Whispering in
Shadows: Reconstructing Identity through
Environment and Indigeneity
Dr. Devika,
Assistant Professor,
Department of
English and Other Foreign Languages,
Gurugram University,
Gurgaon, Haryana, India.
Abstract: Through my research
paper, I intend to take issues of identity, indigenity and environment
pertaining to Jeannette Armstrong’s Whispering in Shadows. Armstrong, a Native
Canadian writer from Okaangan Valley puts forth her worries towards the
preservation of Nature and its resources through the character of Penny
Jackson. Penny Jackson, the protagonist of the novel, considers the economic
policy of globalization to be the major reason for the plight of the natives in
Canada, U. S. A. and the likes. Colonialism and subjugation, which lasted for
more than 500 years, combined with the denial of
political, economic, and cultural freedom, resulted in the contamination of
indigenous communities ancestral lands and the subsequent genocide of entire
populations. Using literature as a platform for activism represents a new
opportunity for radical change as Armstrong necessitates a confrontation with
the questions of Identity, Indigeneity, Environment and cultural hegemony.
Keywords:
Environment; Indigenous community; Identity; Land; Native Canada.
Introduction
Jeannette Christine Armstrong, born in 1948 is a Canadian author, born
and grew up on Penticton Indian reserve in British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley.
Armstrong stresses on the themes of language, identity and environment that are
inherent in the wholeness of the Okanagan community. Her literary works aim to
express her feelings about the symbiosis of land, language, and community,
while also generating and perpetuating a creative process that benefits more
than one person. She is also an advocate for Indigenous people’s rights and
focuses her work on the revitalization of Indigenous communities and
environment.
The environment includes everything that makes up our surroundings,
including air, water, land, plants, and animals, and its quality has an impact
on our ability to live on the planet. Extensive research has been conducted in
recent decades to examine how people affect the environment. Air pollution,
deforestation, acid rain, and other environmental threats, according to
reports, are man-made calamities that will eventually take a severe toll on
both humans and non-human organisms. This paper examines the ecosystem of
Canada’s native reservations, which has been harmed by colonisation and capital
imperialism. Armstrong, in her works, shows how native lifestyle and belief
system is in harmony with Nature and exhibits respect and care for Earth with
the flora and fauna in its lap.
Cheryll Glotfelty defines Ecocriticism in introduction to The
Ecocriticism Reader (1996)
“What…is Ecocriticism? Simply put, Ecocriticism is the study of the
relationship between literature and the physical environment. Just as Feminist
Criticism examines language and literature from a gender- conscious-
perspective, and Marxist Criticism brings an awareness of modes of production and
economic class to literary studies.” (168)
The story portrayed by renowned Okanagan author Jeannette Armstrong
traces the life of a young Native woman on a reserve who is exposed to
pesticides while working as a fruit picker in the Okanagan Valley. It provides
a glimpse into the complexities of the contemporary life and psyche of
Aboriginal people. The novel conveys an important environmental theme and
insights into the future as well. It follows the life of Okanagan painter
Penny, who has been diagnosed with cancer after working as a fruit picker in
the Okanagan Valley and exposing herself to pesticides. In the novel, we get a
glimpse of what it is like to live and think like an Aboriginal person in the
present day. An essential ecological theme is conveyed in the novel. After
witnessing injustice as an Okanagan Indian, Penny Jackson sets out on a
national and international journey in search of a path to self-discovery.
Penny, like Jeannette Armstrong, responds to the real threat to Native
communities by erasing their identity in favour of whiteness at the expense of
nativeness through activism and art. One of Jeannette Armstrong’s main
motivations for writing this novel was to resist white oppression and support
the harmed communities. She uses literature as a form of resistance and a tool
for decolonization. The novel depicts complex modernization and globalization
system, which governs modern society, and the complex indigenous traditions
that eventually return us to our own mother earth.
Rob Nixon, a professor in Humanities and the Environment at Princeton
writes about social and environmental movements. It is because of Nixon’s
assessment of the devastating social, cultural, spiritual, and economic effects
of such acts on Indigenous peoples whose definition of self and family are
grounded in their connections to and relationships with the land that further
that Nixon conceptualises environmental degradation as well as the
displacements that it creates similar to acts of war.
In the words of Rob Nixon in Slow Violence and Environmentalism of
the Poor, published in 2011,
“By slow violence I mean a
violence that occurs gradually and out of sight, a violence of delayed
destruction that is dispersed across time and space…. We need, I believe, to
engage a different kind of violence, a violence that is neither spectacular nor
instantaneous, but rather incremental and accretive, its calamitous
repercussions playing out across a range of temporal scales.” (119)
Cheryl Suzack and Shari M. Huhndorf argue in Indigenous Women and Feminism: Politics, Activism and Culture that:
“Although Indigenous feminism is a nascent field of scholarly inquiry,
it has arisen from histories of women’s activism and culture that have aimed to
combat gender discrimination, secure social justice for Indigenous women, and
counter their social erasure and marginalization – endeavors that fall arguably
under the rubric of feminism, despite Indigenous women’s fraught relationship
with the term and with mainstream feminist movements.” (20)
This expansive collection delves into the political, social, and
cultural landscapes, emphasizing the contributions of indigenous women both
historically and in their present roles as thinkers and activists. Writers who
view literature as a tool for social good often embed activism within their
work. Employing literature as a means of advocacy opens new pathways for
meaningful and transformative change.
