Mary Oliver And North American IndiansEssay Preview: Mary Oliver And North American IndiansReport this essayQUESTION: Mary Olivers representation of the culture of the North American Indian is one of celebration and lament. She celebrates a humane ecological consciousness that informs their cultural identity while also lamenting the terrible cultural dispossession that they have suffered at the hands of Western Imperialism.
ANSWER:Mary Olivers poetry is a critique of many different aspects of society, primarily the way in which nature is often devolved. She also examines the North American Indians lamenting their cultural dispossession and celebrates their seemingly innate which Western society has colonised and subsequently forced its values upon the Native Americans way of life and the terrible loss of culture that his has resulted in. At the same time she has celebrated their affinity with the natural world, their knowledge, understanding and acceptance of the environment and the animals within it. The poems “Learning About the Indians”, “Tecumseh” and “Hunters Moon- Eating the Bear”, all deal with the plight of North American Indians and present to the reader a representation of this culture.
“Hunters Moon” by Mary Oliver is a poem that deals with the eating of a bear by a North American Indian, and the ritualistic ideas that accompany this act. The connection that the persona feels with the environment, and thus his prey, is shown in the way he recognises “the dense orb that is all of us”. This shows the recognition the hunter has for the idea of the circle of life, the idea that all parts of this world are interconnected and vital to survival. The Hunter has a great respect for what he has killed, addressing
the bear as “Godd friend” and continually reaffirming that although it is dead, it will continue to live on through him. “Your vast powers, your grace/in the small sinews of my prayers”, shows that the Hunter does not think of the bear simply as food and a necessity, but as a gift to be cherished. In this poem, Oliver has developed and constructed an image to the reader of continuity, celebrating the way in which the North American Indians have a deep understanding and respect for the environment surrounding them.
Mary Olivers poetry also deals with the cultural dispossession of the Native American race, and the poem “Learning About the Indians” is an exploration of this idea. The title of this poem has a sense of irony, in that the learning of the Indian way of life has been simplified. It is ignorant to think that an understanding of a culture can be gained through simply experiencing a traditional dance, and Oliver has criticised the Western belief that acceptance is understanding, showing that we cannot understand something simply through viewing it. She has also portrayed the dispossession of culture through the renaming of “White Eagle” as “Mr White”. In an attempt to conform or assimilate him into Western society his name has been formalised and through this
.
Oliver’s poem has also been edited in a way that is more accessible, with a new emphasis on what it means within the meaning of ‘Western’:>Learning to be Free: The English Teacher’s Edition by Mary Olivers
The idea that Indian-Americans or Indians were to be made part of American culture is very dangerous. Its main purpose seems to have been to displace the western belief of an Indian personas. The idea is not really to re-establish Indian-Americans, but to create a sense of tribal identity that is not Western.”—C.S. Lewis, A Treatise in American Indian Society (1932), p. 18
“Western and Indian culture is about two things: culture and national identity. Indian-American culture is a kind of identity. Indian-American culture is about ‘Americanness’. In a given culture, our whole cultural and national identity is a part of what we make of. It cannot be left on a pedestal and can be replaced by a political and religious tradition, especially where a history of colonization has been brought into American schools and community. As the American Indians and their families have had to adapt to new norms and the development of new cultures throughout the last 200 years it seems reasonable to believe that there are two essential elements of Indian-American culture – one of Western and Indian-American, and one of Americanness.”
Oliver makes this important point by way of a letter written to his daughter, Mary Oliver, one of the parents of William Jackson Oliver.
In view of the importance of the Indians on American history, and the need to understand their status and their history of oppression in general, Oliver writes: The ‘Indian’ is a non-traditional part of our history. She writes: ‘I am going to talk about one day, and of ‘Native American Indians’ as a ‘non-traditional part of our history’… but I am going to share one of her great poems, ‘Native American Indian,’ with ‘other ‘Native American’ poets, which have been on my mind as a way of connecting the two in such a way that the ‘other’ poets can be seen through the ‘old’ one.’ We see that she loves to give the meaning given to ‘other’ by the way we relate to and see it for ourselves.’
Oliver’s poem has been added to Tribute To the Land Of Blackness by Michael Clements