A Postcolonial Ecocritical Reading of Mahmoud Darwish’s “The Red Indian’s Penultimate Speech to the White Man”

Abstract

Inspired by the tenets of postcolonial ecocriticism, theories of settler colonialism, and indigenous ecologies, this study examines the connection Mahmoud Darwish establishes between the colonized people and natural elements in his poem “The Red Indian’s Penultimate Speech to the White Man” while making reference to Native American oral traditions and Chief Seattle’s speech. This article argues that Darwish’s poem expresses an inclusive perspective that requires appreciation of the interconnection between the national and ecological struggle of the colonized. The analysis in this article is premised on Darwish’s dictum in this poem that the resistance of the colonized against loss of homeland is also a resistance against loss of nature; that is, Darwish seems to argue that the ecological ethos is inherent in the resistance of colonized people against settler colonialism. In “The Red Indian’s Penultimate Speech to the White Man,” Darwish expresses consciousness of a history of colonial domination that aggressively exploitated natural resources and destroyed natural habitations that natives had nurtured and depended on for their subsistence over the years. In other words, the poet represents the central ecocritical argument that environmental issues are integral to the existence of colonized peoples.