“Flooding Waters Were a Cautious Gift”: Indigenous Knowledge and Environmental Memory in Leslie Marmon Silko’s and Ofelia Zepeda’s Storied Landscapes

The historical, agri/cultural, and spiritual relevance of water in the U.S. Southwest has been well-documented through pictographs, oral narratives, photographs, literary works, and scientific studies crafted by Indigenous and settler cultures. This article focuses on human/water relations, as recorded by Native American writers Leslie Marmon Silko and Ofelia Zepeda. Their stories and poems often center around rivers, irrigation ditches, arroyos, clouds, or the ocean, and nurture respectful connections to place. I specifically examine Leslie Marmon Silko’s non-fiction books Sacred Water (1993) and The Turquoise Ledge (2010) in conversation with Ofelia Zepeda’s biographical and ceremonial poems in Ocean Power. Poems from the Desert (1995), arguing that these deeply relational books activate Indigenous environmental memories and place-based consciousness. They are poetic examples of Native Science that contribute valuable knowledge about water in the era of climate change. They also encourage us to renew broken pacts with water and to honor traditional systems of interdependence with the earth through caring and sustainable bonds. Building on ideas from Native/First Nations intellectuals Simon Ortiz, N. Scott Momaday, Gregory Cajete, Glen Coulthard, and LeAnne Simpson on place-based thought, relationality, and Native Science, I discuss some of the tenets of Pueblo and Tohono O’odham water practices, where water is understood as a gift—a key resource for survival—but also as kin and as sacred responsibility. As a European scholar living in a water-centered landscape, I hope to identify ways in which the memorial, ceremonial, and scientific knowledge embedded in these literary works can help us confront our current planetary crisis.