THEORY BEGINS WITH A STORY, TOO:
LISTENING TO THE LIVED EXPERIENCES OF AMERICAN INDIAN WOMEN
By
Andrea Riley-Mukavetz

A DISSERTATION
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
For the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Rhetoric and Writing
2012

ABSTRACT
THEORY BEGINS WITH A STORY, TOO:
LISTENING TO THE LIVED EXPERIENCES OF AMERICAN INDIAN WOMEN
By
Andrea Riley-Mukavetz
This dissertation argues that the stories American Indian women tell about their lived
experiences are rhetorical theories used to survive institutional spaces like academia. One
community-based study is central to this argument: my research with a group of multigenerational Odawa women who live and work in Lansing, Michigan. By listening to the stories
from the Little Traverse Bay Band women, I hear their stories as theories and use them as the
primary framework for the dissertation project. Their theories draw attention to how Native
women take deliberate positions that resist Euro-centric identities and practices. Yet, these
positions affect how tribal and mainstream discourses acknowledge American Indian women’s
roles and responsibilities. I build a relational theory of visibility by weaving the theories from the
Odawa women, the writing of indigenous feminists, and rhetorical histories written by or for
American Indian women into each other. This theory examines how American Indian women
negotiate the challenges of being visible in the community, at work, or while living and working
in the university.

This dissertation develops a cultural rhetorics methodology to continue to disassemble colonial
rhetorics and cultivate a space to examine what practices should be used to rebuild our tribal
communities inside and outside of the university. By drawing upon indigenous rhetorical
practices, I show how researchers are complicit in using colonial rhetorics and provide a model
to decolonize how we live and work in institutional spaces.

Copyright by
ANDREA RILEY-MUKAVETZ
2012

DEDICATION

To the American Indian women who have been and will always be there or here.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Writing is a series of cooperative and collaborative acts. I could not have completed this
dissertation without the help of a small group of dedicated individuals.
I honor the People of the Three Fires: the Ojibwe, Potawatomi, and the Odawa, whose land I
share, live, and work on. This land is beautiful. Chi Miigwetch.
Thank you to the multi-generational, Little Traverse Bay Band women: Geri Roossien, Jannus
Cotrell, Debbie DeLeon, Athena Trentin, Emily and Sarah Proctor, Rosie DeLand, Roxanne
DeLand-Phillips, Carolyn Phillips, Loretta and Wenona Singel. Miigwetch for the teachings, the
laughter, and the friendship. This is just the beginning.
To Dr. Malea Powell: thank you for helping me find the words to tell these stories. Thank you
for your stories.
To Dr. Heather Howard, Dr. Trixie Smith, and Dr. Kimberli Lee: Females, the Strong Ones. I am
forever thankful for your generosity, time, and thoughtfulness.
Thank you to Daisy Levy for being an amazing confident, theory friend, and chip n dip eater.
To Rosemary Albert for helping me learn how to navigate institutional spaces. Thank you to my
ancestors who had the foresight to put aside resources for future generations to pursue formal
education.
Thank you to American Indian Studies Program, Dr. Le Anne Silvey, and Adam Haviland for
your support, friendship, and advocacy.
Thank you to my husband, Michael Riley Mukavetz; he who takes my boots off, listener,
shoulder cryer-on-er, and best friend.
Thank you to Joyce Rain Anderson, Stuart Blythe, Casie Cobos, Marilee Brooks Gillies, Matt
Cox, Qwo-Li Driskill, Jennifer Fisch-Ferguson, Rose Gueble, Angela Haas, Bill Hart-Davidson.
Lisa King, Les Loncharich, Gabi Rios, Dean Rehberger, Doug Schraufnagle, Sue Webb, Travis
Webster.
Lastly, to my parents: Muntaha and Patrick Riley, Pamela Ortner and Michael F. Mukavetz, for
the support, understanding, and love.

