Khandakar Shahin Ahmed | DUJES Volume 28 | 2020 Issue



Aboriginal Places and Colonialist Interventions: Interrogating Spatial Politics in Linda Hogan’s Mean Spirit
Khandakar Shahin Ahmed

Khandakar Shahin Ahmed is Assistant Professor, Department of English, Dibrugarh University, Dibrugarh.

Abstract
Rootedness or attachment to a place can be realised in very many ways, and the differences in spatial perceptions may lead to conflict and clash between communities or group of people. Aboriginal narratives vividly represent the difference in perception of a place that lies between the aboriginal community and the non-native colonisers. This difference can be comprehended in terms of the dichotomies of anthropocentrism as against biocentrism. Whereas the aboriginal natural communities locate themselves in their places with a biocentric faith of sustaining ecological balance of that respective place, on the other hand the colonialist intervention as one of the highest form of anthropocentric manifestations perceive the aboriginal place as an unexplored geographical location ready to be exploited and ravaged in the pretext of progress and development. This paper in taking note of this conflicting worldviews regarding man’s role in living-in-a-place, will go on to argue that the forces of ecological imperialism completely disrupted the bioregion of the natives. The bioregional ethics which governs the natural communities of the native people has been replaced by policies of ecological imperialism to contribute to the economy of colonialist enterprise. This practice results in the growth of towns and cities depending on the consolidations bureaucratic and labour forces for specific agricultural farms or mining enterprises. This paper, therefore, intends to argue that colonialist interventions into the native bioregions of the aboriginal communities through the forces of ecological imperialism ravage the aboriginal bioregional culture of mutual responsibility for both human and non-human entities of an ecological terrain, and in doing so it also takes note of how anthropocentrism and biocentrism as two opposing worldviews determine man’s rootedness to a place. This paper in taking note of this conflicting worldviews regarding man’s role in living-in-a-place, will argue through a reading of Linda Hogan’s Mean Spirit.

Keywords: Ecological Imperialism, Bioregionalism, Natural Community, Living-in-Place.


            Aboriginal writings emanating from different biogeographical locations of erstwhile colonies disseminate aboriginal/indigenous communities’ strong sense of rootedness to their place of origin which is quite antithetical to the spatial perception of the European colonisers. The first contact of aboriginal communities of America, Australia and New Zealand with the European colonisers brings to the fore how different human communities affiliate and identify themselves to a place. Rootedness or attachment to a place can be realised in very many ways, and the differences in spatial perceptions may lead to conflict and clash between communities or groups of people. Aboriginal narratives vividly represent the difference in perception of a place that lies between the aboriginal community and the non-native colonisers. This difference can be comprehended in terms of the dichotomies of anthropocentrism as against biocentrism. Whereas the aboriginal natural communities locate themselves in their places with a biocentric faith of sustaining ecological balance of that respective place, the colonialist intervention as one of the highest forms of anthropocentric manifestation perceives the aboriginal place as an unexplored geographical location ready to be exploited and ravaged in the pretext of progress and development. This paper in taking note of this conflicting worldviews regarding man’s role in living-in-a-place, will argue through a reading of Linda Hogan’s Mean Spirit (1992) that the forces of ecological imperialism and commodity frontier completely disrupted the bioregion of the natives.
Keywords: Aboriginal writing, anthropocentric, biocentric, Linda Hogan.

Aboriginal writings emanating from different biogeographical locations of erstwhile colonies disseminate aboriginal/indigenous communities’ strong sense of rootedness to their place of origin which is quite antithetical to the spatial perception of the European colonisers. The first contact of aboriginal communities of America, Australia and New Zealand with the European colonisers brings to the fore how different human communities affiliate and identify themselves to a place. Rootedness or attachment to a place can be realised in very many ways, and the differences in spatial perceptions may lead to conflict and clash between communities or groups of people. Aboriginal narratives vividly represent the difference in perception of a place that lies between the aboriginal community and the non-native colonisers. This difference can be comprehended in terms of the dichotomies of anthropocentrism as against biocentrism. Whereas the aboriginal natural communities locate themselves in their places with a biocentric faith of sustaining ecological balance of that respective place, the colonialist intervention as one of the highest forms of anthropocentric manifestation perceives the aboriginal place as an unexplored geographical location ready to be exploited and ravaged in the pretext of progress and development. This paper in taking note of this conflicting worldviews regarding man’s role in living-in-a-place, will argue through a reading of Linda Hogan’s Mean Spirit (1992) that the forces of ecological imperialism and commodity frontier completely disrupted the bioregion of the natives.
