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Silence, Absence, And Mystery In Linda Hogan's Mean Spirit, Solar Storms, And PowerStorms, And Powe

University of Central Florida

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Electronic Theses and Dissertations

2006

Silence, Absence, And Mystery In Linda Hogan's Mean Spirit, Solar

Storms, And Power

Kathryn Erickson

University of Central Florida, ksnow17777@gmail.com

Part of the American Literature Commons

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STARS Citation

Erickson, Kathryn, "Silence, Absence, And Mystery In Linda Hogan's Mean Spirit, Solar Storms, And Power"

(2006). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 893.

https://stars.library.ucf.edu/etd/893

SILENCE, ABSENCE, AND MYSTERY IN LINDA HOGAN'S MEAN SPIRIT, SOLAR

STORMS, AND POWER

KATHRYN E. ERICKSON

B.A. Rollins College, 2003

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements

for the degree of Master of Arts

in the Department of English

in the College of Arts and Humanities

at the University of Central Florida

Orlando, Florida

Spring Term

2006

ABSTRACT

In Mean Spirit, Solar Storms, and Power, Linda Hogan uses the devices of silence,

absence, and mystery to articulate the oppression and marginalization of Native Americans.

Specifically, because of the environmental crises that produce conflict in each novel, the project

benefits from ecocriticism, ecofeminism, and ecopsychology. Also, because of various

interpretations that open up when silence is examined, theories of deconstruction strengthen the

thesis. Ultimately, Hogan's characters move from silence as a form of tyranny to silence as a

form of reconnection with tribal ways. As the characters discover pathways to native traditions,

they also discover spiritual connections with the biosphere. The movement from silence as a

form of tyranny to silence as healing to silence as a means of reconnection with tribal traditions

and kinship with the environment ensures the natives' healing and survival.

The Introduction discusses the overview of the project, illustrates my thesis regarding

Hogan's use of silence, absence, and mystery, and outlines my critical methodology. In the

methodology chapter, I detail specific references to ecocritical, ecofeminist, ecopsychological,

and deconstructive texts that I use to analyze Hogan's novels. Beginning with Chapter Two, I

discuss Mean Spirit, which is based on a true story involving the murders of Osage people during

the 1920s in Oklahoma. In Chapter Three, I examine Solar Storms and track Hogan's use of

silence, absence, and mystery in the story of a teenage girl who returns to her birthplace and

reconnects with her tribe and the wild lands surrounding her home. Chapter Four features my

close reading of Power, a coming-of-age story blended with eocological and ethical conflicts

taking place in rural Florida. Finally, Chapter Five concludes the thesis and reasserts my

argument that Hogan's use of silence, absence, and mystery illuminates the conflicts in her

characters' lives and ultimately serves to clear a space for healing and survival.

iii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

First, I want to thank my husband Todd for his patience and understanding throughout

this project. Also, I wish to acknowledge Jen Snow, Carol Michaelsen, Kate Kimbro, and Linda

Hargreaves for their support and encouragement. Finally, I am grateful to my thesis advisor Dr.

Murphy for his guidance and patience throughout the entire process and Dr. Rodríguez Milanés

and Dr. Meehan for their encouragement and wisdom.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION............................................................................................. 1

CHAPTER TWO: METHODOLOGY ......................................................................................... 10

CHAPTER THREE: THE SILENCE OF MEAN SPIRIT ........................................................... 17

CHAPTER FOUR: A JOURNEY INTO SOLAR STORMS ......................................................... 33

CHAPTER FIVE: LINDA HOGAN'S POWER AND THE MAKAH WHALE HUNT CRISIS 49

CHAPTER SIX: CONCLUSION ................................................................................................. 64

LIST OF REFERENCES.............................................................................................................. 70

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION

Linda Hogan, a poet, novelist, and environmental activist, is also a border-crosser. As

Greta Gaard contends, “ecofeminist scholars will need to confront the problem of cross-cultural

ecofeminist ethics and develop a process for determining the applications and limitations of

ecofeminist analyses across the boundaries of culture” (“Strategies for a Cross-Cultural

Ecofeminist Ethics” 93). Hogan's texts cross borders, not only between cultures, but between

non-humans and humans. Boundaries are no obstacle for Hogan. In her novels Mean Spirit,

Solar Storms, and Power, Hogan creates worlds of open dialogue between the non-fictional and

fictional, Native Americans and those of the dominant white culture, and non-humans and

humans. Because I use a variety of ecocritical approaches in analyzing her novels, I seek to add

depth and dimension to the available scholarship on Hogan’s writings. Specifically, I address

silence, absence, and mystery in Hogan’s novels, and I open up discourse regarding the multiple

ways in which she reveals hidden worlds.

Within her stories, Hogan expresses the pain caused by the oppression of Native

Americans as well as of non-human species. By poetically rendering silence, absence, and

mystery in her prose, Hogan illuminates whole spheres of being that cannot be revealed by words

alone. Between the lines and in the margins of her work lie the unarticulated expressions of

characters who have been silenced by the dominant culture. In addition, these characters silence

themselves, as in the case of the Osage tribe in Mean Spirit. Knowing that white people are

killing members of their tribe, the Osage keep quiet in order to survive, which adds to the

realization of how far into the human psyche self-censorship can reach.

From my readings of Mean Spirit, Solar Storms, and Power, I observe that Hogan uses

silence, absence, and mystery in multiple ways. These ways, when viewed through ecocritical,

ecofeminist, and ecopsychological lenses, create varying reflections of interpretation. Different

reflections of interpretation result from different objects of study within ecocritical theories. For

example, while ecocritical studies focus on the relationship of humans and their environment,

ecofeminist studies focus on women, their experiences of oppression, and their interactions with

the environment. In ecopsychological theories, different interpretations arise due to the focus on

the thoughts and behaviors of individuals from an environmental perspective.

Profound changes in the environment and their effects on Hogan's characters drive the

action in her novels. Hogan uses silence in order to articulate the movement of oppression,

resistance, and healing in her texts. Because of my focus on silence and its effects, I use Jacques

Derrida’s theory of deconstruction to further articulate the connection between the words

themselves and what they may signify. For example, the word "silence," in its most basic

meaning, denotes a lack of sound. Yet, the lack of sound does not begin to scratch the surface of

the power silence can wield. In Hogan's novels, silence as repression by white power changes

into silence as self-censorship, silence as survival through evasion, and silence as therapeutic

healing and growth. Hogan's use of silence creates a web of referents, forming connections

within and outside of each novel. In turn, the connections create multiple referents, adding to the

complexity of Hogan’s work.

In addition to opening possibilities of meaning when confronting silence, I also use

Derrida’s inversion of hierarchies to assist in my reading of Hogan's novels. The importance of

the power of silence in Native American culture as well as in the survival of non-humans bears

examination. In a world order that seems bent on oppressing and demonizing the Other, the use

of silence in Hogan's work as a means of communication can provide insight into many areas of

thought. For example, from the outside looking in, the silence of the Osage in Mean Spirit may

seem like the defeated response of a vanquished people. Yet, no one can view Belle Graycloud

or Michael Horse as defeated. In Hogan's novel, silence plays a powerful role in the survival of

Native Americans. The untold story, the story of oppressed peoples, finds a voice in Mean Spirit,

Solar Storms, and Power; additionally, the story finds a voice through Hogan's poetically skillful

use of silence.

Because of the ecocritical and ecofeminist approaches in my thesis, Chapter Two is

devoted to methodology. I discuss relevant passages from the works of Patrick D. Murphy.

Specifically, Murphy’s contention that “multivocality, a pluralistic model for analyzing or

attacking the problem of environmental crisis in the world” (“Ecofeminism in Literary Studies”

39) fits nicely with my observation that Hogan includes voices that have been silenced

historically. Additionally, Lawrence Buell, who claims “aestheticism produces environmental

bonding” (“Representing the Environment” 180), further illuminates my project. Hogan’s

luminous prose presents the concerns of the environment as indelibly bonded with human

concerns.

In addition to ecocritical theory, I discuss ecofeminist approaches to Hogan’s text. Greta

Gaard’s assertion that Hogan is truly a border-crosser in ecofeminist terms becomes evident

when we follow Hogan’s involvement during the Makah whale hunt crisis in 1996. The tribe’s

petition to resume the traditional whale hunt started a firestorm of protest from animal rights

groups, environmental groups, and antiracist whites. The disturbing silence from feminist groups

during the controversy created a space that needed to be filled. Into the silence walked Linda

Hogan, “translating the ethical voices and beliefs of each so that they can be heard by the other”

(Gaard, “Tools” 16).

In my paper, I feature prominent ecofeminists such as Joni Adamson, whose theories

prove helpful in the discussion of Hogan’s non-dogmatic method of presenting the sometimes

problematic intersection of nature and culture. Hogan focuses on a holistic knowledge of cultural

and environmental conflicts rather than a judgmental mindset. As Adamson states in American

Indian Literature, Environmental Justice, and Ecocriticism: The Middle Place, there is a “middle

place that encompasses both nature and culture” (88). The middle place, therefore, stresses

knowledge and understanding rather than a right/wrong dichotomy. In Hogan’s writing, because

she refuses “to grant the reader a simple dichotomy of innocent and good versus evil and

corrupt,” she opens up a space for diversity “of forms of resistance” (Murphy 184).

Additionally, I include observations from the writings of Andy Fisher, who is the author

of Radical Ecopsychology: Psychology in the Service of Life. He provides insights regarding the

connection between ecological crises and the human psyche. Also, excerpts from Eugene Victor

Walter’s work serve to articulate my observation regarding the effects of the environment on

Hogan’s characters. In Placeways: A Theory of the Human Environment, Walter asserts that

“[a]ncient people responded to the feeling and meaning of rocks, trees, and contours of the

ground. They used natural features of the landscape to cultivate the experience of an independent

spiritual energy acting on human feelings” (70). Expressing the power of the landscape on

spiritual energy, Hogan’s characters in Mean Spirit, Solar Storms, and Power return to traditional

tribal ways in order to reconnect with their spiritual lives.

Finally, because of my close reading of silence, absence, and mystery, I feature excerpts

from Derrida’s Of Grammatology to further discern Hogan’s use of silence and its effects,

especially in the depictions of Native American mythologies. Because Derrida questions the

superiority of one term over another in philosophical oppositions, I follow his theory of

deconstruction in order to question sound/silence, presence/absence, and truth/non-truth

hierarchies. Because of the space opened up by deconstruction, I reveal different dimensions in

Hogan’s characters in relation to native mythologies.

Beginning with Chapter Three, the focus shifts to the text of Mean Spirit. Using an

ecocritical methodology, I examine the use of silence as a weapon against the Oklahoma Osage

Indians, who have been victimized by the deadly business practices of local land owners and city

officials. The federal government has also victimized the Osage, and the resulting oppressive

silence takes on huge implications. Silence as a form of oppression manifests itself in fear; the

Osage fear for their lives, so they initially remain silent and withhold their knowledge of the

murders in order to survive.

Not only the Native Americans, but the land itself bears the scars of oil barons who put

profits ahead of lives. In order to heal and bring a sense of justice and identity to the Osage, the

characters in Mean Spirit return to the ways of their ancestors. The ancestors' ways center on a

strong connection with the biosphere. In addition, many of the connections to the Osage

traditions involve silence as a healing force. For example, in Mean Spirit, the Hill People act as

silent, powerful sentries, protecting Osage landowners and bringing them back into the fold. The

Hill People act as catalysts for the Osage characters' reconnection with ancient traditions.

Reconnection with ancient traditions in Hogan's novels necessarily involves reconnection with

the environment. As Murphy contends, “[f]rom the lessons of the Hill people, from the

knowledge of the keepers of the fire, from the shamans, and from their own family histories, the

survivors regain their sense of right relationship to the land, which is the basis for their identity

as a people” (Farther Afield 183).

Belle Graycloud, the matriarch of the family, Grace Blanket, Michael Horse, and their

extended families bear the brunt of despicable and corrupt business practices perpetrated by a

murderous group of local officials. Because Mean Spirit so closely follows the true story of the

Osage murders-for-oil in 1920s Oklahoma, I feature the work of journalist Dennis McAuliffe Jr.

In addition, passages from The Dawes Act and the Allotment of Indian Lands, and Reconfiguring

the Reservation shed historical light on this shameful part of our nation’s past. In Mean Spirit, a

novel of fiction, the pages resonate with historical relevance:

The guards knew the situation could explode at any time, but the Indians

knew, from history itself, that it was a smart thing to keep silent on the

affairs and regulations of Washington, to be still and as invisible as

possible. They might be cheated, but they still had life, and until only

recently, even that was not guaranteed under the American laws, so they

remained trapped, silent, and wary. (63)

From the silence of characters who are able to speak, but cannot or will not, to the

absence of evidence regarding additional crimes against the Osage to the mystery of who

commits the murders, Mean Spirit traces the effects of oppression and marginalization in the

characters’ lives. Additionally, because the native survivors eventually oppose local authorities,

resistance plays a crucial role in the novel. To strengthen my thesis, I discuss relevant points by

Adamson concerning Native American resistance. The effects of silence, both oppressive and

liberating, inform the dynamics of Hogan's imagery and illuminate the arc of Native American

resistance in Mean Spirit.

In Chapter Four, I examine Solar Storms. Partially based on the true story involving the

massive James Bay Hydroelectric Project, Solar Storms features a teenage girl named Angel as

narrator. As the construction of the James Bay project got underway in the 1970s, the building of

dams affected huge tracts of fragile ecosystems. Additionally, the project negatively affected

Native American tribes in the area (Tanner 138). Hogan again connects silence, absence, and

mystery with native and environmental concerns. When Angel returns to her birthplace in the

fictional community of Adam’s Rib, she focuses on the absence of sacred ties to the land and

animals, an absence resulting in destruction and desecration of the environment and the spirit of

the people who have close ties to the natural world.

