Nature as Culture: Ecological Awareness in Silko's Writings

Abstract

At this time of environmental degradation, human learning to preserve natural world has become a burning issue as nature is the foundation, the basis out of which emerges all that exist, and it is also the basis to bind together natural world with human identity in a complex web of relationship. Though the modern world has developed comfortable and sophisticated elements to cope with the contemporary lifestyle, it has been causing restlessness within the people's mind. The earth has been also loosing its strength day by day.The permanent solution to these problems is to accept the nature's essentiality in our life. As a responsible part of human society, taking an earth centered issue, humanitarian scholars need to represent the co-existence between human and other natural elements in their writings. In this context, L. M. Silko's writings bring forth the Native American Laguna Pueblo culture to reinforce ecocritical movement.Her writing hold indigenous views about nature to be the main source of their culture. Her texts view white American anthropocentric perspectives to bethe main cause of modern environmental extinction. While reading her essays, stories, and poems,we find them supporting the ecocritical movement and speaking for biocentric world. Her texts reinforce the Laguna Pueblo belief and valuesthat regard nature natural phenomena.She believes, if natural phenomena are obstructed, they create disaster in our nature based cultural society and a person who tries to cross this worldly attitude, will be punished at lastbynature herself. We cannot survive isolating ourselves from nature because it is nature from which we are safeguarded. Therefore, from herwritings, Silko makes it very clear that our failure of understanding about nature is itselfa failure of understanding our culture, we belongto.