Self, Nature, And The Contemporary Native American Autobiography

Native American wisdom contains profound ecological perceptions upon the physical environment which the Native American consider themselves as part of. Holding deep reverence for the land and the various species, they emphasize a balanced and harmonious relationship between human beings and the natural world. Contemporary Native American writers like N. Scott Momaday and Leslie Marmon Silko have not only nourished themselves with these cultural heritages but also exposed themselves to the Euro-American literary traditions. Their autobiographical works, therefore, not only incorporate the American Indian ecological wisdom but also develop the authors' own thinking and pondering of the environmental condition and deterioration in particular.This dissertation traces the history of Native American autobiography from the eighteenth century to the early half of the twentieth century and explores the shared attributes as well as the diversified features of these texts. The ensuing chapter is dedicated to the academic study of Native American autobiography, examining and commenting the critical efforts of Arnold Krupat, H. David Bramble III, and Hertha Dawn Wong. After a discussion of the pros and cons of these criticisms, this piece of work provides ecocriticism as its theoretical approach and a comparison between Native American aesthetics and ecocritical ideas. Following the theory, a deep ecological reading of The Way to Rainy Mountain and an ecofeminist reading of Storyteller are conducted in an effort to probe the ecological characteristics of the two autobiographies. A conclusion is eventually drawn to demonstrate that Momaday and Silko through The Way to Rainy Mountain and Storyteller elaborate and develop the Native American wisdom with regard to self, nature, and autobiography while taking a further step in the historical transformation of Native American autobiography in the contemporary era.