On the Relationship Between Human Beings and Nature in American Indian Culture: A Case Study of Leslie Marmon Silko's Novel Gardens in the Dunes

The American Indian's traditional idea about the relation between human beings and nature has been richly embodied in their literature.Such relationship is of inter-dependence and unity instead of abuse and exploitation.Through analyzing Leslie Marmon Silko's novel Gardens in the Dunes, the authors probe into the Indian ecological wisdom from both the material and the spiritual relationships between human beings and nature.Traditionally, the Indians would depend on nature for material support and closely connect with nature in spirit.While the white colonists and main stream American culture take the land and nature as the object of subjugation, utilization and exploitation, the deprived Indians deem the nature to be the mother creator.The divinity, religiousness and redemptiveness of the Indian man-nature relationship may well complement the deficiency of our modern society, which is characterized by avaricious exploitation of nature and egoistic anthropocentrism.