The Semiotics of Dwelling in Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony

Abstract A reader of Ceremony must also acknowledge a second concept that Silko and other contemporary Indian writers suggest is fundamental to American Indian epistemology: there are profound, inextricable linkages among self, community, and the physical and metaphysical dimensions of the land. Three brief statements by N. Scott Momaday, Paula Gunn Allen, and Louise Erdrich succinctly outline such a relationship to the environment. Momaday’s statement emphasizes an aesthetic perception and valuation of land that he sees as characteristically “Indian.”