Longing to find her place in the world, Angel begins her trek to the land of her ancestors

in defensive silence, and when she arrives, she observes her relatives’ ways and listens to their

stories. Consequently, her silence disperses and blends with the silence of her family, who

initially protect Angel from learning about the cause of her scarred face. For Angel and her

family, life in the harsh boundary lands between Canada and the United States crystallizes into a

tale of mystery, beauty, redemption, and healing. Ultimately, as with the characters in Mean

Spirit and Power, Angel turns toward ancient tribal traditions and away from the modern world.

She reflects on the power of silence and ancient ways as she listens to stories told by the elders:

From what little I understood of the language, they talked about the time

when everything was still alive. That’s what they remembered and missed.

It was what all the old people longed for again, the time when people

could merge with a cloud and help it rain, could become trees, one with

bark, root, and leaf. People were more silent in those days. They listened.

They heard. (203)

The above passage illustrates the way in which Hogan features silence as listening. The

silence of listening, rather than representing a passive activity, denotes a type of strength that

centers on kinship between humans and non-humans. Ultimately, this kinship promotes strength

and healing during Angel's reconnection with tribal traditions. Again, the reconnection with

tribal traditions involves a reconnection with the biosphere, and silence plays a powerful role in

intertribal and interbiospherical relationships.

Moving from the icy landscape of Solar Storms, I focus on Power, which is set in rural

Florida. Chapter Five of my paper centers on the tale of Omishto, a young Native American girl

living in Florida. Hogan’s novel suggests that a silent power resides in those who have nearly

been marginalized out of existence. A young member of a fictional Native American tribe in

Florida, Omishto must not only face the problems she encounters as an adolescent but must also

face a life-changing conflict of ethics when her mentor, Ama, kills a Florida panther. As a

member of the Panther clan of the Taiga tribe, Omishto must cross borders between the tribe and

the dominant white culture. As she crosses borders, Omishto lives in a world of thought, using

silence as a means of survival and a form of power.

The aura of mystery surrounding the text is directly related to the power of silence in its

many manifestations. More than any other Hogan novel, Power speaks volumes about what is

absent and what is not said, and it allows for the exploration of spaces between worlds. Real

power resides in life that has been torn away, pushed back, encroached upon, and marginalized.

Hogan’s text negotiates a space for dialogue between animal and native worlds and a culture that

appears bent on oppressing, demonizing, and marginalizing the Other.

Because Omishto watches Ama defy tradition and go against both her own tribe and the

larger culture when she kills the panther, the young girl must occupy the space between two

worlds: the traditional Taiga world and the dominant white culture. In order to shed light on the

ethical dilemma Omishto and the tribe face, I draw parallels between Hogan’s novel and her real-

life involvement in the Makah whale hunt controversy. Critical analyses by Greta Gaard and

Brenda Peterson provide insight into the Makah crisis and enrich my examination of Hogan’s

text. Gaard and Peterson closely follow Hogan's activism during the Makah controversy. They

reveal her holistic approach to the ethical problems confronting the tribe and the environmental

activists who oppose the hunt. Her remarkable ability to listen to all sides of the conflict without

passing judgment on anyone parallels Omishto's contention that "both sides are wrong, but both

sides, also, are right" (138).

In Chapter Six, I conclude by reasserting my claim that Hogan uses silence, absence, and

mystery to articulate the effects of oppression on Native Americans and non-humans. From the

fields of Oklahoma to the icy borders of Canada and the United States to the swamplands of

Florida, Hogan uses her rhythmic, poetic prose to illuminate a world that is threatened with

destruction. In the places she writes about, the characters’ stories work to reveal the ways in

which silence conceals and heals at the same time. As Lawrence Buell contends, “Every place

signifies; every place, every creature has a story connected with it that forms a web of

significance (always in process, not a constant) within which human thought assumes form and

meaning” (287). In each of Hogan’s novels, the story becomes a conduit through which

characters and readers cross boundaries to awareness and understanding of many of the most

important issues of our time.

CHAPTER TWO: METHODOLOGY

Because of the various ways in which Hogan uses silence to open up worlds of

interpretation in her writing, I apply a four-fold critical method to Mean Spirit, Solar Storms, and

Power. These critical approaches will help to shed light on my assertion that Hogan uses silence,

absence, and mystery to cross borders between cultures and worlds of meaning. Specifically,

because of the environmental crises that produce conflicts in each novel, my project benefits

from ecocriticism, ecofeminism, and ecopsychology. Furthermore, the effects of silence,

absence, and mystery on the characters, who suffer from the environmental crises upon which

the novels are structured, warrant examination through various ecocritical lenses. Additionally,

because of the interpretations that open up when silence is examined, the use of deconstruction

strengthens my argument.

First of all, I perform ecocritical readings of the novels in order to situate my argument

within the issues of cultural and environmental concerns. Hogan’s use of landscape and animal

imagery, juxtaposed with silence, poetically informs the novels and brings them to the forefront

of crucial ecological discourses. Additionally, her interweaving of silence, absence, and mystery

within the web of her characters’ thoughts and actions illuminates the far-reaching effects of

oppression on human and non-humans. The ecocritical approach of my thesis is worthwhile

because, as Patrick D. Murphy contends, “cultural identity and environmental identity are one

and the same” (Farther Afield 183). Paramount, therefore, to an understanding of the effects of

cultural and environmental oppression, an ecocritical reading articulates the importance of

relationships between humans, non-humans, and their surroundings. Ecocriticism calls for a

"dialogical orientation toward the human-nonhuman interanimation of both the human psyche

and inhabited space" (Murphy 183).

In applying the ecofeminist approaches of critics such as Greta Gaard and Joni Adamson,

it is my aim to examine the relationships between Hogan’s female characters and the non-human

and human members of the communities in which they live. For Gaard, ethical questions

surrounding feminist tenets and Native American cultural concerns are especially compelling.

Linking these ethical questions to Hogan’s characters as they move through their quests to cross

borders between indigenous communities and the larger culture, as well as fostering an

understanding of the concerns of each of these often opposing groups, Gaard’s balanced

evaluation of ethical ecocritical approaches serves to further my discussion.

Throughout Hogan’s non-didactic method of presenting possible solutions to conflicts

within native, non-native, and non-human worlds, there is a movement toward “a middle place”

(Adamson 88). This middle place focuses on knowledge and understanding rather than on a

judgmental mindset. Adamson offers insight into the middle place of ecofeminism, especially in

Native American literature. In my study of Native American concerns within Hogan’s texts, the

role and importance of silence, absence, and mystery opens a space for discussions of

oppression, discovery, and ultimately, healing. In Mean Spirit, for example, the silence imposed

on characters who have either witnessed murders or have knowledge of them goes through a

metamorphosis. From a destructive force to one that fosters wisdom, the silence Hogan writes

about in Mean Spirit richly engenders a continuing life for the Osage who pull up stakes and

leave the land where so much pain has changed their lives forever. As Adamson notes, “Once

indigenous people were removed, governmental and corporate agencies could represent the

region as a blank spot on a map, a sacrifice zone, a target” (American Indian Literature 16).

In Mean Spirit, the sacrifice includes the murders of natives, and the silence imposed on

native characters who have either witnessed murders or have knowledge of them changes from

the silence of oppression and self-censorship to the silence born of healing and a return to native

traditions. Tracking the metamorphosis includes an ecocritical approach based on historical

information taken from texts by Dennis McAuliffe Jr., Emily Greenwald, and D.S. Otis.

For Mean Spirit’s matriarchal Belle Graycloud and her family, the experiences they

suffer through and survive attest to the strength of a people who listen to the landscape and

animals they live amongst. In turn, the non-human members of the community light pathways to

ancient beliefs and myths which remain the life blood of the Osage throughout the novel.

For the Osage in Mean Spirit, as well as the intertribal people of Adam’s Rib in Solar

Storms, and the fictional Taiga tribe in Power, the old ways serve as a conduit of wisdom and

healing. When the characters of these novels are prevented from relating with the environment in

ways that have served them well in the past, they exhibit varying degrees of distress and conflict.

My thesis investigates the characters’ psychological state as directly affected by the

environmental crises present in the novels. The goal, then, of examining silence, absence, and

mystery in the characters’ lives as they change and adapt benefits from the ecopsychological

theories found in Eugene Victor Walters’s and Andy Fisher’s work. Examining Walters’s theory

of human and non-human interactions and the potent spiritual energy that results, I hope to

further my contention that Hogan’s depiction of silence, absence, and mystery articulates the

power of unseen worlds. These unseen worlds connect in a spiritual way with people who use

their power and energy to find strength and healing from nature as they follow ancient tribal

ways. To further articulate my contention that powerful spiritual energies strengthen human and

non-human bonds, I turn to Walter’s theory of place energy. Walters explains place energy and

hidden meanings in Placeways: A Theory of the Human Environment:

The energy of a place is not to be grasped in the same way we understand

the mechanical energy of an industrial city. The two energies belong to

different orders of intelligibility. Physical energy means the capacity for

interaction with features that can be measured and expressed in

mathematics. . . . [The poetic] notion of energy is swollen with ambiguity, unlike

the scientific concept of physical energy, which is lean and precise. . . .

Certain words have hidden meanings that cannot be expressed

precisely but only sensed through image and metaphor. (127-28)

The metaphoric imagery to which Walters refers supports my position that Hogan

illuminates hidden worlds through her poetic use of silence. Also, Walters's theory of place

energy fits nicely with my observations regarding the effects of silence, absence, and mystery on

Hogan's characters when approached from an ecopsychological perspective.

In addition, Fisher’s ecopsychology provides additional insight into the harmful effects of

damaged environments on people who have traditionally lived in harmony with land and

animals. For example, the fictional Taiga people, featured in Power, live in the silent margins of

society, garnering from and giving their strength to the land and animals of rural Florida. Due to

the constant development of wild lands, the Taiga tribe is very nearly extinct, and so too, is the

Florida panther. The Florida panther’s numbers have dwindled to the point that scientists predict

the cat will be extinct in the near future (McMullen 380). When a species becomes extinct, a

void is created in the ecological balance. Hogan writes of balance, silence, emptiness, and space

throughout the novel, and the refrain of absence plays like a silent symphony. She writes that

"the cats can hide themselves, but you can feel them there. It's as if space has eyes and ears. It

watches with all its might" (58). An ecopsychological reading of Power, therefore, would

necessarily investigate the power of silence and absence.

Near the conclusion of Power, a passage that makes use of silence, absence, and mystery

describes the changes Omishto has gone through. She says “at the end of the road is a different

story” (231). Hogan makes a connection between the girl’s silence and Panther Woman’s

withholding of “magic words” (231). Omishto’s “end of the road” (231) becomes a new life with

the elders of the Taiga tribe, people who “remember the stories that are the force of living”

(231). Because of the centrality of native storytelling in the novels, my project benefits from

close reading of tribal myths across an ecocritical approach.

That Hogan is truly a border-crosser in ecofeminist concerns becomes evident when we

read about her involvement regarding the Makah whale hunt crisis in 1996. The tribe’s petition

to resume the traditional whale hunt created controversy within and outside of the native

community. Animal rights groups, environmental groups, and antiracist whites came to

Washington in order to protest the hunt. The conspicuous silence from ecofeminist communities

during the controversy created a need for further examination. Patiently listening to all sides of

the conflict, Hogan helped the opposing groups find common ground (Gaard, “Tools” 16).

Because of the silence from feminist groups during the whale hunt conflict and the poetically

rendered silence in Power, an examination of the relevance and effectiveness of the use of

silence in environmental fiction becomes necessary. In the search for ways to understand cultural

and historical differences, Hogan finds a “middle place” in order to hear all sides of the conflict,

listening to those who envision a resolution of what Adamson calls “interrelated social and

environmental problems” (American Indian Literature xvii).

In applying a close reading to Hogan’s use of silence in her novels, I turn to Jacques

Derrida and his method of deconstruction, particularly his assertion that “logocentrism is an

ethnographic metaphysics. It is related to the history of the West” (Of Grammatology 79).

Derrida’s assertion is especially helpful to my project of tying the power of silence to the

oppression of Native Americans and non-human species in the geographical areas featured in

Hogan’s novels. As Derrida contends, “It is less a question of confiding new writings to the

envelope of a book than of finally reading what wrote itself between the lines in the volumes”

(Of Grammatology 86). This “between the lines” to which Derrida refers is echoed in Hogan’s

observation regarding Solar Storms: “‘It’s a form of truth, not a story. It’s in some ways a

retelling of history. . . . It’s the story that’s been repressed’” (qtd. in Tarter 139). The silenced

voices to which Hogan refers represent the difference between a logocentric concept of action

and the inaction of an oppressed people's defensive withdrawl. In Hogan's texts, the logocentric

concept of action is rethought; inaction becomes the moment of most importance. Consequently,

Hogan retells history in her novels; she changes the archive and opens the story that Western

ethnocentrism has silenced.

The true story of the Osage murders influences the plot of Mean Spirit and reflects the

devastating result of Eurocentric ideologies at their worst. Additionally, the “massive James Bay

hydroelectric project and its influence on the bioregion in Solar Storms are important symbols of

the destructive force of Euroamerican culture. The project, its effects and the struggle against it

drive the plot after the first third of the novel” (Tarter 137). The destructive force of the

dominant culture to which Tarter refers tells the story of logocentrism and its silencing effects on

native cultures. The repressed stories of native peoples, silenced for so long, are found not only

in Hogan’s texts, but in the margins and between the lines. They are found in the poetic silences

she so beautifully conveys.

In my thesis, I use at least one of the four critical methods in each of my readings of

Hogan’s novels. These critical approaches illuminate my project of examining silence, absence,

and mystery in Hogan’s writings, connecting them to the environmental crises that inform her

texts. Contextually, the critical theories strengthen my observations linking the oppression of

non-humans and humans with silence and absence. Additionally, the theorists I draw from

further my discussion regarding Hogan’s border-crossing and her characters’ return to ancestral

ways--and ultimately--their healing and survival.

