“One Elegy from Aruac to Sioux”: The Absent Presence of Indigeneity in Derek Walcott’s Poetry and Drama

Abstract

Walcott calls attention to a suppressed indigenous past that haunts the Caribbean through a thematic focus on Native American history. In addition to repeated but brief allusions to the Caribbean’s indigenous past, such as the reference to the island’s Arawak name, “Iounalao,” in the poem’s opening lines, Omeros gives sustained attention to the late-nineteenth century U.S. phenomenon of the Ghost Dance and to the events that led up to the death of Chief Sitting Bull in 1890. Walcott’s emphasis on indigenous peoples of the Americas, both Caribbean and North American, reflects his rejection of an Afrocentric poetics that has tended to neglect the indigenous Caribbean presence.