Hogan’s novel vividly demonstrates that it is not only the successful migration of the non-native population to the aboriginal place, but systematic and regimented importation of non-native species of plants and animals that completely shattered the unique ecological character of the native place. The bioregional ethics which governs the natural communities of the native people has been replaced by policies of ecological imperialism to contribute to the economy of colonialist enterprise. This practice results in the growth of towns and cities depending on the consolidation of bureaucratic and labour forces for specific agricultural farms or mining enterprises. This paper, therefore, argues that colonialist interventions into native bioregions of the aboriginal communities through the forces of ecological imperialism ravage the aboriginal bioregional culture of mutual responsibility for both human and non-human entities of an ecological terrain, and in doing so it also takes note of how anthropocentrism and biocentrism as two opposing worldviews determine relationship to a place.
            A bioregional novel strongly delineates in its narrative the aspect of threat initiated by colonial modernity in the name of development and nation building to the unique bioregional cultures of aboriginal/indigenous communities. As instances of bioregional novel, the above-mentioned texts from Native American context deals with this spatial politics to unravel the ways in which bioregional cultures come under the process of erasure triggered by capitalist agencies and totalising narratives of imperialism. The narrative of a bioregional novel foregrounds the dichotomies between the natives and the European intruders in their relation with a region. Jim Cheney in his essay "Postmodern Environmental Ethics: Ethics as Bioregional Narrative” (1989) observes that a bioregional narrative represents a region as a “storied residence”1 i.e. the narrative is embedded with stories growing from the natives’ deep relationship with the physical environment and ecological entities of the region. The region as a residence is not solely occupied in material terms, but the process of shaping a community through immersion into the ecological system of a region, reflected in the bioregional stories of indigenous people, transforms the region into a life-place of ethical and spiritual fulfilment. The storied residence, therefore, reflects on the stories generating from the biocentric relation between human and non-human worlds that ensures ecological health of the region and the human community. The stories generating from a community’s identification with the ecology of a region transforms the region from a tangible and physical territory to an inner and psychic realm of defining human behaviour.
On the other hand, the spatial politics of the European settlers involves isolating human community from the physical environment in a process of commodification of the ecological components. The notion of a ‘storied residence’ is at stake as the totalising discourse of profit and progress initiates a process of eradication of the contextualised discourse of a region by means of perceiving the ecological entities in isolation from one another. Since the environment is perceived as a store of commodities, trees, animals, landscape, rivers and other forms of lives are conceived as objects of profit-making, and this capital-based worldview, by undermining the mutually sustaining relation among all forms of life, tacitly undermines the culture of storied residence that is part of the biocentric relation. Systematic separation of ecological entities from one another results in the collapse of the local stories that define an aboriginal community in relation to a region. A bioregional novel interrogates the colonialist spatial politics by delineating the conflict between the totalising discourse of the colonisers and the contextualised discourse of the indigenous people. This conflict finds its narrative enunciation in ways in which the landscape becomes, on the one hand, the metaphor of both profit and capital for the White settlers, and on the other hand is shown to be a spiritually fulfilling ecological-human culture for the aborigines. For instance, in Linda Hogan’s Mean Spirit the Oklahoma landscape constitutes an inner terrain of consciousness of Osage community formation, while the same landscape with its grasslands and fields is viewed as source of oil and pastures for livestock by the European settlers. Hogan’s novel exemplifies the quintessential aspects of bioregional narrative in its representation of the spatial politics of the intruding forces in aboriginal places. Such spatial politics, demonstrated in the bioregional novels, is depicted in the way meanings and cultural connotations of the ecology and landscape have been re/misappropriated by the totalising discourse of colonialist intervention to legitimise extraction from and exploitation of the environment. The colonialist narrative of re-appropriation of the environment aims at redefining the man and land relationship, and this spatial politics involves obliteration of the stories of aboriginal people through colonial takeover of the land that shapes their ‘storied residence’.
