"So like the mockingbird I have more than one song but they are all our songs. It has seemed to me that no one else will sing them unless I do" (Revard 80). In their autobiographical essays, many of the Native American writers explain how they define themselves through their story telling and their unique use of language. Simon Ortiz analyzes the importance of the oral tradition in the creation of his world. "Memory, immediate and far away in the past, something in the sinew, blood, ageless cell. Although I don't recall the exact moment I spoke or tried to speak, I know the feeling of something tugging at the core of the mind, something unutterable uttered into existence. It is language that brings us into being in order to know life" (187). The language of the Acoma Pueblo people, Aaquumeh hano, was that of a "struggling people who held ferociously" to their heritage and culture in spite of colonization. They fought hard to maintain their mother tongue regardless of the punishments and ostracism incurred. The English language which he was forced to learn opened up magical worlds for the young Simon, but his original language contained the vales and philosophy of his life and vision.
Some of the other writers concur with this view. They discuss the disciplinary tactics of the Catholic missionaries who attempt to humiliate and beat the "savagery" and otherness out of the Indian children. Yet their culture survived, according to Ortiz, primarily because of the stories handed down from parents and grandparents to children, teaching their own view of history and culture. "It was knowledge about how one was to make a living through work that benefited his family and everyone else" (189). His grandfather was an important link to the past for Ortiz because he also instilled a reverence for the earth and taught him compassion. As a medicine man and elder of the kiva, his grandfather "brought [the younger generation's] present beings into existence by the beliefs they held" (190).
This is a profound philosophical view similar to the beliefs of some tribal peoples that by reciting the cosmogonic myth they are participating in the creation and survival of the planet. Language not only teaches values and culture, it creates humanity and the earth itself. The Genesis story contains the same truth: the spoken word is creative, life giving. To destroy or prohibit the original language of subjugated peoples, consequently, is to annihilate the life force itself.
Joseph Bruchac describes his function as a metis, a "translator's son," interpreting the languages of both sides (203). Linda Hogan calls biculturalism being "a person of betweens, a person of divided directions" (243). She sees the telling of life stories as "subversive" because they tell the truth. Joy Harjo, similarly, "used to see being born of the mixed-blood, mixed-vision a curse" (266). She felt that she did not belong anywhere. Now she sees it as a blessing and "it is only an illusion that we are separate" (266). Speaking the truth about life with its mixed blessings and pains helps to create the Self and to make connections with others. Becoming translators' sons or daughters, learning to translate the human condition for one another could give us all the blessing of mixed-vision.
Like Linda Hogan all of us have old men at war living inside us, living in our breath when we are quiet, walking through our veins without speech. Many of us have blond grandfathers fishing the river and calling the Indians peaceful. Many of us also have bloods of indigenous peoples or immigrants or slave peoples who are not blond, who were the conquered ones. Within our veins many Americans still wage wars of independence and liberation and civil rights. Hearing the songs and stories of one another can be the healing force to make peace within and without.
Another theme woven through these autobiographical essays is the sacredness of the earth, the Indian concept that many "new age" thinkers idealize. In its original form, however, this is a beautiful idea. Joseph Bruchac, for example, was raised in the foothills of the Adirondack Mountains near spring waters that were "regarded as sacred and healing by the Iroquois and Abenaki alike" (203). This became his dreaming place, which only death can separate from his flesh. Linda Hogan remembers to say "thank you to every living thing that graces [her] eyes or whose sound fills [her] ears. It is best if [we] return some of our richness into the spirit world and to the earth" (248). She sees this as a healing ceremony when we can recall our connection with the rest of creation. Spirituality is our "inner self," she says. It is in seeing the world, in breathing, talking, writing journal entries! The sharing of stories, coupled with our "thank you" to the universe, can be a healing, unifying ritual.
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