On page 172 of Ceremony, Tayo describes the process of white people stealing Laguna land. He states, “it was then that the Laguna people understood that their land had been taken, because they couldn’t stop these white people from coming to destroy the animals and the land” (p. 172). Even though, in Ceremony, the Laguna people were still “technically” in possession of some land, it didn’t matter. The deer and the trees were being destroyed by loggers. This same pattern of Indigenous peoples having designated land (albeit far less than what they deserve) and that small area of land still being tarnished by white people is a central idea in the movie Homeland. The water source of the Cheyenne in the Tongue River Valley is being polluted by strip miners, the Gwich’in Athabaskan Indians in northeast Alaska are losing more caribou everyday (an animal they rely on and feel personally connected to) because of oil companies nearby, the Navajo tribe is dying from uranium exposure due to situ leach mining, and the Penobscot people’s river is being polluted by an upstream paper mill. We see this pattern happen over and over again. “Protected” land still not actually being protected even after so many years of suffering and fighting by Indigenous groups. This feels a bit odd to ask as a white person but I guess my question is: how do we determine when a land is truly stolen? Is it when Native American sovereignty is first violated? Is it when the animals are affected? When the land is affected? Because we all know that state-protected land doesn’t truly mean much. Was the land stolen when white people sailed to the Americas? In Homeland, when were the different groups’ land no longer truly theirs?
I also thought this passage of the book connected the most strongly to Homeland. I connected it instead with the example of caribou hunting in Northern Alaska, especially the section that follows; “It was then too that the holy men at Laguna and Acoma warned the people that the balance of the world had been disturbed and the people could expect droughts and harder days to come.” Similar to how the Gwich’in chief described how crucial the caribou were to the people’s way of life, and their removal would also mean the removal of people. I liked your discussion question though, and I think it goes really in depth to follow along with the history of breaking treaties and environmental racism. My take is just that- that the land was first stolen “on paper” through conquest and the establishment of the united states, and then stolen efficcably through environmental pollution (and all things which limit agri/cultural sovereignty.
Reading the section of Ceremony on witchery and prayers against its trickery. The question is posed by Tayo on page 132 (p.128 in other versions, right before the poem), as he asks “I wonder what good Indian ceremonies can do against the sickness which comes from their wars, their bombs, their lies?” With this, I thought about the excerpt from Homeland showing the Gwich’in tribal members in ceremony and prayer before meeting to discuss the fossil fuel extraction plans on their land, and discussing how to best counteract the industries efforts. I think this also relates to the theme in this class of religion’s intersection with political effort- I mean to focus more on religion as the momentum for a way of life and effort, rather than the basis for the way of life itself (storytelling). In this way, I think being engaged in spiritual prayer or meditation, just as spirituality may reinforce any way of living, can have a strong effect on individuals to continue in activism.
The film “Homeland: Four Portraits of Native Action” discusses four different Indigenous Groups and how they have to always be fighting against invasion of colonizers. Something important to note that was common in this film was the power that came from the ancestry of Indigenous People. For example, the people of Northern Cheyenne refused large amounts of money in order to protect their land from methane wells. Gail Small said that the history and power that this land brought is more important than millions of dollars. The Gwich’in people also have a similar story where corporations are trying to turn the land into a drilling center, but the community came together to fight against it because the land has more power than money can bring. On page 120 of “Ceremony”, when Tayo is feeling uneasy while at the fire and the boy is taking ribs he is given advice that is “Accidents happen, and there’s little we can do. But don’t be so quick to call something good or bad. There are balances and harmonies always shifting, always necessary to maintain. It is very peaceful with bears; the people say that’s the reason human being seldom return. It is a matter of transitions, you see; the changing, the becoming must be cared for closely. You would do as much for the seedlings as they become plants in the field,” (Silko 120). This quote relating adapting and growing similar to taking care of the plants that people are growing in their fields, and can exemplify the way the Navajo found strength within the land. Tayo is told to not call something good or bad right away, yet in the film there are very obvious things that are named bad, like Indigenous land being taken for oil in order to get economic gain. Would economic gain always be bad, or are there ethical ways to get money? Are are there subjects in life that are truly either good or bad? -Brynne Dieterle
The film Homeland and the book Ceremony have both been incredibly compelling to me. Both of these works provide a glimpse into the issues faced by indigenous peoples for generations, and what I’ve found most engaging about Ceremony is Silko’s ability to demonstrate how these issues interrelate and influence one another.