Colonialist intervention in aboriginal places involves agencies and policies of dispossessing the aboriginal communities from their places of origin thereby disrupting a unique human culture that evolves from the potentials and limits of natural environment of that place. European colonizers legitimize their possession over the aboriginal places by means of projecting those territories as empty lands. This politics of representing aboriginal place as empty geographical location does not negate the presence of aboriginal human population as dwellers. However, the negation seeks to invalidate aboriginal populations as an organised human society devoid of any structured and administrational social settlement. Having identified with the wilderness, as Stephen Greenblatt in his Marvellous Possessions (1991) states, the aboriginal human population and their way of life have been described and associated with the element of marvel, a marvellous phenomenon that has to be normalized and regimented. Corroborating aboriginal way of life with the element of marvel marks the policy of not acknowledging the natives of America as an organised and structured human society having culture of rationality and progress. It is due to this politics of denial that Columbus observes that he “was not contradicted” (Greenblatt 58) by the natives. The preclusion of contradictions facilitates intrusion and circulation discursive practices of documentations and institutionalised regulations of European paradigm in order to normalize the aboriginal population:
We can demonstrate that, in the face of the unknown, Europeans used their conventional intellectual and organizational structures, fashioned over centuries of mediated contact with other cultures, and that these structures greatly impeded a clear grasp of the radical otherness of the American lands and peoples. (Greenblatt 54)
The “radical otherness” of Native American land and people has been incorporated within the “organizational structure” in order to dispossess the natives from their right over the place on the one hand, and on the other hand it legitimizes European colonizers possession over the place.
The political takeover of aboriginal territories by means of European “organizational structure” has been further accentuated by demographic takeover of these places. In “Ecological Imperialism: The Overseas Migration of Western Europeans as a Biological Phenomenon” (1988) Alfred W. Crosby enunciates that successful colonization of places like America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and countries belonging to temperate zones has not merely been attained by European political and technological interventions, rather the agencies of ecological imperialism outnumber the natives in their life-place and relegate them to the fringes. To Crosby, ecological imperialism operates the how Western Europe as a biological phenomenon marks its expansion in the aboriginal places of America, Australia and elsewhere. This biological expansion of Europe, according to Crosby, is facilitated by the Europe-like climate of temperate zone lands, as against tropical zone lands, where not merely European population grows rapidly but at the same time domesticated European animals along with flora and fauna proliferated abundantly in these “Lands of Demographic Takeover” (Crosby 104). The Europeans “have swarmed” (Crosby 106) and outnumber the aboriginal population in their place of origin:
In the cooler lands, the colonies of the Demographic Takeover, Europeans achieved very rapid population growth by means of immigration, by increased life span, and by maintaining very high birthrates. Rarely has population expanded more rapidly than it did in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in these lands. It is these lands, especially the United States, the enabled Europeans and their overseas offspring to expand from something like 18 percent of the human species in 1650 to well over 30percent in 1900.  (Crosby 105)
The demographic takeover results in “decimation and demoralization of the aboriginal populations” (Crosby 106) and they are outnumbered in their own land. Along with the demographic takeover, the physical environment of these places is taken over or rather tarnished by the forces of ecological imperialism by means of “awesome success of European agriculture” (Crosby 106).
The triumph of European agriculture on the one hand destroys the local flora and fauna, on the other hand it disrupts bioregional way of life of the aboriginal population. Bioregional dwelling in a place involves a way of living-in-a-place within potentials and natural limits to support the life-sustaining system of that place for all biotic and abiotic entities of environment of that place. Whereas European agricultural enterprise manipulates the environment of aboriginal places, it is further accentuated by the intrusion of domesticated European animals like horses, cattle, sheep, goats, pigs and rabbits. European domesticated animals take high toll on the local environment, at the same time the livestock of imported animals serve as source of capital for the settler-colonisers to triumph in their agricultural regimentation of the environment. In the lands of temperate zones, parallel to rapid growth of European human population, the livestock of imported animals marks a high reproduction rate. Having demographically taken over the lands of temperate zones, the proliferation of both human and non-human European communities also acts as bearers of “pathogens or microorganisms that cause disease in human” (Crosby 107). It results in aboriginal population getting infected by alien diseases causing large scale death. Europeans as biological phenomenon, having attained ecological control, promulgate and put in circulation a culture of dwelling in a place based on consumerist policies and accumulation of capital at the expense of exploitation of the ecological components. Rapid growth of European population, both human and non-human, promotes systematization of natural resources and acceleration of production of food grains and life-embellishing commodities. In relegating the aboriginal way of life as obsolete and unscientific, the culture of demographic takeover ushers a way of living life impinged on consumerism and mobility of capital.
