Ceremonies in the desert

“Long time ago
In the beginning
there were no white people in this world
there was nothing European.
And this world might have gone on like that
except for one thing:
witchery.”

Since reading Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony well over two years ago I've grown a fascination with New Mexico, USA. Even as the name suggests it has no individual identity, it's a state torn apart and sewn together with a plethora of conflicting races and nationalities.

Silko's novel written in 1977 tells the story of Tayo, a mixed race Pueblo man returning to Laguna, New Mexico after fighting in the second world war. Tayo is traumatised from his experiences, in particular the death of his cousin, Rocky who was fighting alongside him in the Philippines.

Tayo's desire to return to his homeland soon develops into a restlessness he cannot shake off. He and the other Pueblo veterans returning from the war realise the 'war hero' status is not theirs to own, it is the white man's. The Pueblo consciousness has been gradually eroded away and smoothed over by white ideologies. Ownership,boundaries. The life of the land becomes obsolete.

Silko intends to show New Mexico through a thick weave of stories and tales which expand, alter and intertwine to create the real consciousness of the state. Tayo's story is predominately linear but is littered with quick flashbacks of pre-war New Mexico and war time jungle conflicts as Tayo struggles to reclaim his roots in Laguna. Silko also merges ancient Pueblo stories within the novel, a central one being the story of the drought caused by Reed Woman leaving the earth.

The crux of Ceremony is the importance of these tales and the ability for Native Americans to adopt new ones. Tayo is shunned by many of his Pueblo contemporaries because of his half European, half Native American background. Like attitudes towards Tayo's bi-racial status, the Pueblos see the white man impregnating native land as a sign of change for the worse.

With the help of an Elder named Betonie, Tayo learns to deal with his post traumatic stress as brought on by the horrors of the war and the death of his cousin. Betonie is the true personification of New Mexico, of mixed Mexican and Pueblo decent he practices the native religion in a shack filled with Western pop cult: coca cola cans, newspapers, magazines overlooking white man's territory. Clearly the novel cannot avoid the overwhelming melancholy of the Pueblo in a land which is becoming unrecognisable to them, but Silko is optimistic (as a mixed race American herself) that a kind of acceptance and absorption of Western culture is necessary to progress.

Since reading Ceremony I have been mesmerized by the magical quality of New Mexico. From playing Uru (initially set in modern day New Mexico) to touring the plains on Google Maps for hours, it has been an obsession of mine to visit the state which boasts a whole load of nothingness (much of the desert remains uninhabited) but is brimming full of old world magic, stories and ceremony.