CHAPTER THREE: THE SILENCE OF MEAN SPIRIT

Linda Hogan’s novels feature silence, absence, and mystery as main components in the

narrative. The device of using silence as a means of communication and understanding within

the text serves as a motif in her novels. Hogan’s Mean Spirit, set in Oklahoma in 1922, and

based on a true story, tells the tale of a small group of Osage Indians and how they are deceived,

swindled, and murdered for their oil-rich lands. Silence born of oppression and self-censorship

settles on the landscape and natives like a shroud. Ultimately, however, silence opens up a space

for the characters' reconnection with tribal ways and serves as a conduit to healing. Within the

space of healing, silence also figures prominently in the kinship between humans and non-

humans. Hogan weaves silence with absence and mystery, crafting a work that moves from

oppression and genocide to courage, resistance, healing, and survival.

When the rich Indians living in Watona reconnect with the reclusive Hill People--a small

group of Osage who have renounced the materialistic ways of their urban counterparts--silence

takes on a new dimension. Ultimately, tribal ties between the native groups bring about the

silence of strength, self-preservation, and continuance.

Deception by those of the dominant culture permeates the Watona Indians' lives, and due

to a handful of greedy businessmen, even the Osage gravesites are robbed. Because of fear of

retribution, silence plays a huge role in the Native Americans’ characters’ lives. Silence begins

on the first page of the novel, in the description of a deceptively calm scene:

What a silent bedchamber the world was, just before morning when even the

locusts were still. In that darkness, the white beds were ghostly. They rose up

from the black rolling hills and farmlands. Here, a lonely bed sat next to a barbed

wire fence, and there, beneath the protection of an oak tree, a man’s lantern

burned beside his sleeping form. (3)

In the above passage, Hogan sets up an interesting and revealing juxtaposition between

landscape, silence, and mystery. The beds are described as “ghostly” (Hogan 3), which gives

them an air of existing in a borderland between life and death. Ghosts are often depicted as

intruders in the world of the living; they seem to span a time and place that does not belong here

on earth, a realm that is out of place with “real time.” Of course, beds are ordinarily associated

with rooms inside a house, not outside in meadows and gardens. So, immediately, the words set

up a ghostly image of beds that are out of place, and by association, the people who occupy

them. The Indians in Mean Spirit seem out of place in white society, and they are seen as inferior

by the businessmen who use them.

Why the natives should seem out of place in the long-established Osage territories of

Oklahoma adds to the injustice of the situation. According to Dennis McAuliffe, author of

Bloodland: A Family Story of Oil, Greed and Murder on the Osage Reservation, “For centuries,

the Osage owned, occupied, and ruled over most of modern Missouri, the southern half of

Kansas and the northern halves of Arkansas and Oklahoma” (38). Additionally, for hundreds of

years the Osage sustained hunting camps in Oklahoma (Baird 13). Narrating an account of the

government’s shameful treatment of the Osage, McAuliffe reveals a story of long-standing greed

and corruption:

[S]hortly after the 1803 Louisiana Purchase, which included the Osage domain,

the Americans forced the Osage to embark on a “Trail of Treaties” that would

confine them to a 50-by-100 mile, 12 million-acre reservation in southern Kansas.

Over a seventeen-year period, the Osages ceded 98.6 million acres of their

ancestral land for $166,300, mostly in livestock and merchandise—for one-sixth

of a penny per acre. (38-39)

As Murphy points out, “In order to steal a people’s land or overthrow their form of

government, it must be established that they are not equally human” (97). Without much

difficulty, therefore, we can infer that the murders of the Osage occurred because the perpetrators

viewed the Indians as unequal. Furthermore, the use of land as a commodity distanced the Osage

from their tribal traditions and caused their urbanized counterparts to get caught up in the

dangerous silence of complicity, as depicted in the novel. Psychologically, the Osage in Mean

Spirit feel the oppression of self-imposed silence; yet they dare not speak:

The guards knew the situation could explode at any time, but the Indians knew,

from history itself, that it was a smart thing to keep silent on the affairs and

regulations of Washington, to be still and as invisible as possible. They might be

cheated, but they still had life, and until only recently, even that was not

guaranteed under the American laws, so they remained trapped, and wary.

(Hogan 63)

For the Osage, keeping silent often ensures survival. The withholding of information

regarding the murders in Mean Spirit temporarily ensures survival for some; but silence also

leads to dangerous marginalization. Although they live on lands that belonged to their ancestors

for hundreds of years, the people who are out of place in Oklahoma are the Osage, according to

those of the dominant white culture. Obviously, the Osage should be right at home on their

native lands, but they are not. In a revealing passage, Grace Blanket looks like “an apparition

from the past walking through the rooms she’d decorated with heavy, carved furniture and glass

chandeliers” (5). An apparition has a ghostly connotation, and like other Native American

characters in the novel, Grace occupies a borderland. Throughout Mean Spirit, this borderland

proves as uncomfortable as it is ghostly and mysterious, and it thrives on silence. Grace lives in a

house full of ornate European furniture, but she is a Hill Indian.

Many of the Hill Indians live in a settlement away from Watona. In the 1860s they had

decided to leave Watona and relocate to the hills outside of town in order to ensure continuance

of their peaceful way of life. The Hill People have “runners, a mystical group whose peculiar

running discipline and austere habits earned them a special place in both the human world and

the world of spirits” (Hogan 5). Resolved to live their lives without the dominant white culture’s

incursions, the Hill Indians represent traditional tribal ways in the novel. Their peaceful silence,

born of self-sufficiency and a firm grasp of their heritage, stands in contrast to the dark silence

that descends upon the natives who live in and around Watona. If silence begins the novel rather

peacefully, with the image of beds scattered across a ghostly countryside, after Grace Blanket is

murdered, the silence grows ominous:

No one felt safe, but there was nothing they could put a finger on, and that state of

being in the dark made the situation even worse. The family grew suspicious of

everyone. Even at home, there were new silences in the house. Floyd wired

outdoor lights at both the front and back doors, and when he sold his mason jars

full of Tulsa liquor, he paid keen attention to the careless words of drunks, to see

if any of them might let something slip about the murder. (44)

Oppression causes the natives' reluctance to speak. The silence that follows Grace’s

murder feeds the oppression of the Osage because they must not divulge their belief that

authorities have covered up the truth. For example, when Benoit, a French-Indian, calls for an

investigation into Grace’s death, he doesn’t dare bring up the black Buick at the murder scene,

for fear “he’d be in over his own head” (41). Benoit suspects Watona authorities know

something about the owner of the Buick, but he says nothing. Witnesses who saw the black

Buick at the crime scene area remain silent as well. Benoit wants to see justice come to light, but

he also wants to survive. Knowing that he might be killed for speaking out creates an unbearable

dilemma for him.

Benoit occupies a borderland between the native and white worlds. He also occupies the

potentially dangerous ground of resistance against the Watona authorities. When he eventually

confronts Sheriff Gold about Grace’s death, he puts himself in jeopardy: ‘“What about

witnesses?’” Benoit said, trying to remain calm. ‘Did you wonder about that?’ The Sheriff

answers: ‘No one’s come forward. If there were witnesses, they haven’t talked as of yet’” (41).

Trying and failing to start the wheels of justice spinning regarding Grace’s murder, Benoit walks

“away from the jail in frustration. Whoever shot Grace in the heart wanted it to look like a

suicide, even though suicide had never been a way out of life for Watona’s Indian people” (41).

Due to his outspoken nature, however, Benoit is eventually imprisoned on trumped-up charges.

Finally, in order to permanently silence Benoit, the whites murder him.

Silence engenders silence in Mean Spirit. When Grace’s corpse is stolen, absence is

added to silence and mystery. Ona, an old native woman who serves as a fire-keeper, notices

“the casket was upended on the ground where it had been opened and left vacant. . . . Nothing

remained, not the body of Grace, not the beads, gold, not even the medicines that had been

buried inside the coffin for the woman’s journey to the other world” (43). Because Ona decides

to keep quiet about what she sees, “and to put the coffin back in the ground herself, somehow,

and cover it up” (43), her silence becomes a conduit of oppression. Fearing the potentially deadly

consequences of informing the authorities, Ona retreats into self-imposed silence. Again, the

silence of self-censorship in Mean Spirit illustrates the depth of oppression within the characters'

lives.

The “ominous silence living in the shadows” of Belle’s house becomes deeper after

Grace’s murder. Yet, the silence of the runner standing outside Grace's home is a different kind

of silence: the runner “looked rooted to earth, and he stood like one of the Hill Indians, as if he’d

never lived among white people or their dry goods, or the cursed blessing of oil. His face was

smooth and calm” (30). Within the silence of the runner lies a mysterious strength that generates

a positive effect on the Osage. The runner doesn’t need to speak; his silence speaks for him. He

has power that doesn’t come from white culture. Now the effect of silence changes to a positive

link with tribal ways. Silence, which strongly informs the text, broadens our understanding of the

white culture’s oppression of the Osage. The silence that serves to oppress the natives becomes a

way to reconnect and strengthen tribal traditions. Even though, at “a distance, it was easy to fall

away from the old ways” (50), in Mean Spirit, the old ways become ways of survival in a world

turned treacherous and deadly.

Louise’s hesitation, when she bites her tongue and says nothing to her mother’s insistence

that her children stay under their family’s protection, illustrates yet another type of silence.

Louise knows she wants to “take her children and move at the first chance” (36), but she says

nothing to Belle. Louise’s fear regarding the law that forces all Hill children to attend a boarding

school in Custer adds to the depth of her silence. The forced assimilation of school children

fosters another type of silence: the deliberate silencing of a people’s native language. To

illustrate the oppression of forced assimilation, in The Dawes Act and the Allotment of Indian

Lands, by D.S. Otis, the commissioner of a so-called philanthropic group makes these

statements:

The Indian child must be taught many things which come to the white child,

because of environment, without the school-master’s aid. From the day

of its birth the child of civilized parents is constantly in contact with

civilized modes of life—of action, thought, speech, dress—and is surrounded by

a thousand beneficent influences that never operate upon the child of savage

parentage, who, in his birth-hour, is encompassed by a degrading atmosphere

of superstition and barbarism. Out from the conditions of his birth he must be led

in his early years into the environments of civilized domestic life. And he must

be thus led by the school teacher. (65)

No wonder Louise fears the school in Custer. Laws like the 1887 Dawes Act, which

disguised itself as a law ensuring the welfare of Native Americans, generated interest in “Indian

education on the part of philanthropic groups” (Otis 65). Education policies were initiated to

supposedly help Indians assimilate into the Euroamerican mainstream, but these policies had the

culturally damaging, negative effect of further dispossessing Native Americans (Greenwald 15).

The silencing effects of the dominant culture demonized native traditions. For many who had an

interest in seeing the assimilation of natives into the dominant culture take place, “this was the

most important means of destroying tribalism” (Otis 10).

In Mean Spirit, Louise knows that the white schooling of native children and the attempt

at full assimilation foster another type of silence; the repression of the natives’ cultural and

linguistic heritage. According to the law, “if the families resisted, the children would be made

wards of the state and removed permanently from their homes” (Hogan 36). In other Native

American tribes, “the authorities had hunted down hidden children and taken them, lifted them

up, screaming, from the ground, and carried them away from their families so that they would

learn the cultured, civilized ways of the Americans” (Hogan 36).

The wide-ranging effects of the Dawes Act served to further marginalize Native

Americans. Parceling out land to the Osage, then swindling them out of it again (which Mean

Spirit illustrates), can only be described as diabolical. What happened in the early 1920s in

Oklahoma comprises a 3,274-page FBI file entitled “Osage Indian Murders” (McAuliffe Jr. 123).

According to Dennis McAuliffe Jr., up to sixty wealthy Osages were murdered for money before

authorities finally got involved. The names of most of the murder victims do not appear in the

files, according to McAuliffe Jr. He cites newspaper reports about an Osage woman who was

hacked into small pieces by doctors at her autopsy in order to hide evidence that she was shot to

death; another “Osage woman’s grave is blown up” (123); a white rancher takes out an insurance

policy on an Osage man and then brags to the insurance company that he intends to have the man

killed. When the insurance company refuses to pay, the rancher sues (123). Local journalists

were ironically calling the crimes ‘“The Osage Reign of Terror’” (McAuliffe 124), as if the

natives themselves held responsibility for their own murders.

Within Louise’s silent terror regarding the events unfolding in Oklahoma, and within the

other natives’ fear and silence, the story that has been relegated to the margins of history comes

to light. For example, although Horse wants to “put together the broken edges of things” (39),

the ragged pieces of their lives seem beyond repair. Silencing themselves, the Osage want peace

and quiet so badly that they turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to the signs of truth that surface.

Grace’s murder reveals the end-result of corrupt practices by whites against the Osage. One of

the corrupt practices involves arranged marriages between Osage women and white men: a

“white man, when asked what he did for a living, said by way of an answer that he’d married an

Osage woman, and everyone who listened understood what that meant, that he didn’t work; he

lived off her money” (Hogan 34). White husbands inherited their Indian wives’ oil-rich lands

upon their deaths, and law-enforcement officers would make sure the murders went unsolved.

The Osages were so afraid for their lives they burned lights around the perimeters of their homes

all night (McAuliffe 124). In Mean Spirit, the fear of being killed manifests itself in silence.

At Grace’s home, a sense of darkness prevails. Her house feels “heavy and ghostly” (48),

and despite the rising temperatures outside, seems “cold as a cave, and silent” (48). Grace’s

house appears to have a kind of spirit. As ecopsychologist Eugene Victor Walter contends,

places have their own, individual dynamics, which grow “out of the biographies and local

histories, and the drama of dwelling together” (Placeways 9). Geographical and architectural

dynamics are, therefore, “intimately connected with the local imagination, with the spirit of the

place. I formulate these qualities as expressive space” (9). Grace’s house contains the sadness

and loneliness that she felt in her life. The coldness of atmosphere within the walls and the

sterility of the glass ornaments and heaviness of the European furniture attest to the out-of-place

feeling that haunts Grace from her existence in the borderland of the Indian and white worlds to

her ransacked gravesite. Although she has a smile for everyone, Grace turns away from her tribal

past, and tragedy follows her.

