American Indian Rhetorics of Survivance: Word Medicine, Word Magic Edited by Ernest Stromberg

In his introduction to this collection, Stromberg offers rich insight into American Indian rhetorics, beginning with the point that the exclusion of American Indians voices and practices from the Western rhetorical tradition is part of what Stephen Riggins calls the longstanding “rhetoric of othering” within our field (3).  This collection, demonstrates, however, that American Indians [...]

Yagleski, Robert “A Rhetoric of Contact: Tecumseh and the Native American Confederacy”

 
In this essay (1995), Yagleski draws on the work of Mary Louise Pratt to define rhetoric as a “site of contact and social struggle between Native Americans and white Americans iin the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries” (66).  As a specific site of contact and social struggle, Yagleski explores the rhetoric used by Tecumseh in which, [...]

Stromberg, Ernest — Introduction to “Rhetoric and American Indians”

Introduction to “Rhetoric  and American Indians”  Ernest Stromberg
 
Ernest Stromberg begins his introduction to “Rhetoric and American Indians” with an explanation of why the concept of American Indian Rhetorics is so complicated.  Not only is the term rhetoric a contested term with multiple meanings, so is “Indian.” In fact, he points out how Vizenor claims that [...]

“Rhetorics of Survivance: How American Indians Use Writing” Malea Powell

 
Malea Powell begins this article by articulating the transformative potential of stories to construct “new histories and theories” in our discipline, which in adhering to The Rhetorical Tradition maintains a Western Eurocentric perspective and contributes, perhaps unknowingly, to the US imperial process. Powell draws on Vizenor to explain that the contemporary American Indian “situation” should [...]

“Rhetorical Sovereignty” Scott Lyons

 
Lyons begins his powerful essay “Rhetorical Sovereignty” with the profound claim that writing has played a major role in eradicating tribal identities and cultures and replacing them with the cultural values and beliefs of white civilization.  Because of the “duplicitous interrelationships between writing, violence, and colonization during the nineteenth century,” a distrust of the written [...]

Powell, Malea

Powell, Malea.  “Extending the Hand of Empire:  American Indians and the Reform Movement, a Beginning”
 
In this essay, Powell describes the discursive interactions of Susan LaFleche Picotte and the Women’s National Indian Association (WNIA).  In exploring this rhetorical relationship, Powell attempts to reveal the complex relationships between Indian reformers and Indians in the late 19th century.  [...]

Enoch, Jessica

Enoch, Jessica “’Semblances of Civilization’: Zitkala Sa’s Resistence to White Education”
 
In this essay, Enoch juxtaposes the autobiographical work of Zitkala Sa’s rhetoric with the Carlisle Indian Boarding School papers in order to demonstrate Zitakala’s direct rhetorical resistance to Carlisle’s educational rhetoric that legitimated, produced, and reproduced an Indian education that oppressed the very students it [...]

Cook-Lynn, Elizabeth “The American Indian Fiction Writer: “Cosmopolitanism, Nationalism, the Third World and First Nation Sovereignty” (1993)

In this article, although Cook-Lynn is discussing contemporary troubles with the literary canon, Cook-Lynn troubles the notion of justifying the exploration of Native American rhetorics as a means to expand the rhetorical canon or make the canon more inclusive.  Cook-Lynn argues that the notion of opening the canon is a multi-cultural ideal that denies other [...]

Cobb, Amanda “Powerful Medicine: The Rhetoric of Comanche Activist LaDonna Harris”

 
In this article, “Powerful Medicine: The Rhetoric of Comanche Activist LaDonna Harris,” Amanda Cobb models a solid social history of American Indian rhetoric.  Cobb begins her article by articulating the need for social histories of contemporary American Indian rhetoric because these rhetorics are being practiced by contemporary leaders and activists which are “teaching our communities [...]

Progress on My Social History of Rhetorics Project

In thinking of how to organize my social history of rhetoric project, I have been tinkering with the idea of collage.  Beam essentially rewrites history through collage and montage of seemingly unrelated icons, indices, and symbols.  These techniques allow him to construct history in a nonlinear fashion–an important move for Beam since his work, in [...]