The Alienation of Native American Existence

One of the central themes of Natalie Diaz’s “Abecedarian” is the alienation of Native American existence within the dominant culture of white supremacy and Christianity. On one level, this alienation is reflected in the utter mismatch between Biblical imagery and the concrete facts of material indigenous existence. For instance, the speaker claims no knowledge of the angel “Gabriel” (7), revealing only an awareness of a “guy named Gabe” (7). At every turn, she prefers to speak from a place of material, day-to-day existence, privileging social life over lofty, invisible religious ideals that bear no relation to what she knows.

In her attempt to explain why she thinks of Gabe, she says that Gabe only has “wings” only insofar as he is a “jailbird” (10), and this is the closest any Native American can come to being or resembling an angel, reflecting the incompatibility...