Nature, Healing, and Environmental Stewardship: an Indigenous Knowledge Perspective in Where the Crawdads Sing and Ceremony
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: This paper examines the conjunction of indigenous knowledge and the salutary force of nature in terms of environmental care in America in two novels: Delia Owens’s Where the Crawdads Sing, and Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony. The paper analyzes ways in which nature is represented by both novels as a healing agent; finally, it traces a representation of this in Indigenous systems of knowledge vis-à-vis environmental stewardship; and third, it goes on to analyze the implications and relevance of the portrayals pertinent to contemporary times. In this study, the methods of comparison of Where the Crawdads Singand Ceremony novels are used. Specifically, comparative literary analysis based on Ecological Literary Criticism and Indigenous Knowledge Systems theories have been applied to these novels in order to reveal that they present nature as a place of healing and self-realization, and that the interdependence between people and environment is crucial.
Author: KOMBIENI,, Didier
Language: English
Subfield: Literature and Literary Theory
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Life on land
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7203764824