An Analysis of Palestinian and Native American Literature

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).

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