I feel it is very lost on us (us being the “westernized perspective”) the importance that family plays in indigenous societies. For a country that considers themselves very family-value oriented, the U.S. could truly learn something from indigenous communities. In the film Homeland the importance of ancestors, and the lessons learned from them, is greatly demonstrated. Throughout Ceremony we see this concept also demonstrated.
In the film Homeland one of the interviewees refers to something they call “Ethno-stress”. This is used to describe the stresses faced only by the indigenous, or “colonized” if you will. The interviewee described it as “you wake up in the morning and you’re still Indian.” In the book Ceremony we see many representations of this concept. One of the most compelling parts of Tayo’s story (in my opinion) is his battle with his identity, and the shame that surrounds it largely in part due to his ethnic and racial background.
What I wonder is, where do we locate the party responsible for this stress? Is “ethno-stress” simply a part of the indigenous experience? Or is it a symptom of westernized colonialism? Something I asked myself about Ceremony was how we could imagine westernized perspectives influenced people close to Tayo. How did westernized perspectives influence his mother’s story? Just some ideas.
Throughout “Ceremony,” Tayo is struggling with the effects of trauma from war and also colonization. This seems to connect into the land itself (like the drought and the feeling that things are just wrong). In “Homeland: Four Portraits of Native Action”, the communities are dealing with environmental harm like polluted water and ecosystem degradation that also affect their way of life. For example, Northern Cheyenne in Montana, whose reservation is threatened by coal-bed methane extraction. The drilling contaminates the Tongue River, the reservation’s primary water source, endangering the health and culture of thousands of people (00:00–23:50). How do both “ceremony” and “Homeland” show this idea that harm isn’t isolated? Do they think this damage could ever be undone?
Another point of connection I thought about was how in “Ceremony”, storytelling and ceremony are important ways of healing and pushing back against the impacts of colonization and war violence. In the poem at the very beginning, Silko writes, “They aren’t just entertainment… They are all we have… all we have to fight off illness and death” , which makes stories feel like a form of survival. In Homeland the communities are also resisting, but through things like court cases and protests. These both seem like ways of protecting land and culture. Could the forms of resistance in Homeland (like protests or legal action) connect to the healing and ceremonies in ceremony?
After engaging with both Ceremony and Homeland: Four Portraits of Native Action, I started thinking about how each work presents different but connected forms of Indigenous resistance and survival. In Ceremony, Silko shows healing as something rooted in storytelling, spirituality, and restoring relationships with the land, especially through Tayo’s journey. His recovery depends on reconnecting with tradition and participating in ceremonies as a way to bring balance back to both himself and the world around him. In contrast, Homeland focuses on Native activists who are actively fighting against environmental destruction through protests, organizing, and legal resistance. This made me wonder how these two approaches relate to each other: are the actions in Homeland a modern extension of the ceremonial practices Silko describes, or do they represent a shift into more political forms of resistance shaped by current environmental threats? It seems like both are ultimately about survival, just expressed in different ways.
I also noticed that both works emphasize how deeply connected land is to identity, but they communicate it in slightly different ways. In Ceremony, the land is portrayed as living and sacred, and Tayo’s healing is directly tied to restoring that relationship. Environmental harm is not just physical but also spiritual, tied to the legacy of colonialism. In Homeland, the activists are fighting to protect land from exploitation because it threatens their communities, cultures, and sovereignty. From my perspective, both works challenge the idea of land as something to be owned or used for profit, instead presenting it as something relational and essential to cultural survival. This leads to another key discussion question: how do these works redefine dominant Western ideas of land as property, and what do they suggest about Indigenous perspectives on environmental justice and responsibility?
