The fiction Ceremony written by Silko address the universal social issues in the Native American cultures. She uses Laguna Pueblo community in this article as a miniature to explore the native identity, traditions, and religious beliefs problems after-colonization and cultural assimilation with Anglo-Saxon American culture. The witchery is a metaphor that indirectly reveals how the colonial history and assimilation influence both mentally and behaviorally damage in Laguna community. By identifying and studying the issue, Silko suggest a solution to end the cultural and environmental destruction from materialism, and encourage the audience to create a multi-culture concept by accepting the culture change. In the Ceremony, the protagonist …show more content…
Love, respect and compassion to other beings is the cure which helps people release from fear, hate and shame. Silko uses the mythical figure Reed Woman and her feminist power as the cure. Reed Woman is the sacred woman who bring abundance and reciprocal relationship to human in the Laguna beliefs. She brings the teaching to Tayo, that by respecting the tradition, and nature. “It was pulling him back, close to the earth, where the core was cook and silent as mountain stone, and even with noise and pain in his head he knew now it would be: a returning rather than separation” (201). It is the moment Tayo regain his feeling about the environment when he go to the mountain to search his uncle Josiah’s cattle. It also symbolize the moment he returning to the traditions, the core worldview which made who he is. When Tayo understand how the witchery works, he know the pain and confusion are only caused by illusion. “The dreams had been terror at loss, at something lost forever; but nothing was lost…The mountain could not lost to them, because it was in their bones...The damage that had been done had never reached this feeling. This feeling was their life, vitality locked deep in blood memory, and the people were strong, and the fifth world endured, and nothing was ever lost as long as the loved remained” (220). The love dispels his fear about change, and it is the change helps their culture continuously