders is the fact that over the course of his life he had already been separated from his land several times and had lost attachment to it and his community. As a child, he had attended a boarding school that was far away from his village, and many years after that he left again to work in Barstow on the railroad.

Unlike many other Laguna men who quit their railway jobs to return to Laguna Pueblo when the uranium mine was opened and needed employees, Sterling continued to work on the railroad. In fact, he was happy to be able to avoid the controversy about the establishment of the uranium mine, which the elders saw to be a “crime against all living things” for which “all the people would pay, and pay terribly” (35). His disconnection from his community is evidenced by the fact that Sterling realizes that he has no one to defend him against the Tribal Council. In his essay “Silko’s

Reappropriation of Secrecy,” Paul Beekman Taylor agrees that Sterling is likely blind to the appearance of the giant stone snake because “his work on the flat railway line Dakin 57

west of Laguna has blurred his vision of the land’s configurations.” Furthermore,

Taylor argues that the fact that Sterling has been “nourished by American pulp fiction

and initiated into the deluxe delights of American whores” during his absence from his

village has only further severed the connection between Sterling and Laguna Pueblo

(47-48). Sterling has even actively disconnected himself from the “old-time ways” of

living because “he had always thought the old beliefs were dying out,” an assertion

which makes it easier to understand why Sterling did not comprehend the value and

necessity of protecting the land from outsiders (Almanac 762).

Though perhaps Sterling should not be entirely freed from blame for drifting away from his community, it is necessary to recognize how European colonization has played a role in Sterling’s identity as an indigenous man and his banishment from his tribal lands. The reasons that Sterling left home over the years can be directly traced to colonial practices. For one, the decision to send Sterling away to a boarding school shows how the Laguna Pueblo’s traditional methods of education had either been deemed inadequate or had eroded over time because of the effects that European invasion had on their community. Furthermore, the whitewashing and cultural erasure that Sterling would have suffered at such a boarding school would also have broken down Sterling’s indigenous identity, not to mention that the separation from home would have caused him to feel less of a member of that community. Sterling’s decision to work away from his homeland on the railroad later in life was a common fate for indigenous men because the breakdown of sustainable living in their communities. However, while many other Laguna men returned home from the Dakin 58

railroad when work at the uranium mine became available Sterling chose to say where he was, indicating his lack of roots to his community and his ambivalence about living on his ancestral homeland. These colonial influences in Sterling’s life are essential to understanding his later exile from Laguna Pueblo. Though some of the blame might rest on Sterling for not appreciating his homeland and his community, ultimately this blame falls squarely on the colonization of the Pueblo region. Colonization of Laguna

Pueblo has strained community ties, made the people dependent on white-controlled capitalist society, has forced many indigenous people to leave their homeland to find employment, and has desecrated the land with railroads and mining. Therefore,

Sterling’s exile can be directly linked to the colonization of his people and his land, even though the banishment was actually carried out by the tribe itself.

By the end of Almanac of the Dead, Sterling’s time with Zeta and Lecha as well as the pain of being separated from his home and community slowly recuperates him and leads him back to his ancestral home. When Sterling finally makes his way back to Laguna Pueblo in hope of being accepted back into the community he becomes reinvigorated by his reunion with the land. He eventually makes his way to the shrine of the great snake, and this time he is able to view it in its entirety, seeing how “there were streaks of cornmeal and pollen on the snake’s forehead and nose where those who came to pray had fed the spirit being” (761). As Sterling ponders all that has happened to him since his banishment from Laguna Pueblo and the appearance of the snake, he realizes that the snake was not bothered by the uranium mine that by this time had been shut down, because “humans had desecrated only Dakin 59

themselves with the mine, not the earth…Man was too insignificant to desecrate her”

(762). The story of Sterling’s exile in Almanac of the Dead is an important lesson both

on how colonization can cause disintegration of indigenous communities and the exile

of indigenous peoples as well as how important homeland is for the reclaiming of

indigenous identity and the continuance of indigenous communities.

Sterling had the fortune of reconnecting with his indigenous identity and his

homeland over the course of his exile, but it is important to recognize that this is often

not the fate for many indigenous Americans. One indigenous character who ultimately

is not able to overcome the effects of his colonization is Menardo, a Mexican man of

mestizo background whose attempts to distance himself from his indigenous roots prove to be lethal. Menardo is the most prominent example in Almanac of the Dead of how disconnection from homeland and community can shred a person’s indigenous

identity. As a young child, Menardo enjoys listening to his grandfather tell stories

about their ancestors and he readily takes in his family’s history. However, as

Menardo grows older the other boys at his school begin to tease him and call him “Flat

Nose,” a derogatory name for Indians. When Menardo realizes that his grandfather has

the same nose and that the ancestors in those stories were actually Indians, Menardo

stops visiting his grandfather and is relieved when the old man passes away in his

sleep. Menardo, who could have otherwise looked like one of the sangre limpia (pure-

bloods) without his characteristically Indian nose, grows deeply ashamed of his

heritage and spends much of the rest of his life trying to distance himself from his

indigenous background. He marries a white woman, Iliana, from the prominent Dakin 60

Gutierrez family and builds up a wildly successful insurance company called

Seguridad Universal. Insurance is a business built for “the new world that they were living in, the new age” (260), and Menardo has to invest a great deal of energy in convincing older businessmen to buy his plans. Menardo’s decision to work in insurance is a further testament to his disconnect from the land and his past, both because of the fact that his job as an insurer is to protect people from the powerful forces of nature and also because it is a tool of the modern Western world, not the world of his indigenous family.

One of the major thematic arcs of Almanac of the Dead is the assertion by the indigenous people that the white man “had no future [in America] because he had no past, no spirits of ancestors here” (313). This belief is reflected in the fact that

Menardo’s wife is incapable of bearing children. Menardo, who is constantly attempting to emulate his European colonizers, is not able to carry on the familial line because he rejects his past; without a past, there can be no future. The consequences of

Menardo’s actions become increasingly apparent as the financial success of Seguridad

Universal grows and the strife of Mexican political turmoil increases. Not long after the death of Iliana and his subsequent marriage to Alegría, an architect with whom he was cheating on his wife, Menardo begins to wear a bulletproof vest underneath his clothing. He becomes deeply paranoid to the point that he even wears the vest to sleep, and he frequently has dreams in which he is attacked or in great danger. His entire life revolves around the vest, and he becomes so obsessed with its protective capabilities that he asks his Indian driver, Tacho, to shoot him in front of a group of his associates, Dakin 61

a request which turns out to be fatal. The fact that an Indian kills Menardo is representative of the assertion that one is not able to escape their past and, in fact, must be connected to it in order to survive.

Menardo’s life is wracked by paranoia and a desperate need to be accepted as a member of white, upper-class Mexican society, and the nature of his death signifies the culprit: his attempts to severe himself from his indigenous identity. Unlike

Sterling, Menardo is a highly unlikeable character and his constant attempts to promote colonial white culture over indigenous culture are presented as contemptible.

However, what must be recognized is the fact that it is European colonization that has driven Menardo to reject his indigenous identity and even actively work against indigenous continuance. One particular factor worth noting is that unlike with many of the other indigenous characters in the novel, the specifics of Menardo’s homeland and his community are relatively unknown. He is identified as Mexican, but that is the extent of the knowledge about his background. When Menardo becomes aware of his indigenous identity, he rejects it immediately because it is mocked by the white community. Menardo has absorbed racist ideology over the course of his life and has come to believe it, which is what motivates him to deny his indigenous heritage and surround himself with the trappings of white society. The rejection of his identity can be directly tied to his separation from his homeland and his indigenous community.

The only connection that Menardo seems to have to his indigenous roots is his grandfather, and at the time that his grandfather had been telling Menardo the stories of their ancestors Menardo had not even been aware that they were Indian stories; as Dakin 62

soon as he did, he promptly stopped listening to them. The primary reason that

Menardo seems to be so disconnected from his indigenous identity is the fact that he

has no connection to his homeland and his community; he has effectively been exiled

from them, and therefore from himself. White propaganda and racist thoughts filled

this empty space over the course of his young life, so by the time that he became

aware that he was mestizo he was unwilling to accept this fact or find any sense of pride in it. Therefore, we see that separation from homeland and a sense of belonging with his indigenous community has radically altered his sense of indigenous identity in a way that he is never able to overcome. Almanac of the Dead provides no clearer case than Menardo for the importance of ancestral homeland and indigenous

community to the preservation of indigenous identity in the modern, colonized world.

Many similar themes of cultural erasure can be found in the Palestinian community, especially for those who were exiled from their homeland. One such exile is Palestinian-American author Suheir Hammad, who was born in Jordan to

Palestinian refugees and was raised in Brooklyn, New York. Much of Hammad’s poetry is autobiographical in nature and discusses how a blending of multiple cultures has come to form her identity as a Palestinian-American living in exile from her ancestral homeland. Hammad touches on the experiences of multiple different types of exile and the cultural erosion that result from being separated from one’s homeland, whether it be the kind of second-generation American exile that she has known personally or the immediate physical exile of native Palestinians that was experienced by many of her family members. For example, the first poem of Hammad’s collection Dakin 63

Born Palestinian, Born Black entitled “dedication” begins with a young Palestinian boy named Hammad. Suheir Hammad identifies Hammad as a universal symbol of

Palestinian youth in the first lines by stating that “his name could’ve been / ahmad mustafa jihad / could’ve been / mohammad yousef hatem” (1-4), illustrating that the boy Hammad’s story is not one unique to himself, but rather the experience of many Palestinian children whose lives have been shaped by the suffering of their people. Like so many of these Palestinian children, Hammad is exiled from his homeland and is relegated to viewing it longingly from afar by “standing on a mountaintop in Jordan / looking over the vast sea” (6-7). From his mountaintop view,

Hammad “saw the land his people had come from / land of figs and olive trees / what should’ve been his phalesteen” (8-10). Even though Hammad has never been to his ancestral homeland, his connection to “phalesteen” and his people remains deeply rooted. It is worth noting that Hammad speaks about the natural landscape of his homeland, the “figs and olive trees,” because this illustrates the important role that the natural elements of the land play in Palestinians’ connection to their homeland even when living in exile.