Other natives in Mean Spirit turn away from their tribal pasts. For example, Michael

Horse watches the Indian congregation from the back of a church in Watona: “Some of the

younger women had lightened their hair to a brassy orange with hydrogen peroxide. Some of

them wore makeup that was paler than their faces, imitating the white women’s pictures in

magazines, but Michael Horse wasn’t fooled; they were Indians” (12). Spending money wildly,

driving expensive cars, and filling their houses with ornate European furniture, the oil-rich Osage

turn their backs on their tribal heritage. The silencing of old ways comes back to haunt the

natives. One way that past traditions haunt the Osage community in comparison relative to the

dominant culture’s intrusions involves the natives’ reaction to the damage inflicted on the

environment.

An example of the hurt connected with the Osage and the land surrounding them is

evident near Grace’s house. A huge crater, created by a gas blowout, measures fifty by five

hundred feet, and it has dried up the water sources in the area and killed the trees and grasses that

once grew freely. Another field not far from the crater is pumped for oil night and day, and “the

bruised fields” are “noisy and dark” (54). Bleeding oil, the earth is scarred and littered with

pumps and drilling machinery. The oil drillers ‘“burn the poor birds right out of the sky’” (76),

as Belle Graycloud says.

Belle experiences another astonishing incident when she goes to town to run some

errands. Something “stopped her in her tracks, Belle stood dead still a moment, turned and

looked again at what she hoped was an error of vision. What met her eyes was a truck filled with

eagle carcasses. They were golden brown birds, with the blue-white membranes of death closed

over their eyes” (109-10). The sight of a hundred and seventeen dead eagles strikes Belle silent.

Several minutes pass within Belle's mute reaction. Then, she screams at the men driving the

truck filled with dead birds. By breaking her silence and exposing the senseless destruction of

life, Belle takes up the banner of what Adamson calls “an alternate vision of what might

constitute proper human/environment interrelations and practices” (American Indian Literature

174). By confronting those who perpetuate ideologies that situate non-humans as separate and

inferior to humans, Belle takes the first step in correcting these destructive belief systems. When

one of the men yells back ‘“They’re just birds’” (110), Belle’s anger grows, and she assaults the

men. She becomes the voice of the silenced eagles.

Addressing the silence of non-humans, Belle often leads the way to a means of

understanding and kinship. From a human/non-human interaction perspective, silence opens a

new world of communication. For example, when Belle stands up to defend the bats at Sorrow

Cave, her strength is manifested in silence:

But Belle pretended to hear nothing as she remained there protecting the double

world of bats with their whistling songs and their lives in the cool deep darkness,

the bats who were husbands to trees, the beautiful creatures who were hated by

those who lived in what they called the light." (279)

Belle's silence antagonizes the sheriff and his men. When the lawman claims that the bats

are "pests" that don't benefit humans in any way, Belle stands her ground by remaining silent

(279). She quietly represents the bats, who lack the means to speak in their own defense.

Here, silence in the novel has undergone a major change. From fear to courage, from

oppression to strength, silence is held by Belle in order to protect the bats and initialize a war of

sorts between her people and the law that has for so long dismissed the cultures of both humans

and animals. As Murphy argues, in conflicts of environmental and cultural ethics, "answerability

must necessarily involve both human and nonhuman actants, must necessarily involve other

entities that have their own unique once occurrent event of being, whether they enjoy volitional

behaviour or not” (“Grounding Anotherness” 2).

Forced from any sort of secure existence, the bats and Belle create a united front of

resistance, and they use silence as both weapon and shield. Within Sorrow Cave, the bats wait,

knowing from history’s ancient lessons that making their presence known to humans has almost

always been a deadly mistake. This time, however, Belle’s presence is needed at the mouth of

the cave. Hogan juxtaposes the silent atmosphere of the cave and Belle’s silent resistance, which

creates a dilemma for the sheriff and his men. The conflict becomes a major standoff as more

tribal people and Belle’s family and friends join her.

After the sheriff and his men give up and retreat, at least for the day, the resistance group

explores Sorrow Cave. Going deep within its many hidden passages, the group finds “paintings

of bats. Red bats. In a hallway there were blue fish, and more bats with red, opened wings, and

the paintings of black buffalo. It was a sacred world they entered and everyone became silent and

heard a distant dripping of water in the caveways, the echoing sounds, the breathing of earth”

(284). The paintings in Sorrow Cave represent what Derrida calls writing "between the lines" (Of

Grammatology 86). A part of history, the artwork deep within the cave tells a story that Western

texts have silenced and marginalized. Words are absent from the walls, but the paintings silently

reveal and change the archive of history nonetheless.

The scene changes from battleground to sacred place. The awareness generated at the

mouth of the cave and carried to the cool walls within symbolizes what is happening to many of

the Osage. Belle’s resistance at Sorrow Cave represents a larger movement of awareness within

her social circle.

One of the people in Belle’s social circle who visibly changes due to increasing

awareness of the destructive changes in his congregation and beyond is the Indian minister, Joe

Billy:

Joe Billy’s face was rubbed with red clay and yellow ochre, the elements of earth.

He wore a red scarf around his neck. His eyes were closed and he was praying,

but he was a different man than the one who wore the black suit on Sunday

mornings. And even his prayers were different, deeper somehow, more heartfelt,

more physical as if they came through the body and not just the mind. He

stretched wet buckskin across a small drum, and when he arranged the holy sage

all the talkers became silent. (73)

Joe Billy leaves his life as a Baptist preacher and returns to the traditional ways of his

people, visiting Sorrow Cave and waiting for a vision or revelation to come to him, a vision that

“could not be named or spoken” (212). Throughout Mean Spirit, the value of the unspoken

illustrates power in ways that reveal the limitation of words. Reverend Billy is more powerful

and sure of himself when he returns to traditional ways; his silent patience becomes a sign of

maturity and wisdom. His non-native wife, Martha, joins him in learning about tribal ways.

Eventually, she embraces Native American traditions and leaves her own culture behind. In

doing so, Martha takes up the cause of resistance with her Indian husband.

As Adamson asserts, “American Indian people have not given up their lands without a

fight. Taking up positions of resistance. . . they appeal to different concepts embedded in other

cultures, languages, and relationships to the land” (American Indian Literature 72). Resistance in

Mean Spirit takes the shape of silence against the dominant culture as well as silence within the

natives’ clearing of sacred spaces for animals and ancient traditions. The “echoing sounds, the

breathing of the earth” (284) cannot be heard unless we are silent long enough to enable us to

hear them. In this way, silence becomes a conduit to awareness and understanding. Another way

of looking at the connection to sacred spaces involves the respect for other cultures, including

non-human cultures: ‘“You know,’ Joe Billy said, stirring the fire, ‘One of the best things about

bats is that they are a race of people that stand in two worlds like we do. . . . And they live in

earth’s ancient places’” (Hogan 257).

Absence and mystery take center stage when Stacey Red Hawk, who crosses the

borderland between white and native cultures, tries to find people at the Hill settlement. Their

absence astonishes him. Red Hawk works in Washington, D.C. as an investigator. The mystery

surrounding the deaths of so many Indians in Oklahoma draws him into the investigation. The

effect on Red Hawk’s life is two-fold: he leads the inquiry into the murders, and he also returns

to native ways and traditions. Described as “a keeper of tradition, and a carrier of the sacred pipe

of his people” (50), Red Hawk looks for the Hill People, who may have the answers he seeks.

Discovering their absence, the mystery puzzles him and he “wondered if he had, as Levee

suggested, gone crazy. Or was it possible a whole people could vanish into blue air?” (303).

Because too many curious people were approaching the Hill settlement, the natives had to retreat

deeper into the wilderness. Their absence reveals the defensive tactics of silence and mystery.

We can infer from tactics such as these--learned across hundreds of years of genocide and

oppression--that Hogan’s use of the device of silence resonates with a long contextual history.

Addressing the tactic of opacity in oppressed cultures, Edouard Glissant notes that when

one culture has "evolved at the expense of the other, we can state that the only possible strategy

is to make them opaque to each other" (133). Opacity in the oppressed culture of which Glissant

writes in Caribbean Discourse has much in common with the natives' silent opacity in Mean

Spirit. The absence of transparency serves to protect the Osage from those of the dominant

culture who would harm—and in some cases--kill them. Silence, in turn, becomes a type of

opacity for those who have been silenced. In a way, the return of the silence of the oppressed

becomes a defensive weapon of survival.

Again, silence and absence play a major role in Mean Spirit when the courtroom scene

dissolves into mystery:

Between that new information, the fact that witnesses did not appear, and the

disturbing exodus of many of the Osage people the previous day, many of the

Indian people gave up on justice and went home. They dissolved into the town,

absorbed by the shadows and streets and the leaves and trunks of trees. They

might never [have] been solid, never have been really there.” (333)

The empty streets suggest an "absent presence like a word on the tip of your tongue or a

dream not quite remembered" (Jameson 135). As the Osage pull up stakes and leave town,

Michael Horse documents the shame of injustice that culminates in the heavy inertia at the

courthouse. During the courtroom scenes, many of the Hill People gradually stop attending. They

resent having to look at the defendant’s face. Only half of the subpoenaed witnesses show up,

and Red Hawk finds out that the original indictment is flawed, although no one informs the

public about the mix-up. Business as usual in law enforcement assures Horse that the Indians

will not find justice for what has been done to them. He writes, ‘“the land is ravaged and covered

with scars and so are the broken people. Those of us who still have an ounce of strength have

been losing it during these testimonies in the courthouse’” (341).

The absence of the Osage remains a silent testimony that speaks nonetheless. Their

absence tells of genocide, displacement, and injustice, the sad song of hundreds of years of

marginalization.

Because Hogan leaves the reader with an unresolved courtroom outcome, her novel’s

conclusion is open-ended. At the end of Mean Spirit, Moses and Belle leave their homes, looking

at a sky on fire with the destruction of burning buildings. The Osage move through the night,

carrying “generations along with them” (375). They also carry silence along with them, but this

time the silence fills the air with the knowledge that their lives will go on. Because the survivors

connect with “an older world, the silent places of the ancient ones” (284), they decide to move

away from the oilfields in order to continue their quest to live peacefully, embracing ancient

traditions. As Murphy contends, the survivors reconnect with the Hill People and rediscover their

relationship with the land, which serves as a key component of their tribal identity (Farther

Afield 183).

Ultimately, Hogan’s first novelistic attempt to address silence strongly relates to the

survival of native people. Silence as oppression, self-censorship, and opacity becomes silence as

a movement toward healing and survival. Within the context of healing, silence also figures

prominently in the relationship between humans and non-humans. The progress of Native

Americans toward hope and against terrible oppression and injustice informs Mean Spirit and

continues in Solar Storms.

CHAPTER FOUR: A JOURNEY INTO SOLAR STORMS

Like Mean Spirit, Hogan’s Solar Storms focuses on cultural and ecological conflicts

between natives and those of the dominant culture. Solar Storms, however, centers on the first-

person perspective of a teenage girl named Angela Jensen, also known as Angel Wing. Tracing

Angel’s journey back to her homeland and extended family, the story takes a familiar path in

Hogan’s fiction: a path forged from the silence of oppression and pain to the silence born of

inner strength that comes from a reconnection with the biosphere and native traditions. What

makes Angel’s journey difficult and life-changing also makes Solar Storms a unique novel in

terms of ecocritical and ecofeminist perspectives. An analysis of the mother-daughter

relationship reveals a de-romanticized view of maternal culture when juxtaposed with

environmental trauma. Angel's mother, Hannah, bears scars from past violence against her

people and her homeland. In Solar Storms, Hogan weaves silence created by repression of

trauma with silence as native resistance. Additionally, during Hannah's death scene, Hogan

presents silence as resolution.

Early in Solar Storms, Angel’s quiet behavior masks her painful introduction to life as an

abused child. As a result of abuse at the hands of her mother, Angel is removed from her

homeland and placed in a succession of foster homes. Returning to the fictional town of Adam’s

Rib, a small settlement located on the Great Lakes boundary land between the US and Canada,

Angel seeks to gain knowledge of her mother’s whereabouts. Sadly, she still bears the scars of

Hannah’s mistreatment. One of the mysteries of Solar Storms lies within the reason for Angel’s

abuse at the hands of her mother. Initially, the girl does not know why or how her face was

scarred. Angel, “full of words” (25) inside herself, lives in defensive silence behind a curtain of

long red hair which she uses to cover her scars. Living in “a room of fear, fear of everything—

silence, closeness, motionlessness” (26), Angel conveys a tough exterior in order to mask her

astonishing vulnerability. She feels “another room being built, but without knowing it, I was

entering silence more deeply than I had entered anything before” (27). Hogan conveys the power

of silence in Angel’s life, describing an almost palpable presence of pain and fear within the

soundless depths of the girl’s existence.

As she does in Mean Spirit, Hogan uses poetic imagery in Solar Storms to help shape the

text’s powerful depiction of the human connection with the environment. For example, Angel

quietly begins to “form a kind of knowing at Adam’s Rib” (54). She starts to see “how I am like

the night sky with its stars that fall through time and space and arrive here as wolves and fish and

people, all of us fed by them” (54). She thinks of “the dust of sun, the turning of creation taking

place” (54). Although she lives inside her own silence, Angel finds the strength to search for and

find the women who took care of her when her mother could not. Reconnecting with her tribe

serves to structure Angel’s ways of knowing more than all the years she spent going from one

foster home to the next. Looking back, she realizes she never got the answers she sought about

her scarred face. She recalls questioning one foster mother about her scars, only to be told she

fell.

