Quote:
Originally Posted by R. S. Gwynn
Harjo is a very fine poet, rhetorically skillful and passionate. But she continually harps on the saving powers of a lost world, an Eden if you will, where humans and nature were one. It's a belief that many hold.
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You collapse a complex worldview to something you can grasp, I guess. Most tribal philosophies are very different from the easy dualism of the usual takes on Genesis. A poem like the one below might seem simple but it isn't based in a misunderstanding of the cruelties in all pasts. Something else is being presented. It is definitely not "humans and nature" as one. That business may be a belief that many hold but it isn't the belief of the majority Amerindian perspectives, the Siberian peoples from where those migrations likely came, the Australian aboriginies, or the myth chain coming up out of Africa (Witzel). Animist and totemic peoples were/are waist deep in the realities of the living world in ways that make us look like sheltered children. I think you might have Harjo confused with that French White boy Rousseau.
Once the World Was Perfect
Once the world was perfect, and we were happy in that world.
Then we took it for granted.
Discontent began a small rumble in the earthly mind.
Then Doubt pushed through with its spiked head.
And once Doubt ruptured the web,
All manner of demon thoughts
Jumped through—
We destroyed the world we had been given
For inspiration, for life—
Each stone of jealousy, each stone
Of fear, greed, envy, and hatred, put out the light.
No one was without a stone in his or her hand.
There we were,
Right back where we had started.
We were bumping into each other
In the dark.
And now we had no place to live, since we didn't know
How to live with each other.
Then one of the stumbling ones took pity on another
And shared a blanket.
A spark of kindness made a light.
The light made an opening in the darkness.
Everyone worked together to make a ladder.
A Wind Clan person climbed out first into the next world,
And then the other clans, the children of those clans, their children,
And their children, all the way through time—
To now, into this morning light to you.
I don't read this as lioning for an Eden. This is an appeal to the future. It is the most similar poem to your dismissal's straw man I can think of offhand. It is based in a tribal story and builds from there. The repetitions in her work are not harping but grounding her work in the storyscape of her people. The robust and nuanced animisms that many of these tales precede from have an intimate knowledge of the undomesticated that makes your comment seem sorta ignorant to be honest. That is not some noble savage idealism. That is observed fact.