In the following stanza, Hammad is described as being “the son of the land”

(14), a powerful testament to Palestinian endurance and the value that their homeland has for them, particularly in the case of an exile like Hammad who has never even set foot there. The fact that Hammad has never been to his homeland does not diminish

“his love for phalesteen so fierce” (15) or the importance that it has had in shaping his identity. Despite being miles away in Jordan “he swore that he could smell the ripe Dakin 64

olives” (19), the zeitoun that flourish in his homeland and sustain his people. Hammad

imagines what his life would have been like if “phalesteen” had been allowed to grow to ripeness like the olives, whether he would be “rejoicing a wedding instead of / mourning another death” (24-25) or sleeping in a house instead of huddled in a tent in

a refugee camp. He also imagines being able to go to school where he would learn to

write poetry about “the sky the sun love” (27). However, when his daydream

ends he sees that “he aint carrying / books of poetry / but a knife and small pistol” (39-

41). The breakdown of Palestinian society and culture is greatly evidenced by

Hammad’s musings about his imaginary life in the country of Palestine that never

came to be. Simple aspects of Palestinian society, such as building a home for one’s

family, celebrating a wedding, or tending to an olive grove have all been washed away

by the horrors of colonization and exile. Hammad has never known some of most

basic elements of Palestinian culture and tradition, such as celebrating a wedding in

his own home. Instead, Palestinian life has been relegated to another land and forced

to be carried out in the vulnerable and transitory refugee camp, and the children of

exiles are denied the knowledge of a full Palestinian life in their homeland

uninterrupted by displacement, death, and suffering. Furthermore, children like

Hammad who might have once furthered their society through poetry and other arts

have instead turned to violence as a result of the wrongs they have endured. The harsh

life of the refugee camp offers little time for activities such as poetry, and even if it did

it is unlikely that Hammad would be writing about “the sun” and “love.” Instead, his

pen has been replaced with a knife and his mind is filled not with poetry, but revenge. Dakin 65

At fifteen he sees his life as a “life wasted” (47) worrying only about survival and finding enough food to eat. But now, he says, it is not his belly which is starving but his pride, and his “enemies blood / the only nourishment needed” (51-52). He is repelled by his own evil desires that dehumanize him, but then again he points out,

“his enemies / never believed he was human” (55-56). Again we see how oppression and exile break down society and distort indigenous identity. After so many years of subjugation and suffering, Hammad has turned to thoughts of violence because he sees it as the only way to revenge his suffering and to reaffirm the strength of the

Palestinian people. He has been caught in a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy, where he has been treated as if he were an animal for so long that he begins to absorb his treatment, believe it, and embody it. However, he is also intent on proving them wrong by shedding his blood and showing them his humanity. When “his warm human blood” will “fertilize the soil of phalesteen” (58-59) his enemies will no longer be able to deny his humanity or his claim to the land. Body and homeland will have become one, and his blood will bring new life to Palestine.

Hammad’s dream of returning to his homeland “with his life with his blood”

(63) is never realized. Three years after he contemplates phalesteen from across the sea he is shot by Israeli soldiers; his blood stains the ground of another land and “his body never reached home” (67). However, Hammad’s story does not end here because his story is the story of many Palestinian exiles. Five years later, his niece visits the same spot as her uncle once did; she “feels her uncle’s heart join hers / thinks of exchanging her books and pencils / for a knife a small pistol” (72-74). This young Dakin 66

girl is in fact Suheir Hammad, who has chosen the life of poetry and Palestinian

continuance through words, though she too is tempted by thoughts of violent

resistance. Her exile, even more profound than her uncle Hammad’s, has also split her

identity and kept her from her homeland. However, even though she spent most of her

life in Brooklyn, the roots of Palestine are deep within her. She closes her eyes and

can “smell the ripe olives” (79), dreaming of home. We see her experience of exile

overlaid with her uncle’s, and although the courses of their lives have brought them

profoundly different fates, their displacement and love of homeland nevertheless binds

them to the same Palestinian narrative of struggle and endurance amidst cultural

destruction.

Much of Hammad’s poetry focuses on the perspective of children of

immigrants and exiles because this has been her experience as a Palestinian-American.

One important facet of this experience is of course the tension between the parents, who have suffered the trauma of knowing and being separated from their homeland,

and the children, who have never known their homeland and are trying to navigate

between their heritage and their attempts to create a life for themselves in a new

country. Hammad tackles these complex narratives in “argela remembrance,” a poem

which centers on the pain of a parent’s exile and a child’s attempts to deal with that

pain. This story is set with the image of father and daughter smoking an argela

together, a scene likely based on Hammad’s own interactions with her father due to

the autobiographical nature of most of her poetry. They are depicted as “inhaling

strawberry tobacco / exhaling mediterranean breezes / mid east sighs” (Born 5-7), Dakin 67

revealing how the simple act of smoking an argela together can be a direct portal back to the homeland where such an activity is commonplace. Her father relates to her the longing he and other exiled Palestinians have for the past and the trauma they experienced by leaving their land. He describes the intimate relationship between people and homeland when he relates their parting:

we are a people stood on the edge of the sea asked her to kiss our toes goodnight she kissed them goodbye we departed with those sea and hibiscus kisses yellow hibiscus kisses shadowing our path goodbye (Born 9-16)

In these lines we are reminded of Abram’s animate landscape that actively engages

and communicates with its people. We see a people resistant to leave their homeland,

hoping that the sea might only kiss them goodnight instead of saying goodbye forever.

Their departure is framed by images of the sea and yellow hibiscus, the beauty of the

land seeing them off as they depart.

As exiles from their homeland in America, Palestinians like her father attempt

to recreate the natural beauty of Palestine but such replicas remain inferior. They

“plant plastic potted plants / in suffocating apartments / tiny brooklyn style / in

memory of the soil once / laid under our nails” (Born 25-29), but these artificial leaves

that need no soil to remain green only remind them even more of what they left

behind, and the cramped quarters of their New York dwellings fall sharply in contrast

with the vastness of the Mediterranean sea that once lapped their toes. Now, instead of Dakin 68

a people of the land of Palestine they have become “a people of / living room politics

and tobacco / stained teeth” (Born 35-37). Small attempts are made to stay connected to their past and to their land: Quranic verse is recited along with “um kolthom

scripture,” memories of “how jasmine can / fill your head on a clear night” are

coupled with how “mint tea dawned you to morning” (Born 40-43). However, even

these efforts to retain culture and memory in a new land only elicit painful memories

of a land loved and now lost. “We once stood on the edge of our sea,” he tells his

daughter between puffs of flavored smoke, “but they made us leave” (Born 51-52).

His daughter tries to stop his crying but in vain, “sea foam escaping his eyes” (54).

This final image serves as a powerful testament to how deeply the land is a part of every exiled Palestinian, the body and landscape becoming one in this image of the father shedding Mediterranean tears. It also speaks to how the exile is never able to escape the memory of his homeland; even though it has been decades since his departure, her father can still clearly recall the time when they “stood on the edge of our sea.” For him the feeling of exile is ever-present and unyielding; unlike his daughter who has been able to craft an identity for herself in Brooklyn, no such reality exists for him. “Argela remembrance” is therefore an important look at the intersection between two different types of Palestinian exile: the exile who intimately knew his homeland but is incapable of returning, and the daughter of the exile who has never known her homeland and therefore must reconstruct it through memory, customs, and words. Dakin 69

Hammad transitions from this story of longing to a much darker narrative in

“dead woman,” a poem which begins by asserting that “tradition says you can tell a dead woman by the way she walks / going no where a little / too fast” (Born 1-3). The

“dead woman” is described with unsettling imagery: she is “wearing fragrance heavy / to hide the smell of blood / violent and dried on / her thigh” (Born 7-10), and “you can hear the death of a woman / in her screams against the sky / muffled muted and mutated” (Born 11-13). The dead woman in this case is not literally a dead woman, though she is described in terms of physical rot; this metaphor aims to illustrate the death of a woman that occurs internally because of the violence and suffering that she has endured. The speaker identifies herself as a dead woman who was “murdered at birth / born to a people years dead” (Born 23-24), of course referring to the Palestinian people. The speaker was fated to be dead because she was born Palestinian and therefore inherited this legacy. She was murdered at birth “before i inhaled a / struggled breath” (Born 25-26), just as Palestine and the dreams of its people were murdered by their colonizers before they were able to gain life. The speaker asserts that she and her people will remain dead until “we once again / taste our breath as sacred” (Born 28-29). They must “exhale / this struggled air” (Born 30-31), learn to shed years of torment and loss so that they may rebuild their “demolished homes” and

“souls” (Born 33). They must also “return to our soil” (Born 34), identifying their lost homeland as an essential piece of the puzzle in their attempt to rebuild as a people and a “dead” nation. This effort must be a collective one or they will never be able to repair their “hardened hearts” (Born 39). While this poem is brief, it touches on an Dakin 70

important topic related to the struggles of Hammad as an exile from her homeland as

well as all Palestinians, that being the deadening of the soul that occurs as a result of

decades of colonization and loss of homeland. The powerful imagery of decay not

only speaks to the suffering of the Palestinians, but also highlights the stagnation that

can plague Palestinian society. Though Hammad puts the bulk of the blame on the

colonizers, she also asserts that Palestinians have the ability to change their society for

the better if they are only able exhale the “struggled air.” Their society and culture

may have been profoundly damaged by the loss of their homeland and the horrors of

occupation, but Hammad also seems to suggest that if Palestinians are able to reach

within themselves, revitalize their culture, and reclaim their lost homeland, a new

chance at life is possible.

Because Hammad has never lived in Palestine, her experience as a Palestinian-

American and her attempts to create a space for herself in American society has greatly affected her connection to her homeland and the way that she experiences her

Palestinian identity. Much of Hammad’s poetry discusses the interactions of various oppressed, non-white cultures in her Brooklyn neighborhood and how these cultures, which are markedly different from her own Arab heritage, have shaped her identity as a Palestinian, an American, and a woman. Often her attempts to mold an identity for herself in America bump up against the ideals of her traditional Palestinian family; for example, when Hammad’s father once heard her listening to hip-hop music, he angrily said to her, “This is why we came to this country? So you can come home with filth in your mouth? No more…we are not black, or Spanish” (“A Road” 86). However, Dakin 71

despite her father’s disapproval, Hammad continues to find solidarity and strength through American hip-hop culture, and this influence is apparent in much of her writing. As a child of non-white immigrants living in a community of other non-white children of immigrants and oppressed peoples, Hammad’s poetry frequently reflects the challenges that all of these communities collectively face in their attempts to find self-determination and respect in America. Many of her poems interweave the narratives of individuals from different backgrounds to demonstrate parallels between their struggles and encourage oppressed non-white peoples to band together in a collective struggle against white American hegemony.

However, Hammad is not afraid to be self-critical of the non-white community in Brooklyn. Part of the struggle of this community, as Hammad identifies, is to resist colonization of the mind. Colonization often forces indigenous and non-white peoples

to adopt the colonizer’s societal customs in order to survive; this is often the case in

the United States, where oppressed peoples search for success in the capitalist- consumer world instead of organizing in their own communities and fostering resilience through non-white culture and identity. Hammad tackles this issue in “yo baby yo,” which is a strong critique of her Brooklyn community’s willingness to buy

into consumerist culture to the detriment of women, children, and the community as a whole. She begins the poem with a list of various ways that the people of her

community attempt to gain status by cultivating an image of wealth, such as “gucci

leather” and a “polo sweater” or a “belt by fendi” and “shoes by nike” (Born 3-4).

After her list of various status-gaining items, Hammad asks, “what have you done for Dakin 72

this sista lately?” (Born 11) implying that when non-white communities spend so much time trying to build pride and status through expensive designer items and a

“macho” image, they become distracted from what should really matter, such as helping out their communities and especially their women.

