“The Earth Itself Was Sobbing”: Madness and the Environment in Novels by Leslie Marmon Silko and Louise Erdrich
Abstract
One of the difficulties faced by those of us who teach Native American literature is that our students come to us forearmed with all sorts of generous stereotypes about Indians. Our students tend to think, for example, that virtually all Native Americans live close to the earth, are proud victims of white domination, and are spiritually superior to those who have colonized them. That Indians are humble people who worship a god of nature, peaceful people who love dogs and horses, reverent people who pay daily homage to their mother earth and their father sun. That Native Americans are strong and silent in the face of oppression. That they sit tall on horseback silhouetted against the setting sun. And so on. One of the things that teachers do—or let the voices of Native American writers do for them—is complicate these kinds of stereotypes. Of course, there is usually some truth to stereotypes. The trouble with stereotypes is that people want to be able to oversimplify a complicated subject by taking what may be true for one or two or many individuals and assume that it is true for everyone in a certain group.