Building on these ideas, I also found myself thinking about how both works deal with the idea of time and continuity, especially in the face of ongoing colonial pressures. In Ceremony, healing is not immediate but rather nonlinear and deeply tied to remembering stories that stretch across generations, suggesting that the past, present, and future are all interconnected. Tayo’s journey shows that recovery requires patience and a willingness to relearn ways of being that colonial systems have tried to erase. In Homeland: Four Portraits of Native Action, the activists are also working within this sense of continuity, even though their actions may seem urgent and present-focused. Their resistance is grounded in protecting land not just for today, but for future generations, which reflects a long-term responsibility that aligns with the worldview presented in Ceremony. This shared emphasis on intergenerational knowledge and endurance raises a broader question for discussion: how do these works challenge dominant, short-term approaches to environmental problem-solving, and what alternative frameworks for sustainability and responsibility do they offer?
The film Homeland: Four Portraits of Native Action and Silko’s book Ceremony both talk about how land and the resources provided from the environment is the livelihood of indigenous people, which they rely on to survive. Additionally, both sources touch on the ways in which indigenous people have a connection with animals and plants that was different than what western beliefs acknowledges or values as genuine knowledge. These differences between their ways of life combined with racial tension between indigenous folk and white folk set the stage for viewing the long lasting effects of colonialism and colonization that are still playing out today. How does Homeland and ceremony help you understand they ways colonialism is still present in todays society and/or how to combat its effects? -Phoebe S.
“He cut into the wire as if cutting away at the lie inside himself. The liars had fooled everyone, white people and Indian alike; as long as people believed the lies they never be able to see what had been done to them or what they were doing to each other…the lies had devoured white hearts, and for more than 200 years white people worked to fill their emptiness; they tried to glut the hollowness with patriotic wars and with great technology and the wealth it brought. And always they had been fooling themselves and they knew it.” (pg. 191) In this section Tayo is frustrated with himself for questioning whether his cattle were stolen by the white man or not and for believing the lie that the white man should be trusted over Indians or Mexicans. In the documentary we see in all 4 situations broken promises, shady tactics, and an overall neglect of the relationship between the Indians and outside influences, as well as the relationship with humans and the environment overall. How are the beliefs in lies depicted in the book portrayed in the film, what are the lies the organizations and corporations tell the reservations and themselves? Are there lies we tell ourselves in regard to sustainable development related to the negative forces illustrated in the book? Are there lies indigenous Americans tell themselves about their own situations and history that reproduce this unjust relationship on reservations?
When examining both the film Homeland: Four Portraits of Native Action and Silko’s Ceremony, we gain insight into a new reality. Things have changed, yet one can still practice ceremonies amid that change, it may simply look different. When Tayo visits Betonie, he is confused and uncomfortable by the mess that surrounds him; it isn’t how one would picture a traditional medicine man. Tayo notices that Betonie “didn’t act like a medicine man at all.” What Tayo fails to realize is that Betonie is living within his new reality, accepting that things are not as they once were. In the film, this is something the Native Americans had to come to terms with in order to make change. They had to learn about their enemy; they needed people who could adapt to modernization.
Furthermore, both the film and the book emphasize why Native Americans are fighting. Throughout the film, the connection to the land is explained in depth, one nation relying on caribou, another on fish. This relationship is part of who they are, and even with mining nearby, they are determined to remain on that land. Betonie expresses the same sentiment. He makes clear that he is comfortable on the land and does not wish to be anywhere else, regardless of what surrounds him.
How do both Betonie in Ceremony and the activists in Homeland demonstrate that adapting to change is not a betrayal of Native identity, but rather a form of cultural survival, and what does this suggest about the relationship between tradition and modernity in Indigenous communities?