Women’s issues are a topic which Hammad takes very seriously, and “yo baby yo” is not exempt from this discussion. Hammad dismisses men who would try to get her attention by shouting “yo baby yo” at her and her fellow women. “Me to turn around you expect after / you show me no kind of respect?” (Born 15-16) she spits.

She criticizes the man’s appearance, asserting, “the sherling you sportin worth more than / our children goin hungry / so you could go clubbin?” (Born 19-21). Hammad shows little sympathy for the men who choose to denigrate women to feed their own machismo or who spend hundreds of dollars on expensive clothing and accessories while children in their communities starve and go without basic necessities. In her conclusion to the poem, Hammad addresses the kind of man that has a “gloc cleaned and shined” with “herbal buzz on the mind” (Born 31), telling him, “yo baby yo / yo brotha yo / them gold chains / are tighter than you think.” (Born 34-37). These evocative final lines are meant to wake up Hammad’s brothers and sisters to the reality that they are not finding liberation and power by getting sucked up into a consumerist, testosterone-fueled lifestyle but rather are furthering their oppression and playing into the hands of American hegemony.

The issues raised in “yo baby yo” are a prime example of how colonization, displacement, and oppression will lead to cultural erasure and the breakdown of Dakin 73

identity. Hammad’s Brooklyn community is filled with the ancestors of former slaves,

children of immigrants hoping to better their lives in America, and refugees such as

Hammad’s family: in other words, peoples who have left or been forced out of their

ancestral homelands and cultural contexts. Some chose to leave willingly while others

left by force or circumstance, but regardless of the reasons all of the non-white

members of Hammad’s poor Brooklyn community are now faced with the struggle of

surviving in white-controlled capitalist society while simultaneously trying to maintain

their own cultural identities. After being told repeatedly that their communities are not equal to that of mainstream white America, many non-white Americans turn to other

means by which to get ahead and reclaim their pride, such as overt machismo and

flaunting money. Hammad is astute in recognizing these self-defeating tendencies in her Brooklyn community that are bringing down her people and the people with whom she shares a common struggle. These struggles are directly linked to Hammad’s experiences as an exile from her homeland because they are all byproducts of Western colonization, displacement from homeland, and cultural erosion. Hammad’s connection to both the Palestinian refugee community and the non-white hip-hop

Brooklyn community shed light on the important parallels between indigenous and non-white colonization and the obstacles that must be overcome to achieve self- determination and cultural continuance.

Suheir Hammad’s poetry and Leslie Marmon Silko’s novel Almanac of the

Dead are valuable testaments to how the state of physical exile from one’s homeland as a result of colonial practices has the inevitable effect of damaging an indigenous Dakin 74

community’s culture and identity. As can be seen from the many disparate backgrounds and experiences of the characters found in the two women’s verse and prose, physical exile can come in various forms due to numerous different factors, and each individual responds to their state of exile in alternate ways. However, what seems to be a universal consequence of exile, whether one is talking about Sterling,

Hammad, or Menardo, is the fact that it causes disconnection from one’s community and dissolution with one’s identity as an indigenous person. All of these individuals were in one way or another forced from their homelands because they did not fit into the utopian vision of the settlers who seized control of their lands, and as a result of this colonialism the reality of their communities as free inhabitants in their own land was forever altered. When removed from the context of their homeland and their communities, it is impossible for exiled indigenous individuals to maintain an identity that is intact and free from the damaging effects of colonialism, whether they be social, political, physical, economic, or mental. Both Silko and Hammad strongly assert the belief that until reconnection to homeland is attained in some form, colonized indigenous peoples will not be able to rebuild their communities, reclaim their identities, and achieve self-determination. Dakin 75

CHAPTER FOUR

As illustrated through the work of Leslie Marmon Silko and Suheir Hammad, physical exile is one of the most immediate and devastating consequences of colonization that often befalls an indigenous population. Exile from homeland can result for a number of reasons. For example, an indigenous population may be forced from their land because the colonial powers wanted to take control of natural resources in the region. Forced exile can also occur as a result of military combat that displaces a native population, or even as a form of collective punishment. In the case of the indigenous Americans and the Palestinians, physical exile from their homelands initially occurred because their respective colonial oppressors wanted the land free from indigenous inhabitants so that a new nation could be built in their stead.

However, sometimes a state of exile can occur even when an indigenous person continues to live in their homeland. For example, when Mahmoud Darwish and his family returned to Palestine from Lebanon after the 1948 war, they discovered that their village of al-Birwah had been razed by Israeli forces and that they were now considered to be “internal refugees” or “present-absent aliens,” in their own homeland

(Akash xvi). More broadly, the term “internal exile” can refer to a state of being Dakin 76

isolated from one’s community or identity as a result of colonialism despite the fact that one might still be living in one’s homeland. This form of exile can at times be even more painful than internal exile, as Mahmoud Darwish once noted:

If we compare being a refugee in exile with being a refugee in the nation (watan), and I have experienced both kinds of exile, then we find that exile within the nation is harder. The pain in exile, and the longing and expectation of the promised day of return—has something in it that explains it…something natural. But to be a refugee within your nation—there is nothing explicable about it, and there is no sense in it (Mansson 53).

The experience of living without agency in one’s own homeland, a land which is now ruled by a settler-colonial party, can be devastating both for the individual and the community. The poetry of Mahmoud Darwish and Simon Ortiz reflects and comments on this notion of internal exile and how even when still present in one’s homeland, it is still possible for the erosion of indigenous culture and identity to occur.

In his introduction to Woven Stone, Simon Ortiz recalls a conversation he had with Laguna Pueblo elementary students about their indigenous Acoma language.

During this conversation, Ortiz asked the students if they had ever heard of a place named “Deetseyamah”; they responded that they had not. However, when he asked them if they knew where McCartys was, many students quickly raised their hands.

Ortiz explained to them that Deetseyamah and McCartys were in fact one and the same location, but that Deetseyaham was its name in the Acoma language. When the students realized that they had heard the name of where he was from in their own language for the first time, Ortiz said, “they smiled again” (3). This scene is a powerful testament to how internal exile and cultural erasure can occur within an Dakin 77

indigenous population even if that population is never physically exiled from their homeland. Colonization has many methods, and some of the most insidious are those that sometimes go unnoticed such as the renaming of indigenous spaces with Western colonizing names. However, each of these small efforts serves to disconnect an indigenous population from its land and its community, and over time the effects can be devastating. In the following section, I will look at four poems from Woven Stone in order to better understand how European colonization of indigenous lands has disrupted the relationship between the native people and their land, how that disruption has resulted in cultural breakdown, and how this breakdown creates a sense of internal exile and loss of indigenous identity.

The poem “Under L.A. Airport” deals directly with how loss of agency in one’s homeland causes irrevocable damage to indigenous identity. This poem takes place in the banal setting of an international airport after the speaker, “numbered by the anesthesia of jet flight” (1), arrives in Los Angeles. The speaker describes the airport in impersonal terms; the large television screens displaying arrival and departure times have a “complete ignorance of my presence” (6), and the escalator

“deposits” (8) him mechanically in front of numerous tunnels. The disconnect that the speaker feels between himself and his surroundings is significant because it falls sharply in contrast with the “animate landscape” that indigenous communities are a part of when living on their native lands. The speaker, who is foreign to the artificial

“innards” of L.A. International, senses indifference from his manmade surroundings because they have created an environment which is not animate, not reciprocal, and Dakin 78

not indigenous. This disconnect continues throughout the poem; the speaker remarks that “I’ve never been good at finding my way out of American labyrinths” (9-10), talking literally about the maze of hallways in L.A. International but of course referring to the many challenging paths he has been forced to follow as a result of

American colonization. The speaker looks for “a distinct place, a familiar plateau”

(12) but is unable to find one, which speaks to the importance of familiar natural landmarks in indigenous societies and the absence of such locales in this artificial

American space. He asserts that the airport is in “someplace called America” (20), further emphasizing the speaker’s disconnection from this place and his recognition that he is not a part of this “America.” Despite the fact that he can pinpoint exactly where he is, he nevertheless feels lost and is reduced to a “poor, tired wretch in this maze” (24). Overwhelmed by the loud jets and the expressionless screens he feels that

America has “obliterated my sense of comprehension,” and that without this comprehension he is “empty of any substance” (27-29).

“Under L.A. International” is a testament to the deleterious effects that being separated from one’s homeland and being subjected to foreign colonization can have on a person’s sense of self and even their humanity. In this poem, the confusion and emptiness that the speaker feels in the L.A. airport is representative of his experience of being indigenous to land that has been colonized, renamed, and transformed against his will. The speaker’s muddled wandering through the labyrinth of the L.A. airport might on some level point to the fact that he is more comfortable in the natural context of his homeland than in the artificial construction of the airport, but more importantly Dakin 79

this situation is symbolic of the experience of being indigenous in America overall.

Even though the speaker is living in a country known as America, he neither feels a part of this place nor does he understand it. In effect, the speaker has become an exile in his own homeland. Outside forces now dictate that certain indigenous lands are contained within specific borders without taking into account the needs or desires of the peoples that live on these lands, laws are imposed upon the indigenous peoples without their consent, and ownership of the land is now claimed by these so-called

“Americans” from whom the speaker is totally disconnected because they have two mutually exclusive relationships to the land and how to conceive of it. Because the colonizing force is in a significant position of power over the indigenous peoples of

America, their conception of the land is able to take precedent and as a result it erodes indigenous identity. We see this erosion of identity at the end of “Under L.A

International” when the speaker states that “America has finally caught me” (29).

Colonialism truly succeeds either when it eliminates the indigenous population or it is victorious in instilling its viewpoint of the indigenous population in the minds of the indigenous peoples themselves. In the case of this speaker, America has left him completely bewildered and exhausted; he is tired of trying to work himself through the labyrinth that America has set up all around him. In the end the speaker dies, melds into the walls of the tunnel and becomes “the silent burial” (31). America has obliterated his sense of being, so much so that when he dies “there are no echoes”

(31), not even a reverberation of a life lost. For this indigenous man, exile has stripped Dakin 80

him so deeply that the only escape is through a silent death, and even that goes unnoticed.

The poem “For Our Brothers: Blue Jay, Gold Finch, Flicker, Squirrel” deepens our understanding of how colonization has created cultural disruption and a sense of exile in one’s own homeland by extending these notions to the non-human community. In “For Our Brothers,” the speaker observes the broken bodies of four animals that were found on the side of the road in southwest Colorado and laments the loss of their lives that came abruptly with “the sudden sound of a speeding / machine”

(4-5). In each case, the speaker contrasts the ugliness of the animals’ dead, decaying bodies with the beauty and familiarity that they once brought to his life when they were at peace in their natural habitat. For example, he describes the body of the

Flicker, its “head crushed. / Misshapen. / Mere chips of rotting wood / for your dead eyes” (74-77), which is contrasted with a lengthy ode to the Gold Finch’s previous life when he was “the color of corn pollen” (43) and the speaker used to see him

“glittering from branch to branch, / whirring and rushing from one tree / to another”

(45-47). The same is seen with each of the other creatures, the Blue Jay’s

“flashing…bluegreen blackness” (19-20) now reduced to “dry eyelids” and “old sticks” (8,10) and the squirrel that once darted along the underbrush searching for

“tiny savory items” (87) is now “lying by the side of Highway 17…its body swollen with several days / of death in the hot sun” (93,96-97).

