Leslie Marmon Silko and the Artistic Expression of Indigenous Storytelling: Freedom and Sovereignty in Defiance of Settler Colonialism

This presentation attends to Silko’s artistic expression as an Indigenous storyteller, honoring the stories she weaves from her Indigenous traditions in pursuit of sovereignty and freedom--two different yet related terms. In the act of listening to Silko’s stories, questions are posed: What is the connection between storytelling and having sources of sovereignty and freedom, especially in times of oppression and despair? The presentation starts by exploring the liberating power of Indigenous storytelling. It then focuses on nuclear storied landscapes in Silko’s novels, Ceremony and Almanac of the Dead. We discover artistic storytelling for achieving two kinds of freedom: Sovereignty to enable accountability to the land and its people; and freedom from environmental racism and other forms of settler oppression. The presentation concludes with the curative role of artistic storytelling, assisting humans to survive and even flourish as they seek freedom and justice in the face of the catastrophic.