In the first section of required readings from Tayo’s Ceremony, Tayo begins to see the landscape that can be described as a desert as more of a slate of history. Tayo sees the landscape and environment as a living thing and begins to appreciate the many things the landscape can offer such as crops and its willingness to harbor life. This is similar to the film Homeland in the way that the indigenous populations fight to protect their landscape because it holds ancestral stories and is a vessel for life. In both, native populations are fighting the change or destruction and exploitation of their environments. Ceremony takes the approach of healing through storytelling and pushing people to have a personal connection to the environment, whereas Homeland shows people’s resistance through protests and legal action. My question would be; How can these methods of resistance prevent environmental injustices in communities that have not been tainted by the white man? Henry Hudgins
I found several notable points of contact between the film Homeland: Four Portraits of Native Action and Silko’s Ceremony. One overarching theme that these two works share is the endurance and evolution of Indigenous practices/tradition/culture — Indigenous resistance. For example, Tayo’s journey to recovery from PTSD largely depends on spiritual practices (ceremonies) that people in his community (medicine men Ku’oosh, Betonie) guide him through. Tayo quickly discovers that while traditional ceremonies help, they’re inhibited by their inability to apply to modern struggles. When he visits Betonie, however, he is told that new ceremonies must be created in order to remedy his problems. These new ceremonies are informed by old ones but target a particular obstacle: the destructive influence of white culture on the environment/world.
This sequence of events in Tayo’s path of healing tell us that indigenous tradition must evolve to endure and continue serving its people in the current day. We see evidence of evolved traditions in Homeland in all four subjects of the film. Gail Small’s fight for Northern Cheyenne land through legal proceedings is one example. Small seeks justice in court after extractive white-ran energy companies begin working on the edges of her reservation without Cheyenne permission. She explains that her people were taken advantage of years earlier during the coal wars because they had a tribal council that spoke limited English and were told the companies only planned on exploring their land. Her organization, Native Action, is a modern response to the fight between the Cheyenne people and coal companies, fueled by time-old values — land, freedom, and heritage.
Another example concerning the adaptation of indigenous culture through clashes with white culture from Homeland is Evon Peter’s story. Peter was elected as a Gwich’in Chief at just 23 years old. His mission was to help his people understand complex western laws and systems — including legal proceedings and computerized communication/record-keeping — so they could resist the plot of oil companies to drill in their protected land (threat to Porcupine Carribou, Native livelihoods.) When they first discovered companies were planning on essentially destroying an important breeding ground for the local Carribou “the sacred place”, Peter’s people from all over Alaska and Canada, young and old, came together and held traditional ceremony to decide how they wanted to respond. They adapted old cultural practices to fit modern problems and agreed to stand up to the oil corporations threatening their continued existence.
Both ceremony and homeland consistently return to the relationship between land, identity, and ongoing colonial pressure, showing how these forces are not separate issues but are deeply intertwined. In the homeland, we see different indigenous nations repeatedly defending lands that are still being actively damaged wether it is the Cheyenne resisting methane wells, the Gwich’in protecting caribou habitats from oil drilling, or the Navajo and Penobscot facing the long-term industrial contamination. Even when land is legally “protected,” it is still being reshaped and harmed in ways that undermine its meaning. Ceremony frames this differently but points to the same reality. Tayos understanding of land is not just about ownership but about relationship and responsibility, where imbalance in nature reflects a much larger cultural disruption caused by colonization. Across both texts, land is not just territory; it’s memory, survival, and identity. What stands out is just how strongly both works connect resistance to ancestry, family, and lived in knowledge. In the homeland, indigenous communities draw strength from inherited responsibility to the land and from collective memory even when facing powerful economic pressures. That resistance is not only political but deeply personal, rooted within the idea that land carries history that cannot be replaced by money. Within the ceremony, this idea is echoed through moments where Tayo is encouraged to think in terms of balance and transition rather than immediate judgments, good or bad, suggesting that survival depends on understanding interconnected systems rather than isolating events. At the same time, the concept of “ethno stress” from the homeland. The constant psychological weight of “ waking up and still being indian” connects directly to Tayo’s struggle with identity, shame, and belonging in a world shaped by colonial narratives. These texts together raise difficult questions if harm continues even on “protected” land, and when does land actually become stolen? Is economic development always inherently destructive in these contexts, or can it exist ethically alongside indigenous sovereignty? And finally, is “ethno stress” a fixed condition of indigenous life or a consequence of colonial systems that continue to shape how identity is experienced today?