The hit-and-run deaths of these four animals speak to the destructive nature of colonization on numerous levels. For one, these four scenes demonstrate on a basic Dakin 81

level how colonization, represented here as the automobile—one of the chief symbols of Western “productivity” in the 20th century—has brought death to the land and its inhabitants and radically altered the human and non-human inhabitants’ relationship to their land. Animals such as the Blue Jay and the Squirrel, which used to roam freely on the land without fear except for their natural enemies, are unprepared for the invasion of Western peoples and their unnatural technology which is able to take life suddenly with the quick spin of a tire. Unlike these animals’ natural predators who take the lives of their prey in order to continue their own lives and support the greater ecosystem, these mechanical predators take life pointlessly “in this most unnecessary war” (Ortiz 251) without any consequence beyond thoughtless destruction. As a result of their land being criss-crossed by roads, their environments being polluted by

“prosperity,” and their very existence being threatened by unnatural machinery, the lives of these indigenous animals have been stunted by colonization. Unable to live freely and constantly under siege, the fauna lives in a kind of internal exile that it is not even fully capable of understanding or able to combat.

In detailing the tragedy of the loss of these four lives, the speaker is also drawing parallels to the suffering of his own people. When he observes their crushed bodies, the speaker asserts that “I don’t have to ask who killed you” (117) because he is already intimately familiar with the colonizers of his homeland. “I’m sorry for this mess,” he says to the Gold Finch, “I’ll try to do what I can / to prevent this sort of thing / because Gold Finch, goddammit, / the same thing is happening to us” (65-69).

The speaker refers to the animals as his “brothers” because he recognizes the common Dakin 82

kinship they have as inhabitants of this land and the fact that they both share the same fate. Not only are both the human and non-human inhabitants suffering as a result of foreign borders and imposed “development” on their land, but the speaker recognizes that the destruction of the plants and animals also signals the erosion of his culture and his way of life. With every acre of stolen land and the death of every creature, the colonization of his homeland is further entrenched and his livelihood and culture is threatened. Because indigenous culture is so intimately linked to the land and the kinship with its non-human inhabitants, the death of even one bird or squirrel signifies the continuing violation of homeland, body, and culture.

One of the most prominent ways that exile within one’s homeland is seen in

Ortiz’s work is through examples of when the U.S. government creates barriers that change the way that indigenous people are able to interact with their homeland, which consequently changes their lifestyles, cultures, and sense of identity. For example, in

“A Designated National Park,” the speaker visits Montezuma Castle in the Verde

Valley of Arizona, which has been labeled a “Designated Federal Recreation Fee

Area” (2); a sign tells him that he must pay “$1.00 FOR 1 DAY PERMIT” (4) and this national park was “AUTHORIZED BY THE LAND AND WATER

CONSERVATION FUND ACT OF 1965” (11-13). “This morning,” states the speaker, “I have to buy a permit to get back home” (14-15). The assertion sheds light on the ludicrous nature of American governmental authority over indigenous lands, an authority which completely denies any notion of indigenous claims to lands that they have inhabited for thousands of years and never left. In this circumstance, the speaker Dakin 83

is forbidden to visit this important landmark in his homeland without first going through the motions set up by the U.S. national government and paying a fee to visit land that was stolen from his people. The only way that he is now able to visit this area of his homeland is to experience it through the framework established by the Land and

Water Conservation Fund Act of 1965. He presses a button on a wooden booth and hears the voice of a white American telling him to look at the artifacts in the box “For a glimpse into the lives / of these people who lived here” (34-35). This statement of course ignores any possibility that there are indigenous peoples still living on or near this land who claim heritage to it, and also implies that this museum is the authority on indigenous history rather than indigenous people themselves. The speaker observes the preserved body of a small child, “her eyelashes still intact” (39), holding some painted sticks and fragments of cloth. “Girl, my daughter, my mother,” he says, “They have unearthed you” (40,42). The American government sees this preserved body as nothing more than an artifact from centuries ago, but the speaker instantly recognizes his familial connection with this young girl who could have been his mother or his daughter in another life, and mourns over how she has been desecrated. Undoubtedly the government did not obtain permission from the indigenous community who claim ancestry to this to display the body of one of their ancestors as a tourist attraction, which speaks to the disrespect that the American government has for indigenous rights on their own land and for the preservation of their own ancestral spaces. The fact that the only way that this speaker is able to interact with his ancestral land and the bodies of his ancestors is through a U.S.-established museum that he must pay to enter and Dakin 84

which has shown such dismissiveness towards the rights of the indigenous people is in many ways a kind of exile. The government’s restriction of the speaker’s access to his people’s ancestral, sacred spaces affects his relationship to his ancestry and his ability to preserve his cultural understanding. He is not able to experience his culture fully and interact with his homeland in the same way because the government has restricted his access to certain regions and removed important items from these lands that hold cultural significance. The final line of the poem, SEE MUSEUM FOR MORE

INFORMATION (55), reasserts the alleged authority of non-native government officials over the narrative of native peoples’ lands and histories as opposed to the native peoples’ understanding of their lands and histories. The stripping of native people of their authority over their own lands and histories not only denies them agency, but it limits their ability to live their cultures in a very real way. Furthermore, if the colonizing force becomes the authority on indigenous history this not only takes agency away from indigenous peoples but it also allows the colonizer to rewrite history or frame it in a way that benefits it—for example, by giving the impression that this land has been long abandoned and only artifacts remain. This kind of cultural genocide has a significant impact on how the non-native population of America views native lands and history and can only lead to further cultural genocide and erosion of indigenous rights and agency.

Another example of how the colonizer's manipulation of the land results in internal exile and cultural breakdown is found in “Long House Valley Poem.” This poem begins with a contemplation of a valley in northeastern Arizona, where “the Dakin 85

long brown and red land” is “looming unto the horizon” (2-3), and “the old rocks” are

“millions of years old” (10). However, this peaceful contemplation is quickly interrupted with the arrival of a “Mohawk camper trailer” (11) being pulled by a large white Cadillac. “Tourists,” the speaker informs us, “the crusaders” (13-14). The color of the car can hardly be coincidental, and the brand name of the camper trailer—

“Mohawk”—is a particularly perverse kind of cultural appropriation where now not only are the white “crusaders” repeating their ancestors’ invasion of native territory, but they are doing it in vehicles emblazoned with the names of the people that once lived on this land who their forefathers slaughtered. This insult is further amplified when the speaker is pulled over by a “cop car / flashing frenetic orange” (15-16). Here we see how the speaker’s free movement on indigenous land is hampered by the colonizer’s laws and those who enforce them. The speaker, “who can’t even remember my own license plate number” (18), is now required to follow the edicts of a nation imposed upon him and his people that override his own community’s laws and therefore is denied agency and free will on his own land.

After this passage, the speaker approaches the Peabody Coal Company and the

Black Mesa Mine. He describes the scene where “Bulldozer smoke and dust rise / from the wounded mountain” (28-29) and “power lines over the Mountain” (23) are

“carrying our mother away” (26). He sees the destruction of his land, the land taken from his people that is now visited as a tourist attraction and violated for the sake of further building up the country established by his colonizers, and he becomes enraged:

“A PLAGUE ON ALL YOUR DAMN HORSEPOWER/ A PLAGUE ON YOUR Dakin 86

KENNECOTT COPPER BLIGHTS” (30-31), he says, invoking Mercutio from

Romeo and Juliet, perhaps in an attempt to speak the colonizer’s language so they might listen to his plea for once. However, his tone quickly becomes solemn again as he reflects on the profound damage that colonial efforts such as this massive power center are having on indigenous identity and continuance. As he observes the rocks that have been there for millions of years and the horses grazing in the valley, he ends by saying, “The Yei / and hogans and the People / and roadside flowers / and cornfields and the sage / and the valley peace, / they are almost gone” (36-41). In only a few stanzas, “Long House Valley Poem” encompasses so much of the indigenous struggle related to their land, how their land has been taken and manipulated, and how that manipulation via colonization has led to massive destruction to the indigenous way of life. Beginning with the very first European colonizers, who are invoked by the white Cadillac and its crusading passengers, and continuing to present-day colonial efforts such as the Black Mesa Mine which is pillaging and polluting the earth against indigenous will, the speaker leads us to the inevitable conclusion of these actions: the erasure of indigenous life from this land. Even though his people may currently still inhabit this land, they are nevertheless severely restricted by the presence of American colonizers, the restriction of American law, and the destruction of their land for the sake of “American prosperity.” In effect, they are exiled on their own land because they are no longer capable of living freely and are in constant threat of being erased permanently along with their culture, the other inhabitants of the land, and peace. Dakin 87

Ortiz’s poetry in Woven Stone has much to teach us about the real-life impact

of colonization of indigenous lands in America and the effect that this colonization has on indigenous continuance and identity. As one can see from these four poems, almost all of these struggles can be tied back to indigenous connection to land. The disruption of an indigenous people’s relationship to their land and the denial of their agency in their own ancestral spaces has a tremendous impact on how indigenous communities are able to continue carrying out their traditions, how they are able to preserve their histories, and how current and future generations of indigenous peoples in America can maintain their identities as native peoples within the context of their homelands.

Ortiz teaches us that even something as seemingly minor as the hapless killing of a bird can be just as traumatic as the establishment of a large coal mine, because both of these acts signal the destruction of the land and consequently the erosion of indigenous culture. As is made evident by these four poems, even if an indigenous community is

able to continue living on its homeland, this does not mean that they are free from the

erosive effects of colonization.

Though they are writing from notably different contexts and experiences,

Mahmoud Darwish’s poetry touches on many of the same topics of internal exile that

are found in Simon Ortiz’s Woven Stone. As previously mentioned, Darwish has intimately known both external and internal exile from his homeland, and as such is able to masterfully weave reflections on both states of being into his poetry. One such instance is in his poem “To Describe an Almond Blossom,” which is a commentary on the state of exile but also significant is its statement about the failure of language and Dakin 88

the difficult task faced by the poet to manipulate language to speak truth, or get as

close as he can to truth through replication. “To describe an almond blossom no

encyclopedia of flowers / is any help to me, no dictionary” (Almond 1-2), begins

Darwish. To Darwish, his attempts to portray the beauty of the almond blossom, a native Palestinian flower, is to get caught in the “snares of rhetoric / that wound the

sense, and praise the wound they’ve made” (3-4). He continues on to attempt various descriptions of the almond blossom—“It is translucent, like liquid laughter…light as a white musical phrase” (Almond 8,10)—but feels every time that he is incapable of doing the beauty of the flower justice through language.

