Re-reading Silko9apos9s Ceremonies and American History

This article retrieves the history of Native American ceremonies to highlight the aboriginal ways of being. Using Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony to retrieve the reality of the ceremonies, I argue how the myths inscribed in Native American contemporary writings are the social and cultural embedment of the ceremonies in which they were written and thus the knowledge of prehistoric times. I focus on Silko’s modern techniques to revive the myths of oral tradition to understand and publicize the truths of Native American ceremonial world. She explains the ceremony of 1955 with reference to the ceremonies incorporated in Laguna myths, thereby juxtaposing two different time periods: the pre-Columbian timelessness and the post-second World War fragmented tribal community in Laguna in 1955. To understand the overlapping of poetic-prose stories I explain the function of ceremony in the prosperity of the Pueblo and assimilate the present in the past and the future.