Angel’s family members--Bush, Agnes, and Dora-Rouge--re-enter her life at a time when

she stands on the threshold of adulthood. The convergence of a coming-of-age story with a tale

of environmental destruction informs the narrative. Additionally, Solar Storms traces Angel’s

reunion with her mother, a meeting fraught with emotional pain that comes from the knowledge

that her mother has been physically and emotionally damaged beyond repair. The mother-

daughter conflict invites a close ecofeminist analysis because Hannah Wing’s emotional and

physical scars come from crimes committed against the natives as well as the lands in and around

Adam’s Rib.

The conflict between the dominant culture and the natives begins on a warm day when

two young men appear at Adam’s Rib and inform Angel and her family about a hydroelectric

corporation’s plans to build several dams in the area:

In the first flooding, the young man said, they’d killed many thousands of caribou

and flooded land the people lived on and revered. Agents of the government

insisted the people had no legal right to the land. No agreement had ever been

signed, he said, no compensation offered. Even if it had been offered, the people

would not have sold their lives. Not one of them. (57)

The stealing of lands occupied for several thousand years by Native Americans takes

center stage. The “Cree, Ashinabe, and various subarctic tribes—already displaced and

impoverished by the logging industry—fight to prevent construction of dams and reservoirs

threatening to flood their homelands” (Rainwater 97). By featuring the true story of the James

Bay Hydroelectric Project in her narrative, Hogan crosses the permeable boundary between

fiction and non-fiction. The building of hydroelectric structures marked a time when the

consequences of damming rivers and disrupting fragile ecosystems were seldom considered.

Throughout Hogan’s text, the threat of unnecessary disruption of ecosystems and the resulting

damage on non-human and human lives becomes apparent.

The notion that Native Americans “emphasize collective existence and psychic

connection” informs Solar Storms and structures the impetus of resistance against the dominant

culture (Rainwater 93). As Angel continues to inhabit her silent world, she discovers the tension

between her people and those of the dominant culture, a tension that threatens to silence not only

the natives but also the non-human lives that comprise the vast wilderness of the northern US/

Canada Boundary region. In other words, the damming and subsequent flooding of rivers not

only damages the non-human life in the area; it damages the link between non-humans and

humans, a link that the US government and many large corporations ignored in the past and,

unfortunately, still ignore today.

In order to articulate the strong connections between the biosphere and humans, Hogan

fills her text with poetic images of astonishing beauty:

We heard the low howl of a wolf, so low it could have been mistaken for the

wind. It lay down across the wet earth. Tulik’s dog answered, remembering the

wolf blood that still lived inside it, no matter how it had been bred out, no matter

how people wanted to make of the animals something they weren’t, as they’d

tried to do with the people, as they were doing with the land. And so the events

that followed were tribal cries, the old wailing come to new terms. (255)

Hogan’s depiction of the silencing of the wolves symbolizes the larger silencing of

animals, land, and people by intrusions of so-called progress. When she writes about the sound

of "the train from a long ways off" (255), and how the sound "drowned out the voices of the

wolves" (255), she brilliantly illustrates the approach of progress and its silencing effects on

non-human life. As an economic venture, the “massive James Bay hydroelectric project and its

influence on the bioregion in Solar Storms are important symbols of the destructive force of

Euroamerican culture. The project, its effects, and the struggle against it” compel the narrative

(Tarter 137). As Hogan insists, Solar Storms is ‘“a form of truth, not a story. It’s in some ways a

retelling of history. . . . It’s the story that’s been repressed’” (qtd. in Tarter 139).

Told through Angel’s eyes, the novel articulates her coming of age within the dynamics

of native culture and the conflicts surrounding the hydroelectric project. Angel lives within a

painful silence when she first comes to Adam’s Rib and stays with Bush, her step-grandmother.

Initially, she dislikes Bush and feels the woman’s silence is “unreachable” (75). Bush’s

connection with the land strikes Angel as mysterious and strange. Alternately resenting and

admiring Bush, Angel sees her as “a goddess with a beautiful song and Levi’s and graying hair”

(75). Angel watches her “at the misty edges of land and water” (75), where she becomes

“something else, something nearly invisible and silent” (75). Although Angel finds herself

attracted to the silence, it “nearly hurt” (75). Silence, for Angel, has come to mean pain, and she

reacts to it by feeling uncomfortable in the presence of a woman for whom silence has become a

way of life in an often hostile environment of ice and snow. Like her unfamiliarity with the

landscape of her birth, Angel’s uneasiness in the presence of Bush illustrates her initial feeling of

alienation upon her return to Adam’s Rib.

Silence and mystery combine in the character of Bush, providing a human connection to

the homeland from which Angel has been absent for most of her life. Like the Hill People in

Mean Spirit, Bush represents silence and mystery in the form of connections with native

traditions and the biosphere. Reconnecting with tribal traditions and mythologies, Bush passes

her knowledge to Angel. One of the Native American tales about which Angel learns centers on

Wolverine, a silent shape-shifter. Wolverine appears intermittently in the text and comes to

represent many ideas and conflicts. Bush tells Angel the story of two trappers who accuse each

other of stealing their catches:

“You know who it was? Who stole from the traps?” She looked at me.

I resented the quiz. “What’s your point?” I said.

“It was Wolverine; they do this.”

I looked at her. “What’s that? Wolverine?”

“That’s what everyone wants to know.” She laughed. Not a hostile laugh. An easy

one. (77)

Wolverine, although he never physically appears in Solar Storms, is a character

nonetheless. He represents an absence that is a presence, a dynamic about which Derrida writes

in Of Grammatology (154). Derrida calls writing "the disappearance of natural presence" (156).

Therefore, the inherent characteristic of writing, representing absence, pervades all texts and

ultimately causes deferral of meaning. Wolverine defers meaning because he represents different

things at different times to different people. Wolverine, as an absent presence, defers meaning as

a character; thus, a double deferral occurs when he appears and yet does not emerge per se.

When Hannah dies, Wolverine appears and yet doesn’t appear again:

Some people say Wolverine had things mixed up, too. At times it was said he was

a human returned to his animal shape. At other times, he was animal inhabiting a

strange, two-legged body, wearing human skin. Whichever he was, Wolverine

had come to despise humans and they didn’t feel so good about him either. But he

knew them, and he knew everything about them. That’s how he knew to steal the

flints and other things of value to human beings and to spoil the things they

needed to live by. I wondered if he was the one who stole my mother. (253)

When Hogan makes the connection between Wolverine and Hannah, she does so in order

to illustrate what happens when the non-human/human bond becomes corrupted. Alongside the

mystery of Wolverine stands the mystery of Hannah. Hogan never clarifies the origin of

Hannah’s strange, abusive behavior, but we can reasonably infer that her behavior has something

to do with the poisoning of the environment. Hannah’s people lived on Elk Island and ate the

carcasses of animals that had been poisoned by white settlers. The pores of Hannah’s skin exude

the smell of cyanide. When people disrespect the kinship between humans and animals,

“Wolverine takes away their luck in hunting” (82) and causes multiple problems to occur.

Unfortunately, natives who had nothing to do with the poisonings suffered. Angel learns that

there are “consequences to human sins: ‘Some say Wolverine is a human gone wild,’ Bush says.

‘That’s how it knows to hide out and escape capture. They know how to walk in the prints of

other animals, especially those of men, like a shadow following them”’ (84) In its absence that is

presence, Wolverine haunts the text, defers meaning, and shifts from animal to human and back

again. As Bush says, “‘That’s how Wolverine watches to see how humans treat the animals. And

you never know where Wolverine is”’ (84). Clearly, you never know who Wolverine is either.

Hogan’s connection of the mysterious Wolverine to the destruction of fragile ecosystems

culminates when Angel takes on the shape-shifter’s characteristics in an act of silent resistance.

She knows Wolverine wants “the people to leave” (322). Angel also wants the soldiers and

police who are trying to stop the natives from protesting the building of dams to leave, so she

steals away from the house in which she is temporarily staying. She pretends to be Wolverine so

she can travel unseen in the night: “Without words, I, like Wolverine, would tell the men to leave

our world. Without words, I, like Wolverine, would speak, would destroy their food” (322),

starve them out, and force them to leave. By having Angel take on the persona of Wolverine,

Hogan combines mystery with silence in an alchemy of Native mythology and environmental

activism. Angel takes canned food, eggs, and coffee away from the soldiers’ post. Ripping into

bags of flour, pouring bottled water on the mounds of sugar she spills on the floor, Angel departs

after ruining the food reserves, leaving behind “white footsteps, the path of a ghost” (323).

To defer meaning, Hogan sets Wolverine in motion, but only in the language and

thoughts of her characters. Again, Wolverine does not appear; we can only imagine what he

looks like and guess where and when he will arrive; yet, his absence/presence is powerful. As a

mythical animal, Wolverine both represents and opposes a Westernized, mistaken view of non-

humans that many Native Americans have rejected for a very long time:

Animal language—and animality in general—represents here the still living myth

of fixity, of symbolic incapacity, of nonsupplementarity. If we consider the

concept of animality not in its content of understanding or misunderstanding but

in its specific function, we shall see that it must locate a moment of life which

knows nothing of symbol, substitution, lack and supplementary addition, etc.—

everything, in fact, whose appearance and play I wish to describe here. A life that

has not yet broached the play of supplementarity and which at the same time has

not yet let itself be violated by it: a life without difference and without

articulation. (Of Grammatology 242)

So, the animal lives both inside and outside the play of language. With humor as well as

with a tinge of threat, Hogan lets Wolverine run across her pages like the mysterious loner he has

always been. Wolverine can’t be fixed, he can’t be caught, and he can’t even be described twice

in the same way. He, she, or it is the imaginative embodiment of the resistance of language to a

stable meaning. Wolverine’s ghostly presence shapes Solar Storms when disrespect of the

biosphere occurs. That Angel’s footsteps are etched in real flour when she runs from the

provisions building only adds to Wolverine’s legend and reinforces his textual presence. The

dominant culture’s ethnocentrism and logocentrism only serve to make Wolverine more

powerful, and the defining moment for Angel—the moment she stops letting other people decide

for her—comes when she acts like Wolverine.

Using the Wolverine legend, Hogan creates a way for Angel to link tribal stories with

temporal concerns. Wolverine sabotages those who do not respect animals, and Angel identifies

with him. As ecofeminist Silvia Schultermandl points out, “Angel’s environmental activism

relates to her political activism for the cultural survival of her tribe” (“Fighting for the

Mother/Land” 71). Angel comes into contact with what Hogan calls the “inner language” of

native traditions (Dwellings 57). She taps into the stories of her matrilineage through Bush, her

great-grandmother Agnes, and her great-great grandmother Dora-Rouge.

The problematic link in Angel’s matrilineage, her mother, ultimately serves to strengthen

ties to the native community. Because Angel chooses to forgive her mother for past abuse as well

as take responsibility for her baby sister, Aurora, she forges strong inter-female bonds within the

tribe. At the same time, she comes to terms with her painful childhood and gains personal

strength as a result of treating her mother with forgiveness and compassion.

In another play of language, silence changes with every turn in Hogan’s text. On the

surface, the word "silence" exists next to sound and moves within the difference between the two

terms. Arguably, silence in Hogan’s work embodies the reiteration and impossibility of

repetition. Silence for Angel changes from her life as an abused child, told in retrospect, to her

life when she first arrives at Adam’s Rib to her life when she journeys north. Bush’s silence

differs from Angel’s. The silence Angel discovers on her journey with Bush, Agnes, and Dora-

Rouge changes again:

We were in the hands of nature. In these places things turned about and were

other than they seemed. In silence, I pulled through the water and saw how a river

appeared through rolling fog and emptied into a lake. One day, a full-

tailed fox moved inside the shadows of trees, then stepped into a cloud. I was

equal to the other animals, hearing as they heard, moving as they moved, seeing

as they saw. (172)

Angel’s silence has changed from a product of childhood trauma to a result of her

reconnection with wild places and animals, and "the way the world grows amid silence" (E.

Smith 125). Hogan’s poetical descriptions of Angel’s journey resonate with the blurring of

dichotomies. Water and land merge, and there are “no sharp distinctions left between darkness

and light” (177). Water and air mingle with earth “in the marshy broth of creation” (177). Angel

finds power she never knew existed as she travels on the rivers and streams, “wearing the face of

the world, floating in silence” (177). The silence of loneliness has given way to the silence of

wisdom: Angel and her grandmothers hear inside each other “in a tribal way” (177). What Hogan

calls “feelings that can’t be spoken” forge bonds between people in the tribe (Dwellings 57).

These bonds strengthen as “currents pass between us and the rest of nature” (Dwellings 57).

Solar Storms’ permeable boundaries, revealed in Hogan’s radiantly descriptive language,

illustrate the text’s consummate movement toward the blurring of dichotomies.

At North House, where Angel and the women stop to rest on their journey, Dora-Rouge

meets Jere, a woman from Adam’s Rib. The two talk about old times: “It was what all the old

people longed for again, the time when people could merge with a cloud and help it rain, could

become trees, one with bark, root, and leaf. People were more silent in those days. They listened.

They heard” (203). Here, Hogan situates silence within Native American traditions and tribal

beliefs. Silence appears as a way to connect with the biosphere. Rather than seeing the

wilderness as something to be conquered and exploited, the natives view all life as

interconnected, and what happens to the environment necessarily has a profound impact on

humans.

According to Adrian Tanner, who writes about the potentially disastrous effects of the

James Bay Hydroelectric Project, government utilities organizations in the area expressed little

or no concern regarding social and environmental impacts (“Culture, Social Change, and Cree

Opposition” 122). In fact, aside from Cree and Inuit opposition to the dams, Hydro-Quebec

never met with public discourse against the project. From the beginning, natives were

apprehensive about the flooding of their harvests, campsites, and ancestors’ graves. As Tanner

argues, “Most aboriginal communities throughout northern Canada have what may be referred to

as the classic symptoms of a specific form of social breakdown, associated with the rapid

disintegration of the traditional way of life” (124). This breakdown, connected to the absence of

tribal traditions and lack of viable choices, causes extreme distress in native communities

(Tanner 124).

