Yellow Woman and a Beauty of Spirit

The American media whitewashed accounts of the atrocities committed by the American government against Native American peoples and failed to “report the validity of Indian claims of treaty violations and the legitimacy of other Indian grievances” (73), relying instead on Hollywood stereotypes of hostile Native American uprisings even in the face of protests at Alcatraz Island, Wounded Knee, and the Washington Bureau of Indian Affairs in the 1970s.

In 1981, the US Commission on Civil Rights released a report compiled and written by Native American lawyers and legal specialists titled “Indian Tribes: A Continuing Quest for Survival.” The report stated that ignorance leads to civil rights violations by failing to identify the federal and state governments responsible for stealing and plundering Native American resources. The report further asks Congress to recognize Indian tribes like states, although the report did not include or address necessary legislation and federal funding to make this recognition happen. It did, however, describe Native American history in an attempt to wipe out public ignorance of Indian rights, specifically focusing on Pacific Northwest fishing rights, East Coast land claims, and the legal status of tribes—the most controversial topics for non-Native Americans, which the report says stems more from greed, and not necessarily racism.

Silko states that Indian law is rarely taught in law schools, even though there is an entire volume of US Code devoted to it. Similarly, Indian water, natural gas and oil, and uranium rights affect the growth and quality of life in places such as Los Angeles and El Paso, although many people do not realize this. Tribes have filed lawsuits against states for wrongful government seizure of land. The American government, like the Western European governments before it, created treaties that veiled its brutal colonization efforts.

However, the American government often went back on these treaties, as in the case of Northwest tribal fishing rights, in which the government attempted to use the Fourteenth Amendment to claim that no one race had exclusive fishing rights. However, this was in direct violation of the treaty the American government had signed with the northwest Tribes, granting them exclusive fishing access. Similar violations have occurred in issues of land claims and other civil rights:

This, perhaps, has always been the greatest outrage: that for American Indians, the worst violations came not at the hands of private individuals acting out racist perversions, but from the federal government itself […] The American public has difficulty believing such injustice continues to be inflicted upon Indian people because Americans assume that the sympathy or tolerance they feel toward Indians is somehow felt or transferred to the government policy that deals with Indians. This is not the case (78).

Silko introduces Auntie Kie, who sits outside on a bench under a tree while her grandchildren play around her. Silko asks Kie what another four years of Ronald Reagan means for Native Americans. Kie talks about how Reagan means something different to Native Americans than he does for the rest of Americans, and how Native Americans have about 5 percent of the land they started with, most of which is land “‘the white people didn’t want’” (81). Kie offers that the US was founded on stolen land and discusses the fraudulent nature of Indian treaties that white settlers never intended on keeping. Kie maintains that the land is still Indian Country, no matter what fraud, armed robbery, or murder the US government commits. Kie then says that the proposed cuts Reagan intends to make on health and education is detrimental for many Americans, but for Native Americans, this federal money is not welfare or assistance, but rather money owed to the Native peoples by the US government for more than two hundred years: “‘Another four years of Reagan will only get the United States farther behind in its payments on the Big Debt owed for all the land wrongfully taken and the damages resulting to Native Americans’” (82).

Auntie Kie says that Native American patience is running out, and soon they will call for Americans to immigrate to other countries if they don’t pay back the debt, effectively evicting white America. The narrator worries about Reagan filling four Supreme Court positions, since, as Kie says, only Congress is allowed to regulate commerce with Indian tribes, and not the Supreme Court. She uses the Trail of Tears as an example for the USSC’s futility in dealing with Native Americans: despite the Court’s protestations, Georgia still marched many Native Americans to their deaths and other Native Americans to alien land. Kie says that it doesn’t matter if the presidents are Republican or Democrat, they’re just there “‘to give the people a good show’” (84). 

At first, Silko did not understand what the title of this chapter truly meant because she conceived of homelands as having boundaries and invisible ownership. In the old days, there had been no boundaries but rather a mutual respect for the land and all of its living beings:“Long ago the people had ranged far and wide all over the desert plateau region” (86). This meant that even when Silko left New Mexico, she was still “home” in Tucson, which was Yaqui country, remembering that one of her best friends growing up had been half-Yaqui. However, the American government only recognized the Yaqui as Native American in 1973, before which they had been classified as Mexican because many of them had fled Mexico in attempts to escape the Mexican Army’s genocide against the Yaqui.

It was not until Silko left Laguna for Tucson that she understood her relationship with the land, her home, because she had to pay special attention to the land in Tucson as it was unfamiliar. Silko could see the difference between Tucson and the surrounding Yaqui settlements: the street names turn into Spanish and the villages look like pueblos instead of cities, with corn, melons, and other vegetables growing in place of lawns. In this way, Tucson differs from New Mexico, which burned all but the outlying pueblos outside city boundaries. Nonetheless, Silko found similarities between Laguna and the Yaqui settlement of Old Pasqua, sensing the transition from the city of Tucson to the village: “The presence of the Yaqui people and their Yaqui universe with all the spirit beings have consecrated this place; amid all the clamor and pollution of Tucson, this is home” (89).

One day, driving through Old Pasqua, Silko marveled at how deserted it was before, and all at once, people opened their doors and began streaming out of their houses, much to Silko’s amazement.All were heading towards a white hearse to pay their respects. Without telephones, they all came out of their house at once, cementing the idea of what it means to be a people and a village within the narrator’s head: the collective consciousness that is tied to their land.

Silko remembers that growing up at Laguna, she also had no telephones and instead relied on a town crier for meeting and village duty announcements. Everyone was involved in everyone else’s business, but quietly, without open confrontation, and it was expected when asked how you were, that you would share any news or gossip you knew. This information was retold in story format, and people would remember similar stories which they would then recount:

The storytelling had the effect of placing an incident in the wider context of Pueblo history so that individual loss or failure was less personalized and became part of the village’s eternal narratives about loss and failure, narratives that identify the village and tell the people who they are(91).