Red oaks & black birches Book

Ravens are not just Corvus corax, a species of bird that can be analyzed in terms of taxonomy. The raven, one of the most intelligent of all birds, is also a bird that has a particularly strong presence in myth, religion, literature, and folklore. And Catherine Feher-Elston takes pains to emphasize the mythic and mystical dimensions of the raven in her book Ravensong.

Feher-Elston, who has written extensively about Native American issues, places a strong focus on the role of the raven in Native American life in this Natural and Fabulous History of Ravens and Crows (the book's subtitle). The book's four sections focus on the raven in myth; the raven in the time when a large part of North America went through a "transition and transformation" from Native American to United States sovereignty; the raven as seen from the perspectives of science and law; and the raven as seen in today's world.

The raven in Native American myth is sometimes a benevolent spirit conveying knowledge; sometimes a mischievous trickster; and sometimes, a dangerous bringer of discord and death, as with the wizards and witches "known as Kalanu Ahyeli ski, 'Raven Mockers.' These most powerful of sorcerers robbed the ill or dying of their lives, adding these years to their own. After killing their victim, Raven Mockers cut out the heart and ate it; no one could see them and their lives left no scar" (pp. 51-52). As an illustration of that mythic archetype, Feher-Elston helpfully provides a story of a young Cherokee hunter who enters the house of an old couple, discovers that his hosts are Raven Mockers, and then must use his wits in order to find a way of surviving this dangerous encounter.

The chapter on "Transition and Transformation" includes a thoughtful treatment of Edgar Allan Poe's poem "The Raven" (1845). Feher-Elston describes how Poe lived in "an era of slavery, of brewing civil war, of the fulfillment of Manifest Destiny and the building of railroads across the continent" (pp. 99-100) - a time, in short, of Anglo-American industrial hegemony inexorably overtaking the richer, purer, more mystical culture of the Native Americans. Yet Feher-Elston seems to like the ways in which Poe did not fit into that painfully white industrial world; she appreciates Poe's "dark mysticism" and his affinity for mysticism and for the occult, and writes approvingly of how "Poe clearly understood ambivalent Euro-American attitudes towards ravens, but he also understood the birds' innate intelligence and dignity" (p. 98).

Ravensong is not a scientific study of the raven, or a book of the kind that a raven-studying ornithologist like Bernd Heinrich might write. The nature-loving, anti-rationalist, somewhat New Age-ish spirit in which Ravensong is composed comes forth in a number of portions of the "Science and Law" portion of the book, as when Feher-Elston comments on the impact of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, passed by the United States Congress in 1972. The treaty makes it unlawful for anyone to "kill, capture, collect, possess, buy, sell, trade, ship, import, or export" any of the many bird species covered under the act. Where this potentially impacts ravens, Feher-Elston suggests, is that "the practical result [of the law] is that anyone who stops to help a wounded bird without first obtaining a federal and/or state permit is violating the law. A compassionate person, by taking in and assisting in the healing and rehabilitation of an injured protected bird is in fact a criminal" (p. 150), if that person has not acquired the necessary paperwork.

Federal and state wildlife officials might point out in reply that a member of the general public, no matter the depth of his or her compassion and good intentions, might actually do a great deal of harm if that person's humane wish to help a wild bird in distress were not informed by a rigorous degree of knowledge regarding ornithology and the proper care of injured wild animals. But the depth of Feher-Elston's humanitarian concern for the situation of ravens and other forms of wildlife is never in question.

Ravensong was published in 1991, in the year of the Persian Gulf War, and therefore it is not surprising that Feher-Elston concludes her book by reflecting on that war's dire impact on the ecosystem of the region in which the war was fought. Invoking the importance of Great Raven in the religious and cultural systems of many Native American nations, Feher-Elston calls the reader's attention to the manner in which Saddam Hussein's defeated Iraqi forces "opened oil conduits and released millions of gallons of oily death into the gulf. Humans at war with one another over economic and political spheres of influence declared war on Raven's world as well" (p. 185).

In Feher-Elston's reading, humankind may well destroy itself through its mad, irrational war on the natural world that sustains all human beings. But if it does so, Great Raven will be there to pick up the pieces:

"Ultimately, the world will be cleansed, the natural order restored. And Great Raven will someday traverse a vast beach, hopping and flapping and stretching his beautiful wings. Perhaps, after pausing to eat some delicious tidbit on the shore to assuage his enormous appetite, Raven will feel bored and lonely. And then, Raven will bend down, and with his mountain-maker's hands, create new playmates, carefully crafting and sculpting new creatures, painting them in new colors, building another world, again." (p. 186)

Feher-Elston writes about the raven with energy and affection, and the illustrations by Lawrence Ormsby capture the intelligence and the quirky spirit of the raven. Published by Northland Publishing, a now-defunct Flagstaff, Arizona-based publisher that specialized in Southwestern regional material, Ravensong provides an interesting and engaging look at a bird whose power to fascinate never seems to diminish.