The social breakdown caused by environmental degradation to which Tanner refers forms

a central tenet in the work of ecopsychologist Andy Fisher. In Radical Ecopsychology:

Psychology in the Service of Life, Fisher notes that psychological and social breakdowns occur as

a direct result of violence against ecological systems (112). Ecopsychology, then, “is

fundamentally a response to violence" (55).

Linking violence against ecological systems to violence against humans, Hogan’s

depiction of Angel’s abuse at the hands of her mother holds a particularly relevant place in the

novel. When Angel finally reunites with Hannah, the meeting is not a happy one: “What Hannah

said, that she’d never hit me, was almost true. She hadn’t laid a hand on me. She had used

weapons against me, I learned later—hot wire, her teeth. Once she even burned me with fire”

(231). Hannah’s damage lives inside herself and is manifested in her abuse of Angel. When

Hannah—whose people ate the carcasses of poisoned animals—dies, Angel notices that “the

persons or spirits or demons who followed her about were gathering together in a truce; they

were becoming silent now” (249). Silence as resolution informs Hannah's death scene, bringing

Angel to another level of personal growth:

But even if she hated me, there had been a moment of something akin to love,

back at the creation. Her desperation and loneliness was my beginning. Hannah

had been my poison, my life, my sweetness and pain, my beauty and homeliness.

And when she died, I knew that I had survived in the best of ways for I was filled

with grief and compassion. (251)

Forgiving her mother, Angel moves beyond “patriarchal laws that advocate maternal guilt

and bad motherhood” (Schultermandl 74). Hogan's non-romantic depiction of motherhood

avoids placing full responsibility on Hannah. Because Angel and her grandmothers do not

completely blame Hannah for her sickness and violence, a space opens up for recognition of the

often devastating effects of “a phallocentric culture dominating women, ethnic minorities, and

nonhuman nature” (Schultermandl 73). Because Angel’s martilinear culture “relies on lateral

rather than hierarchical structures,” her ability to move on from painful childhood memories and

forgive her mother serves to strengthen the bond with her tribe and reinforce her development

into a strong, compassionate woman (Schultermandl 73).

Along with stronger intertribal bonds, Angel’s environmental activism reflects her

matrilinear culture because the tribal connections between women position them as leaders in

their communities; hence, the opposition to the Hydro-Quebec Project encompasses intertribal

and interbiospherical kinships.

One of the tribal legends about which Angel learns involves Ammah’s island. Covered by

lush vegetation, grain, seeds, nests, and eggs, the island stands as the home of Ammah, one of

the creators and protectors of life. No one is allowed to set foot on the island. Completely

shielded from human encroachment and activity, Ammah’s home symbolizes the unspoiled

beauty that flourishes in the absence of humans. Angel often paddles her canoe close to the

island:

I sat in a canoe and daydreamed out across the water at the place Ammah

protected, and I liked to see the island on my sleepless nights and mornings. I was

told Ammah was a silent god and rarely spoke. The reason for this was that all

things—birdsongs, the moon, even my own life—grow from rich and splendid

silence. (265)

Hogan takes the device of silence and allows it to grow, “rich and splendid” (265). Rather

than dismissing it as the second term in a sound/silence hierarchy, Hogan uses silence as a device

that cannot be fixed in one meaning. Like Wolverine, silence lives in the pages of Solar Storms,

encompassing and enabling endless paths of thought. For Hogan, silence does not represent lack;

rather, it engenders fullness and makes possible the lives portrayed in the text and the worlds

created by the words and the reader. By situating silence in the above passage on Ammah’s

island, Hogan leaves a space for at least one possible reading: a call for the necessity of leaving

ecological systems alone to exist on their own terms. The natives permit no one to set foot on the

island. From this edict we can reasonably infer that some places remain at optimal growth only

through the absence of human activity. When Angel respectfully sits in her canoe and gazes at

the island, she never questions the reasons why all are forbidden to go there. Accepting her

tribe’s position places her strongly in what ecofeminist critic Charlene Spretnak calls “radical

nonduality” (425). Radical nonduality “asserts the existence of unitive dimensions of being, a

gestalt of a subtle, unitary field of form, motion, space, and time” (Spretnak 425).

By choosing not to set foot on the island, Angel regenerates her tribal heritage, what

Murphy says “can be maintained only by means of the cultural conservation being practiced by

the marginalized and subordinated groups who defend and recover their heritages in order to

generate their futures” (Farther Afield 134). By not violating the culture of Ammah’s island,

Angel participates in radical nonduality by removing herself from the scene; her non-

participation, then, qualifies as participation. By actively choosing not to set foot on sacred

ground, Angel and her people not only ensure continuance of tribal traditions; they ensure

continuance of the island as a biosphere existing on its own terms.

Within the web of non-human and human life lives “the language of myths—memorable,

dramatic, emotional, full of imagination, designed to enchant the mind as well as the stars”

(Walter 167). The language of myth preserves “a way of talking, singing, and thinking” that

connects “the sky, the earth, and human life” (Walter 167). Using the language of tribal myth,

Hogan locates a nexus for silence to work its magic. The immersion in wilderness that Angel

experiences unites with the deep silence “one can encounter. . . when the dualistic habit of

perceiving self apart from nature gradually loses its grip” (Spretnak 430). Immersed in natural

surroundings, Angel notices something extraordinary happening to her perceptions: “I had

traveled long and hard to be there. I’d searched all my life for this older world that was lost to

me, this world only my body remembered. In that moment I understood I was part of the same

equation as birds and rain” (79).

Unfortunately, the voices of Angel and her family and friends who oppose the dam-

building project do not stop the implementation of the project's first phase:

While we’d been at Two-Town, caught up in the battle over water at its source,

the flooding of this place had already begun. It was the result of the damming

we’d witnessed at the Fat-Eaters’, the result of the stopped rivers to the north. It

was the result of our failure to end the first phase of the project. (334)

Angel tells of buildings submerged, homes engulfed, and levees breached. Dead fish float

in the streets at Adam’s Rib. Angel’s return to town renders her silent. She cannot speak about

the destruction that surrounds her.

When she reunites with her friend, Tommy, a boy she met before she journeyed north

with her grandmothers, the “silence of deep love” holds the young lovers together. One can

envision the continuance of the tribe through Angel, Tommy, and Aurora. When Angel connects

with Tommy, she “has no words” (350). They take Aurora to a tribal dance and hold her high

above their heads, showing her off to the people. The three “dance the dance where songs were

dressed in sunlight, where they walked silver and thin out of sky, out of a distant past” (350).

Although Angel moves into a brighter future, and although it takes “more than a year” for

the dam-building to cease (344), Hannah’s darkness still haunts the text:

My mother walked out of rifles of our killers. She was born of knives, the

skinned-alive beaver and marten and the chewed-off legs of wolves. She hurt me

because I was part of her and she hated herself. I think of her last name, Wing, as

it she could fly, weightless as a bird catching a current of air. Or, like the

wolverine on the rock paintings, perhaps her wings were invisible until they were

wet, and then they opened, full and strong. I hoped she lived in a place where she

could open those wings with a love she’d never known in life. (345)

Out of unstable and painful beginnings, Angel moves forward, enveloped by her

compassion for Hannah and her love for Tommy, whom she marries. Additionally, she finds

strength through the kinship of her tribe. Throughout Solar Storms, silence, absence, and mystery

comprise a language in and of itself. As Tarter contends, the “project, at heart, for Hogan is to

reconstruct our notion of language” (145). Thus, the writing "between the lines" (Derrida 86) in

Hogan's text reconstructs our concept of silence, absence, and mystery.

Like Solar Storms, Hogan’s third novel, Power, which I discuss in my next chapter,

features the same gesture toward a reconstruction of our perception of language. Set in rural

Florida, Power tracks the conflict between Native Americans, a panther, and the dominant

culture, as told through the eyes of a teenage girl. Also like Solar Storms, Power reveals a

bildungsroman structure with a strong focus on human and nonhuman spiritual connections from

a Native American perspective.

CHAPTER FIVE: LINDA HOGAN'S POWER AND THE MAKAH WHALE HUNT

CRISIS

At the intersection of feminist and ecofeminist ethical theory and conventional ethical

theory lies a conflict of different perspectives. Relying on the moral authority of the traditional

patriarchy is often questioned by feminists and ecofeminists alike. In determining a boundary for

feminist ethics, Karen Warren insists that ecofeminism is contextualist. She claims it is

“structurally pluralistic rather that unitary, giving central significance to the diversity of

women’s voices; it reconceives ethical theory as theory in process, which will vary in relation to

its historical and socioeconomic circumstances" (Ecofeminist Philosophy 83). Warren also

argues that ecofeminism supports oppressed persons' points-of-view and refuses to take an

objective stand in ethical conflicts (Ecofeminist Philosophy 83). Yet, there is more to

ecofeminism than contextuality; there has to be.

Building relationships between people within and outside of a culture and negotiating on

behalf of insiders is certainly a necessary and worthwhile goal of the ecofeminist. Applying

ecofeminist ethics to a work of fiction such as Linda Hogan’s Power presents a special

challenge. Although Power appears to position animal rights and native rights in conflict with

one another, a look at the bigger picture suggests that the dominant culture is ultimately at odds

with both animal and native rights. Centered on the killing of a Florida panther, Power speaks

volumes about what is absent and what is not said; it allows for the exploration of spaces

between worlds. Silence becomes a conduit for answers that until now have never been spoken.

Real power resides in life that has been torn away, pushed back, encroached upon, and

marginalized. In poetically rendering silence and mystery, Hogan crosses borders, and in doing

so she negotiates a space for dialogue between seemingly impassable factions of animal and

native worlds and a dominant culture that appears bent on oppressing, demonizing, and

marginalizing animals and natives. Exploring the parallels between the conflict of the panther,

the Taiga tribe and Ama in Power, and Hogan’s real-life involvement in the Makah whale hunt

controversy, we see that the subject of ecofeminist ethics becomes a crucial point.

Ethical concerns intersect with Native American perspectives in Power. Told through the

eyes of a sixteen-year-old American Indian girl, Omishto, the story revolves around the killing of

a Florida panther by a member of the fictional Taiga tribe. Ama, Omishto's second cousin and

mentor, kills the panther. Her inexplicable action throws many in the small Florida community—

native and white—into an uproar. Observations about the panther’s disappearing habitat due to

massive development in Florida complicate the problem and ensure that no ready-made answers

exist.

One of the difficulties in Power centers on a right/wrong dichotomy that does not always

apply to matters involving indigenous people and environmental concerns. For example, when

Ama kills the panther, she is rebuked by white environmentalists, the government, and members

of her own tribe. The difference in the focus of the three groups illustrates the problem. The

environmentalists object to the killing of the cat, the government opposes the possible breaking

of laws, and the Taiga tribe objects to the fact that Ama did not bring the panther’s body to them.

Omishto thinks about the problems of right and wrong when she attends Ama’s courtroom

appearance:

The protestors on the left of us are those who have returned to a reverence for

animals and they are Americans who want her to go to jail and I would like to say

to them that they are right, that it is wrong to kill land, animals, that it was wrong

to destroy any of it, even us, but they are the children of those who were alive

from the deaths of others and so I do not look at them even though they are right;

they are taking up our beliefs and judging us, and to them I am a monster because

for them everything has been so easy, but they do not see themselves or know

their own history. (138)

In Power, Omishto thinks about panthers and how they have all but disappeared from the

wild lands in and around where she lives. She discerns the presence of the cat, and “it feels like

space has eyes and ears, and it watches with all its might, listens with ears that can pick up the

slightest hint of sound, and it moves slowly, silently”(2). Her sense of the panther calls into

question whether she means that it is somewhere in the brush, watching her, or whether its

absence from the wild has created a void in the environment, a space that has manifested itself in

mystery.

The Florida panther’s numbers have decreased to the point that scientists fear the cat is

near extinction (McMullen 380). When a species becomes extinct, a void is created in the

ecological balance. Hogan writes of balance, silence, emptiness, and space throughout the novel,

and the refrain of absence plays like a silent symphony. A critical reading of Power, therefore,

would necessarily investigate the importance of absence. Omishto’s feeling of being watched by

the unseen panther is a haunting cadence throughout the novel that can be interpreted in many

ways, one of which involves an ecofeminist reading.

That Hogan occupies a middle place in environmental and cultural concerns becomes

evident during her involvement in the 1996 Makah whale hunt conflict. Certain members of the

tribe demanded the right to resume hunting of the great gray whale. The whale's numbers had

increased over the years due to governmental protection, and the Makah hunters pushed for a

return of the traditional hunt. Because of dissension within the Makah tribe over the petition to

resume hunting the whales, Hogan offered to listen to all sides and put forward suggestions

(Gaard, “Tools” 16). Hunters, environmental activists, antiracist whites, and tribal dissenters

argued while Hogan listened and mediated.

In “Revaluing Nature” Lori Gruen makes a case for “a richer theory of community”

(359). In other words, the tendency to superimpose typically hegemonic, hierarchical Western

values on all communities remains problematic and should be avoided. Moving past the potential

storm of values assumptions, communities form and thrive within a climate of communication.

Dialoging with one another precludes “the desire to talk at or dictate to other members of the

community” (Gruen 361). Because of ecological ethics situated within Native American and

ecofeminist concerns, an awareness of Hogan’s actions during the Makah Whale crisis and her

ability to fill the silence created by feminist groups necessitates a closer look at similar conflicts

in Power. Because of the silence from feminist groups during the whale hunt conflict and the

poetically rendered silence in Power, an examination of the relevance and effectiveness of the

use of silence in environmental fiction becomes necessary.

In Power, a passage that makes use of mystery, silence, and space describes the

disappearance of wild places: “But we, us Taiga people, haven’t run. Instead, silent and nearly

invisible, most of us have been pushed up against the wild places, backed against them. And

some of them are still there, like a dark corner in the minds of the intruders. I walk as silent as

possible toward Ama’s” (8). Because Omishto watches Ama defy tradition and go against both

her own tribe and the larger culture when she kills the panther, the young girl must occupy the

space between two worlds: the traditional Taiga world and the dominant white culture.

