Subjugation of Indigenous Land: The Geographical Depletion of Place Depicted in Linda Hogan’s Mean Spirit

Abstract

Linda Hogan is a Chickasaw writer who has been always concerned about the issue of place in her literary works since place is taken as a witness, participant and even sufferer of the Native American people’s colonial history. Meanwhile, the native belief regarding human relationships to land and place in cosmological and ecological aspects can also well illustrate her initial concern of place. This paper is to situate the analysis of place within the context of postcolonial and ecological avenues, exploring the geographical depletion of the local place, and further reproducing the colonized and displaced situation of indigenous land. Through the representation of land loss history represented in her first novel Mean Spirit, this study is intended to draw upon the concerning social elements resulting in the native people’s land cession experience from two aspects, colonial conquest and capital expansion, thus generalizing Hogan’s attitude toward land as a component of the local place and conceptualizing her land ethic stereotype. In a nutshell, the land-language concept revealed in Hogan’s literary work encompasses the idea of caring for and listening to the place and ultimately demonstrates her land ethic doctrine that can be comprehended as her place-oriented proposition and a new strategy of resistance against the colonial and ecological crisis.