            It is pertinent to note that bioregional culture of the aboriginal communities in the erstwhile colonies does not perceive ecological components of environment as resources, rather they situate themselves as one of the living entities of that environment with shared responsibility for all biotic and abiotic dwellers of the land. This state of dwelling in place on the part of aboriginal population has been misconstrued as poverty by the European settlers. Having misconstrued poverty of the natives as resultant of their irrational and unscientific management of environment, the European settlers take it as cue to view the aboriginal lands as zones of immense possibility and prosperity guaranteed by abundance of natural resources and fertile landscape. William Cronon in his book Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England (1983) demonstrates that the relationship of New England Indians to their environment is determined by the cycle of seasons, and it is a relationship based on ecological ethics as the natives hold less demand on the ecosystem of the place by changing their habitat within the region as per natural abundance of seasons.
To Cronon, whereas the ecological relationship of the natives with their place is characterised by mobility, however, the European colonisers seek to establish a relationship based on fixities. This is evident as the European settlers strive to reproduce ecological relationship of European standard in the aboriginal places by means of establishing monoculture of agricultural policies and commodification of natural components. European fixity is further evident in their intent of attaining complete control over the environment of the place by compartmentalizing landscape for permanent human settlement, bureaucratic establishment, agricultural fields, domesticated animals, recreational parks, reserve forest and so on. The segmentation of natural landscape corroborates the tacit imperial policy of regimenting and exploiting the environment of the Non-European regions. Having attained the ecological knowledge of dwelling in their place of origin, the mobility of the natives as requisites of wheels of the season exhibits their shared responsibility for life-sustaining system of the region, on the other hand the fixity of the European settlers manifests a human intervention to reorganise the landscape and ecological properties of the region with a motif of accumulation of capital and commercial enterprise:
But whereas Indian villages moved from habitat to habitat to find maximum abundance through minimal work, and so reduce their impact on the land, the English believed in and required permanent settlements. Once a village was established, its improvements—cleared fields, pastures, buildings, fences, and so on — were regarded as more or less fixed features of the landscape. English fixity sought to replace Indian mobility; here was the central conflict in the ways Indians and colonists interacted with their environments. (Cronon 57)
The “central conflict” between the natives and European colonisers, according to Cronon, can be comprehended by the strife to “replace Indian mobility” with “English fixity”. The mobility in dwelling the region on the part of the Indians involves their local knowledge of “habits and ecology of other species” (37) on the one hand, and on the other hand it exhibits the process of learning to live-in-a-place without affecting the life-supporting system of the environment as the “Indians seek to obtain their food wherever it was seasonally most concentrated in the New England ecosystem” (37).
Indian mobility is based on seasonal diversity and it shapes a way of living life in a place holding less demand on the ecology. Whereas spring marks the abundance of seasonally produced food items of different kinds, winter on the other hand ushers the season of scarcity. Cronon observes, while the Indians feel it wise to remain starved for days during winter with an assurance that spring will again bring abundance, but for the European settlers it is rather beyond any rational comprehension as to why the Indians prefer to remain starved when there is enormous possibility of extracting the environment for human comfort. In categorically terming the native way of life as irrational and unscientific, the English fixity strives to attain complete control over the environment for reproducing the European way of life characterised by structured and segmented territorialisation of each and every component of ecology for human usage and accumulation of capital. Having disrupted the bioregional culture of the native aboriginal community, the overarching fixity of European settlers, according to Cronon, quite obtrusively perceives the ecology and landscape as “merchantable commodities” (20). The biological expansion of the West in the temperate lands not only marks a demographic takeover of the aboriginal region, simultaneously it standardises a culture of anthropocentric extraction and commodification of ecological properties of a region.
