Through the Eyes of the Deer: An Anthology of Native American Women Writers

Off Our Backs, Oct 2000 by Douglas, Carol Anne

Through the Eyes of the Deer: An Anthology of Native American Women Writers

edited by Carolyn Dunn and Carol Comfort, Aunt Lute Books, San Francisco, 1999, paperback.

How long has it been since you've read anything wise? Too long? Then you might want to read Through the Eye of the Deer: An Anthology of Native American Women Writers. The stories and poems take you to a land where Coyote speaks, Deer dances, and Spider Grandmother gives advice. That land was in the past, as in Native American' creation stories, but it reverberates in the present as the voices of older wisdom try to be heard.

The first story by Paula Gunn Allen begins: "In the beginning was the Spider. She divided the world. She made it." Quite a contrast to the Gospel according to John's "In the beginning was the Word." In Gunn Allen's tale, Spider creates two sisters, who then take part in creation. The first people are two women, rather than a man and a woman. (Later they have sons, and bear children by their sons.)

In other stories, Coyote is shown as a trickster in the past, trying to get a more powerful name such as Bear or Eagle, and as a trickster in the present, betraying women who need to name deceitful men as Coyote.

But Coyote is not always an unsympathetic character. Shawna McCorrey's poem, Coyote It Seems, says:

Coyote, it seems

You can tempt the rain

call it by its true name

make its meaning change.

There is a tale that Deer becomes a beautiful woman who has the power to seduce and perhaps destroy. Several authors write modern variations on that theme, including one in which Deer dances in a shabby bar and inspires instead of destroying.

The editors write that Native Americans have used stories not only for entertainment, but for instruction. "...it is our hope, given the present interest in American Indian spirituality, that this volume will function as tradition has always functioned: to provide the audience with ancestral American Indian values and understandings that they can use in everyday life."

Native American women's tradition and use of animal archetypes and narrative differ from men's, the editors write. Women's stories follow the cycle of women's lives -- birth, power, family, and regeneration -- while men's tend to center on death or rebirth through death.

Women from many Native American nations write about families, love, death, and transformation. The book includes the work of well-known writers such as Leslie Marmon Silko, Paula Gunn Allen, Louise Erdich, Beth Brant, Joy Harjo, and Linda Hogan, as well as many other amazingly talented women.

Beth Brant tells what happens to Coyote when she decides to pretend that she is a man. Linda Hogan writes about her respect and affection for snakes. Judith Witherow tells how her pack of wolves helps her bear the pains of illness.

Some stories are set in older times, while others tell about Native Americans trying to survive the ugliness and brutality of the white man's world. A poem by Ines Hernandes-Avila recounts the story of a bear cub killed in Yosemite in 1996 by a pack of boy scouts. The spirit of Grandfather Bear comforts the dead cub's spirit.

In all of the stories and poems, even the painful, there is hope. They are grounded in the belief that life is meaningful -- not only human life, but all life.

by carol anne douglas

Illustration (Dear sitting cross-legged on a box)