The decolonial perspective on America’s founding mother myth: a study of Paula Gunn Allen’s Pocahontas

Resumo

Western History and Literature have been perpetuating the image of women who have played an important role in the creation of the nation. According to those narratives, they emerge as figures that have helped European men to understand, connect and be part of native culture.Most importantly, they abandoned their own culture in order to build a more “civilized” nation in alliance with the Europeans and therefore they are seen as traitors. However, more recent studies tell us different stories about those women, stories that reveal that, in fact, these women were subjugated and/or discredited. From this perspective, this article aims at reflecting upon the oppressive patriarchal colonial forces that build the narrative of native people as the other. In that intent, we will analyze the poem “Pocahontas to Her English Husband, John Rolfe,” as well as the biography of Pocahontas, both written by Paula Gunn Allen, a native American writer, who gives voice to the silenced native woman and the tradition of her people.