Omishto’s is a culture of waiting and watching; in fact, her name means “one who watches” (4).

Her role in the novel is one of border-crosser, and a conflict ensues, but it is a quiet one, taking

place largely within Omishto’s mind and the minds of Ama and the elders. Although white

environmentalists and lawmakers chime in, their perspectives are largely pushed to the margins.

The main concern of the novel is what Omishto observes, suffers, and decides.

Drawing a parallel between the panther crisis in Power and the Makah Whale Hunt, we

see that the whale controversy attracted a similar mixture of activist groups: anti-whaling

organizations, animal rights groups, and individuals protesting cultural essentialism. To give

native people a voice and simultaneously acknowledge environmental concerns demands

analysis and exploration of social and environmental ethics, not a simplistic, knee-jerk reaction.

Such an extreme, reactionary response is illustrated in Omishto’s reception at school when she

returns. The word “Killer” is painted on her locker door, and whispers of “[t]here she is. Cat

Killer” follow her as she walks into class (105). Only sixteen years old, Omishto must span not

only time but different worlds in her coming-of-age story. She must cross borders in order to find

a place for herself and come to terms with what Ama has done; she must also come to terms with

her own silent role in the killing of the panther.

When Omishto watches Ama kill the panther, her suffering has as much to do with the

animal’s death as with her mentor’s perceived crime. As Gaard contends, the “association

between native and animal, and their joint oppression under colonization is made all the more

painful by the loss between humans and animals” (“Strategies” 93). In Power, this loss is a

double tragedy. Omishto recalls her mother’s story about being lost and then guided home by a

red wolf, and she remembers “Janie Soto and one of the other old Taiga women, Annie Hide,

telling about how sometimes the animals used to help the humans, how they would teach them

the plants that were healing, sing songs for them to learn, how they would show the people the

way to renew the broken world” (29). Omishto’s strong belief in the animal/human connection

makes the killing of the panther that much more disturbing, and her emotional anguish causes her

to feel estranged from Ama. What makes the estrangement more difficult for Omishto involves

her love and admiration for Ama:

On the days when Ama is silent, I learn from her stillness. It’s not that she’s

moody. It’s not an empty quiet, either, the way it would be with some people. It’s

a full silence and I like sitting with it and it’s a relief from the chattiness of my

sister and mom. I can’t say what I learn from it; there’s no words for it. Words are

such noisy things and silence is something you have to listen to and when you do,

it takes you by the hand, it catches hold of you. It tells you how to know things,

like how sounds travel, where a certain bird is calling from. (19)

Hogan builds Ama’s character and shapes the power of poetic imagery with silence.

Because Ama embodies silence in Power, and because she remains a person Omishto looks up to

and follows, her place in the text invites analysis. Additionally, Ama’s position within the

ecocritical ethics dilemma is pivotal. If not for her killing of the panther and her subsequent

silence regarding the reason why, no one would challenge the Taiga tribe to come up with

answers to environmental problems that are arguably not their doing. In fact, the tribe has not

over-developed Florida to the point of squeezing out the panthers’ habitat and bringing the great

cat close to extinction; the dominant culture has.

Throughout the text, Ama’s silence leaves room for speculation. For example, Omishto

narrates a story about Ama’s past disappearance. Ama does not divulge where she’s been when

she returns from a weeks-long absence, and speculation and superstition abound, rendering Ama

something of a legend in tribal circles. Some believe she was taken by the “little people” (22).

According to tribal lore, the little people kidnap others and teach them about medicines. Other

stories concerning Ama’s disappearance involve her murder by a bear and subsequent

metamorphosis into a “spirit that changed bodies the way they used to do when people could turn

into animals and transform themselves into human shape” (22). Ama’s mystery positions her in

the center and periphery of the novel at the same time. Unable to determine her exact role in the

tribe as well as in white society, no one quite knows what to do with her. Her action drives the

novel but her silence puts her somewhere outside explanation. She defers meaning the way

Wolverine defies description and, consequently, capture, in Solar Storms. The difference

between Wolverine and Ama, of course, is that Hogan presents Ama as a real woman, even

though members of the tribe think she may be some sort of mystical being. Her banishment from

the Taiga clan near the end of the novel situates her in another ambiguous role. Although the

thought of living alone in the wilderness would be enough to devastate most people, Ama has

lived alone in the swamps before. She can do it again. The question that arises concerns

punishment. Is banishment into wild Florida punishment for Ama? Perhaps the greater question

is this: should she be punished at all?

What is intriguing about Power from an ecological ethics standpoint centers on the

parallel between the conflict within the fictional Taiga tribe and the real-life division in the

Makah tribe over the whale hunt. In a striking similarity to the panther conflict in Power, the

Makah tribe has been divided over the killing of whales. Several Makah elders protested,

publishing a statement that opposed the hunt. Additionally, seven Makah tribal members

attended a 1996 commission in Scotland to protest the whaling (Gaard, “Tools” 4). The

disagreement within the tribe and the resulting harassment from pro-hunting factions caused

some dissenters to become silent. Unfortunately, members of feminist organizations also avoided

involvement, adding to the overall silence. As Gaard asserts, this “silence needs to be broken, for

as the earth’s wild places and wild species diminish through the rapacious practices of

multinational corporations and the forces of industrial ‘development,’ the interests of indigenous

people, animals, and the environment—interests that Euro-Americans have romanticized as

harmoniously intertwined—now seem to be increasingly at odds” (“Tools for a Cross-Cultural

Feminist Ethics” 1). From an ecofeminist perspective, the battle over Makah’s right to hunt

whales and the rights of the animals themselves invites a cross-cultural approach.

Voicing the cross-cultural approach, in a Seattle Times editorial, Hogan argues that while

Native treaties should be honored, the Makah would benefit by following tribal traditions that are

older than the hunting of whales: they should listen to the grandmothers of the tribe. Dottie

Chamblin, one of the Makah elders, speaks about "'grandmothers fighting this fight against them

[pro-whale-hunting tribal council]. The tribal council issued a memo that nobody was to talk to

the newspaper. . . . They wanted to banish those of us who oppose whaling from the reservation.

This fear of banishment really stopped a lot of people from helping us"' (qtd. in Peterson B-7).

From an ecofeminist viewpoint, reverence of matriarchs holds a long-standing place in many

Native American communities. As Andy Smith points out, most native societies were

matrilinear. Males did not dominate; rather, they enjoyed equal status regarding division of labor.

Additionally, the women of the tribes often held positions of power, both spiritually and

militarily. In fact, “violence against women and children was unheard of” before colonialism

(“Ecofeminism through an Anticolonial Framework” 22).

From the whales’ perspective--as far as anyone can claim to represent them—Makah

tribal elder Alberta Thompson suggests that many involved in the conflict “‘haven’t reckoned

with the spirit of the whale’” (qtd. in Hogan B-9). Peterson also argues for the whales when she

so eloquently writes this passage for the Seattle Times:

This is really a dialogue much deeper than treaty rights; it is about the connections

we make between ourselves, other species and our living world. Let our

connection with the whales—from Baja to the Bering Sea—be the human hand

and heart, not the harpoon. As we begin a new century, why not listen to the

Makah elders, because these grandmothers are speaking bravely and eloquently

for other elders of a species more ancient than our own. (B-8)

Tribal silencing of the Makah grandmothers, however, differs from the silencing of the

much younger Omishto in Power. Omishto maintains her silence by fulfilling her promise to

Ama. Strongly encouraged to speak about all aspects of the killing by members of the court and

members of the tribe, the young girl does not speak about certain details in order to remain true

to herself and her friend. Ama does not want the elders to know about the miserable condition of

the panther while it lived. The great cat had been reduced to a “ragged, flea-bitten” creature with

“broken teeth” (166). Although she refuses to answer all questions the elders put to her, Omishto

is most like the leaders of her tribe when she holds her silence: “From here I can see how the old

people sit, quiet and still, almost stiff. In this place where words can lie, their stillness and

discomfort is honest, and silence is a kind of truth” (120)

In her understanding of both sides of the conflict, Omishto reveals wisdom beyond her

years. Border-crossing for her also means entering the “opening between the worlds,” an opening

illustrated by the ancient story of the Panther Clan:

This is how I heard it. Years ago, Panther walked on two feet. A woman lived in

the dark swamp of the early world in those days. She was raised by wild animals

because her human family had rejected her, but the animals favored her. It was

given this woman to keep the world in balance. So she was a person who sang the

sun up in the morning, and if she could do this it would keep the world alive. Like

memory, she was there to refresh our thoughts and renew our acts. (110)

In Power, the Panther Clan myth goes deeper than tribal legend. Omishto links the

ancient story to Ama’s killing of the panther when she relates the Taiga belief that “all the

hunted, if hunted correctly, would return again” (111). In the legend, the Panther Woman enters

the opening between the worlds and witnesses—prophetically--panthers dying of sickness in a

terribly damaged environment. The woman follows the panther through the opening between the

worlds, and because of the weakened condition of the cats, the panther asks her to kill him.

Panther Woman performs the sacrifice so that “all the animals and the panther would come back

again and they would be whole” (111).

Connecting the Panther Clan myth to Ama’s actions, we can reasonably infer that Hogan

creates an ambiguous situation that defies a right or wrong answer. Ama, aware of tribal laws

and traditions, kills the panther. In her eyes, perhaps, she performs a service and ensures the

survival of only the healthiest panthers. She does not, however, bring the animal’s body to the

elders of the Panther Clan, thereby violating tribal rule. Therefore, she runs afoul of both Native

American culture and white environmental law. White environmental law holds the panther in

protected species status; in the dominant culture’s eyes, Ama has broken the law. The reason she

walks away from the court proceedings without being convicted involves Native American

treaties and the tribe’s right to hunt.

As stated before in this chapter, Ama occupies a central, yet marginalized place in the

novel. Rejected by the white world as well as the tribal elders, Ama holds her silence about the

sad condition of the panther she killed. Wanting to shield the clan from the truth about the cat,

Ama sacrifices her status in the tribe in order to ensure continuance of the Taiga. Whether she

cares about how whites view her can easily be discerned: Ama does not need the dominant

culture’s approval, nor does she seek it.

In the opening between worlds, the place where no one willingly goes, Omishto imagines

the Taiga myths, the old stories that hold the tribe together. Although she claims to ignore

“superstition” (22), Omishto does not invalidate the Taiga myths or, for that matter, her mother’s

Christianity. Consequently, Omishto is able to coexist in the tribal world and the world of white

culture, although by the end of the novel she comes to prefer the traditional tribal ways.

Although her relationship with her mother is somewhat strained, Omishto loves and

understands her. Trying for years to pass as white, Omishto’s mother engenders a protective and

tender pity within her daughter. Omishto is able to cross from the white to the tribal world, and

she accepts the love she feels for both her mother and Ama, although they are nearly polar

opposites in belief and behavior. Omishto listens to her mother and Ama, and from their words

and within her own silence, she makes up her mind.

In much the same way, Hogan is a border-crosser. As Gaard points out, “ecofeminism’s

critique of dualistic thought and ‘truncated narratives’ suggests that rather than seeing different

perspectives as competing, a more holistic approach would be inclusive of all these layers of

relationships, examining the interrelationship between the ethical context and the ethical

contents” (“Tools” 7). Ethically, Hogan explored the whole story of the Makah tribe, revealing

the fact that in years past there was no whale hunt ritual in their culture. Looking at the how and

why of the crisis demands going far enough back in time to get a holistic view of the Makah’s

practices. In her Seattle Times article, Hogan writes:

At the time our treaties were created, we did not foresee the loss of species, large-

scale toxicity, the thinning of waters, the deforestation of continents. . . . as

Indians, we have the necessity, the requirement, really, to speak out for both the

old people and the old ways. What most tribes shared in common has been the

respect for life. In the traditional and historic past, we recognized the sovereignty

of other species, animal and plant. We held treaties with the animals, treaties

shaped by mutual respect and knowledge of the complex working of the world,

and these were laws the legal system can’t come close to. That is what gave us

our past. That is what the Europeans who arrived here did not have. (B-9)

Although Hogan is a Chickasaw rather than a Makah, she sees matriarchal leaders as

bridging the gap between tribal cultures, environmentalists, and the dominant white culture.

These women dare to challenge “the ethics of their own traditions” (17). As noted earlier in my

thesis, Hogan writes about how the tribal grandmothers spoke powerfully on behalf of the whales

when no one else would (B9). Interrogating practices involving unfair human dominance over

the rights of animals, nature, and other humans, therefore, should be a characteristic of border-

crossing and ethics.

In Power, Omishto questions all sides of the conflict:

But I realize the trial is about more than one thing, more than if she’s

insane or not, if she killed the cat or not, because now they are asking a

biologist whether or not it was a true Florida panther and not another

species, because if it wasn’t it wouldn’t be endangered and all she’d have

been doing was hunting. And that would open up the laws, make a hole in

the law that was to protect. (121)

As the debate becomes more complicated, Omishto resorts to silence, and she begins to

think about the panther’s culture, and how “[t]hey’ve never been known to hurt one person yet,

but they will follow you. And no one wants them to eat cattle or dogs. There’s no place human

wants will let them be” (123). Speaking for the panther rarely happens, especially in the

courtroom. Instead, Omishto gives the panther a voice, if only briefly, silently, in her mind:

And on the other side, as if divided by choice, are the native protesters

who have come to speak for Ama, and I would like to say to them, too,

that it wasn’t her right to kill the cat; it’s no one’s right to take one of

those god-damned poor animals, and who in this place will speak out for

the panther. (138)

Yet, Omishto feels the pull of her tribe. They are her people, after all. There are no easy

answers in this novel. “Again, both sides are wrong, but both sides, also, are right” (138).