Darwish then makes a connection between his struggle to encapsulate the image of the almond blossom in words and the failure of language as related to his own existential crisis as a Palestinian in exile. “Neither homeland nor exile are words,” says Darwish, “but passions of whiteness in a / description of the almond blossom”

(Almond 22-24). Here we see Darwish find a commonality between how the essence of the almond blossom and the powerful notions of homeland and exile cannot be effectively contained by language, so much so that the words “homeland” and exile” cannot even be taken as words but rather are felt by Darwish to be “passions of whiteness” that are reflected in the whiteness of the almond blossom. In the final lines of the poem Darwish states,

If a writer were to compose a successful piece describing an almond blossom, the fog would rise from the hills, and people, all the people, would say: This is it. These are the words of our national anthem (Almond 20).

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These lines are again a commentary on the elusiveness of language and the poet’s

failure to be able to fully portray the beauty and truth of the world to the reader

because it will never be anything “but an echo” (Almond 7). However, in this instance

Darwish is also speaking to the inability to put the experience of his exile into words,

as well as to fully and accurately describe his homeland and his people’s connection to

their land. Language fails in any attempt to express the enormity of his exile and the effect that it has had on his life and his identity, and it also fails in any attempt to try to capture his relationship to Palestine. When Darwish tries to write about the physical land of Palestine he is incapable of doing it justice even when trying to describe the simple almond blossom, so words are even more ineffective when he tries to speak to the memory and the dream of Palestine which cannot even be pinned down in the physical world.

In the final lines, Darwish asserts that if it were possible for a writer to successfully write a poem describing the almond blossom, then it would become their national anthem. Not only does this statement speak to the interconnectedness between the Palestinians and the natural landscape of their homeland, but it also serves as a reminder of the intangibility of nationality and homeland for the Palestinian people. In

this poem, Darwish is not just talking about the logistical difficulties of crafting poetry

that effectively translates the truth of the world as the poet sees it, but he is also

speaking to his inability to express his connection to his homeland and the torment he

has suffered as a result of both internal and external exile over the course of his life.

Because his ability to live freely on the land of his people has been compromised with Dakin 90

the establishment of the state of Israel in Palestine, his identity as a Palestinian and as

an individual has become fractured. “To Describe an Almond Bloom” therefore

speaks not only to his difficulty to tell the story of his struggle through words, but it

also relates to the reader the greater struggle of the Palestinian people to try to craft an

identity and a homeland for themselves when these things have been so thoroughly

compromised by the loss of their land.

In his Arabic-language collection I Love You, I Love You Not, Darwish

composed seventeen psalms written to Palestine that speak at length to the personal struggles that Darwish has encountered as a Palestinian who has lived in exile on his land and in exile from his land. Two of these psalms, “Psalm 8” and “Psalm 10,” which can be found in Denys Johnson-Davies’ English-language compilation of

Darwish’s work entitled The Music of the Flesh, are powerful odes to the pain of exile that no doubt can be felt both when living in one’s colonized homeland or when exiled abroad. In “Psalm 8,” Darwish directly addresses his homeland in a voice of desperation and asks her to release him from the bond she has over him. “O country whose names are known by mood / By history’s whips, / By history’s prisons, / By history’s places of exile” (1-4), he cries, “why do you not announce your disavowal of me / That I may abstain from death? (11-12). Darwish’s homeland, which he describes as being “beautiful to the point of suicide” (9), has had such a powerful influence over almost every aspect of his life that he has finally reached a point where he is begging to be rid of her. He cannot seem to bring himself to turn his back on her, however, because he asks for her to “announce her disavowal” as opposed to him. Darwish asks Dakin 91

his country to allow him to abstain from death, no doubt meaning not a literal death

but the death that kills the soul after years of homelessness, exile, and oppression. In

Annette Mansson’s dissertation “Passage to a new wor(l)d: Exile and restoration in

Mahmoud Darwish’s writings,” she references a passage by the scholar Ibrahim M.

Abu-Hashhash in which he asserts, “When the natural life with one single death is

closed, the life of the Palestinians in exile is a constant death in life” (91). “Psalm 8”

shows how love for one’s homeland can become an overwhelming burden for a

colonized and exiled people because their desire for that homeland can never be

fulfilled. In Darwish’s case, his feelings of desperation have become so profound that

he would rather his homeland turn away and desert him than continue to be burdened

by a desire for a land that cannot be fully attained.

In the next stanza he repeats his request for his country to reject him, to tell

him “just the once: our love is over” (14-15). However, this time he asks her not to save him from death, but to release him so that he “may be capable of death and departure” (16). In her discussion of exile, Mansson asserts that “in Palestinian poetry,

to abandon the country equals death,” and that “departing from the country equals a

sure death because it means uprooting, as a tree without roots dies” (90). Unlike the previous stanza, Darwish has reached the point where he is desirous to be able to walk away from his country and depart from this chapter of painful exile. His request to be capable of death seems to be a request for a death of identity, that identity being a

Palestinian and as such a man of seemingly unending homelessness and exile, even when living in his land. Darwish’s plea reveals that the suffering of exile, both Dakin 92

external and internal, can be so overwhelming that it seems better to relinquish one’s

ties to the land altogether, and consequently one’s identity along with it. Therefore, we

see here how the effects of colonization and loss of homeland can be so great that they

not only damage indigenous society and identity, but can actually cause an indigenous

person to want to reject them entirely. The full effects of exile are seen in a subsequent

stanza when the land begins to transform into the colonizing force for Darwish instead

of his actual oppressors. The passion of the relationship between Darwish and his land

is described in bodily terms in the lines “you spread along my body like sweat, / You

spread into my body like lust” (22-23); this imagery reinforces the physical connection between the indigenous person and his homeland, which in these lines takes on elements of both sickness and sexual desire. However, in the following lines Darwish says to his land, “Like invaders you occupy my memory, / And like light you occupy

my brain” (24-25). These lines are significant because they show that the colonization

of Darwish’s homeland has been so corrupting that it has actually transformed his land

into the colonizer. The land has adopted the qualities of her invaders and is now

subsequently occupying his memory and his brain; Darwish no longer is talking about

the decolonization of his land in the sense that he wants the original colonizers of

Palestine to leave, but in fact he is talking about ridding himself of the occupation of

his self by his own homeland, whose memory and presence have become so

oppressive that he has begun to view it in colonizing terms. This is one of the most

powerful images of the disastrous affects that colonization and loss of homeland can

have on an indigenous people, because in “Psalm 8” these traumatic events have had Dakin 93

such an effect on the indigenous person that he actually has become unable to view his

land outside of the context of colonization and would rather be rid of it entirely than

continue on in a state of exile and suspended existence.

While “Psalm 8” discusses Darwish’s wish to free himself from the bonds of

exile, “Psalm 10” deals with how Darwish has taken on his identity as exile and how it

has transformed his life as a public representative of the Palestinian people. He

describes exile as the “lengthy state of dying” (1), which is similar to the imagery seen

in “Psalm 8.” While existing in a prolonged state of metaphorical death has brought

him tremendous suffering, it has also “made me into a cause” (7). Through his work as a poet and an activist, Darwish’s life as an exile has “brought me into houses, into hearts, into ears of wheat…Has given me an identity” (43, 45); he has become in many ways the symbol of exile for the Palestinian people and through this role has given form and meaning to the trauma that so many Palestinians have experienced and continue to experience as a nation of exiled people, both physically and internally. The colonization of his homeland and the aftermath has been such a transformative aspect of Darwish’s life that exile has become his sole identity: it is what he defines himself by and it is what has made him into a “cause” for the collective Palestinian people. In the following stanza, Darwish seems to argue that he was not always so revered by his people because “crime was mortgaged in songs, / So they passed by and did not utter my name,” instead choosing to bury “my corpse in files and coups d’état” (10-12). As a result, Darwish says that “the country I used to dream of will remain the country / I was dreaming of” (14-15). This passage seems to be articulating two different but Dakin 94

interconnected ideas: first, that Darwish’s country will remain in the realm of dreams

because his corpse was buried and forgotten, and second, that his country would

remain in the realm of dreams because his people were too preoccupied by “crime”

and “coups d’état” to learn from Darwish’s words and have the chance to make their

dreams of returning home into a reality.

In the final two stanzas of the poem, Darwish asserts that as a result of his exile he is “the master of sadness / And the tear of every Arab girl in love” (31-32). He is not just overcome by sadness, but in fact has become sadness incarnate, and his writing and his being serve as the expression of collective Palestinian sorrow. “The singers and orators have grouped themselves around me / And on my corpse sprout poetry and leaders / And all the brokers of patriotic language” (33-35). These lines show the positive side of Darwish’s exile, which is that it can be the fertile ground by which the beauty of language and the fruits of a collective national consciousness can sprout. However, these seemingly positive consequences are not without their detractions. In the following lines, Darwish writes, “Clap / Clap / Clap / And long live

/ The lengthy state of dying” (36-40), which adds a somewhat sinister tone to the way that Palestinians have rallied around Darwish’s suffering, which reflects their own suffering. Though it hardly seems that Darwish does not see the benefit of his life and identity being turned into a cause, he also is well aware of the negative result, which is that his exile is consequently prolonged by becoming the rallying cry of his people.

His poetry and his role as the embodiment of exile are something they value and by which they define themselves, but in doing so not only do they force Darwish to Dakin 95

continue in a state of exile, but perhaps also prolong their own exile by allowing it to become a defining part of their existence. In his final lines, Darwish repeats the lines of how his lengthy state of dying has brought him into people’s homes and hearts, but he adds a new twist: the fact that his exile has made him to a cause and given him an identity has also given him “a legacy of chains” (46). This legacy of chains holds a dual meaning for Darwish’s life and work. On the one hand, by taking on the role of embodying collective Palestinian homelessness and suffering, Darwish has condemned himself to a life defined by these things. The consequences of this were particularly apparent when Darwish self-exiled himself for almost three decades beginning in the early 1970s, an act which many Palestinians saw as a betrayal of the cause, the people, and the land. Darwish’s “legacy of chains” has the second meaning of speaking to the fact that Darwish’s body of work, his “legacy,” is defined by the exile and oppression that he and his people have experienced. Having a legacy of chains is an authentic embodiment of the Palestinian experience, but this line also seems to touch on Darwish’s concern that Palestinians must work to free themselves from their chains, not become further entrenched by them. “Psalm 10” is therefore a short but complex contemplation of Darwish’s decision to embody a cause and identity rooted in exile and despair, which serves as a rallying point for Palestinians but also has the potential to condemn them to a “lengthy state of dying” that may be perpetuated longer than necessary.

