Power: A Novel

“I know some of the things that live in there. I’ve seen their eyes shining through the dark nights. But there are things in shadows I don’t know, things that might leap at me or reach out and take a hold of me. I don’t want to look, but I’m half-minded about this because I don’t want to turn my back on it either.”

The contrast between “shining eyes” and “dark nights” highlights Omishto’s connection to living things and their role as spiritual guides through difficult times. The ominous mood is increased by the shadows, which signify the unknown. Omishto is “half-minded,” wanting knowledge of the world but afraid of the dangers of experience.

“Just barely, though, we just barely survived the tide of history, and even at that, sometimes I look at myself or the other Taiga people and I think maybe the only things that remain of us, just like with the mastodon and sabertooth cats, are bones and teeth. We barely have a thing, a bit of land, a few stories, and the old people who live up above Kili Swamp.”

The metaphor of history as an ocean that wipes away civilizations conveys colonialism as a powerful destructive force. The comparison of the Taiga people to extinct species increases the urgency of their dwindling numbers, also emphasized through the repetition of “barely.”

“Even though I saw the pure fear on his face that day, she knows I don’t believe in magic. I don’t believe because at school I learn there is a reason for everything. This is what separates me from Aunt Ama, that as smart as she is she never went to high school, that even though she reads, she swears by old-time beliefs, and she believes in all the Taiga stories, that they are true, that they are real.”

The novel examines the clashing cultural values of Indigenous Knowledge Versus Western Scientific Knowledge. At the opening of the story, Omishto has adapted to Westernized educational systems and ways of thinking, which privileges formalized, standards-based learning above oral storytelling and traditional wisdoms.

“I heard one of those gold-colored panthers once. Its cry was so loud I thought it could bring down the world. But now the world’s come down without a cry. The panther’s world too, if you could call it different than ours.”

The parallelism of the two statements contrasts the power of the cat’s crying with the silence as its world disappears, painting a devastating portrait of an endangered species on the brink of disappearance. Omishto’s direct address to the reader implicates them in Omishto’s perspective that the world of the panther and the human are one and the same.

“Listening, too, to a thousand songs of locusts all around us, and that’s when I see the four women from another tribe come down along the road slow as a breeze, shaking their rattles, singing together beneath the heavy clouds that are coming in with them, from the same direction, as if they are forming up near Kili Swamp.”

Omishto’s recurring vision of the ancient women from Kili Swamp symbolizes her imaginative connection to the land and her belief in the mysterious powers of nature. The aural imagery of the locusts and the comparison of their movement to the wind shows their spiritual link to Oni, the wind god, and creator of the Taiga people. The heavy clouds moving with them signal that they are harbingers of change.

“I scream and see that the sky is bruised and unnatural, and the wind is so strong the deer are flying, looks of terror on their faces. The deer are flying in the storm. The hungry deer they have been shooting. They are lifted up by the wind and everything is dark again and wounded and two large trees turn over and fall, black trunked and shaken out by the hands of something bigger.”

The striking image of the bruised sky personifies the storm clouds as damaged skin, the thin layer of protection that human bodies have from the elements. Nature is shown as vulnerable, and the deer are pitiful and victimized by powerful forces that are both natural and unnatural. While the storm is a natural phenomenon, the reference to the people shooting stranded deer suggests that the unnatural forces of urbanization and destructive water management practices have led to their deaths and the storm’s fury.

“Her hair looks like it is part of the dying house, a black vine creeping along the wall, and she is only carved wood. I think I can see her rib cage through the cloth, her belly and breasts. She is against the house like she is nailed there, crucified, and she can’t move, and the door is torn off its hinges and open. Several birds are also thrown against the house. One of the snakes is cast from the tree against Ama.”

Linda Hogan’s use of the biblical allusion when describing Ama as “crucified” and the snakes as “cast” from the tree reverses the biblical teleology in which humans are cast out after falling for the snake’s temptation and Christ is crucified to save humanity from sin. Instead, the snakes are being cast from the tree by the Taiga God Oni onto Ama, who has become a part of nature, made of wood. The storm is not a God of judgment, but a form of power that can overwhelm nature and humans alike. This foreshadows Omishto’s choice to reject her mother’s Christianity.