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We who have survived fierce battle must tell our war stories over and over again ~ Alice Walker

vi

TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1
FEMALES THE STRONG ONES: RE-LISTENING
TO THE THEORIES OF THE CIRCLE WOMEN ................................................
I am Gathering my Materials ......................................................................
It Started with a Request.............................................................................
Stories all the Way Down...........................................................................
I’ve Told this Story Before .........................................................................
The Best Stories are Success Stories ..........................................................
On being “Here” or “There:” Grandmas Making Theory ............................
Education: A Seat at the Table....................................................................
A Conclusion: Females, the Strong Ones....................................................
It’s Stories All the Way Down: A Beginning..............................................
Indigenous Rhetorical Practices: Gathering My Materials...........................

2
2
3
4
5
11
12
16
22
23
24

CHAPTER 2
GIVE THE PROJECT LONGEVITY: AN INDIGENOUS
ORIENTATION TO COMMUNITY-BASED RESEARCH 33
December 25, 2011 ....................................................................................
Theory Begins with a Story, Too ................................................................
: Listening to the Lived Experiences of American Indian Women...............
American Indian Studies & Ethnography....................................................
Rhetoric and Composition & Community-Based Research .........................
Using Cultural Rhetorics for Community-Based Research..........................
Working within Native Rhetorics ...............................................................
Building Theory-Building a Path: Chapter Breakdown ...............................

27
28
30
32
39
42
47
51

CHAPTER THREE
TAKING UP SPACE:
THE RHETORICS OF INDIGENOUS FEMINISM ..............................................
Imagine This ..............................................................................................
Returning: This is a Coming to Indigenous Feminism Story .......................
Authenticity Rhetoric, or What Gets in the Way.........................................
Indigenous Feminist Historiography or Making Space for Future Generations
A Story about Essentialism.........................................................................
Coming to Indigenous Feminism ................................................................
Beginning: This is a Coming to Indigenous Feminism Story.......................
Take this story. It’s yours now. Do with it what you will ............................
Frayed: Weaving as an Indigenous Rhetorical Practice ...............................

54
54
55
57
60
60
66
70
73
74

CHAPTER FOUR
TO BE THERE, OR
HOW I CAME TO HEAR OUR GRANDMOTHERS ...........................................
Working Between Disciplines: An Opening ...............................................
This is a Research Story .............................................................................

77
78
80

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Oral History, Why? ....................................................................................
Oral Historiography....................................................................................
Stories and Dreams: Weaving Through Indigenous Bodies.........................
On Stories and Dreams: How Can I tell My Grandmother What to Do?......
On There-ness: A Relational Theory of Visibility.......................................

83
93
90
98
102

CHAPTER FIVE
FEMALES, THE STRONG ONES:
MAKING SPACE FOR INDIGENOUS RHETORICAL PRACTICES .................
Developing a Relational Scholarly Practice: Snakes, Dreams, and Grandmas…
A Theory of Gallbladders ...........................................................................
On Patience and Understanding..................................................................
My Whole Self: A Theory of Knees ...........................................................

105
105
114
116
117

REFERENCES

120

viii

The best stories are success stories ~ Susan Applegate Krouse

1

Chapter One
Females, the Strong Ones:
Re-Listening to the Theories of the Circle Women

I am Gathering My Materials
I ask you, dear reader, to be patient with me as I build theory out of relationships—out of story.
This theory building is painful: full of grief and insecurities. This theory building is about
honoring relations. It’s about love. There’s something about working in academia that tests our
patience. We don’t have a lot of time. We need to get to the point quickly; to be clear and
concise, but we have to be careful and take our time while building theory. I come to you with a
good heart because I know I am about to test your patience.
On three separate occasions, from February to March of 2010, a group of multigenerational Little Traverse Bay Band Odawa women who live and work in Lansing traveled to
the Union building at Michigan State to share the stories of their lives with community members,
faculty, staff, and students. The talking circle participants are the following sets of grandmothers,
mothers, and daughters: Geri Roossien , Jannus Cottrell, Debbie DeLeon, Athena Trentin,
Wenona Singel, Loretta Singel, Sarah Proctor, Emily Proctor, Rosie DeLand, Roxanne DeLand
Phillips, and Carolyn Phillips. Many of the women have close relationships to the university
because they have held positions in various Lansing Indian centers working alongside Michigan
State professors, students, and staff or their daughters and grandchildren attend a four-year
university. For the last event, the talking circle women, their family and friends, and the audience
gathered at the Nokomis Center in Okemos to feast. Rosie led the prayer.