To conclude my analysis of Darwish’s work, I would like to look at one of the quatrains from the four-part work “Exile,” which is the last collected long poem that Dakin 96

Darwish wrote before his death in 2008. As Fady Joudah notes in his introduction to the collection of Darwish’s poetry “If I Were Another,” “Exile” is a kind of “play in verse” with various voices in conversation that are sometimes tangible and other times ethereal, with the “I” of Darwish seeming to split and interact with itself or even blend with the “other” in the poem (xxii). I will look to “Dense Fog Over the Bridge,” which is the second section of “Exile” and consists of an interaction between two main characters, the “I” and an unnamed “he.” The scene is a spectral one, the two figures standing on a fog-laden bridge before any sign of light. The speaker states, “By dawn…things will clear up” (3), but his companion disagrees: “but there’s no time more dubious than the dawn” (4). The speaker then ponders, “Where then does the dawn take us, / this bridge, where does it take us?” (13-14). In his introduction, Joudah notes that the bridge which serves as a focal point throughout this poem invokes the

Jericho Bridge, which “has become iconic for Palestinians and continues to serve as an oppressive checkpoint for those crossing between Jordan and the West Bank” (xxiv).

However, the bridge in “Dense Fog Over the Bridge” should not be taken literally as the Jericho Bridge, but rather a metaphorical space to discuss issues of subjugation, exile, and existence “where the physicality of the bridge, and of those on it, is and is not itself” (xxiv). The hazy state of the bridge suspended in time and the ambiguous characters of “I” and “he” represent the uncertainty of the purgatorial nature of exile that has the ability to strip identity and confuse the senses.

The “he” of the poem responds to the question of where the bridge will take them by asserting, “I am not looking for a burial / place. I want a place to live in, to Dakin 97

curse it if I please” (15-16). At one point in her dissertation Anette Mansson notes that

“if life in exile is a constant death, to die within the country is to die victoriously”

(91). However, in this instance it seems that “he” is not satisfied simply by the idea that he could one day find a resting place to call his own, but instead demands to have a place in which to live that he has the ability to love but also criticize if he so chooses. This figure has not yet resigned himself to exile, but hopes that one day he might be able to leave the “bridge” and exist instead in that elusive “place,” which he describes to be “the senses’ discovery of a foothold / for intuition” (19-20). When he reminisces about the place to which he wishes to return, “the narrow street that used to carry me / in the spacious evening to her house / in serenity’s suburbs” (21-23), the speaker of the poem warns him to not “bet on the realistic, / you won’t find the thing alive like its image / waiting for you” because “Time domesticates / even the mountains” (27-30). This statement speaks to one of the greatest struggles of the exile, because one will never be capable of returning to the time before the exile occurred and erase the effects of colonization. In the context of Palestinian exile, this fact has certainly been proven by Darwish himself who returned to Palestine but still endured the feeling of exile for his entire life. Memories can be dangerous for the exile because they may keep him or her returning to a time and a place that can never again exist.

He then asks the speaker, “Have we been that long on this road?” (33) to which the speaker replies, “Is the fog that dense on the bridge: how / many years have you resembled me?” (34-35). The separation between “I” and “he” begins to blur when he replies, “How many years have you been me?” to which the speaker says, “I don’t Dakin 98

remember” (36-37). The “he” figure concludes that “I only remember the road” (38).

This exchange speaks to the confusion and loss of identity that occurs as a result of exile. The blurring of memory that prevents the “I” and the “he” of the poem to be able to differentiate between each other is indicative not only of the similarity of experience for all exiled peoples, but also to how exile can be a dissociative state of being that forces one to question who they are and what defines them. Instead of their past identities, the “road” as a representation of exile has now become their state of being. The two figures’ inability to determine just how long they have been “on the bridge” adds to the dissociative nature of exile and emphasizes how it can seem to be a never-ending state of being with no clear end, or dawn, in sight. The speaker’s companion then ruminates that “I feel I have forgotten my feelings” (46), and the speaker states, “My friend, the long road has empties me / of my body. I don’t sense its clay or its form” (56-57). The companion seems to be slipping further back into memory, asserting that “soon we will mimic our voices when we were young, / gliding our Lam, lisping our Seen” (47-48), while the speaker is drifting further away from his past and his identity, stating that “Whenever I walk I fly. My steps are vision. / As for my “I” it waves from afar” (58-59). Two separate but interconnected experiences of exile are related here, where one is the tendency to regress back to childhood and the memories of the past in hope that the “delicious, / pure, beautiful air is also the same, waiting for me / as it has always been” (53-55), while the other is to detach oneself from not only memory but even the ego itself in Sufi-like fashion. These two conflicting paths come to a zenith in a following stanza when the “I” of the speaker Dakin 99

begins to break down, questioning whether he is “two in one / or am I / one who is shrapnel in two” (87-89). At this point, it becomes unclear whether the speaker is actually accompanied by another, or if he has simply been debating two conflicting

“I”s within himself that have resulted from existence on the bridge, for “each bridge is a schism” (84).

The remainder of the poem consists of a dream-like back and forth between the speaker and his companion who sometimes merge to become “we,” speaking in one voice of “I,” and then again separate in later stanzas until we find out that the speaker

“was along that day on the bridge” (233). In sixteen quatrains that Joudah describes as

“a dream becoming ‘fever’ (xxiii) the speaker, who at this time is speaking in tandem with his companion, seems to sink into a kind of dream-state in which he “will waken my soul to a previous ache…and chant: I’m still alive, / I feel the arrow pierce my waist.” In one stanza he states that “I will search mythology and archaeology / and every –ology for my ancient name, / a Canaanite goddess will favor me, she will / swear with lightning: This is my orphaned son” (125-29). In these lines the speaker seems to be expressing his desire to find his eternal self outside of exile and the realm of the bridge, a self that goes back to the very beginning and can be claimed by the earliest goddess of his land. Throughout this section the speaker delves into his memories and most innate desire to return to the place where he “will hear my heartbeat in the pebbles” (100), but when the fever begins to break he acknowledges the need to relinquishes this past so that he might escape from the dream, asserting Dakin 100

that “I will move farther from yesterday when I give it back / its inheritance: memory.

/ I will near tomorrow / when I chase a shrewd lark” (149-52).

After these sixteen quatrains the speaker and his companion again split into two entities that seem to be pulling in difference directions. The speaker urges his companion that they should “enter the land of story” (161) so that they might “visit the crumbs of life, life / as it is” (184-85). However, his companion stares at the bridge and responds that “this is the door / of truth. We can neither enter nor exit” (195-96).

They thus continue their wandering, time again breaking down so that it is unclear what has happened before this moment and what will happen after. When the companion speaks, he says that “My idea has turned my body into a book / of evidence, nothing proves that I am me / other than a candid death on the bridge” (213-

15). The speaker resists his companion’s belief that death on the bridge is the only fate, arguing that “Life / on the bridge is possible. And metaphor is a spacious vastness” (219-20). However, at this point the companion seems to leave the speaker alone on the bridge where he continues to wander, “unable to enter / or exit, rotating like a sunflower (237-38). At night he hears the voice of the night-guard of the bridge, singing, “Don’t promise me anything / don’t give me / a rose from Jericho!” (241-43).

As Joudah notes, Jericho was “one of the first cities handed over to ‘Palestinian control’ under the ‘peace agreement’” (xxiv), and therefore this final line is a resistance to promises of escaping exile and subjugation that are inauthentic and only deepen the complexity of life on the bridge. Therefore, at the end of “Dense Fog Over the Bridge” we find the speaker who has resigned himself, at least for the time being, Dakin 101

to continue following his path of exile on the bridge with no knowledge of when he might be able to return to “yesterday” or find a new life in “tomorrow.” Because he does not want a “burial place” but rather “a place to live in, to curse it if I please,” it seems that he has chosen a life of exile over “a candid death on the bridge.” This lengthy contemplation of exile is a compelling means by which to understand the confusing and spectral nature of exile, which is neither death nor life and which can create profound fissures in both identity and memory. The battle of the self that occurs as a result of years of colonization and exile is one that Darwish knew intimately, and

“Dense Fog Over the Bridge” therefore speaks to both his personal turmoil in attempting to overcoming his fate as an exile as well as the collective journey on the bridge walked by all Palestinians who have known loss of homeland.

These poems by Simon Ortiz and Mahmoud Darwish help crystallize the complex notion of feeling exiled by forces of colonization even when physical exile from the land has not occurred or is no longer a reality. In the case of Ortiz, we see indigenous individuals who struggle to find themselves in a country called “America” to which they were never meant to belong, even though that nation sets up museums to

“honor” the people they now view as relics of a time long past. In the verse of

Mahmoud Darwish, we see a highly thoughtful contemplation of the state of exile that is applicable to a wide range of banishment, both internal and external, and the profound way that exile is capable of not just mutating indigenous identity, but in fact often becomes the prominent identity of the indigenous individual. Internal exile can be particularly corrosive to indigenous identity because it is so seemingly inescapable; Dakin 102

if existing on the land is not enough to ensure indigenous continuance or achieve agency, it is difficult to imagine how colonialism can ever be defeated. Furthermore, as Edward Said notes in “Intellectual Exile: Expatriates and Marginals,” internal exile can lead the exile to become stagnant in this state of being “since that state of inbetweenness” can become “a sort of dwelling whose falseness is covered over in time, and to which one can all too easily become accustomed” (377). The awareness of this fact is detectable in the work of both Ortiz and Darwish, whose poems balance their feelings of deep longing and despair with a sense of urgency for resisting entrenched colonial mindsets in order to reclaim indigenous identity and self- determination in their respective ancestral homelands.

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CHAPTER FIVE

“This land yearns / for us,” writes Simon Ortiz, “The people yearn / for the land. Loss and separation / are hard to bear” (352). These six lines from “Our

Homeland, A National Sacrifice” in Woven Stone succinctly relate the fundamental fact that there is a reciprocal relationship between indigenous communities and their homelands, and when this relationship is disrupted or severed entirely it leads to tremendous suffering for both parties. Though written by an Acoma Pueblo poet, this sentiment can easily apply to his Laguna Pueblo neighbor Leslie Marmon Silko as well as Palestinian and Palestinian-American authors Mahmoud Darwish and Suheir

Hammad, who all know the unique pain of exile. As demonstrated by the poetry and prose of these four writers, exile comes in as many forms as colonization. Exile can be a very literal, physical distance from homeland, or it might be experienced as the disruption of the relationship between an indigenous person and their homeland as a result of colonial practices even when one is still living in their land. In either case, a sense of internal, emotional exile is experienced as the indigenous person attempts the complex and painful process of trying to retain their culture and identity when they are denied one of the most fundamental tools for persevering them: their homeland. Dakin 104

Simon Ortiz, Leslie Marmon Silko, Mahmoud Darwish, and Suheir Hammad all recognize that even in a post-colonial world, the history and consequences of colonization can never be fully vanquished. Colonization changes indigenous communities in fundamental and permanent ways, and this is a reality that indigenous peoples must continue to grapple with and overcome. Both the indigenous Americans and the Palestinians are faced with tremendous uphill battles in their attempts to reclaim their homelands and fight for self-determination and indigenous continuance.

