Ritualistic Power: Harmony and Renewal in House Made of Dawn and Ceremony

Abstract

Authors of the Native American Renaissance, a literary movement beginning in the 1960s, use the tradition of storytelling in a non-traditional way (written, rather than oral) to demonstrate how healing rituals offer a solution to an ailing people, an ailing nation. Authors of this renaissance have moved from depicting the mythic mystical Indian that America idealized to portraying contemporary Native Americans who battle dichotomies such as modernization versus tradition and assimilation versus loyalty. While reservation life is often hard and assimilation into the mainstream culture offers escape, abandoning traditions often proves detrimental to the Native American culture and to the psyche of the individual. Contemporary authors' works offer another solution: not a complete dismissal or conversion, but rather an evolution within tradition. N. Scott Momaday, in House Made of Dawn, and Leslie Marmon Silko, in Ceremony, both create characters with damaged psyches as a result of failed attempts at escape. These characters experience healing by reconnecting with cultural traditions and rituals, specifically, with a contemporary version of the Navajo Night Chant. In my capstone, I will summarize and interpret the ancient version of the Navajo Night Chant whose power I suggest lies chiefly within the words; draw parallels between the key elements of the ancient and the modernized versions offered by Momaday and Silko; and examine the dynamics presented by the emerging hybrid Native American in search of the balance and harmony that the Night Chant offers. First, I will illustrate that the rituals of the Navajo are already hybrid as the ceremonies combine spiritual and ceremonial aspects from the Pueblo and the Navajo prior to the "great Pueblo revolt against the Spaniards at the end of the seventeenth century" (Hultkrantz 126). Rituals are subject to change with the impact of modernization. I will be utilizing John Bierhorst and Washington Matthews to outline the details of the ancient Navajo Healing ceremony and Gary Witherspoon and others to explore the importance of words in the ceremony. In The Night Chant, A Navajo Ceremony, Matthews details the ceremony from his observations in the late nineteenth to early twentieth century. Then John Bierhorst used Matthew's detailed work as a resource in his compilation, Four Masterworks of American Indian Literature, where he combines a basic outline of the Night Chant with commentary and interpretation that point to the true power of the ceremony: words. As Witherspoon notes in Navajo and Art in the Navajo Universe, "Navajo philosophy assumes that mental and physical phenomena are inseparable, and that thought and speech can have a powerful impact on the world of matter and energy... Ritual language does not describe how things are; it determines how they will be. Ritual language is not impotent; it is powerful. It commands, compels, organizes, transforms, and restores" (Witherspoon 9, 34). Rituals enable a journey. Second, I will examine the way in which Momaday and Silko integrate into their novels the transformed versions of the Navajo Night Chant to address issues faced by modern Native Americans on a journey toward balance and harmony. I will explore the impact of the words in the Night Chant that alter the path of Abel's and Tayo's journeys from ones wrought with turmoil, struggle, and isolation to ones that embrace peace, harmony, and community. Momaday speaks to the power of words in Native American tradition in The Man of Words, "Words are intrinsically powerful. Words are magical. By means of words can one bring about physical change in the universe" (16). Momaday's and Silko's respective protagonists, Abel and Tayo, are riddled with a pain that encompasses hybrid ancestry, disconnectedness with the community, an inability to participate in positive traditions, and post war trauma. They are searching for relief with behaviors that beget negative consequences, until they begin a healing process through the Night Chant. Finally, I will explore the impact of the emerging hybrid Native American on reviving, maintaining, and/or affecting tradition. I will synthesize the opinions of several sociologists on the emerging hybrid identity to support the theory that those Indians receptive to change will bring revival, with adaptations, to the culture and will enable the core of the old traditions to survive in an ever changing, progressive world.