SD 3800 Voices in Sustainable Development 
On page 172 of Ceremony, Tayo describes the process of white people stealing Laguna land. He states, “it was then that the Laguna people understood that their land had been taken, because they couldn’t stop these white people from coming to destroy the animals and the land” (p. 172). Even though, in Ceremony, the Laguna people were still “technically” in possession of some land, it didn’t matter. The deer and the trees were being destroyed by loggers. This same pattern of Indigenous peoples having designated land (albeit far less than what they deserve) and that small area of land still being tarnished by white people is a central idea in the movie Homeland. The water source of the Cheyenne in the Tongue River Valley is being polluted by strip miners, the Gwich’in Athabaskan Indians in northeast Alaska are losing more caribou everyday (an animal they rely on and feel personally connected to) because of oil companies nearby, the Navajo tribe is dying from uranium exposure due to situ leach mining, and the Penobscot people’s river is being polluted by an upstream paper mill. We see this pattern happen over and over again. “Protected” land still not actually being protected even after so many years of suffering and fighting by Indigenous groups. This feels a bit odd to ask as a white person but I guess my question is: how do we determine when a land is truly stolen? Is it when Native American sovereignty is first violated? Is it when the animals are affected? When the land is affected? Because we all know that state-protected land doesn’t truly mean much. Was the land stolen when white people sailed to the Americas? In Homeland, when were the different groups’ land no longer truly theirs?
I also thought this passage of the book connected the most strongly to Homeland. I connected it instead with the example of caribou hunting in Northern Alaska, especially the section that follows; “It was then too that the holy men at Laguna and Acoma warned the people that the balance of the world had been disturbed and the people could expect droughts and harder days to come.” Similar to how the Gwich’in chief described how crucial the caribou were to the people’s way of life, and their removal would also mean the removal of people. I liked your discussion question though, and I think it goes really in depth to follow along with the history of breaking treaties and environmental racism. My take is just that- that the land was first stolen “on paper” through conquest and the establishment of the united states, and then stolen efficcably through environmental pollution (and all things which limit agri/cultural sovereignty.
-David
This is Heather Adamsky by the way totally forgot to put my name lol
Reading the section of Ceremony on witchery and prayers against its trickery. The question is posed by Tayo on page 132 (p.128 in other versions, right before the poem), as he asks “I wonder what good Indian ceremonies can do against the sickness which comes from their wars, their bombs, their lies?” With this, I thought about the excerpt from Homeland showing the Gwich’in tribal members in ceremony and prayer before meeting to discuss the fossil fuel extraction plans on their land, and discussing how to best counteract the industries efforts. I think this also relates to the theme in this class of religion’s intersection with political effort- I mean to focus more on religion as the momentum for a way of life and effort, rather than the basis for the way of life itself (storytelling). In this way, I think being engaged in spiritual prayer or meditation, just as spirituality may reinforce any way of living, can have a strong effect on individuals to continue in activism.
David Bass
The film “Homeland: Four Portraits of Native Action” discusses four different Indigenous Groups and how they have to always be fighting against invasion of colonizers. Something important to note that was common in this film was the power that came from the ancestry of Indigenous People. For example, the people of Northern Cheyenne refused large amounts of money in order to protect their land from methane wells. Gail Small said that the history and power that this land brought is more important than millions of dollars. The Gwich’in people also have a similar story where corporations are trying to turn the land into a drilling center, but the community came together to fight against it because the land has more power than money can bring. On page 120 of “Ceremony”, when Tayo is feeling uneasy while at the fire and the boy is taking ribs he is given advice that is “Accidents happen, and there’s little we can do. But don’t be so quick to call something good or bad. There are balances and harmonies always shifting, always necessary to maintain. It is very peaceful with bears; the people say that’s the reason human being seldom return. It is a matter of transitions, you see; the changing, the becoming must be cared for closely. You would do as much for the seedlings as they become plants in the field,” (Silko 120). This quote relating adapting and growing similar to taking care of the plants that people are growing in their fields, and can exemplify the way the Navajo found strength within the land. Tayo is told to not call something good or bad right away, yet in the film there are very obvious things that are named bad, like Indigenous land being taken for oil in order to get economic gain. Would economic gain always be bad, or are there ethical ways to get money? Are are there subjects in life that are truly either good or bad? -Brynne Dieterle
The film Homeland and the book Ceremony have both been incredibly compelling to me. Both of these works provide a glimpse into the issues faced by indigenous peoples for generations, and what I’ve found most engaging about Ceremony is Silko’s ability to demonstrate how these issues interrelate and influence one another.
