The Identity of Contemporary Native Americans Represented by Various Stories of Leslie Marmon Silko

실코의 다양한 이야기들을 통해서 재현되는 현대 미국 원주민의 정체성

In this paper, I will explore disparate voices embedded in the interactions of stories in which personal, cultural, historical, and mythical consciousness brings up diverse ideas about the experiences of Native Americans. The accommodation of differences and changes is clearly manifested through the healing ceremony of Tayo, which poses some practical questions: what could be the authentic tradition of Native Americans?; which direction should it be led to? As these questions suggest, Tayo needs to think over and work through the way that Native oral stories will enrich the signification of being Indian within multicultural U. S. society. In other words, Tayo should transfer the oppositional relationship between Anglo and Native American world into an interactive one to bring forth new meanings concerning their interactions. As a hybrid, Tayo begins to recognize that his fragmented consciousness could represent the pervasive but surmountable anxiety about the cultural clash between Native and White Americans. Going through the multiple layers of his stories, Tayo learns that Native Americans need to hold a balanced viewpoint firmly: this demonstrates that storytelling brings restoration and renewal to him. As a result of Betonie's healing ceremony and his intimate relationship with Ts'eh, Tayo comes to have a holistic comprehension about how all the living things are interconnected to one another. After acquiring this recognition, Tayo succeeds in his quest to get back Josiah's cattle and recovers his identity as a Laguna Pueblo Indian, still letting diverse voices, cultures, and stories flow into the process of storytelling. As the last scene in which the conversations among Tayo, Auntie, and Grandmother took place illustrates, Tayo has newly secured a position that will require him to create a new, alternative story, not just repeating previous stories.