The Presence and Role of Ancestors in North American Indigenous Cultures, and Beyond

In my presentation, I argue that ancestors as “spectral beings” present a challenge for Euro-American scholars. Ancestors play a powerful role in many cultures, and yet due to various forms of secularism, Euro-American scholars tend to discount the role of ancestors—including in their own Euro-American cultures. My window into this large topic is North American Indigenous cultures in the context of settler colonialism. After making broad comments about the role of past and future ancestors in North American Indigenous cultures, giving special attention to the work of Kyle Whyte of the Potawatomi Nation, I focus on the work of Leslie Marmon Silko. Ancestors are prominent characters in Silko’s writings: they are tangible, practical part of life. Finally, I argue that, when viewed from the perspective of Silko’s Indigenous extraordinary beings, we gain a new sense of “spectral” ancestors in Euro-American cultures and traditions.        Spirits, ghosts, and above all ancestors are prominent characters in Silko’s writings. Such beings and presences tend to be neglected or “demythologized” by secular settler scholarship, stigmatized or demonized by settler ideological Christianity, and “spiritualized” or made otherworldly by New Age appropriation. Yet in Silko’s work, spirits, ghosts, and ancestors are a tangible, practical part of life. They can bring trouble but also assistance to Indigenous populations in their struggles against settler oppression and other forms of harm.        North American Indigenous cultures represent variously the relations between humans and the more-than-human. In Euro-American scholarly environmental literature, the more-than-human typically refers to what once was referred to as “nature” when employing the human-nature binary. In this settler literature, then, the more-than-human is usually a secular concept. Yet for Indigenous cultures and authors, the more-than-human includes not only “nature” (as described above) but also spirits, ghosts, and ancestors, among other beings or presences that settler cultures typically call “spiritual” or “supernatural.” Yet the term “spiritual” is potentially problematic because it could suggest a nonmaterial, disembodied sphere (the “spiritual dimension”) that is separate from—even above—the rest of the universe.         And the term “supernatural” is potentially problematic because it could suggest a class of beings or events that operate in a fashion contrary to the ways of “the natural world,” that is, the more-than-human. In the following, I refer to ancestors as “extraordinary beings,” stipulating that by “extraordinary beings,” I am referring to a broad set of diverse remarkable beings that belong to the more-than-human and that interact with humans.        In the U.S. and elsewhere, Indigenous worldviews that include extraordinary beings have been and continue to be disparaged and (literally) demonized. Settler supremacist religious ideology vilifies Native American traditional belief as forms of idolatry, heathenism, witchcraft, and Satanic worship (all stigmatizing labels in Euro-American settler contexts). To “protect” Native American children from such primitive or dangerous belief, white settler governments and organizations forcibly removed children from their homes and communities and forbade them from using their Indigenous languages. Despite such suppression and oppression, U.S. Indigenous groups and authors have been courageous and resilient, maintaining their dynamic worldviews. Leslie Silko is among these authors.        Spirits, ghosts, and especially ancestors are salient aspects of Silko’s accounts of Indigenous worldviews. As already noted, these extraordinary beings are not seen as belonging to a separate spiritual dimension but as integral members of the more-than-human. Like other members of the more-than-human, they can cause harm to humans, ignore humans, or cooperate and offer various forms of support. These forms of support are not limited to what settler culture often refers to as inner spiritual strength and insight. The support can contribute to personal strength and healing but also to social, economic, and racial justice. Indeed, in Silko’s work, the ancestors usually work to bring both personal and public healing and justice, recognizing the connection between the two.         When viewed from the perspective of Silko’s Indigenous extraordinary beings, we gain a new sense of the vitally “spectral,” extraordinary dimensions of Euro-American cultures and literature. For example, spirits, ghosts, and ancestors are found in Romanticism, yet secular scholars tend to think of these as fictional creations for the sake of “spooky” entertainment. Scholars often assume that, with the rise of science and the (supposed) demise of religion, nineteenth century readers did not actually believe in ghosts and ancestors. However, such belief was in fact prevalent, and Romantic literature is teeming with vibrant ancestors. For example, Wordsworth’s haunting poem, “The Thorn,” tells of a witch-like figure in a scarlet cloak who for twenty years has been wailing on a mountain top, mourning beside an infant’s grave. At night, one can hear “voices of the dead”—the ancestors—and in a pond not far from the grave, one can see the shadow of “A baby and a baby’s face, / And that it looks at you.”  When vigilantes (thinking the woman killed the baby) seek justice with shovels in hand to dig up “the little infant’s bones,” the ground around the grave begins to shake. The vigilantism stops, and Wordsworth has intentionally woven mystery into the poem. When read from the perspective of Silko’s worldview, “The Thorn” becomes alive with possibility, including that of vision and voice of the ancestors, and of quaking land defending the sacred.         Silko’s Indigenous interpretive framework enables one to view afresh vibrant ancestors in Euro-American cultures.  Yet secularized accounts of Indigenous cultures and literature fail to register the vibrant role of the ancestors, and the accounts thereby miss the close connections between religious, political, and environmental progressive thought. The ancestors in Silko’s authorship bear directly on such material issues as Indigenous sovereignty, land justice, resilience, and continuance. Kyle Whyte skillfully writes of how settler climate and other scientists draw on Indigenous knowledge to “fill in gaps” in their models that require certain local data; but these same scientists will not find acceptable or useful any traditional Indigenous knowledge that is associated with “ancestral spirits.”        My presentation, in contrast, seeks to take seriously—and literally—the role of ancestors in Indigenous cultures and to note its potential implications for Euro-American cultures.