The Tao of Raven: An Alaska Native Memoir - Literary Analysis Essay

Introduction

The Tao of Raven: An Alaskan Native Memoir is a book written by Ernestine Hayes. It is a fantastic blend of personal memoir and Alaska history, sense of belonging, and fiction all intertwined with Tlingit myth of creation "Raven Stealing the Light". Hayes retells and analyses the tale over and over with clever and ironic uses of The Art of War, a timeless book written sometime in the sixth century. In narrating the story, the Raven brings light to the world. It tries to dissipate the darkness of intergenerational disturbance that has damaged and hurt her people.' The narrative is multi-layered with remarkable creativity, natives' historical understanding, empathy, and philosophical insights for all people who share the world.

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The trauma covers all the Tlingit generations leading to the slow demise of its culture. The devastating alterations in the people's way of life include Christianity and colonialism, which lead to the disappearance of the Tlingit traditions and language, including dances, songs, and potlatch through coerced conversion to Christianity and forced assimilation. The author posits that currently, there is little to no appreciation of the Tlingit art, customs, and crafts complemented by loss of self-confidence.

The author is clear in listing the factors that reflect culture loss such as smoking, alcoholism, college dropouts, domestic violence, and poverty, and depression. She believes that the Raven needs to bring light to the Tlingit people. She claims that only then that the Tlingit strength and heritage can be salvaged. The author reflects growing up with her grandmother, who taught her Tlingit, about animals, cooking, and her family. It is interesting how Hayes is determined to regain the spiritual sense of her native land and at the cultural heritage. The Raven leads the reader along several paths. The book is a narrative of Hayes the child, her mother, grandmother, and other family members and their dispossession of the indigenous land and others.

Opinion

In my opinion, the author of the book is determined to repossess her cultural heritage. In the person writing the author recounts when she went fishing with her schoolmates who made a ridiculing comment about her grandfather. It beautiful how this encounter depicts so much about the life of assimilation and the pain it causes the natives. Hayes is torn between the two worlds. But to be an Indian is what makes her grandfather happy smiling with the fish on his hand as the white children get ready to run into another world. Hayes is forced to live the life designed for the white children, which I believe is devastating to her losing her culture.

I tend to think that the author tries to show the analogy of assimilation through the story of Tom and the women and children they relate with. A white woman adopting a foster child helps the reader to understand the concept assimilation and how it destroys the native population's way of living to another. I think that the beauty of the memoir is telling how colonization devastated the native community. She beautifully mixes the world of imagined and real people as well as glaciers, ravens, and seals. This helps us feel the emotions of anger, shame, resilience, hopelessness, love, and strength that flow throughout the story showing how the Tlingit has culture has eroded. The difficulties they encounter in adapting to another culture.

Children like Hayes are left without a choice at all except to full the life designed for other people. Her mother, grandmother, and the other family member are shocked by the loss of their land, home, and a new way of life. The Native population perceived all the world as interconnected and that everything is alive. I believe that the Native American women played a central role in society and Christianity and colonialism brought disturbance to the native's way of life, peaceful coexistence with nature respecting it, and believe that they are alive.

I also tend to think that the natives have lost what it means to belong to their land and the rich history it gives them in relating to one another. I believe that colonialism degrades the status of women as central to the ritual and spiritual of the Native Americans. I see that many Native American writers such as Hayes have overcome this intergenerational trauma and overcame issues of cultural suppression. The native women writers have reclaimed their voice through their work.

References

Hayes, E. (2017). The Tao of Raven: An Alaska Native Memoir. University of Washington Press.