Gloria Bird's, Towards a Decolonization of the Mind and Text 1

In Gloria Bird's summary of Silko's "Ceremony," I have found that her main focus was her search for decolonization, through the works of "Ceremony." She touches on language and the importance it has on the road to decolonization. She touches on her struggle with her lack of cultural understanding of her own language. She talks about her experiences with her mother who is bilingual and how she never felt like she was truly apart of her culture, because she was kept out of the conversations. She relates her personal experiences with Tayo's. She mentions his relationship with the elders, and how he too was kept out of conversation due to his lack understanding of the language. She seems to be able to relate to the book in many different instances, not just language differences. Like Tayo, Bird seems to use the book as a form of "Ceremony." She talks about how no other books depicts her struggle with decolonization, as well as "Ceremony" does. She even mentions Christianity and how it had greatly impacted the Indians, and their way of life. She feels this is one thing that colonized the Indian culture, because their beliefs were entirely different then those of the Christian beliefs. I feel that Bird covered a lot of val led points, in her paper, when discussing the importance of language, and colonization.