2

It Started with a Request
December 19, 2008
On this perfect, Michigan, December night, where the air is cool and the ground is covered with
a light layer of snow, Susan Applegate Krouse, Geri Roossien, and I are sitting in Geri’s living
room. An Odawa elder, Geri has asked us to help her record her life history and turn it into a
publishable document—a gift for her grandchildren and younger Odawas.
I’ve only known Geri for a month and Susan for three months. It’s taken me weeks to
allow my body to relax while Geri speaks. I don’t really talk with her: I sit and smile and nod
and laugh and listen with my tense body. Susan does most of the talking. She and Geri have
known each other for years. As Geri finishes her story and Susan presses “stop” on her old tape
machine—we all take a big, deep breath and smile. We look so satisfied and happy. After
hearing these stories, I start to understand what healing feels like.
I say, “it is truly amazing that there are three generations of urban, Native women
working on this project.” What I mean is that, I never expected to learn from Geri and Susan
about my own identity—what it means to practice being a mixed Anishinaabeikwe; these women
are my teachers.
Geri says, “well, you know, there are more of us in Lansing;” there are more Odawa
women and most of them have daughters or granddaughters. Geri says, “you two should get
them together.” Susan and I look at each other and say “ok.”
From this request, we spent the next year organizing the talking circles to begin in
February 2010. Susan and I wrote a grant requesting assistantship to the Michigan Humanities
Council. Geri contacted the Odawa women and invited them to the event and I met with the
women to decide on themes and questions.

3

Stories All the Way Down
Almost four years later, I am still taken by Geri’s willingness to discuss her addiction to
alcoholism and tobacco. She doesn’t shy away from sharing how her addiction destroyed
relationships and opportunities as well as hurt the people she loves, especially her daughter.
More so, Geri tells stories to show she has forgiven herself. Thinking back to that December
night, I didn’t understand Geri’s plan for her life history. I didn’t know that her stories are
theories on indigenous recovery and healing. These theories of recovery are important teachings
because she emphasizes forgiveness, awareness, and acceptance. She acknowledges that anger
and out-of-placeness led to her addiction and continues to deal with these feelings everyday;
recovery is an ongoing process. As a young, mixed Native person, I know those feelings as well.
As my elder, she gives me permission to feel angry and re-direct that anger into acceptance and
forgiveness.
I am constantly re-telling the story of how this project began. Mostly, I tell it for myself
and the story always changes. At times, I do voices. I make gestures. Sometimes I don’t. But I
keep telling it as I prepare to write for the dissertation or walk my dog or run out the door to
teach. Sometimes, I will find myself holding my breath. It happens as I stand up in front of the
class to lecture on research methodologies or while discussing oral history strategies with a
colleague. I’ll start to cough or choke. My body will remind me to take my time—to remember
that the story can end, for now. I tell this story to heal—to learn about my relationships with the
women, my research, or myself. In this re-telling moment, I realize that at the center of this
dissertation is a story about how relationships are tools for survival. This is a story on how to
navigate academia from a built community of women who work outside of the university, but are
deeply connected to it.

