Power: A Novel

The urban settings of Omishto’s mother’s church, her school, and the courtroom are juxtaposed with the natural spaces of faith and learning that Omishto frequents in the opening chapters: Ama’s house, the swamp and Taiga birthplace. Within these settings, Omishto continues to grapple with the contrast between Indigenous Knowledge Versus Western Scientific Knowledge and her perspective on them.

Omishto’s character develops in this section as she feels increasingly alienated in the urban settings. Unlike Ama’s house, the church remains untouched by the hurricane. While the congregation sees this as God’s grace, Omishto sees it as a sign of the emptiness of their beliefs. She is attuned to the natural signs of decay, and there are dead plants in the preacher’s yard, but Hogan also juxtaposes plastic flowers in the vase in the church with Omishto’s usual natural environment. The church and its attendees project cheer and brightness but underneath are “short on love” and “strong on judgment” (102), reflecting the beautiful but artificial flowers. Omishto sees that her mother also lacks integrity because she denies her husband’s abusive nature, and because of this Omishto is mistrustful of the world. She judges the places and people around her based on their honesty and authenticity, which Hogan presents as lacking in the urban spaces.

The scenes at school emphasize Omishto’s increasing exclusion from the Western world, a plot point through which Hogan explores Cultural Identity as a Balance of Assimilation and Preservation. Jewel’s admonishment of her actions solidifies the distance in their friendship due to their disparate levels of privilege, family life, and culture. Jewel’s ballet classes and college goals represent Western standards of progress and culture in which Omishto cannot participate, and she is envious of Jewel’s sense of belonging. Omishto doesn’t see herself as part of Western society, despite excelling academically at school. Her understanding that she and Jewel are on separate paths highlights her coming-of-age in her development of cultural identity.

These scenes also address Indigenous Knowledge Versus Western Scientific Knowledge. She has developed an analytical mind that views things in terms of cost, and a scientific understanding of place and time that contrasts with nonlinear time and unbounded spaces represented in Part 2, but she has “unlearned” her ancestral knowledge systems and has lost her place in her culture. The student’s cruelty to Omishto emphasizes their ignorance of Indigenous knowledge. The Americanized students are also disconnected from the natural world, symbolized through the fact that the panther is the school “mascot,” a childlike, cartoon symbolic representation disconnected from the real animal. When Omishto rips up her essay and then decides not to return to school, she is rejecting Western systems of knowing and its views of the separateness of nature and animals from human culture.

The descriptions of the two courtrooms reinforce Omishto’s choice not to assimilate to the Western world because of feeling excluded from it. In the Western trial, Omishto feels “lost” and disenfranchised, as the building is the same structure in which her tribe had been forced to cede the rights to their land and their way of living. She connects the courtroom with her mother’s church as a place of judgment rather than forgiveness. She is bitter at the hypocrisy of tribal practices being judged by a white jury, a group of people who have not had to face the loss of their entire community and culture. She sees this as a weakness—they would “fall down in despair and hit themselves” (119). Here, the woman who is central to her life, Ama, is nearly invisible and experiences prejudice. This sense of exclusion pushes Omishto to reconsider her relationship with modern society, in which she lacks power and agency. Ironically, in the middle of the court that is full of “lies,” Omishto realizes that she has been lying to herself and that she really believes what Ama believes. This is a turning point in Omishto’s development and the beginning of her transformation from a culturally conflicted adolescent to a Taiga woman.

In contrast, at the tribal court in Kili Swamp, Omishto respects the judgment of the council of elders. Unlike the Western judge’s “broken” face, she views the Taiga elders as people of integrity: They have the “goodness of life on their peaceful faces” (154). Ama looks better in the swamp; she looks healthier and connected to her surroundings, like she belongs. However, Omishto still has a sense of unease. She believes that her words have more value to the tribal court but feels a sense of loss and foreignness because she does not speak Taiga, her tribal language, so she cannot understand the whole trial. She can tell the story more fully and truthfully, but still needs to withhold certain truths to protect Ama. In this way, Ama’s banishment is the death that allows Omishto to fully live a traditional life. Like the creative and destructive storm, it is “a beginning and an end of something” (73).