In Ceremony(1977), Leslie Marmon Silko provides positive images of contemporary Native Americans and a viable definition of Native American tradition as an on-going commitment for collective survival. To do this, through all the young male characters, Silko describes World War II as a serious barrier against Native American cultural preservation and transmission, while exploring the challenges that her contemporary Native Americans confront. Through World War II, Native Americans came to have contact with the world outside their reservations on an unprecedentedly massive scale. Based on the observation that the impact of World War II still remains understudied in the criticism on this novel, I read Ceremony as a novel of World War II and as Silko's literary comment on her contemporary Native American movements. Against a prevailing tendency in Silko criticism that assumes Native American tradition as change-free or reads this novel based on oppositional logic, I attend to how Silko dismantles the oppositional logic. In doing so, I argue that Silko warns of the dangers of self-abjectification within the Native American community, while she succeeds in representing positive Native American self-images. While illuminating the complex aspects of the Laguna community before and after the war, Silko provides a viable definition of Native American tradition. Discussing the regenerative power of stories and the process of the protagonist Tayo's identity formation, I also argue that Silko emphasizes Native American agency, showing the emergence of new Native American subjects.