Director, Environmental Studies
Professor of English

STUDY QUESTIONS

Leslie Marmon Silko, “Landscape, History, and the Pueblo Imagination”
At Home on the Earth : Becoming Native to Our Place. Ed. David Landis Barnhill.
Berkeley : University of California Press, 1999. 30-42.

1. What is Silko’s view of the life and spirit of things, from living things to spent corn cobs to clay? How do you personally relate to such a view – and why? How would your life be different if you viewed things this way. How would our culture be different?

2. Why does Silko say that the term landscape is misleading?

3. What is the Pueblo approach to art and how is it different from our conventional view of artistic representation? What view of nature is involved, and how is it significant?

4. The title of one of the sections of Silko’s essay is “Through the Stories We Hear Who We Are.” What does she mean by that? What is the significance of Indian stories?

5. What is the “interior journey” related to the migration story? Whose journey is it? A journey to what? How does her view of this journey relate to the idea that the Indian is “one with nature?”

6. What is the Pueblo view of individuality and identity?

7. Silko speaks briefly about hunting (31 & 33). How does she describe it? How do you respond to such a view – and why?

8. In what way does Silko’s essay, at least implicitly, critique our contemporary culture? Do you agree with that critique? Why, or why not?

9. What aspects of it could be adapted to our culture and to your life? What would be required to do so? What would be lost if we did? What aspects could not be adapted?

10. How does this essay relate to bioregionalism? What aspects of her views fit with bioregionalism, and which ones do not? How might she reform or refine bioregionalism as it has been presented in this class?

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