“The only voice I hear is a bird crying out from the direction of the oyster shell mounds from another tribe of long ago, and I follow Ama, follow her like I can’t leave, like I’m her shadow rooted tighter than Methuselah was to earth even though I know it would take more than wind to whip me free of following Ama, to uproot me, because I feel compelled, held by something, like the day Donna and I couldn’t for the life of us get out of the car to call for help for Abraham Swallow.”

The connection that Omishto has to Ama, and hers to the panther, is portrayed as a mysterious compulsion or an act of fate. The comparison of their relationship to the roots of the tree Methuselah, the oldest person in the bible, conveys the potential for their connection to be stronger than the sum of human history. This indicates hope that they can overcome the destruction of the Taiga culture from colonization, while the comparison to the day of the death of Abraham Swallow foreshadows the death of the panther that is fated to occur.

“Everything she does is under the surface and secret, I think, unlike the land which yields itself and is open in the bright moonlight, unlike the cat that could conceal itself but doesn’t. Instead, it appears so often to lead us forward, as if it knows what it is doing. It could vanish at any time, and every now and again, its eyes give off a light. That light is its only outcry. That eyeshine is its testimony, its voice, its words.”

Omishto sees nature as honest and humans as deceptive. The novel explores The Power of Nature Over Human Industry, and the panther is personified as having agency over its actions—it is not an unthinking animal. The metaphor of the “eyeshine” as its words conveys Omishto’s belief in the ability of nature to speak for itself and have rights.

“Oh, it is such a poor thing lying there all curled lifeless on its side in the grass with the dew and mud and rain on its unshining coat. It looks so weak and small.”

The panther appears pitiful after it has been shot, whereas alive it seemed muscular and beautiful. The exclamatory “[o]h” emphasizes Omishto’s intense emotional reaction to the cat’s suffering and the shift in her perspective from fearing the panther to empathizing with it.

“‘Sisa,’ that’s what we call the cat in Taiga. It is our name for them. It means godlike, all-powerful. The cat is the animal that came here before us and taught us the word, Oni, which is the word for life itself, for wind and breath, and I think all this as Ama carries it like it weighs nothing, no breath in it. But now its breath is in us.”

The contrast between the panther as “all-powerful” with its lifeless, weightless body conveys the dwindling spiritual power and population of the Taiga tribe. Oni, which is the very air of the breath of life itself transferring from the panther to the people, conveys the magical elements of the text, drawing the reader into an unearthly and symbolic world.

“Now I think of the storm that made chaos, that the storm opened a door. It tried to make over the world the way it wanted to be. At school I learned that storms creates life, that lightning, with its nitrogen, is a beginning; bacteria and enzymes grow new life from decay out of darkness and water.”

This shift in Omishto’s perspective of the storm as destructive to creative indicates her growing faith in the resilience of the Taiga tribe and their spirituality. The mixed references of the storm, alive with purpose to change the world, along with scientific chemicals and processes demonstrate her process of integrating Indigenous Knowledge Versus Western Scientific Knowledge into her unique cultural perspective.

“Human creations don’t hold a candle to wind. That’s how I know something is greater than human will. And even though it’s a tragedy, I feel better seeing how small we are. It makes me think that all our crimes against the world will be undone in just one rage of wind or flood.”

The novel explores The Power of Nature Over Human Industry, crystallized through Omishto’s view of the power of the wind above all other forces. She believes in natural justice over human justice systems, emphasized by the symbol of a candle being blown out by the wind. The power of the wind is also Omishto’s power—she is often compared to a strong wind.

“I’ve been good at this world, the one that hits you when you are born and makes you cry right from the start, so that crying is your first language. I’ve learned what I was supposed to learn, but now it comes to me that in doing so I’ve unlearned other things. I’ve lost my sense, I cannot sense things.”

Omishto sees the Western world as violent, highlighted by its personification of its culture “hitting” a baby from the moment of birth and making it cry. The clash of knowledge systems and the oppressive aspects of Western modernity are demonstrated by Omishto’s “lost sense,” which is her tribal knowledge that has been excluded from Western educational curricula.

“I don’t know if I can tell that Ama was blown against the house and that what followed seemed to be natural and right even though it was wrong by law, but that another law was at work that day and it was older than human history.”

The novel explores Indigenous Knowledge Versus Western Scientific Knowledge, including their conflicting views of justice. For Omishto, natural events carry a strong symbolic weight, such as Ama being thrown against the house by the storm. Omishto believes in the power of natural laws over human institutions.