I feel it is very lost on us (us being the “westernized perspective”) the importance that family plays in indigenous societies. For a country that considers themselves very family-value oriented, the U.S. could truly learn something from indigenous communities. In the film Homeland the importance of ancestors, and the lessons learned from them, is greatly demonstrated. Throughout Ceremony we see this concept also demonstrated.
In the film Homeland one of the interviewees refers to something they call “Ethno-stress”. This is used to describe the stresses faced only by the indigenous, or “colonized” if you will. The interviewee described it as “you wake up in the morning and you’re still Indian.” In the book Ceremony we see many representations of this concept. One of the most compelling parts of Tayo’s story (in my opinion) is his battle with his identity, and the shame that surrounds it largely in part due to his ethnic and racial background.
What I wonder is, where do we locate the party responsible for this stress? Is “ethno-stress” simply a part of the indigenous experience? Or is it a symptom of westernized colonialism? Something I asked myself about Ceremony was how we could imagine westernized perspectives influenced people close to Tayo. How did westernized perspectives influence his mother’s story? Just some ideas.
-Odina Corbin
Throughout “Ceremony,” Tayo is struggling with the effects of trauma from war and also colonization. This seems to connect into the land itself (like the drought and the feeling that things are just wrong). In “Homeland: Four Portraits of Native Action”, the communities are dealing with environmental harm like polluted water and ecosystem degradation that also affect their way of life. For example, Northern Cheyenne in Montana, whose reservation is threatened by coal-bed methane extraction. The drilling contaminates the Tongue River, the reservation’s primary water source, endangering the health and culture of thousands of people (00:00–23:50). How do both “ceremony” and “Homeland” show this idea that harm isn’t isolated? Do they think this damage could ever be undone?
Another point of connection I thought about was how in “Ceremony”, storytelling and ceremony are important ways of healing and pushing back against the impacts of colonization and war violence. In the poem at the very beginning, Silko writes, “They aren’t just entertainment… They are all we have… all we have to fight off illness and death” , which makes stories feel like a form of survival. In Homeland the communities are also resisting, but through things like court cases and protests. These both seem like ways of protecting land and culture. Could the forms of resistance in Homeland (like protests or legal action) connect to the healing and ceremonies in ceremony?
Ianna Pfeifer
After engaging with both Ceremony and Homeland: Four Portraits of Native Action, I started thinking about how each work presents different but connected forms of Indigenous resistance and survival. In Ceremony, Silko shows healing as something rooted in storytelling, spirituality, and restoring relationships with the land, especially through Tayo’s journey. His recovery depends on reconnecting with tradition and participating in ceremonies as a way to bring balance back to both himself and the world around him. In contrast, Homeland focuses on Native activists who are actively fighting against environmental destruction through protests, organizing, and legal resistance. This made me wonder how these two approaches relate to each other: are the actions in Homeland a modern extension of the ceremonial practices Silko describes, or do they represent a shift into more political forms of resistance shaped by current environmental threats? It seems like both are ultimately about survival, just expressed in different ways.
I also noticed that both works emphasize how deeply connected land is to identity, but they communicate it in slightly different ways. In Ceremony, the land is portrayed as living and sacred, and Tayo’s healing is directly tied to restoring that relationship. Environmental harm is not just physical but also spiritual, tied to the legacy of colonialism. In Homeland, the activists are fighting to protect land from exploitation because it threatens their communities, cultures, and sovereignty. From my perspective, both works challenge the idea of land as something to be owned or used for profit, instead presenting it as something relational and essential to cultural survival. This leads to another key discussion question: how do these works redefine dominant Western ideas of land as property, and what do they suggest about Indigenous perspectives on environmental justice and responsibility?