According to Armstrong, contemporary cities like Los Angeles, where a
never-ending string of ultramodern skyscrapers completely blocks out any view
of a clear blue sky, are horrendous places to live. Suffocating views of
concrete jungles like this make environmentalist Penny Jackson want to scream
and run away in terror. A call to return to Aboriginal localism is made in Whispering
in Shadows by Penny’s commitment to resisting globalisation through her art
and activism work. Penny makes herself heard on the basis of activities she
indulges in as well as holds a diverse view on various topics ranging from
colonialism, globalisation, modernism. She uses her activism not only as a
strategy to combat globalisation but also to empower indigenous communitites as
well as indigenous women.
The protagonist, who is raised on a Native American reservation and has
grown up with some traditional knowledge and a fondness for colour and art. One
of the world’s most successful artists, a single mother of three who became an
internationalist visiting indigenous peoples and relating their situation to
her own, becomes ill from taking on so much of the pain of the world, and
finally returns to help preserve and renew her own tribe’s traditions and
solidarity.
Penny’s grandmother, who has a deep understanding of the Okanagan
philosophy, is a wise woman. It is Tupa’s role to embody Okanagan cultural
collaboration's values and practises, and she has shaped the protagonist's
attitude and spiritual nourishment.
Land and individual human relationships with the land are intertwined
familial dependences because it carries meaning and identity that encompasses
culture, social, personal and communal existence. Because of the devastation
caused by globalisation, reconnecting to the land provides a strong foundation
for healing and preserving cultural identity.
Communities based on Native cultures that see women as part of the land
are directly impacted by land degradation, as well as discrimination and
injustice related to a lack of respect for sacred traditional practises,
according to these cultures. However, despite the fact that Penny's indigenous
identity is not considered authentic to indignity, she tends to preserve her
own identity and that of Okanangan, which is spiritually and culturally linked
to her indigenous self-identity.
Another lens to this perspective is Penny’s obsession with colours, this
can be interpreted as a metaphor for the Natural world, which is why Penny has
such a maniacal obsession with colours and why no one around her understands
her. It implies that the Material world views the Natural world as abnormal or
incomprehensible. As a result, for Penny, painting is a metaphorical escape
from the material world, where she finds peace, solace, and comfort in ways
that others cannot comprehend.
In the opinion of Penny’s friend Roberta, who is unable to comprehend
Penny’s interest in colour and art, “Why don’t you think of normal stuff, like
how that cool guy Michael has a new car.” (Armstrong 9)
Aside from preserving cultural legacies, the effort is also aimed at
safeguarding nature from Western materialistic and capitalistic influences.
Nature takes on new meanings for these people, even though the settlers have
done everything in their power to remove them from their homes. Indigenous
people and settlers are contrasted in the text in terms of their relationship
to nature. For example, an activist at a camp on five valley coast of Vanouver
island, Jim wonders why the indigenous people wouldn't think of making money
from their lands if they were given full control. Penny responds in the
affirmative.
Armstrong says, “It seems to me what you just said is the real problem.
They haven’t devastated any of their lands in the thousands of years of living
here. Why would they do it now? I don’t think there’s enough research on the
fact that native people understand real sustainability and practice it even on
the small reserves left of their homelands.” (109)
Land and people are, according to Simon Ortiz who is an American Native
writer and is an active participant of second wave of Native American
Renaissance says, “one and the same essential matter of Existence.” When it
comes to Penny’s understanding of her connection to the land, her deepening of
ties with her family, and even the inheriting of traditional customs, history,
and philosophy, the self-sustaining culture of farming that is practised on the
land has a lot to do with it.
Armstrong in “Land Speaking” says,
“All my elders say that it is
land that holds all knowledge of life and death and is a constant teacher. It
is said in Okanagan that the land constantly speaks. Not to learn its language
is to die. We survived and thrived by listening intently to its teachings—to
its language—and then inventing human words to retell its stories to our
succeeding generations—in the sense, all indigenous people‘s languages are
generated by a precise geography and arise from it.”
Recognizing that Native people stand at a pivot point at this time in
history, each having the responsibility of deciding for descendants how their
world shall be affected and what shall be their heritage.
Conclusion
The turn to voicing indigenous provides an opportunity to imagine more
just ‘plantation futures’ in an era of environmental degradation.
Eco-lit needs to delve deeper into portrayals of how environmental
degradation leads to human agony, suffering and displacements; how citizens
turn into refugees within their own country; how economic and political
exploitation turn human life upside down and jeopardise the environment,
thereby making it unsuitable for life in future. But it needs to be done as
literature, as human stories of subtlety, not just the sterile badgering of
activism.”Jeannette Armstrong, envisioned “the survival of what is human in an
inhuman world” and has proposed a possibility of a new ending to the story. As
Native woman writer she locates the roots of the degradation of land on the
basis of insensitivity and callousness in Canada’s colonial history, she also
strives to find the means of changing the system which perpetuates the
oppression of land.
In the words of Nicanor Parra, a poet from Chile, who claims himself to
an anti- poet,
“The mistake we made was in the thinking
that the earth belonged to us
when the fact of the matter is
we’re the ones who belong to the earth.”
Works Citeds
Armstrong, Jeannette. Slash.
Theytus Books, 1985.
--- Breath Tracks. Theytus Books, 1991.
---. Whispering in Shadows. Theytus Books,
2000.
Buell, Lawrence. The Future of
Environmental Criticism: Environmental Crisis and Literary Imagination.
Blackwell, 2005.
Eniko, Sepsi, et al., editors. Indigenous
Perspectives of North America: A Collection of Studies.Cambridge
Scholars Publishing, 2014.
Merchant, Carolyn. Radical Ecology: The
Search for a Livable World. Routledge, 1992.
Mies, Maria, and Vandana Shiva. Ecofeminism.
Zed Books, 1993.