The difference between aboriginal communities and European settlers lies in the antithetical ways both the human communities locate themselves in a place. Whereas the natives of New England believe in the interdependence and reciprocity among all the entities, human and non-human, biotic and abiotic, that constitutes a life-supporting ecological system that can accommodate both human and non-human communities engendering a human culture based on ecological ethics, on the other hand controlled by “their tendency to view landscape in terms of their own cultural concepts” (22), the European settlers perceive the components of ecology in isolation from the ecological life-supporting system that is operating within and around the region. Viewing the components of ecology in isolation involves the process of commodification and mercantile enterprise:
Seeing landscape in terms of commodities meant something else as well: it treated members of an ecosystem as isolated and extractable units. Explorers describing a new countryside with an eye to its mercantile possibilities all too easily fell into this way of looking at things, so that their descriptions often denigrated into little more than lists. (21)
It is quite pertinent to assert that in the temperate lands, whether in Australia or in America, demographic takeover leads to ecological takeover of the aboriginal places. The biological expansion of West, both in terms of population and regimentation of physical environment, leads to relegation of the aboriginal population into fringes. Demographic takeover corroborating merchantable commodification of ecological components engenders a process of diminishing aboriginal way of living-in-a-place ecologically as obsolete and unscientific on the one hand, and in doing so, on the other hand it involves a restless and vicious process of commercialising components of ecology for establishing a capital based way of life. The entire process reflects on man’s relationship with land/region and how that relationship facilitates a human culture that determines the sustainability and longevity of that land or region’s life-supporting system. It can be rightly said that while degree of human intervention in the ecology of a place leads to the formulation of human culture, and simultaneously consolidation and standardisation of that culture legitimise future human interventions in ecosystem of that place.
Whereas aboriginal way of life exhibits a bioregional culture of close and spiritual proximity with ecology of their life-place as they hold less demand, both biological and cultural, on the ecosystem of their region, the intrusion and subsequent settlement of European settlers in the temperate lands radically replaces the bioregional way of life of the aboriginals. The urgency of reproducing a European way of life characterised by production of life-embellishing commodities of life in abundance leads to regimentation of environment for permanent human settlement, monocultural policies of agriculture, pastures for animals, separate domain for domesticated animals, and zones of extractable natural resources. Therefore, it can be said that bioregional culture of aboriginal population is eradicated by European commodity-laden consumerist way of life. Materiality of colonialist interventions in aboriginal places can be felt in the decay of the aboriginal local environment for the purpose progress and development and contiguously it marks the emergence of a human culture that is blind to health of the earth. Colonialist interventions in the temperate lands operate through dualistic forces of ecological imperialism in corroborating demographic takeover with merchantable commodification of ecology.
Linda Hogan’s Mean Spirit tells place-based stories of the Osage Native Americans located in the region of Oklahoma. As a bioregional narrative the novel exhibits how the Osage stories of the region enliven the landscape. The Osage landscape is not merely represented as a geographical territory; rather the landscape acts as a metaphor of community formation that connects the Osage inhabitants with the non-human dwellers and all other entities of the region in a reciprocal relationship of values and moral sense. Since bioregional narratives focus on contextualised discourses of the locale, the landscape as a metaphor in the novel explicates the ways of life that make the Osage native to their place. The symbolic relationship with the land denoting the moral order corresponds to the actual act of sustainable dwelling on the part of the Osage. Therefore, the narrative of the novel sketches the Oklahoma landscape in its layered and dual manifestations – on the one hand the outer, physical and tangible landscape, and on the other hand the inner and the metaphysical landscape of Osage psyche. Both the outer and inner landscapes, in the course of the narrative, correspond to one another, nourish mutually, and thereby shaping a spiritually fulfilling human culture of ecological ethics.
It is, therefore, in the novel when characters like Michael Horse and Belle Graycloud ruminate over the predicament of their ‘land’, they are symbolically referring to the Osage ways of life. The word ‘land’ connotes to a cultural landscape, which is both outer and inner that connects the natives with the physical landscape, the eagle, the bat, the river and all other ecological entities of the region in relationship definable ecologically sanctioned moral order. In this connection Hogan depicts how the destruction of the land due to the incessant drilling for oil symbolically corresponds to the physical ailment and cultural eradication of the Osage. As a bioregional narrative the novel recounts the Osage stories connecting the community with region both physically and imaginatively. Whereas the ‘land’ stands for the community formation for the natives, with the advent of the European settlers a process of redefining the landscape starts. Hogan’s narrative ingenuity lies in her depiction of how the words like ‘land’, ‘field’, ‘river’, ‘grass’, and ‘eagle’ are being attributed with new connotations to legitimise extraction and exploitation of natural resources. Appropriation of words and their connotations to fit into the totalising discourse of progress initiates a process of erasing the contextualised bioregional connotations of the words.