4

I’ve Told this Story Before
March 2009
I’m sitting at the Grand Traverse Pie Co with Little Traverse Bay Band grandmother Geri,
mother Jannus, and granddaughter Amelia. We are drinking our tea or coffee and eating pastry as
we talk about the rationale behind the talking circles. I didn’t expect to talk about the theoretical
justification behind the talking circles. We were supposed to decide on themes and discussion
questions for the actual events. But, I should have expected this, considering Geri’s and Jannus’
positions within the community.
Jannus asks me, “What are you going to do with them?” She’s asking me about the future
of the talking circles. I reply, “well, I’m not sure yet, I know I want to have a space to honor the
women’s stories, to draw attention to their significance to Lansing and Little Traverse history.”
Jannus replies, “well, that’s fine, but my mother has been going to these for a long time, and
nothing comes out of them.” I am still struck by the concept of nothingness.
I realize that Susan and I need to think both short term and long term about the project
and share these ideas with the women. We need to show them that we are invested in the
possibilities. Initially, we thought that this project would be something in addition to Geri’s life
history. Yet, Jannus’ critique of the transparency of the project encourages me to realize that I
have a responsibility to do more. The women want something tangible to come out of this
project. On a daily basis, I repeat to myself: “this shouldn’t be a waste of time.”
I imagine that Jannus says the following “You need to give this project longevity.” I ask
her, “What do you think I should do with this project?” She says, “I don’t know, but something
to make it last, something that can help future generations.” Geri tells me that she wants this
project to be available in schools and libraries for the children. I keep this conversation in mind

5

while Susan and I plan the next stages of the project. Yet, I re-tell this story because I can’t talk
about Geri’s and Jannus’ theories without it. Now, Amelia has found free pie samples and is
taking mini soufflé cups of pie to her grandmother, mother, and myself. We have switched from
project rationale and longevity to discussing the implications of the concept of “leadership” for
the talking circles.
Geri says that she doesn’t think of herself as a leader: she prefers to remain in the
background.1 I believe Geri’s statement to be her main theoretical practice, especially after
listening to her tell stories of overcoming alcoholism and becoming a Native American crisis
counselor for Cristo Rey.2 Geri practices her identity as a Native woman, as an elder by
removing herself from the spotlight and give advice from the background. For decades, Geri
served on Lansing boards, mainly as the secretary, treasurer, or board member but not the
speaker or president. During our talks, Geri shared many occasions where she was encouraged to
run for these positions, but chose not to run because it was counterintuitive to how she
understands her identity. In these stories, she would explain that her co-workers would often
1

In “Listening to Legacies,” Terese G. Monberg examines the rhetorical theories of Pinay
rhetor, Dorothy Cordova to address oral history as a methodology for feminist historiography. I
see direct connections to how Ms. Cordova and Ms. Roossien theorize their identities. For
example, Ms. Cordova theorizes her position within the community to standing behind the
podium. Like Ms. Roossien, Ms. Cordova uses language to theorize the space she works in while
rejecting an expected presence from someone who “runs” an organization. Monberg elevates the
rhetorics of Pinay women from rhetorical strategies to rhetorical theories. In doing so, she draws
attention to the limits of current feminist historiography and offers another approach to feminist
historiography scholarship. Furthermore, “Listening to Legacies” encourages readers to examine
our relationships to the participants and analyze these relationships as data. I will further
examine this essay in my second chapter (Give the Project Longevity) as an example of a
cultural rhetorics approach to community-based research.
2
Cristo Rey is a Hispanic/American Indian community center that offers a variety of recovery
services. It continues to be a resource for Lansing’s Hispanic and Native populations, but due to
budget problems, does not offer as many services as it did when it was initially founded. Cristo
Rey continues to offer itself as a space for Lansing Hispanic and American Indian communities
to gather for Day of the Dead, Ghost Supper, and other traditional gatherings.
6

