Liberation and the Land: The Environmental Ethos of Gerald Vizenor

Although he seems to take issue with the ostensible Indian worship of Mother Earth, Gerald Vizenor makes a point about non-Indians having lost a sense of an inherent American Indian connection with the land that he feels to be of critical importance. For an embodiment of this sense of the land, he chooses the salamander: “The salamander and the natural mediation of amphibians, for instance, could be an unpretentious signature of the earth, the trace between land, water, and our stories” (“Tragic” 194). Despite his challenging, postmodern narratives and elusive characters and at the same time that he disallows any simplistic, reductive, or stereotypical readings of American Indian cultures or beliefs, Vizenor does forcefully argue for an American Indian land ethic.