The European settlers consider the land as resource for oil mining and nurturing livestock animals, and in doing so it triggers a threat to the natives’ bioregional association with the region. While dealing with the issue of invasion of the bioregions of aboriginal people by intruding forces, bioregional literature in general does not merely note the material takeover of the land; rather more specifically it interrogates the spatial politics that eradicates the spiritual aura and imagination connecting natives to their region. Once the words are appropriated to fit into the discursive formation of the white settlers, it involves a tacit process of pushing the place-based stories of the natives into oblivion. For the oil man Mr. Hale, the meaning of Osage landscape stands for its oil deposit and pastureland for livestock animals, and within this totalising framework of progress and profit the metaphysical and imaginary Osage inner landscape of defining sustainable relationship with the region has been suspended to a dysfunctional state. It is in this context that Michael Horse’s diary bears the significance of documenting the native stories as a way of preserving meanings and values with which the Osage are connected to their land both physically and spiritually. Hogan’s Mean Spirit as a bioregional narrative explores the metaphorical and discursive implications of the term ‘land’ in interrogating the colonialist intervention in the aboriginal territory of the Osage.
Linda Hogan in Mean Spirit recounts the invasion of the Osage region of north-eastern Oklahoma by the European settlers. The title of the novel itself is indicative of the destruction caused by the European settlers in dispossessing the aboriginal natives from their land through a process of merchantable commodification of ecology. Donald Lee Fixico in his book The Invasion of Indian Country in the Twentieth Century: American Capitalism and Tribal Natural Resources (1998) observes that “the history of the ‘reign of terror’ began in the early 1900s when oil was discovered on Osage land” (Fixico 27), and Hogan’s novel vividly depicts how the oil boom in Osage territory leads to large scale murder of Osage inhabitants in order to take over their land. The novel revolves around the murder of the Blanket and Graycloud family members by European settlers in the process of quenching their insatiable desire for natural resources. Fixico observes that whereas the Native Americans locate themselves within the ecosystem of their region as participants, the European settlers place themselves outside and above the system as owners and overseers who can utilize the ecological components rationally and scientifically for a modern way of life and capital gain:
The Anglo-American culture of the twentieth century is driven by capitalistic ambitions to acquire wealth. By contrast, American Indians are members of tribal nations whose philosophies stress a kinship and interrelatedness with all creation. And the conflicting dynamics of the two very different systems have yielded a history of anguishing human and environmental exploitation. (Fixico xvi)                                   
This “conflicting dynamics” constitutes the core of Hogan’s novel in depicting how the Osage community is pushed away from their land by the land grabbing policies of European settlers. The large scale settlement of Europeans in the Osage territory results in the formation of a commercial town, Watona, as a hub for trading of Osage natural resources, and at the same time the landscape and vegetation of the region are wounded irretrievably by oil mining and the granting of grazing leases. At the start of the novel it is seen that most of the Osage Indians fail to withstand the commodity frontier of the European settlers and in order to sustain their bioregional culture they “left behind them everything they could not carry and moved up into the hills and bluffs far above the town of Watona” (Hogan 5). The intensity of exploitation of land ravages the ecology of the region, and simultaneously, the proliferation of European population acts as carrier of new diseases to Osage territory that results in infection and subsequent death of natives. European settlers, therefore, expand as a biological phenomenon that not only demographically reduces the Osage to minority, but at the same time it dispossesses them ecologically of their right over land.
Hogan commences the narrative of her novel from the temporal signpost of the 1890s when the federal government of America gave the choice to native Indians to occupy plots of land which had not already been occupied by white Americans:
Those pieces of land were called allotments. They consisted of 160 acres a person to farm, sell, or use in any way they desired. The act that offered allotment to the Indians, the Dawes Act, seemed generous at the first glance so only a very few people realized how much they were being tricked, since numerous tracts of unclaimed land became open property for white settlers, homesteaders, and ranchers. (8)  
The natives are “being tricked” as the Osage community are already rooted to the Oklahoma region, and on top of that instead of individual possession over land, the Osage as an aboriginal community believed in their affiliation and rootedness to their land in terms of belonging to a place as a community in general. For them their sense of place originates from their awareness of the ecological order operating within the region, and it shapes their aboriginal culture where the human community is indivisible from land. Since the Osage, like other aboriginal tribes of different parts of the globe, does not believe in individual ownership of land, therefore, the allotment policy hardly makes any sense for the natives.