For the indigenous peoples of the Americas, this struggle has been ongoing since the mid-fifteenth century and has shown no sign of abating. Despite tremendous resilience of indigenous communities across the two continents, the colonial hegemonic powers have become deeply entrenched and continue to carry out practices that deny indigenous self-determination, threaten native cultures, and seize even more indigenous land from the hands of its native inhabitants. Such colonial methods can be found in practically any location where indigenous populations continue to fight for survival. For example, many indigenous communities are currently being threatened because of the discovery of valuable natural resources on their territory, especially in the case of oil and natural gas. One such case is in Peru, where more than 65 percent of indigenous territories fall inside areas that are marked off for oil concessions. The indigenous Awajún and Marañón people have been highly vocal against the expansion of oil and gas operations on their indigenous lands, but energy companies continue to take predatory measures to further their efforts that threaten the land and livelihood of the indigenous peoples of Peru (Mortenson). This is one of dozens of such cases Dakin 105

throughout South America, and the increasing energy needs of the United States and

Canada have created comparable situations in North America as well. For example, indigenous communities throughout Canada and the United States have been threatened by the Keystone XL pipeline, which aims to transport oil extracted from tar sands in Canada to multiple points in the United States. This pipeline presents a great threat both to the indigenous peoples of Canada whose lands and water supply have been damaged by oil extractions, as well as the indigenous communities in the United

States whose land is in the proposed path for the pipeline. Along with direct threats to the integrity of native lands due to resource extraction, indigenous cultural and religious practices are also under siege. For example, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of

Appeals recently ruled that the Arizona Snowbowl is allowed to use artificial snow made out of human wastewater on the San Francisco Peaks, a series of mountains which are sacred to thirteen native tribes including the Navajo and the Hopi. As the

Navajo Nation points out, “The Navajo religion is defined by and cannot be separated from its relationship to specific geographical places. These sites are sacred because of special religious events which have occurred in that particular site.” Using human wastewater on the mountains is seen as an extreme desecration of this sacred space, which is central for numerous religious beliefs and ceremonies for all thirteen tribes

(ICTMN staff). These three examples of direct threats to indigenous lands and communities in the Americas are a mere fraction of the colonial actions that are undermining self-determination on a daily basis for indigenous communities across the two continents. Hundreds of different situations like this can be brought forth, Dakin 106

serving to illustrate how urgent the situation is for these communities and the lands they call home. The necessity of the work of indigenous American writers such as

Simon Ortiz and Leslie Marmon Silko thus becomes even more apparent in light of these threats to indigenous livelihood in the Americas.

The Palestinians are in a notably different situation from indigenous

Americans when it comes to the history of their national struggle over the past century, but their fight for self-determination and homeland is no less dire. Since the war of 1967, millions of Palestinian Arabs have been living under some level of Israeli military occupation in the West Bank and Gaza without being able to claim citizenship to any nation. In the West Bank, Palestinians face severe restriction of movement due to checkpoints, roads forbidden for Palestinian use, and the Separation Barrier which

Israel began to construct in 2002 (“Restriction”). Israel unilaterally withdrew from

Gaza in 2005, but this has hardly resulted in freedom or self-determination for the

Palestinians living in the Strip. After Hamas came to power in 2007, Israel increased restrictions on Gaza border crossings to the point that it is almost impossible for

Palestinians to leave or enter. The ability to export or import goods is significantly hampered, the majority of businesses and factories have closed, and by 2009 approximately forty percent of the workforce was unemployed. Israel has also carried out several military operations in the Strip since the disengagement, the most notable being Operation Cast Lead in 2008 which resulted in almost 800 civilian deaths and causes extensive damage to infrastructure and Palestinian homes (“Gaza”). Along with these realities in the Occupied Territories, numerous anti-Arab and anti-Islamic bills Dakin 107

have come before the Israeli legislature in the past year; for example, a bill to remove

Arabic as an official language was proposed, as well as a bill to eliminate loudspeakers on mosques that are used for call to prayer. Actions that suppress

Palestinian language and religious practices are a direct threat to Palestinian self- determination and continuance in Israel and the Occupied Territories.

Since the failure of the Oslo Accords in 1993, the peace process has been declared by both sides to be effectively dead. Many Palestinians have become disillusioned about the possibility of establishing a Palestinian state in the Occupied

Territories, which was the aim of the Oslo Accords and the mainstream end result that both sides envision. In the time since the Oslo Accords were signed, numerous actions have been taken by the Israeli state to hamper the ability to move forward with the peace process and to establish a Palestinian state. For one, the Separation Barrier that was erected in the name of suppressing terrorism has cut off sections of Palestinian territories that were intended to be a part of a future Palestinian state. Not only does this make the possibility of establishing a Palestinian state even more difficult, but the barrier takes a powerful emotional toll on the Palestinian psyche and serves as a physical manifestation of Israeli colonization. Furthermore, the establishment of illegal Jewish settlements in the Occupied Territories has resulted in the theft of privately-owned Palestinian land, has created hostile environments in Palestinian communities, and has made the possibility of drawing the border for a future

Palestinian state increasing complex because of the need for Israel to figure out how to evacuate or incorporate the settlers into the Israeli state (“Land”). In the face of these Dakin 108

tremendous obstacles and the failed peace process, president of the Palestinian

National Authority Mahmoud Abbas went before the United Nations General

Assembly in September 2011 to request that Palestine be recognized as a nation and be admitted as a full member to the United Nations. Abbas states that he was taking this step in order to “to secure the right to live free in the remaining 22 percent of our historic homeland because we have been negotiating with the State of Israel for 20 years without coming any closer to realizing a state of our own” (Abbas). Despite this historic effort, the Palestinians have come no closer to establishing a nation in their historic homeland or free themselves from the oppression of Israeli occupation. The need to establish a Palestinian state becomes increasingly urgent with each passing year because illegal settlement in the West Bank shows no signs of abetting, and

Palestinians will never be able achieve self-determination and continuance as a people while continuing to live under harsh military occupation. Cultivating Palestinian collective consciousness and alerting the world to the critical need to find a just solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict that guarantees Palestinian human rights and self-determination is therefore understandably one of the most important roles of the work of Mahmoud Darwish and Suheir Hammad.

The urgency of the need for indigenous Americans and Palestinians to retain their presence and agency in their respective homelands is readily apparent. However, it is also apparent that full reclamation of homeland and the ability to live free of the effects of colonization is likely an unachievable goal. Five hundred years of European presence in the Americas that has lead to the establishment of the world’s greatest Dakin 109

superpower seems nearly impossible to overturn, and the transformation that Palestine has undergone since the establishment of the state of Israel cannot simply be erased.

Furthermore, for indigenous people who are either permanently exiled from their homelands or have willingly left their homelands but still desire to maintain their cultural practices and indigenous identities, presence in their homelands cannot serve to be the foundation for their identities. Indigenous Americans and Palestinians are therefore faced with the challenge of preserving their communities, cultures, and identities without necessarily being able to live in the context of their homeland as those communities, cultures, and identities were originally formulated over centuries.

As indigenous persons with tremendous concern for their communities and their homelands, Ortiz, Silko, Darwish, and Hammad have all found literature to be a powerful tool for indigenous expression and continuance. The fact that these four indigenous people who all feel a deep responsibility to work to conserve their communities, cultures, and homelands have chosen a literary path in order to enact change indicates the efficacy and importance that this mode offers indigenous and oppressed communities. In the case of Simon Ortiz, both indigenous language and storytelling are vital pieces of the puzzle to achieving indigenous continuance. As a young boy, Ortiz recognized the importance of his indigenous language because

“within family and community, the Acoma language was a vital link to the continuance of the hanoh, the people, as a whole” (Ortiz 5). The first stories and prayers that he heard were in his native Acoma tongue, a language which the Acoma believe they have been speaking since they left Kashkahtrutih, the” immemorial time Dakin 110

and place” of origin of the Acoma people. According to oral tradition, after the Acoma people left Kashkahtrutih, the people had to create a new language for themselves

“which would come about from their intelligence, perception and expression, creativity, their consciousness” (Ortiz 5). The importance of the Acoma language to the Aacqumeh people can thus hardly be understated, as it has been a vital aspect of their community since their believed origin and is understood to have been born from the Aacqumeh consciousness; it is both the foundation of Aacqumeh oral narrative since their departure from Kashkahtrutih and is an inseparable part of the Acoma community’s identity. As such, the preservation of the Acoma language, in part because of its crucial role in the oral storytelling of the Acoma Pueblo people, is a vital tool for the continuance of Aacqumeh history and identity.

Persevering and continuing the use of native language and oral tradition is a necessary method to resist cultural whitewashing that has been actively pursued by the

United States government against its indigenous people for generations. White

Americans were sent to teach in Native American schools or indigenous children were sent far from their native lands in order to attend federal and Christian mission boarding schools with the intention of breaking down the children’s bonds to their families and cultures. “It was a severe and traumatic form of brainwashing, literally to destroy the heritage and identity of native people,” states Ortiz. This attempt to “make us into American white people” is one of the principle threats to indigenous communities in the United States, and the need to pass down linguistic and oral knowledge to future generations must therefore be a critical goal of indigenous Dakin 111

communities throughout the Americas (Ortiz 8). However, Ortiz also recognizes the necessity and value of expanding Aacqumeh consciousness beyond their native language and the explicit mode of oral storytelling. Ortiz argues that written stories also can play an important role in the effort for indigenous continuance, even if they are written in non-indigenous languages. When Ortiz began to read and write in

English, he still felt the stories of his people “continued somehow in the new language and use of the new language and they would never be lost, forgotten, and finally gone.

They would always continue” (Ortiz 9). Remembrance and continuance are therefore the most important goals that Ortiz identifies, even if those goals are achieved through written stories or in a new language.

Furthermore, writing in English can be a necessary tool to alert non-natives to the struggles of native peoples. One important factor that Ortiz addresses is the need for indigenous peoples, along with the white and non-white American poor, to understand that they “are forced to serve a national interest, controlled by capitalist vested interests in collusion with U.S. policy makers, which does not serve them”

(Ortiz 361). Ortiz recognizes that in order for indigenous people to protect their lands and their ways of life, they must find a way to make the rest of America recognize that their communities and lifestyles also rely on the preservation of this land; as Ortiz states, “If the survival and quality of the life of Indian peoples is not assured, then no one else’s life is, because those same economic, social, and political forces which destroy them will surely destroy others” (Ortiz 360). Control of Indian land must be given back to Indian people so that they can live productively on the land by whatever Dakin 112

standards they see fit, which will ultimately not just benefit their communities but the

United States as well. Once the American poor and middleclass recognize the shared struggle they have with the indigenous people against economic and political oppression, then efforts can be taken to overcome this hegemony and return sovereignty to indigenous peoples. Writing stories in English or other non-native languages can play an important role in building these connections between native and non-native peoples who both suffer at the hands of capitalist society, and therefore should be used as a tool in conjunction with passing down oral stories and native languages within the indigenous communities as a means to achieve self- determination and continuance.

