Application/Summary Revised

Part One: Summary
In “Toward a Decolonization of the Mind and Text 1: Leslie Marmon Silko’s ‘Ceremony,’” Gloria Bird discusses her feelings about the colonization of her language and culture. She remembers a song that went along with a game. She knew the words and everything, but she felt like the song did not belong to her. Her feelings were the same when it came to her culture’s language. She felt left out because she did not understand the language, so when her mother did not want her to hear something, she would speak in their Indian language. Not only does her lack of connection with her language bother her, the fact that she feels as if she is losing her culture due to the colonization of other cultures coming in and filling the Indian ideas with their own toxic waste. Eventually, what will be left for the Indians to hold onto? As Bird’s ancestors will eventually one day die off, Bird has no chance of retaining the ideals of her culture, and for her then, her whole background will be lost. Her mother believed that, “once the old people are gone, the songs, the stories, the knowledge will be lost” (Bird 1). Bird found herself in a double bind with the song, feeling as if she did not have the right to sing that song. She makes a reference to Leslie Silko’s, Ceremony. The first time that Tayo meets the medicine man, Ku’oosh, and as he speaks to Tayo, he is unable to understand fully what the medicine man is saying. Tayo feels embarrassed for not knowing the language well enough to have a decent conversation with him. His insecurities begin to show through, for example, being a mixed blood, once the language burrier between him and Ku’oosh is obvious. This continues throughout Ceremony as Tayos’ grandmother makes Tayo aware many times that he is different because he is not a full-blooded Indian. Tayo also, must struggle to find his own way to stay connected to his Pueblo background.

Part Two: Application
Silko’s Ceremony and Gloria Bird’s article suggest that a productive topic is “the lie,” but not just the lie about the whites, but the lies and the deceptions of your own people. Tayo, a veteran of World War II, had to cope with the colonization of not only the white people and their mind control over the Indians, but Tayo had to deal with the troublesome antics of Emo.

Bird describes Tayo’s view of “the lie” as, “Tayo is employed to reject the internalization of negative typifications as he frees his cattle from the white man’s land debating whether or not to label the man a ‘thief’” (Bird 6). Here this is where Tayo begins to see through the lie and break out of the colonization, which has been embedded in his head for so long. Tayo and his people have been forced to think that they are the ones whom are to be thought of as the “thieves” and not the white people. In Ceremony, it is even admitted by Tayo that, “he had learned the lie by heart – the lie which they had wanted him to learn” (Silko 191). As the lie unfolds in the novel, Tayo cuts open the wire that held captive Josiah’s cattle. Not only did the white man take the horses, the white man also took advantage and raped the land. The Pueblo culture believed that the land was there for everyone to share, which is why the Indians never used fences. The land does not belong to one single person. The whites had no respect for the land as they used it to only better themselves and to make up for any insecurities or doubts that they may have within themselves. Most importantly though, Tayo realizes that the white men are actually just like the Indians, they are no more powerful than the Indians. But since the Indian’s were brainwashed to believe that the White man was better, they were able to just take and take from them.

Emo, a troublemaker from the start of Ceremony, betrays Tayo with a plan to hunt him down and kill him. But once Tayo figures out the betrayal and runs away from all of his friends, as Harley then eventually takes the blame and has to face the consequences. “Tayo was halfway up the hill before he stopped: suddenly it hit him, in the belly, and spread to his chest in a single surge: he knew then that they were not his friends but had turned against him, and the knowledge left him hollow and dry inside, like the locust’s shell” (Silko 225). Not only has Tayo believed the lie about the whites, now he comes to find out all of his friends have turned on him.

Bird also shows a bit of betrayal by her family. She had always felt like she was “stealing” the language of her people. For example, her mother, “she spoke Indian around me only when she wanted to exclude me” (Bird 1). Also, at family gatherings, Bird would have no idea what her aunts and uncles were talking about because she had a lack of understanding of the language. Her family’s actions made her believe that she was unworthy of her language. She admits, “It seems I have lived under the weight of meaninglessness, the nadir of making meaning, of finding a way in the only language I know to reconnect something, as if to somehow jar the language out of the illusion of its impotence. Auntie did this same sort of thing to Tayo, when she did not fully accept him because he was mixed-blood.

Staying true to the landscape, giving thanks to it, taking care of it, and sharing it; all these things are what keeps the Pueblo culture alive within its people. Tayo finally discovers this when he cut the wire that caged Josiah’s cattle. As he cut the fencing, he was also breaking free of “the lie” and of his insecurities. Finally, Tayo, cured from his ailments, sees the truth, that no matter what color skin, we are all equal within the land.

Works Cited:
Bird, Gloria. "Towards a Decolonization of the Mind and Text 1: Leslie Marmon Silko's "Ceremony"" Wicazo Sa Review, Vol 9, No. 2 Autumn 1993. University of Minnesota Press. 04 Jan. 2009 .
Silko, Leslie Marmon. Ceremony (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition). New York: Penguin Books, 2006.