Summary of Towards a Decolnization of the Mind and Text 1: Leslie Marmon Silko's "Ceremony" by Gloria Bird

Bird, Gloria. "Towards a Decolinization of the Mind and Text 1: Leslie Marmon Silko's 'Ceremony'. " Wicazo Sa Review 9 (1993): 1-8.

In Gloria Bird’s essay she attempts to examine how one is colonized through language by their education and socialization. She justifies her findings by giving first hand examples of her own life, family and friends as well as giving examples from Leslie Silko’s “Ceremony” to exemplify the way Tayo represents the process one makes through first their colonization and then their realization of that happening: decolonization. Bird gives the first view of her personal colonization when she shares her own lack of a “native language”. She then references Silko’s character Tayo due to his embarrassment for not knowing his culture’s language as well. Bird uses language as the easiest form of the colonization of the “Others”. She continues on about her colonization through childhood and how she was taught to be passive. Bird then notes herself as a “colonizer” teaching her own students to use that same voice. She places herself at a parallel with Tayo as they both take steps to undo what has been done to their minds. Through their process of decolonization both Bird and Tayo so “self-evaluations” to allow themselves to see things that weren’t able to before.