Ndé Alliterations

A Poetics of the Oppressed, 2018

If we re-examine more closely the supposed impact of 'postcolonial' studies on Indigenous peoples the world over, we can easily come to the same conclusion as King does when he suggests that “most of us don’t live in university, and I can only imagine that the majority of Native people would be more amused by the gymnastics of theoretical language -hegemony and subalternity indeed- than impressed” (The Truth About Stories, 114-115). As such, I personally do not believe that the concept of a 'poetics of the oppressed' from an academic perspective is something which many people could freely coin or even refer to; yet the term 'poetics' is nonetheless quite radically different in its implications and etymological roots from 'pedagogy', whose historical referents -from ancient Greece to the current day Eurocentric neoresidential educational institutions it inspired- are now well-known to have been widely corrupted, elitist and hierarchical at their basis. And so it logically follows for me that if a concept such as that of a 'pedagogy of the oppressed' can be reclaimed from its etymologically and historically colonial, heteropatriarchal roots and cancerous evolutionary branches by an activist scholar of such a stature as Freire, a similar exception should be much more feasibly achievable with the concept of a 'poetics of the oppressed', as contradictory as it may be to attempt to express obvious truths in a facetiously complex fashion which seems to go against the very nature of what is being described. Despite this perceived limitation of intellectually hegemonic linguistics, my purpose in this venture is virtually identical to that of Taiaiake Alfred's when he suggests that “my intended contribution, and my aspiration, is to present a view firmly rooted in a Native world and solidly grounded in the scholarly world. As one who is fortunate enough to walk in both, I take it as my responsibility to create bridges between the two worlds that others may use to heal the rifts that have developed between us” (Heeding the Voices of Our Ancestors, p. 1).

Rhetoric & Public Address, 2017

Crossing time, place, and tribal nation, these four books offer readers historic and contemporary accounts of colonized lives and experiences in North America, as expressed in Native rhetorics, performances, and Native–non- Native intercultural discourses. Each offers richly contextualized examples of decolonial rhetorical resistance in North America, exemplifying negotiations of Native identities as inescapably linked to individual, tribal nation, and pan- Indian experiences of (de)colonization. These collections of textual fragments successfully contribute toward Robert Warrior’s call for a “generational view . . . [that] provides a new historical and critical site that invites us to see contemporary work as belonging to a process centuries long, rather than decades long, of engaging the future contours of Indian America” (Goeman, 13). The books’ authors cannot and make no attempt to escape the legacies of previous generations, instead demonstrating how rhetorical strategies of resistance alter over time while still resonating with past rhetorics. Read together, the books offer a glimpse across the centuries, revealing experiences and analyzing rhetorical strategies in Native and non-Native interactions across public and private spheres, underscoring the inexorable entanglements between them. I review each in chronological order by the time period covered, discussing how their themes build upon one another across increasingly complex scholarly conversations about Native identities and (de)colonial resistances. American Indians and the Rhetoric of Removal and Allotment. By Jason Edward Black. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2015; pp. 228. $65.00 hardback. The Erotics of Sovereignty: Queer Native Writing in the Era of Self- Determination. By Mark Rifkin. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012; pp. 352. $25.00 paperback. Mark My Words: Native Women Mapping Our Nations. By Mishuana Goeman. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013; pp. 256. $75.00 cloth; $25.00 paperback. Native Acts: Indian Performance, 1603–1832. Edited by David Bellin Joshua and Laura L. Mielke. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2011; pp. 344. $35.00 paperback.

Western American Literature

This article follows the theme of this JAR special issue-from self-suppression to expressive genres-as a way to investigate Navajo poets' ordeals with languages. If ordeals of languages arise from languages as objects of scrutiny, then intimate grammars can be seen as the use of expressive genres in the face of such ordeals of language. I look fi rst at the ways in which Navajo is an object of scrutiny and how, as objects of scrutiny, Navajos have self-suppressed speaking Navajo. Next I turn to the practice of some Navajos of feigning monolingualism in Navajo to avoid interacting with "outsiders" and to remove their uses of non-mainstream Navajo English from external scrutiny. I then turn to the ways Navajo poets continue to use Navajo English in their poetry and to the fact that Navajo poets now write about social, environmental, and political issues on the Navajo Nation. Here they resist a Navajo injunction, doo ajinída (don't talk about it), which is meant to discourage critique that can be overheard by outsiders. I conclude by arguing that we can only understand Navajo poetry within the context of both emergent ordeals of languages and the expressive satisfaction of intimate grammars.

Praeger American Indians & American Popular Culture. Volume 2, Ed. Elizabeth Delaney Hoffman, 2012

Rader-202 might mean). Increasingly, Native poets are challenging readers not to read their poems through a Nativist lens, which raises a number of issues only future poets can resolve.

Celt: A Journal of Culture, English Language Teaching & Literature, 2019

The integration of the personal and the political has been an engaging topic in analyses of literary texts by authors whose works are known for their political content and activism, as well as an emphasis on social justice. Literary audiences in the United States have been familiar with Joy Harjo and John Trudell, two well-known contemporary Indigenous poets, who have voiced out the concerns of Indigenous people in the face of colonization and injustice happening in their homeland. Within the fusion of the personal and the political, as well as the mythical, the idea of transformation is paramount for Indigenous authors since to move from the state of being colonized to one of being decolonized, transformation is undoubtedly crucial. This paper focuses on the role of memory and the power of language in the process of transformation in the three poems by Joy Harjo and John Trudell. The analysis uses a qualitative methodology in the form of a close reading of literary texts to uncover...

Amerikastudien, 2022

With her poetry volume Whereas, Oglala Lakota poet Layli Long Soldier eloquently responds to the 2009 congressional apology to all American Indians. The poet / persona privileges her own perspective on the past and the present by positioning herself as more than a silent recipient of the congressional document. Emphasizing the interrelatedness of land and other spaces, individual positionalities, personal relations, and the impact of language(s) and acts involving physical movement, Long Soldier puts forth a poetological and political book of poems that can be read as producing decolonial knowledge. This essay elucidates how Long Soldier's enunciatory strategies coherently extend from meaning-making punctuation marks and white spaces on an individual page to the poetry book's structural units and its overall conceptualization. In Whereas as a whole, Long Soldier harnesses her poetic prowess to expose how the apology's language perpetuates settler colonialism's imperialist perspective as well as how her own stance as a bilingual, dual citizen provides necessary new ways of understanding and artistically enunciating history, the current moment, and projections of surviving in the future.

English Studies in Canada, 1998