Building on these ideas, I also found myself thinking about how both works deal with the idea of time and continuity, especially in the face of ongoing colonial pressures. In Ceremony, healing is not immediate but rather nonlinear and deeply tied to remembering stories that stretch across generations, suggesting that the past, present, and future are all interconnected. Tayo’s journey shows that recovery requires patience and a willingness to relearn ways of being that colonial systems have tried to erase. In Homeland: Four Portraits of Native Action, the activists are also working within this sense of continuity, even though their actions may seem urgent and present-focused. Their resistance is grounded in protecting land not just for today, but for future generations, which reflects a long-term responsibility that aligns with the worldview presented in Ceremony. This shared emphasis on intergenerational knowledge and endurance raises a broader question for discussion: how do these works challenge dominant, short-term approaches to environmental problem-solving, and what alternative frameworks for sustainability and responsibility do they offer?
Merrick Semple
The film Homeland: Four Portraits of Native Action and Silko’s book Ceremony both talk about how land and the resources provided from the environment is the livelihood of indigenous people, which they rely on to survive. Additionally, both sources touch on the ways in which indigenous people have a connection with animals and plants that was different than what western beliefs acknowledges or values as genuine knowledge. These differences between their ways of life combined with racial tension between indigenous folk and white folk set the stage for viewing the long lasting effects of colonialism and colonization that are still playing out today. How does Homeland and ceremony help you understand they ways colonialism is still present in todays society and/or how to combat its effects? -Phoebe S.
“He cut into the wire as if cutting away at the lie inside himself. The liars had fooled everyone, white people and Indian alike; as long as people believed the lies they never be able to see what had been done to them or what they were doing to each other…the lies had devoured white hearts, and for more than 200 years white people worked to fill their emptiness; they tried to glut the hollowness with patriotic wars and with great technology and the wealth it brought. And always they had been fooling themselves and they knew it.” (pg. 191) In this section Tayo is frustrated with himself for questioning whether his cattle were stolen by the white man or not and for believing the lie that the white man should be trusted over Indians or Mexicans. In the documentary we see in all 4 situations broken promises, shady tactics, and an overall neglect of the relationship between the Indians and outside influences, as well as the relationship with humans and the environment overall. How are the beliefs in lies depicted in the book portrayed in the film, what are the lies the organizations and corporations tell the reservations and themselves? Are there lies we tell ourselves in regard to sustainable development related to the negative forces illustrated in the book? Are there lies indigenous Americans tell themselves about their own situations and history that reproduce this unjust relationship on reservations?
-Adam B.
When examining both the film Homeland: Four Portraits of Native Action and Silko’s Ceremony, we gain insight into a new reality. Things have changed, yet one can still practice ceremonies amid that change, it may simply look different. When Tayo visits Betonie, he is confused and uncomfortable by the mess that surrounds him; it isn’t how one would picture a traditional medicine man. Tayo notices that Betonie “didn’t act like a medicine man at all.” What Tayo fails to realize is that Betonie is living within his new reality, accepting that things are not as they once were. In the film, this is something the Native Americans had to come to terms with in order to make change. They had to learn about their enemy; they needed people who could adapt to modernization.
Furthermore, both the film and the book emphasize why Native Americans are fighting. Throughout the film, the connection to the land is explained in depth, one nation relying on caribou, another on fish. This relationship is part of who they are, and even with mining nearby, they are determined to remain on that land. Betonie expresses the same sentiment. He makes clear that he is comfortable on the land and does not wish to be anywhere else, regardless of what surrounds him.
How do both Betonie in Ceremony and the activists in Homeland demonstrate that adapting to change is not a betrayal of Native identity, but rather a form of cultural survival, and what does this suggest about the relationship between tradition and modernity in Indigenous communities?
Kayleigh Rolison
In the first section of required readings from Tayo’s Ceremony, Tayo begins to see the landscape that can be described as a desert as more of a slate of history. Tayo sees the landscape and environment as a living thing and begins to appreciate the many things the landscape can offer such as crops and its willingness to harbor life. This is similar to the film Homeland in the way that the indigenous populations fight to protect their landscape because it holds ancestral stories and is a vessel for life. In both, native populations are fighting the change or destruction and exploitation of their environments. Ceremony takes the approach of healing through storytelling and pushing people to have a personal connection to the environment, whereas Homeland shows people’s resistance through protests and legal action. My question would be; How can these methods of resistance prevent environmental injustices in communities that have not been tainted by the white man?
