“IT HAS ALWAYS BEEN THIS WAY”: PERSPECTIVES ON TIME IN PUEBLO AND DINÉ WOMEN’S POETRY
“IT HAS ALWAYS BEEN THIS WAY”: PERSPECTIVES ON TIME IN PUEBLO AND DINÉ WOMEN’S POETRY

Summary/Abstract: “It Has Always Been This Way” is the title of a poem in Luci Tapahonso’s volume Sáanii Dahataał. The Women Are Singing (1993), in which she mentions childbirth rituals, expresses native belief in continuance and refers to the individual’s development as part of a tightly knit community. It is an appropriate quote here as it points to the all-embracing worldview that many American Indian nations cherish, including the Southwestern ones. This worldview emphasizes the circularity of space and time as well as the sense of interconnectedness between different elements in the world such as the people, the land and the stories. This study analyzes the concept of time as reflected in most significant poetry by the Pueblo writers Leslie Marmon Silko and Nora Naranjo-Morse and the Diné writers Esther Belin and Luci Tapahonso. These contemporary authors give the full measure of the Southwestern tribal identity from an inside perspective, by revisiting creation myths, rewriting history, testifying about the present and affirming permanence on the land. Recent bibliography is used to establish the distinctiveness of the voices under consideration.

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