From Colorado to the Indus: A Comparative Study of Water Memories in Sindhi Mohana Community and the Mojave American Tribe

Abstract

Water has cultural, spiritual, economic, and political implications that impact the identities, practices, and survival of many communities around the globe. This paper explores the symbiotic relationship between humans and waters (outside us and within our bodies) in Native American Mojave Tribe located in Colorado, U.S.A and the Mohana tribe of Indus, Sindh Pakistan, also referred to as the ‘boat people’. For both, water determines historical significance, colonial oppression, and capitalist injustices. Water stands as a living entity intricately woven into rituals and oral traditions. In an eco-dystopic setting, the resistance poetry from these tribes stands in opposition to colonial narratives that consider water as a commodity. For analysis, this paper will consider Mojave American poet Natalie Diaz’s poetry collection Postcolonial Love Poems (2020) and Pakistani indigenous Sairiki poet Asu Lal Faqeer’s Sindh Sagir Nal Hamesha (Sindh always with the river). It also discusses local communities and their interconnectedness with the waters of Indus River on land and inside their bodies through the works of Fakir and Diaz. For an in-depth analysis of the texts, Steve Mentz’s concept of blue humanities (2023) is deployed which focuses on the role of various bodies of water i.e. ocean, sea, rivers, clouds and rain and the water that lives within our bodies. This focus is to extend the interconnectedness of themes of mourning, ancestry, loss, and resistance concerning water memories in both cultures. Despite the geographical distances, these writers share a similar pattern in their writing which reflects transnational connectedness and universal contact zones.