nominate her for these positions and wouldn’t understand why Geri never accepted the
nominations.
Geri has developed rhetorical strategies that allow her to remain in the background and
still serve as a resource to Native peoples in Lansing and mid-Michigan. She has taught me that
there is a theoretical difference between the practice of elder and leader, especially for Native
women living in an urban environment.
As Geri tells me stories about her co-workers nominating her for more visible positions
or as I sit in seminar classes and listen to myself or students struggle to justify women of color
identity positions as leader, I am reminded how I have been disciplined to consider Geri’s
identity, and thus her theoretical practice as weak-minded, modest, or humble. We might desire3
to continue labeling Geri as a leader, especially when we come to realize that the city of Lansing
named a day after her to recognize her achievements or that she remains one of the only Native
American crisis counselors in the state of Michigan and continues to do consulting work at the
age of 78. But, I would ask those people to think about “remaining in the background” as a
rhetorical theory that someone like Geri enacts as survivance.4 Furthermore, we must reflect on
our desire to revise Geri’s theory to fit our own worldviews. I encourage us to ask, “how does
her racialized, classed gender practices contend the ways in which I understand power and
survival?”
3

Queer/Two-Spirit rhetorical practices have helped me understand desire as a point of inquiry to
examine how power is implicit within Rhetoric.
4
In “Rhetorics of Survivance: How American Indians use Writing,” Malea Powell listens to the
writing of Sarah Winnemuca and Charles Eastman, two nineteenth century American Indian
thinkers whose writing has been misunderstood by both American Indian Studies and Rhetoric
and Composition. Adapted from Gerald Vizenor’s idea of survivance (survival + resistance),
Powell shows how Winnemuca and Eastman enact survivance as a rhetorical strategy. In doing
so, readers can see how Winnemuca and Eastman write to move themselves and American
Indians from this time period from an object status to a subject status.
7

As I hear Geri position herself in the background, I feel and see Geri discuss the
complexity of negotiating power and responsibility while practicing traditions within the urban
environment and among Natives and non-Natives. Geri is aware of how the paracolonial world
sees her: as elderly, uneducated, a recovering alcoholic, and unable to be literate in certain,
disciplinary discourses. And so, she removes herself from those archetypal depictions of
contemporary Native women to a spatial position where she can create things5—make programs
or offer counsel in smaller groups. To remain in the background is a rhetorical space for
cultivating a place for future generations to survive. And, in thinking about this, I feel Geri
urging me to theorize the background in relation to the mundane and the rhetorical spaces
women of color inhabit for re-visionary purposes—for survivance. As I think more of Geri’s
theory, I understand that the background is a liminal space where both Natives and non-Natives
must work in separate racial and gendered communities, but also come together for joint projects
like school functions, committees, and employment. For those who honor paracolonial
knowledge practices and histories, Geri is invisible. For Geri, she relies on that invisibility to
create, educate, and serve as a resource. She doesn’t bother herself with those who cannot listen.
Yet, when she returns to Native communities, they understand the significance of her invisible,
but tangible presence.
When Geri tells me about the recovery aspect of her life history, most of the stories are a
series of client success stories where she explains how her clients (mainly urban, Native peoples)

5

In “Powerful Medicine: The Rhetorics of Comanche Activist LaDonna Harris,” Amanda Cobb
examines the rhetorical strategies of LaDonna Harris. Through Harris’ strategies, Cobb argues
that American Indian women resist leadership identities by taking on roles that emphasize
creating things instead of doing things. Cobb draws attention to the distinction between doing
and making in relation to Western and Indigenous knowledge practices. I will further discuss this
essay in my second chapter (Give the Project Longevity) as an example of Native Rhetorics
work that situates itself as community-based and theoretical.
8

overcame their addictions. I understand these client success stories as a way for Geri to discuss
her own success and recovery. Recovery is not solely about Geri’s individual abstinence from
alcohol, but how she dedicates her life to assisting Native peoples to overcome their addictions6.
In the talking circles, Geri says, “it was learning to lead a sober life” that encouraged her
to take courses and become a substance abuse counselor. I hear Geri relate the process of
recovery to a presence in society. In doing so, Geri makes a distinction between civic
duty/presence and invisibility. Geri’s theoretical practice of remaining in the background relates
to how she enacts Odawa teachings in crisis counseling. This connection emphasizes the
difference between what is seen, heard, and felt. Recovery, like stories are about relationships—
relationality. There isn’t an origin, but a web of responsibility and accountability.
Geri urges me to think about how Odawa teachings and theories have and should be used
to heal Native peoples from addiction. But, at this moment, in this coffee shop, I don’t get any of
this yet. It takes me a year of telling these stories again and again to hear and see the theory.

