Reality consumed by realty: the ecological costs of ‘development’ in Leslie Marmon Silko’s Almanac of the Dead

Published to coincide with the quincentennial celebrations of Columbus’s ‘discovery’ of the New World, the Native American writer Leslie Marmon Silko’s apocalyptic 1991 novel, Almanac of the Dead, is a harsh highly politicized indictment of 500 years of colonialism, inhumanity and genocide. Silko clearly presents a diverse range of pertinent political issues that are of crucial significance to many contemporary tribal communities within the United States. This article analyses Silko’s concern with ecological issues; with the symbiotic relationship between Native American communities and the land; with the ways in which contemporary exploitation of both Native American lands and their natural resources by the highly powerful energy multinationals are replacing the symbiotic with the parasitic; and with the potential human and ecological costs.