White Guilt

I finished reading Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony a few days ago. This is, of course, one of the central texts to my thesis and covers not only geopolitical borderlands but supernatural ones as well. For those of you who haven’t read it (you really should) here’s a mini synopsis.

The main character Tayo, a mixed-blood Laguna man, tries to heal from his horrific experiences in the Vietnam War. Haunted by the deaths of his cousin and uncle, he lapses into alcoholism and self destruction until his exhausted family members send him to a medicine man named Betonie. With the assistance of Betonie, Tayo enters into an ancient, ongoing ceremonial journey to prevent the Destroyers from completing their quest to bring about the end of the world. The Destroyers are evil forces which feed off of devastation, ultimately bent on destroying human kind.

The section of Ceremony which I’d like to focus on is one of the legends which Silko includes in the text, relates to the Destroyers. It’s the origin story of white people.

It begins with a witches conference, where all the witch people get together “for a context the way people have baseball tournaments nowadays except this was a contest of dark things.” All the witches show off their evil talents, until finally only one witch is left, who decides to tell a story.

“Caves across the ocean

in caves of dark hills

white skin of people

like the belly of a fish

covered with hair.

...

Then they grow away from the earth

then they grow away from the sun

then they grow from the plants and animals. 

They see no life

When they look

they see only objects.

The world is a dead thing for them

...

They fear

They fear the world.

They destroy what they fear.

They fear themselves.”

The story goes on for pages detailing the events of the “discovery” of the Americas. The genocides, the diseases, the widespread destruction. The other witches are horrified, saying that:

“We are okay without it

we can get along without that kind of thing.

Take it back.

Call that story back.”

But of course, stories can’t be taken back. That’s the powerful nature of stories, once released, who knows what they’ll do. And so, the story itself brings white people into existence to do the work of the Destroyers and bring about the end of the world. And to be honest, judging from history, it’s not far off. Of course, Silko explains that the Destroyers don’t solely work through white people, and can feed off of anyone. But the white people were created for it.

So how do I, a white person, deal with this kind of origin story? Surely I’m not like that--surely I’m not an agent of destruction bent on obliterating the earth through unspeakable acts of violence? Silko isn’t talking about me, is she? In academia we’re told, never to rely on authorial intention, so we have to find proof in the text. That proof could be that the main character is both indigenous and white and since the message of hope lives in him, perhaps there is hope for me.

I called this post “White Guilt”. Maybe that’s a mistake. Guilt, after all, is a useless emotion that is only self-serving and generally causes inaction. Maybe until we start acting against the violence and destruction in this world, we are working for the Destroyers.