Henry Hudgins
I found several notable points of contact between the film Homeland: Four Portraits of Native Action and Silko’s Ceremony. One overarching theme that these two works share is the endurance and evolution of Indigenous practices/tradition/culture — Indigenous resistance. For example, Tayo’s journey to recovery from PTSD largely depends on spiritual practices (ceremonies) that people in his community (medicine men Ku’oosh, Betonie) guide him through. Tayo quickly discovers that while traditional ceremonies help, they’re inhibited by their inability to apply to modern struggles. When he visits Betonie, however, he is told that new ceremonies must be created in order to remedy his problems. These new ceremonies are informed by old ones but target a particular obstacle: the destructive influence of white culture on the environment/world.
This sequence of events in Tayo’s path of healing tell us that indigenous tradition must evolve to endure and continue serving its people in the current day. We see evidence of evolved traditions in Homeland in all four subjects of the film. Gail Small’s fight for Northern Cheyenne land through legal proceedings is one example. Small seeks justice in court after extractive white-ran energy companies begin working on the edges of her reservation without Cheyenne permission. She explains that her people were taken advantage of years earlier during the coal wars because they had a tribal council that spoke limited English and were told the companies only planned on exploring their land. Her organization, Native Action, is a modern response to the fight between the Cheyenne people and coal companies, fueled by time-old values — land, freedom, and heritage.
Another example concerning the adaptation of indigenous culture through clashes with white culture from Homeland is Evon Peter’s story. Peter was elected as a Gwich’in Chief at just 23 years old. His mission was to help his people understand complex western laws and systems — including legal proceedings and computerized communication/record-keeping — so they could resist the plot of oil companies to drill in their protected land (threat to Porcupine Carribou, Native livelihoods.) When they first discovered companies were planning on essentially destroying an important breeding ground for the local Carribou “the sacred place”, Peter’s people from all over Alaska and Canada, young and old, came together and held traditional ceremony to decide how they wanted to respond. They adapted old cultural practices to fit modern problems and agreed to stand up to the oil corporations threatening their continued existence.
Allison Lehan
Both ceremony and homeland consistently return to the relationship between land, identity, and ongoing colonial pressure, showing how these forces are not separate issues but are deeply intertwined. In the homeland, we see different indigenous nations repeatedly defending lands that are still being actively damaged wether it is the Cheyenne resisting methane wells, the Gwich’in protecting caribou habitats from oil drilling, or the Navajo and Penobscot facing the long-term industrial contamination. Even when land is legally “protected,” it is still being reshaped and harmed in ways that undermine its meaning. Ceremony frames this differently but points to the same reality. Tayos understanding of land is not just about ownership but about relationship and responsibility, where imbalance in nature reflects a much larger cultural disruption caused by colonization. Across both texts, land is not just territory; it’s memory, survival, and identity. What stands out is just how strongly both works connect resistance to ancestry, family, and lived in knowledge. In the homeland, indigenous communities draw strength from inherited responsibility to the land and from collective memory even when facing powerful economic pressures. That resistance is not only political but deeply personal, rooted within the idea that land carries history that cannot be replaced by money. Within the ceremony, this idea is echoed through moments where Tayo is encouraged to think in terms of balance and transition rather than immediate judgments, good or bad, suggesting that survival depends on understanding interconnected systems rather than isolating events. At the same time, the concept of “ethno stress” from the homeland. The constant psychological weight of “ waking up and still being indian” connects directly to Tayo’s struggle with identity, shame, and belonging in a world shaped by colonial narratives. These texts together raise difficult questions if harm continues even on “protected” land, and when does land actually become stolen? Is economic development always inherently destructive in these contexts, or can it exist ethically alongside indigenous sovereignty? And finally, is “ethno stress” a fixed condition of indigenous life or a consequence of colonial systems that continue to shape how identity is experienced today?
Sarah martin