“I would bequeath them an ugliness, a place outside their world, a darkness they could never light on, a memory of something that’s from a history of destruction. They could not dare survive it. They would have anguish. If there were thirty of them in this world, they would fall down in despair and hit themselves. They’d wish for life and death, both at the same time.”

This curse that Omishto wishes upon the Western world reveals the intergenerational legacy of a tumultuous and violent struggle for civil rights. Hogan conveys this by comparing the Taiga people to an endangered species with only “thirty of them in this world.” The heightened certainty and intensity of Omishto’s perspective in this dramatic moment draws attention to her character development.

“A door has closed, a door that will never open again, to a house and a life I will never fully enter or dwell in again. It’s more than my childhood I am leaving, more than my mother’s place.”

The novel is a coming-of-age story. Here, the metaphor of the door symbolizes the death of her childhood and the deeper spiritual resonance of her choice not to assimilate to her mother’s world.

“I read people. Schoolbooks, blackboards, whether or not Mama’s husband is in a mood. With Ama I have learned to read sky and water, land. Now it all seems meaningless and useless, this work of mine, this reading, but I do it, as if to find something true that lies beneath all the rest, the way I have tried so often to read Ama, even now as she sits unafraid, so clear, as if she never broke the shape of things.”

The repetition of “reading” highlights the multiplicity of modes of knowledge in the novel. As a young person, Omishto has been exposed to different ways of knowing but not empowered by them yet. She is learning the value of experience, which she will grow into with age. This is a turning point from which her character develops.

“I will spare them this. It would cut their world in half. It would break their hearts and lives […]. If she gave it to them it would be like giving them sickness and death. […]. It would have been the wrong side of mercy, that’s why she kept quiet about it, I know, because it broke my heart in two just to see that thing with the ragged, flea-bitten coat and broken teeth. This justifies Ama.”

This revelation of Ama’s true sacrifice, in which she gives up her defense and hides the truth to save her tribe, is another turning point in Omishto’s inner journey. It brings her closer to Ama, and closer to understanding the mystery of human behavior. The anaphora of “[i]t would cut” gives emotive power to Omishto’s understanding of the Indigenous value of tribal welfare over individual survival.

“It is the breath of life translated from trees. Because of this, there is no such thing as emptiness in our world, only the fulness of the unseen. It is the sea of creation we live inside. We are tossed about in its currents alongside the panther, the dark sleek otter, and the wild turkey whose tracks I have seen on the ground.”

Unlike Western ways of thinking, which often characterize the air as empty, Omishto sees the air as full of life, like ocean water. Her embracing of the unseen elements of existence contrast sharply with her fear of hidden eyes in the trees in the opening of the novel. Omishto is surrendering to the mystery of life, which is shown in the novel to be a form of power.

“Do I believe the old stories, the things I’ve heard? Do I believe in things I can’t see but are there like fish inside the depths of the dark water? Do I believe I am composed of muscle, nerve, skin, or that a heart I’ve never seen is beating beneath my chest? These are all questions of trust and faith.”

This inner searching through rhetorical questions conveys the difficulty of negotiating Indigenous Knowledge Versus Western Scientific Knowledge. Omishto’s labelling of scientific fact and oral history as part of the same category of “trust and faith” demonstrates that she is learning to integrate and challenge both Western knowledge systems.

“I know their law will not protect me, and this knowledge falls like a stone inside me. Nothing of their world serves me. It’s empty. It’s a sinking stone cast out of a drowning boat. And suddenly, I’m enraged by this world that offers me nothing yet expects so much of me.”

This is a key revelation that leads Omishto to reject the Western world. The hopelessness of a “sinking stone” isolated from the refuge of a boat displays her feeling of helplessness as a young Indigenous woman in patriarchal American society.

“I stand and watch her go and I think of salvation. The church is saving Mama, the old ways are saving the people of Kili. Ama is saving the world. But I am saving myself being here, and in all these savings, the path of things is changed forever. And I can’t help thinking it’s God Mama believes in, but it was the old people who saved us.”

The repetition of “savings” reflects Omishto’s belief in the unity of all beings because she draws connections between everyone’s stories. The contrast of the Church saving her mother and Ama saving the world builds Ama’s sacrifice up as bigger or more powerful than the other institutions. This reflects Ama’s important position in Omishto’s worldview.