Leslie Marmon Silko also recognizes the importance of storytelling and literature for the continuance of the Laguna Pueblo people as well as other indigenous

American communities. For Silko, homeland and storytelling are inextricably linked and both work in tandem in order to define and maintain her indigenous identity. The hills and mesas of Laguna Pueblo have a familiarity to her that is similar to the way she feels towards her family members and that provides her with a security when she is in their presence. Coupled with the physical presence of these locations are the stories that define them. Silko relates how when her father tells her stories about specific places, stories that were passed down to him by his father, “it is as if when one goes back to these places that all of those past things that happened in that place, in a sense, their presence is still there, and so you don’t lose it, even though human beings may pass away and old age comes and so forth” (Seyersted 2). Stories are Dakin 113

therefore a way to build a connection with one’s homeland as well as to maintain a bond with one’s history through the generations of oral history passed down through the community. Silko notes that oftentimes some of the oral storytelling that goes on in her community is labeled as gossip, but she believes that the word “gossip” highly undervalues the role that stories play in the lives of Laguna Pueblo people. Stories serve to “give identity to a place,” and they also serve the same role for people. “It’s stories that make this a community,” asserts Silko, because “People tell those stories about you and your family or about others and they begin to create your identity. In a sense, you are told who you are, or you know who you are by the stories that are told about you” (Evers & Carr 12). Silko recognizes that stories are not just a way to learn about the past, but also function to shape the present and the future by molding and defining indigenous identity by including each new generation in the woven narrative stories passed down through the ages.

Silko is strong in her belief that storytelling and culture will evolve over time.

Though she was born into a primarily oral storytelling culture, Silko identifies herself firmly as a writer and she does not see her writing as attempting to “save” oral stories or putting them in a “stable or lasting form.” However, she does work to translate the feeling of oral storytelling onto the written page, and she believes in the importance of each story being new in its own way. “Every time a story is told,” says Silko, “and this is one of the beauties of the oral tradition, each telling is a new and unique story, even if it’s repeated word for word by the same teller sitting in the same chair.” (Barnes 71-

72). Stories are not meant to be frozen in time and preserved for generations to come, Dakin 114

but rather must evolve as the community evolves and fall away when they are no

longer relevant and needed. “Stories stay alive within the community like the Laguna

Pueblo community because the stories have a life of their own,” explains Silko, and if

a story if forgotten it means that the people no longer felt it had a place in their lives or their community (Barnes 72-73). Silko’s perspective on the evolution of certain stories or traditions is an important component in the struggle for indigenous continuance.

Coming from a mixed Laguna-Mexican-white background, Silko knows the necessary of interweaving old and new traditions in order to form positive and lasting identities.

In the face of colonization and ever-increasing contact between indigenous and non- indigenous culture, it would be impossible for indigenous communities to remain intact as they once were without complete isolation. As such, the ability to recognize when sacrifice is necessary and when it is time to build new traditions is important not just for indigenous oral and literary tradition but also for indigenous life in general.

The Palestinian community also has much to benefit from by utilizing literature to shed light on the voice of the Palestinian struggle and to work toward

Palestinian survival. Mahmoud Darwish’s revered status in Palestinian society is proof that poetry is highly respected by the Palestinians and is believed to be a critical tool for Palestinian continuance. One of the reasons that Darwish has gained such stature is because of his ability to craft a collective voice for his people. Over the years, Darwish has served as a kind of spokesman for the Palestinians through his ability to transmit their particular experiences and suffering through Arabic verse. Darwish’s poetry creates solidarity and resilience among the Palestinians because his literature serves as Dakin 115

rallying cry for the oppression that the people have suffered as well as demonstrates

the beauty of their culture and history. This collective narrative is critical for

Palestinian resistance because it counters oppressive Israeli narratives that deny

Palestinians’ long-standing relationship with and love for their homeland. Since

Darwish is such an emblematic figure in Palestinian society, his writing is also useful

because it can provide an outside audience an opening into collective Palestinian

identity and experience. Darwish is therefore one of the best examples of how

powerful literary voices can benefit indigenous communities by bringing them

together under the banner of collective consciousness.

Related to this topic is the fact that Darwish’s writing teaches indigenous

communities the ability to create a new homeland through words. As someone who

was uprooted from his homeland as a young child and never again was able to live

freely in his land, the need to achieve self-determination and reclaim indigenous identity without free agency in his homeland was a necessity. As such, Darwish turned to literature as a way to express Palestinian consciousness in part by formulating a new understanding of homeland. In a 2000 Newsweek interview when asked what the

role of the poet should be, Darwish stated, “I don't think there is any role for poetry.

Poems can't establish a state. But they can establish a metaphorical homeland in the

minds of the people. I think my poems have built some houses in this landscape”

(Rees & Klaidman). Therefore, while Darwish does not believe that poetry has the

clout to bring about political demands, he does see it as a space for Palestinians to

build their identity around something other than just the land. As Najat Rahman notes Dakin 116

in Literary Disinheritance: The Writings of Home in the Work of Mahmoud Darwish and Assia Djebar, in Darwish’s later work “Poetry itself is figured as home. Home is no longer connected to land or people but to the possibility of a poetic gathering of voices” (43). Darwish turned away from nostalgia and loss in exchange for desire and new horizons, working to weave himself into the Arabic literary tradition in a way that establishes poetry “as a space of survival” (Rahman 43). According to Darwish “a people without poetry are a conquered people” (Rahman 47), and as such he argues that it is necessary for the Palestinians to embrace it. Doing so will provide them with a means by which to build collective identity by recognizing their place in a collective tradition along with building a sense of “home” through their quest for the unattainable (Rahman 64).

In the case of Suheir Hammad, building a metaphorical homeland for

Palestinians is less of a priority than writing powerful narratives that speak in a very direct manner about the suffering of indigenous and displaced peoples. Hammad’s poetry has been an outlet for the oppression she has experienced as a woman and child of Palestinian refugees as well as a means by which to promote activism for the

Palestinian cause. Many of Hammad’s poems are highly political in nature and make biting criticisms of Israel and Zionism, which serves to bring attention to Palestinian oppression in a country which is Israel’s greatest ally and where Palestinian voices are often marginalized or discredited. However, one of the most important effects that

Hammad’s poetry has is to create a bridge between her struggle as a first-generation

Arab woman and an exile from her homeland of Palestine with the struggles of other Dakin 117

oppressed minority groups in America and throughout the world. In her essay

“Weaving Poetic Autobiographies,” Carol Fadda-Conrey asserts that Hammad’s

ability to transcend the self in her verse in order to map “the ‘I’ within the ‘we’”

allows her to create a union between herself and victims of colonization everywhere.

Many of Hammad’s poems express her firm belief that her experience as a Palestinian

exile “cannot be disengaged from the larger history of imperialism and colonialism

that scatter peoples across the world and sever them from their homelands,” whether they are exiles, immigrants, or descendents of slave-trade victims (Fadda Conrey 165).

One of the ways that Hammad makes this link between her oppression and the

experiences of others who have suffered from imperialism is by tapping into oral

tradition. The importance of oral storytelling is quickly apparent through the structure and style of the majority of Hammad’s poems. Much of her verse begs to be read out

loud, and some of her poems such as “Mike Check” from ZaatarDiva are not fully

effective unless they are vocalized. In fact, as a poet who is a part of the “spoken

word” community, her poems often are written explicitly to be performed and do not

hold the same power unless they are uttered with the pop and crack of Hammad’s

Brooklyn accent. Even when read on the page the oral nature of the poems are still felt

through Hammad’s intermixing of English and Arabic which sometimes forces the

reader to read the poems out loud in order to fully grasp their rhythm and meaning.

Hammad’s poetry is even further entrenched in the oral tradition by the tremendous

influence that hip hop has had on Hammad’s life and work. Hip hop is first and

foremost an oral art form that is not just music but “a culture and a mirror of the times Dakin 118

for many of America’s youth” (“A Road” 91). Hip hop is a way for marginalized communities in America to share their history, express their grievances, struggle against white American hegemony, and transform their communities. The style of hip hop makes it particularly suited for these tasks, and this is one of the reasons that hip hop has become the medium for oppressed peoples to gain self-determination and a

platform for their struggles throughout the world. Another one of the reasons that hip

hop has gained such prominence for indigenous peoples is because in many ways hip

hop mirrors the role of oral teachers and storytellers that already exist in their

communities. For example, in Senegal hip hop artists follow the tradition of griots,

West African storytellers who maintain oral history and make political commentary.

“M.C.’s are the modern griot,” asserted hip hop artist Papa Moussa Lo (a.k.a.

Waterflow) to New York Times’ reporter Sujatha Fernandes; “They are taking over

the role of representing the people” (Fernandes). Hammad asserts a similar sentiment

in her essay “A Road Still Becoming,” stating, “in true oral tradition, MCs remind”

(91). Hammad thus recognizes the roots of hip hop to be in the oral traditions of the

various oppressed minorities in this country, whether they be black, Latino, or Arab,

and that this phenomenon that emerged from the 1980s is actually an evolution of

entrenched cultural practices that found a new voice in hip hop. Utilizing oral tradition

is one of the ways that Hammad is able to so effectively make parallels between her

experiences of exile and oppression with communities all over the world that have

been marred by imperialism. Dakin 119

As a women split between her identity as a Palestinian and an American raised in Brooklyn, Suheir Hammad has been able to formulate a new sense of self by melding these two realities through words. “Between the Quran’s teachings and

Rakim’s rhymes,” says Hammad, “I found myself in love with words, and wanting to record not only my story but the stories of those around me, so history would know we existed” (“A Road” 93). Hammad shows that indigenous communities should embrace storytelling and literature not only in order to preserve their history and cultures of their communities, but also to alert the world to their struggle and to connect their oppression with other communities who have known colonialism, racism, and hardship. By recognizing the similarities between their experiences, indigenous and displaced peoples everywhere will be able to work together as a united and powerful force against Western hegemony in their homelands and in their communities.

As we can see, all four authors have turned to writing for both solace and strength. Because they come from different generations, cultures, and backgrounds, each author has a unique take on the way that literature can foster indigenous continuance, and as such other indigenous peoples can draw from their teachings what is most relevant to them. For those like Simon Ortiz who are deeply entrenched in traditional ways of living, writing can be a means by which to share those experiences as well as to translate them into different forms and languages. For others like Leslie

Marmon Silko whose identity is born from a mix of indigenous and settler culture, literature has the potential to serve as a way to synthesize one’s multifaceted perspectives of what it means to be indigenous. Some may relate more to Mahmoud Dakin 120

Darwish, who has used literature to shape a collective voice and a metaphorical homeland for his people, while many others likely relate to Suheir Hammad, a displaced child of refugees who is still building her sense of self as an indigenous person who never had the chance to know her homeland. However, what each of these four authors all express is the necessity of homeland for indigenous survival and the need for indigenous and displaced peoples of all backgrounds to learn from each other and work together to resist the colonial forces that oppress them. In these collective efforts, literature will be a driving force to enact change, preserve culture, and formulate the ever-evolving notion of what it means to be indigenous. As these writers show, communal and individual effort must be made by indigenous writers to use literature in order to preserve the stories and identities of indigenous communities as well as to share the struggle of indigenous peoples outside of their communities. By harnessing the dual powers of language and homeland, the former born from mankind’s drive to understand and communicate with the latter, indigenous peoples will achieve more than just resistance: they will find continuance.

Dakin 121

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