Silko, Leslie. Ceremony
Bird, Gloria. "Towards a Decolonization of the Mind and Text: Leslie Marmon Silko's "Ceremony"

Decolonization of the American Indians has caused a loss of many things to them; not only has their culture been demeaned, but redifined through the colonizers point of view. By forcing upon them an entirely new idea of life, religion, history, and language, their identities have been shifted, skewed, and forgotten. What's worse than this, is the idea that it can in fact be forgotten, their their culture is something that can be lost.

It is not only he loss of such things that cause strife for people such as Gloria Bird, it is the idea that this decolonization has weakened the connection between the people and their history. With the infiltration of European cultures, many have either voluntarily, or in Bir'ds case unwillingly, been sepereated from the stories and traditions of their people. This is a struggle we see within many characters in Ceremony. For Rocky and Aunti, the idea of blending with the European colonizers is ideal. For Tayo, it is something that must be fought against in order to redeem himself and his people.