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desert—water, stone, and sun—and illustrate how the Laguna Pueblo
way of understanding reciprocal relationships between humans, land,
animals, and water shaped her worldview. She writes: “When I was a
child, the people used to watch the sky for changes in the weather. I
learned to watch for the fat dark rain clouds, and I remember the
excitement and the anticipation as the cool wind arrived smelling of rain”
(SW 5). In this passage, Silko connects her own experience of rain with
the collective experience of rain, gesturing towards the communal nature
of water ethics in the desert. She does not partake in nature writing
conventions describing subjective experience as the isolated self within
nature, but rather describes the collective experience that necessarily
governs indigenous understandings of natural processes. When she was
a girl in Laguna Pueblo, for example, there was a strong imperative to
collectively protect and respect supplies of fresh water: “We children
were seldom scolded or punished for our behavior. But we were never
permitted to frolic with or waste fresh water” (6).
The traditional ethics of water usage in the Laguna community pose
a strong counterpoint to ethics of waste in the booming Sunbelt of the
American Southwest, which Silko also describes in Sacred Water. She
writes, “In Tucson and Phoenix, more young children die from drowning
than from traffic accidents. Backyard swimming pools are numerous;
the clear, still water, the colorful tiles, pool steps and pool ladders are all
designed to be attractive and inviting. A safety gate was left unlatched;
the parents always insist they only looked away for a moment” (54).
Silko sets up an obvious comparison between the water ethic she grew
up with in Laguna and the flagrant waste of water within contemporary
Southwestern cities. Where the adults in her community admonished
children not to waste water, an ethic of waste persists in the exploding
urban areas of Tucson and Phoenix where, even in a place with limited
fresh water, many families must have their own artificial swimming pool.
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The waste created by the self-interested development of the Sunbelt
is markedly less sustainable than collective water conscientiousness.
Traditional Laguna people could survive on annual rainfall, but deep
wells in Tucson continue to suck up water from the aquifer “which has
receded so far that the two hundred year old cottonwood trees along
the Tanque Verde wash are dying” (SW 52). The ostensible reason for
depleting the aquifer is to fill more swimming pools. Furthermore, as
Silko’s story about child drownings suggests, the waste of water in the
desert can bear ironic social repercussions.
Within the Keresan Pueblos of Laguna and Acoma there is an extensive
body of cultural knowledge that reinforces a practice of respecting water
and limiting waste. There are, for example, stories that describe times of
extreme scarcity, as Silko remembers: “All around Laguna and Acoma,
there are sandstone formations which make natural basins and pools that
hold rain water. These rain water pools are cherished even now, because
long ago in times of drought, the survival of the people depended on
the rain water stored in the sandstone pools” (18). Ethical use of water
is possible only when people are collectively aware of the possibility of
not having water. If there is communal sense of false abundance, as is
the case with the swimming pools of Tucson and Phoenix, then waste
becomes the order of the day. Through their stories, traditional Laguna
people understand water as the source of life, something sacred and not
to be wasted. The fundamental, shared awareness of the water’s fluidity
and impermanence in the dry desert inculcates stories like that of the
sandstone pools, and through such narratives Laguna people traditionally
maintain a collective memory of water scarcity that promotes continued
prudence.
Sacred Water also touches upon the elemental understanding of water
within the cosmology of Pueblo peoples. Silko writes, “The old-time
Pueblo people believe that natural springs and fresh-water lakes possess
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