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chapters refer to some New Mexican native epistemologies only when applicable to specific points in need of native illumination.
Owens, who is of Choctaw-Cherokee-Irish descent, explains a perspective of Native American writers. This perspective is a “holistic, ecological perspective, one that places essential value upon the totality of existence, making humanity equal to all elements but superior to none and giving humankind crucial responsibility for the care of the world we inhabit” (29). I explore this perspective in the four primary works I discuss as travelers encounter it among natives, and as natives demonstrate and express it within their communities. Paula Gunn Allen, of Laguna, Sioux, and Chicano heritage, articulates the importance of the land for Native Americans in “Iyani: It Goes This Way”:
Whereas the dominant Euro-American and American view of the land may be described as a belief that the land (often an adversary) is meant to be exploited for economic development and Western expansion, many Native American writers see the land—as well as the elements which make it up—as an equal presence or phenomenon. All of its parts must be valued and cared for as crucial elements in order for the earth, and humankind, to survive.
In addition to an egalitarian relationship with the land, many Native American writers are concerned with communal relations. Unlike the modern and postmodern figure, who is concerned with separating the individual from the community to be self-sufficient and heroic, many Native American writers demonstrate concern with the individual in