On the other hand, for the European settlers individual ownership and private enterprise are the prime requisites for prosperity, and in this regard Fixico rightly observes that with the Euroamericans “individualism became a strong characteristic of the American experience and American capitalism. This trait soon became imbedded in the American character” (Fixico xvii). Individualism of the European settlers can be contrasted with the sense of community of the natives, and these contrasting positions indicate the ‘conflicting dynamics’ visible in how the natives and the settlers locate themselves in relation to land and physical environment of their region of dwelling. In the novel the oil mongering white settlers perceive the natives as a community who “were unschooled, ignorant people who knew nothing about life or money” (Hogan 60), and this perception leads to a reductive and prejudiced conclusion that “Indians were a locked door to the house of progress” (Hogan 56). The underground oil deposit in Osage territory becomes an anathema for the natives as they are essentially dehumanized in that they are perceived on the same plane with the natural resources of the region like oil deposit, grazing land and other mineral deposits. Having considered the natives as “locked door to the house of progress”, the white settlers realize very well that to excavate the land and extract the natural resources the first requisite is to eliminate the natives from the land. The natives and their land are essentially reduced to exploitable commodities. It is evident when Joe Billy observes: “It’s more than a race war. They are waging a war with earth. Our forests and cornfields are burned by them” (Hogan 14).
In Mean Spirit expansion of white American population results in reducing the natural community of Osage into Osage oil. Merchantable commodification of Osage land and ecology go hand in hand with dehumanization of the Osage population as they are considered to be the stumbling block on the way to organized European progress and development. Having reduced the natives to unproductive and ineffectual material, the white Americans wage an anthropocentric war against the biocentric culture of natives on the pretext that the natives are not scientifically enlightened enough to manage and regulate the land and ecology of their dwelling. Therefore, drilling and dynamiting the land for oil conflates with shooting, poisoning and robbing the Osage. Failing to comprehend the diabolic design behind the ravaging of land and inhabitants, the Osage culture is pushed to the point of extinction. Michael Horse, the village seer, in his diary laments the innocence of the Osage who fail to understand the sinister design of the white Americans:
It was a fatal ignorance we had of our place; we did not know the ends to which the others would go to destroy us. We didn’t know how much they were moved by the presence of money. (Hogan 341)
The “fatal ignorance” is evident as the natives are tricked to lease out their land to European settlers. Since the life-supporting ecological system of the region is completely brought under the umbrella of mining, the reciprocal man and nature relationship and the bioregional culture that grows from it have been completely replaced by ‘the presence of money’. Money as the pivotal force of life is rather new to the Osage, and their struggle to acclimatize themselves with this new trope of life-force leads them to a disarray material condition.
The newly superimposed materiality on the Osage culture results in a situation where the natives, despite knowing the irrelevance of money within their cultural realm, have to participate in the game of accumulating money. Hogan in her novel recreates the figure of “master criminal William K. Hale, self-proclaimed ‘King of the Osage’” (Fixico 27), the sinister manifestation of mean spirit who takes Osage land on lease and subsequently conspires to murder the native leaser thereby grabbing the land. In the novel John Hale – “a lanky white man …been a rancher in Indian Territory for a number of years before he invested in the oil business” (Hogan 22) – whose character is created after William K. Hale. As the natives are amateur in the management of money, in this newly emerged capital-based consumerist culture they are always in “debt, owing to stores, the court-assigned legal guardians” (54) and in such a situation Hale is “always ready with quick offer and fast cash” (54). The natives are entrapped, and the enormous possibility of making his fortune in oil leads Hale to plot ceaseless murders of the natives to attain complete individual ownership in Osage territory.