As Joni Adamson states in American Indian Literature, Environmental Justice, and

Ecocriticism: The Middle Place, there is a “middle place that encompasses both nature and

culture” (88). The middle place, therefore, stresses knowledge and understanding rather than a

right/wrong dichotomy. In Hogan’s writing, because she refuses “to grant the reader a simple

dichotomy of innocent and good versus evil and corrupt,” she opens up a space for diversity “of

forms of resistance” (Murphy 184). Consequently, when facing a conflict like the one in Power,

Omishto’s knowledge of native culture is most important, and because the novel is a coming-of-

age story, Omishto’s discovery of her heritage becomes that much more relevant. She occupies a

middle place through most of the story because she doesn’t demonize anyone, except for Herm,

her stepfather. Herm eyes Omishto up and down like she’s a piece of meat, but he does not have

anything to do with the main conflict of the novel.

Omishto’s compassion for her mother--who runs from her ancestry--ties in with her

understanding of white culture, and as a result she does not point fingers of blame at anyone.

Crossing borders, she begins to realize the power of unseen forces, the mystery of invisible

energies, for which we have no explanation. Jacqueline Shea Murphy contends that Omishto, and

“through her we as readers—start to see that meaning that isn’t spelled out or clearly stated,

information that’s withheld, can play as vital a part in the story of renewal as what is clearly

explained” (3).

Meaning that isn’t spelled out brings us to the mysterious power that travels through the

novel like a whisper, like the breath of life: the power which inhabits the space left by the

panther. The absence created by the disappearance of the cat has caused a void in the balance of

the world, and as Ama says, “there are other worlds beside us all the time and every now and

then we cross over and enter one, and every so often, too, one passes over and enters ours” (55).

After it is gone, the panther has “power over us, some kind of sway” (74). The space it inhabited

“is crying out with emptiness” (184). Power is also breathed out by trees, and as a result, “there

is no such thing as emptiness in our world, only the fullness of the unseen. It is the sea of

creation we live inside. We are tossed about in its currents alongside the panther,” and the power

of silence and mystery merges with the power of the unseen (178). How much longer can the

unseen in the environment and the power of the animals within be ignored by the dominant

culture?

Like the Florida panther, the great gray whale has been protected by laws passed to

ensure its survival. Now that the whales’ numbers have increased (unlike the dwindling

panthers’), some members of the Makah tribe feel it is time to resume the hunt. A bitter conflict

has opened up between environmentalists, the hunters, and the members of the tribe in

opposition to the hunt. Yet, a dialogue between environmentalists protesting the killing of the

whales and the Makah hunters should be a spiritual one (Peterson B7). An ethical approach

demands a holistic view of the Makah culture as well as the culture of the whale and the songs it

has sung for millions of years. Because the whale is traditionally seen by the tribe as not only a

source of subsistence but also of spirituality, the Makah crisis is very much like the crisis in

Power. The hide and claws of the panther are used by the clan as more than mere trophies. The

connection between the panther and the tribe is a powerfully spiritual relationship because the cat

is “god-like, all powerful” and it is the “animal that came here before us and taught us the word,

Oni, which is the word for life itself, for wind and breath” (73). Mysterious and elusive, the

panther represents more than just an entry on the endangered list.

For the ecofeminist, negotiating a space within and outside of cultures is a necessary and

worthwhile pursuit. In this pursuit of ethical positioning, the power of border-crossing, silence,

and mystery is interconnected within and outside of fiction and non-fiction texts, sometimes

blurring the lines between categories. As we explore the parallels between Power and the Makah

whale hunt crisis, place becomes a land without impassable borders. As Buell contends, “Every

place signifies; every place, every creature has a story connected with it that forms a web of

significance (always in process, not a constant) within which human thought assumes form and

meaning” (287). In Hogan’s Power, the story becomes a conduit through which characters and

readers cross boundaries to awareness and understanding of many of the most important issues of

our time. Awareness comes when we realize that one of the most important issues of our time

centers on the interconnectedness of all life, which guarantees our being affected by the absence

of a species.

CHAPTER SIX: CONCLUSION

Throughout Mean Spirit, Solar Storms, and Power, Hogan uses silence, absence, and

mystery to articulate her characters’ inner lives. As cultural and environmental changes

destabilize the natives’ daily existence and endanger their ways of life, Hogan uses poetic

imagery to inform the texts and provide a way to open up new worlds of interpretation. Each of

the novels features Native Americans as major characters, and each novel shows influence from

true stories regarding cultural and ecological crises. Hogan’s narrators attempt to negotiate these

crises, and in some cases, they struggle to remain alive through the dominant culture’s

marginalization and oppression of their ways of life. In order to negotiate their places in the

world, the characters of Mean Spirit, Solar Storms, and Power use silence to foster transition,

healing, and continuity.

Turning first to Mean Spirit, we can discern that the narrative benefits from a multi-

voiced perspective. No single character emerges as the main protagonist, although much of the

focus remains on Belle Graycloud. By featuring various perspectives and voices, Hogan creates a

powerful depiction of great numbers of people affected by corrupt business and governmental

practices. Because of the oil-rich land in Oklahoma on which the natives have lived for so long,

local businessmen and authorities participate in dishonesty, thievery, and murder in order to take

over the land and extract profits. Additionally, governmental agencies contribute to the overall

marginalization and oppression of the natives. One method of oppression involves the silencing

of native voices. When members of the Osage community are murdered, the authorities use

silencing tactics in order to convince the natives that nothing can be done. Additionally,

authorities perpetuate silence in the form of veiled threats against the Osage. Silencing witnesses

and people who have information about the murders contributes to fear, frustration, and anxiety.

Because of such leaders as Belle Graycloud, Michael Horse, and Joe Billy, the Osage

band together and realize the crimes being committed against them begin with silence. Although

the final trial involving the worst of the businessmen does not bring justice to those who were

swindled and murdered, the natives garner strength and courage through reconnection with

ancient tribal beliefs and ways. The silent world of the old traditions and the connection of the

Osage people with nonhuman life build a strong resistance to the dominant culture. In a way, the

natives take the forced silence used against them and turn it back on local and national

government. By keeping to the old ways and traditions and rejecting the whites’ destructive,

despicable, and foolish exploitation of people and the environment, the Osage survive.

Because Mean Spirit begins by looking at assimilated natives who dye their hair, dress

like whites, and squander the money they receive from their oil-rich lands, Hogan sets up an

opposition between the falseness of turning away from a rich cultural heritage and the ultimate

peace of mind and survival of those who return to tribal traditions. Mystery and silence reinforce

the power of the unseen, the unknown, and the unspoken. In the end, the silence that serves to

oppress and endanger the Osage becomes a way to form lasting bonds between members of the

tribe and, ultimately, the environment they will call home in the future. One gets the feeling that

wherever the Osage go, they bring with them a strong native community based on beliefs and

practices that have lasted thousands of years.

Like Mean Spirit, Solar Storms focuses on cultural damage that manifests itself in the

aftermath of forced environmental changes. For Angel, the first-person narrator, life has played

out in a series of foster homes. Additionally, the mystery of her scarred face preoccupies her and

haunts the text. Again, silence and mystery play major roles in the story. Also, like Mean Spirit,

Solar Storms is inspired by true events. In Solar Storms, the environmental conflict centers on

native resistance against the James Bay Hydroelectric Project. While the massive project gets

underway, Angel and her family become involved in protests against the government. While they

journey to the north in search of Angel’s birth mother, the family reconnects with native

traditions, and Angel discovers the astonishing power of silence in the Canadian wilderness.

Mystery and absence fuse together in a poetic, haunting mix of native mythologies, legends

about Angel’s abusive mother, and the family’s extensive local history. Reunited with her

birthplace and her mother, Angel enters the power of silence and draws strength and continuance

through compassion. Hogan sets up a link between Angel’s newly-learned connection with the

biosphere and her resolution to forgive her mother for past abuse. In addition, Hogan juxtaposes

Angel’s scarred face with environmental abuse committed against humans and non-humans,

culminating in the retrospective narration of Hannah’s abuse of Angel as a child.

As she does in Mean Spirit, Hogan ends Solar Storms with an open-ended possibility of

interpretation. Although Angel and her family fail to stop the initial building of dams and the

ensuing biospherical and cultural damage, her marriage to Tommy and her commitment to

Aurora combine to form a picture of tribal strength and continuance. Like the natives in Mean

Spirit, the tribal people in Solar Storms build a community based on ancient wisdom and

tradition born of an indestructible reverence and connection with all life. As she completes her

journey, Angel silently connects with her native heritage and the living world at the same time.

In Dwellings, Hogan describes the deep canopy of silence under which kinship communities

form:

There is a still place, a gap between worlds, spoken by the tribal knowings of

thousands of years. In it are silent flyings that stand aside from human struggles

and the designs of our own makings. At times, when we are silent enough, still

enough, we take a step into such mystery, the place of spirit, and mystery, we

must remember, by its very nature does not wish to be known. (20)

Respect for the right of non-human life to exist on its own terms informs Hogan’s novels.

Power engendered by silence and mystery thrives in places where human interference is limited

or absent. Although the characters in Hogan’s novels interact with animal and plant life, they do

so without destroying the balance necessary to sustain ecological systems. Instead of seeing non-

human life as the “other,” the Native Americans in Hogan’s texts see each living being as

“another” (Murphy “Anotherness and Answerability” 3). By following their beliefs in kinship

systems, Hogan’s characters survive through environmental and cultural crises in order to take

their resistance against the dominant culture into the future.

As in Mean Spirit and Solar Storms, the natives in Power find themselves in a position of

opposition against the dominant culture. Like the narrator in Solar Storms, the primary character

in Power is a teenaged girl. The young native girl, Omishto, must come to terms with a situation

that echoes real-life events. Specifically, the killing of a Florida panther in Power creates a

conflict of animal and cultural rights that resounds in the factual Makah Whale Hunt crisis. A

close reading of Power necessitates an examination of real-life resolutions in cases where natives

and environmental activists oppose one another. Because of Hogan’s involvement and

subsequent call for cross-cultural solutions in the whale conflict, my reading of Power situates

the novel within the ongoing struggle to find a common ground of discourse within Native

American and ecocritical communities confronted by ethical dilemmas. My purpose in this

cross-reading is not an attempt to find an easy answer. Rather, I use multiple critics and factual

events in order to open the possibility of additional paths and approaches.

In addition to critical perspectives involving historical events, ecofeminist and

ecopsychological analyses support my thesis. Because of Hogan’s depiction of matriarchal

communities, specifically in Solar Storms and Power, ecofeminist perspectives shed light on the

difference between indigenous Americans’ kinship systems and Eurocentric attitudes of

superiority over natives, women, and non-humans. The result of the dominant culture’s damage

to native communities and the environment causes tremendous pain and anguish for the

characters. Ecofeminist approaches strengthen the contention that women and nature suffer from

oppression. In the end, the women within the texts and their negotiation of the crises in which

they find themselves demonstrate great power.

In view of ecopsychological approaches, the interdependence of human and non-human

life reveals profound sadness and loss on all sides when the biosphere is threatened and

damaged. Hogan’s characters live through psychic pain and suffering. An ecopsychological

analysis, therefore, allows us to come to terms with how the mind structures and controls the

ways in which one acts within a geographically situated context. I think that the application of

ecopsychology serves to broaden our understanding of the life-threatening situations Hogan’s

characters often experience.

Turning to another critical approach, the reader may note that because of Hogan’s use of

silence, absence, and mystery, her novels lend themselves to deconstruction. Especially in Solar

Storms and Power, deconstructive approaches open the readings and question the motivations of

characters who reside in the margins of the text. Wolverine’s indeterminate identity and Ama’s

mysterious persona enrich the novels while they disseminate meaning. The absence/presence of

Wolverine creates a clear path to Derrida’s theory, which then refracts any notion of

stabilization. Like sunset-haunted clouds, changing shape and color as the eye takes them in,

Wolverine and Ama defy expectations. They remain among the most fascinating characters in

Hogan’s work.

From the oil fields of Oklahoma to the icy lakes of the Canadian border to the

swamplands of Florida, Hogan’s novels encompass a broad sweep of Native American

territories. Within the silence of her characters’ lives, a silence often caused by genocide and

oppression, Hogan combines fiction with non-fiction. She blurs the boundaries between fictional

narrative and history. Revealing human and non-human worlds that survive under a cloak of

silence and mystery, Hogan ultimately clears a space for alternative approaches within an

environment that is increasingly under attack from overdevelopment and greed. Her work has

never been more relevant than it is today.

Although Hogan’s writing opens itself up to many critical approaches, I have restricted

myself to the four methods outlined in Chapter One. Therefore, in narrowing the scope of my

thesis, I hope I have succeeded in presenting a sufficient close reading of Mean Spirit, Solar

Storms, and Power within the limited space the project requires. My aim has been to illustrate

the various ways in which silence, absence, and mystery enrich Hogan’s novels and generate

ecocritical discourse. At the same time, my goal has been to expand the ways in which we move

toward an understanding of the interdependence of all living systems. In the words of Jacques

Derrida, “are other paths not possible?” (Of Grammatology 161).

LIST OF REFERENCES

Adamson, Joni. American Indian Literature, Environmental Justice, and Ecocriticism: The

Middle Place. Tucson: U of Arizona P, 2001.

Baird, W. David. The Osage People. Ed. John I. Griffin. Phoenix: Indian Tribal Series, 1972.

Buell, Lawrence. The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing, and the

Formation of American Culture. Cambridge: Belknap-Harvard U P, 1995.

Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology. Trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Baltimore: Johns

Hopkins UP, 1997.

Fisher, Andy. Radical Ecopsychology: Psychology in the Service of Life. Albany: SUNY P,

2002.

Gaard, Greta. “Strategies for a Cross-Cultural Ecofeminist Ethics: Interrogating Tradition,

Preserving Nature.” New Essays in Ecofeminist Literary Criticism. Ed. Glynnis Carr.

Lewisburg: Bucknell U P, 2000. 82-101.

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