The Osage are shot, poisoned and blown up and simultaneously the land and ecology are tarnished and ravaged irrevocably: “the earth had turned oily black. Blue flames rose up and roared like torches of burning gas. The earth bled oil” (54). In the novel, Grace Blanket, Belle Grayclod’s niece, becomes Hale’s first victim. She is shot in broad day light, and Hale murders her with the awareness that Grace’s minor daughter Nola cannot inherit her land. The official arrangement is such that only a white can be appointed as legal guardian of natives, and since most of the natives are in debt the land is legally handed over to the party who takes it on lease. Grace’s sister Sara is killed in an explosion inside her house and Benoit who is accused of the act eventually commits suicide in jail as a native is not entitled to hire an advocate. An old native Walker is poisoned to death as his death will entitle Hale to become the beneficiary of Walker’s insurance policy. Stacy Red Hawk, a native police official who is appointed to investigate the murder of natives, to his utter dismay and astonishment discovers that “the people he was up against here in Indian Territory were the ones who did not love the earth and her creatures. Much of what these people believed to be good, was not good” (205). Stacy’s is disillusioned and resigns his position within the bureaucratic system of the whites. Hale’s murderous conspiracy reflects the fact that the Osage are no longer considered as a living cultural human community, but rather viewed in a quantifiable manner as a bundle of commodities either to be discarded or utilized. This is further evident as the European settlers not only excavate the land to extract natural resources, but at the same time dig the native graves to extract the deceased body and wealth buried with the body. Grave robbing becomes a lucrative business because of the “money Indian bodies are getting on the black market from museums and roadside zoos” (318). In life and after death the natives are reduced to quantifiable material. In life they are hunted for the underground reserves of oil and after death their bodies are excavated as “the bodies of Indians were at a premium for displays across the country and in Europe” (120). It is evident, therefore, that the settlement of a large European population in the Osage land along with their organizational structure of officialdom uproots the natives from their land and culture both demographically and ecologically. The reproduction of a European way of life is marked by repopulation of the Osage aboriginal land, and this shift is engendered by a European notion of land ownership expanding and taking over land and ecology.
Colonialist intervention affects the health of the Osage aboriginal land in more than one way. Whereas rapid growth of the European population outnumbers the native population, simultaneously proliferation of European species of animals hold heavy toll on the physical environment. For the European settlers domesticated animals to triumph in a new environment species of European grasses are cultivated. The entire process ravages local flora and fauna on the one hand, and more specifically it triggers a practice to perceive the Osage landscape as a domain of capital investment. Overseas successful migration and settlement of European human and non-human communities along with flora and fauna are accompanied by intrusion of pathogens and microorganisms that infects the natives with alien diseases. John Hale is not only an oilman in Osage territory; at the same time “he was one of the first men to bring cattle to Indian Territory” (Hogan 54). Having invested heavily in cattle, Hale discerns the necessity of pastureland for the cattle, and for ensuring brisk growth of the cattle he introduces new grasses later on labeled as “Hale Grass” (54). For clearing the landscape for pastures, he tricks the natives with the prospect of profit, and he along with the natives cut and burn the landscape for the cattle investment. The new grass has not only “fattened cattle”, but at the same time, strong roots of the grass have “spirited away the minerals and water from other trees and plants, leaving tracts of land barren-looking” (54). Transforming the environment into a viable variable of capital investment has been achieved through the ways the Osage region is tamed, regimented and commodified by the agencies of ecological imperialism.
Underground disruption of the land caused by mining corresponds to a collateral damage of the landscape as the new species of animals and plants adulterate and change the local flora and fauna in an irrevocable way. Michael Horse rightly observes that “the land is ravaged and covered with scars and so are the broken people” (Hogan 341). Having scarred the land, the European intervention as a biological phenomenon also brings in diseases alien to the natives. Ona Neck’s son John Stink’s suffers from a special form of tuberculosis that spread from “coughing settlers to the Indian population” (99), and the natives identify that “the settlers’ pigs were instrumental in the spread of the disease” (100). The visible symptoms of this tuberculosis are skin lesions and swollen glands, and the disease is accompanied by a decaying smell. Stink contracts the disease in his childhood but the unpleasant smell remains in him, which is why he is renamed from Ho-Tah-Moie to John Stink by the white settlers. In the same way Grace’s youngest sister Molene dies of a paralyzing illness “spread by white men who worked on the railroad” (7). Sara is also infected by this illness that forces her to remain in bed, motionless, for over a year. It is, therefore, evident that agencies of ecological imperialism operate together to dispossess the Osage from their land of origin. The relationship between man and land has been completely shifted into a different dimension, and aboriginal bioregional culture is replaced by a profit-laden anthropocentric culture. In dealing with the contact or encounter between aboriginal culture and European colonists, Hogan’s novel brings into focus how colonialist interventions operate through the agencies of ecological imperialism and commodity frontier dispossess the natives from their land. It involves an all pervasive process of eroding the ecological system of aboriginal region, and at the same time in disrupting aboriginal’s relationship with land it eradicates the bioregional culture of aboriginal way of life.

Endnotes
1 Jim Cheney in his essay “Postmodern Environmental Ethics: Ethics as Bioregional Narrative” (1989) demonstrates the idea of ‘storied residence’ in explaining how bioregional narratives are based on the contextualised discourse by virtue of the narrations of place-based stories, myths and legends that connect a community with a place.

Works Cited
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