I ask her, “why do you reject the word leader?”

Geri doesn’t answer me probably because she already has and I haven’t heard it yet. But, I feel
that she has said something significant because I remember my breath catching—my shoulders
softening. I start to realize that I am mishearing Geri when Jannus, relying on familiar theoretical
language, explains her mother’s theory to me. I imagine that they both seem a little annoyed that
I don’t get it yet, but I am not sure about this.

6

By always relating her own success and failure to her community, Geri’s theory, “remaining in
the background,” emphasizes the relationality of Malea Powell’s theory of survivance.
9

She says, “leadership is a masculinist construct.”
“Oh,” I reply.

And then, after that, everything comes together. My breath slows and my body sighs in relief and
understanding.
Jannus uses institutional words in order to show me that I misheard her mother. Where
Geri might not know these words or resists explaining her strategies, Jannus relies on
institutional discourses— academic discourses to illuminate what she has already heard.
During the talking circles, Jannus had an opportunity to reflect on her relationship to
formal education as well as Native education. When she was in school, she would hear
stereotypes or misinformation about Native peoples and didn’t have the words to speak back.
She recalls, “I felt muted—I didn’t know how to say “well, that’s not true.” I don’t want my
children to be in a position of feeling muted. Now, I can be a resource.” Jannus’ theory and thus,
her daily practice are to share insights from learning how to negotiate multiple discourses and
theories. Jannus takes the time to explain what she hears to people like herself or like me: mixed,
Natives who have not had the opportunity to grow up with the traditions, but spend adulthood
learning and searching.
By juxtaposing her educational background to her identity and responsibility, Jannus
relates her ability to negotiate institutions and to serve as a resource to her mixed blood identity.
She recalls,
I hope we can bring back our Native history—our Michigan Indian history here—it’s
been a continued effort on our part. It’s been good—it’s been enlightening for me—
finding her history and thus, finding a part of my history as well. My Native community

10

was the Lansing Indian Center—it’s a very different environment than growing up on a
reserve or around the aunties and grandmothers. I see the political and business work of
being Indian to bring community to a fragmented environment like Lansing. My politics
have been developed from this perspective—I’ve seen what it’s like to stay alive in this
setting and what can make it crumble…I got these degrees not to work in Anthropology,
but I needed something—some resource. Fortunately, the professors I learned under are
strong advocates for Native peoples. Now, I can be a resource.
Jannus moves from the conditions of her mixed blood identity to describing the conditions she
grew up in. Jannus makes these connections as a way to argue what she had to do in order to be a
resource. Jannus understands herself to be someone much more complex than a translator.
Instead, she is able to acknowledge and fill an absence; where Jannus may have not had these
resources as she grew up, she becomes it.

The Best Stories are Success Stories
March 2011
I finally open the DVD case from the first talking circle. It’s taken all of my emotional strength
and patience to just sit down and watch. I know these stories already. I’ve carried them in my
body for a year or maybe my whole life and I am ready to re-listen.

I watch as Dr. Le Anne Silvey and Dr. Susan Applegate Krouse thank the people of the three
fires, thank our elders, and thank me. I watch as Le Anne and Susan giggle and banter and play.
All of the good feelings from February 2010 come back. All of the grief and pain comes back—
watching, feeling, knowing that Susan is fighting cancer and will walk on five months after the

11

talking circles. Our moderator, Le Anne, another LTBB woman, asks the participants: “Can you
introduce yourselves?” I love how the women look to each other and silently decide that their
elder and respected Native American substance abuse counselor, Geri should go first.

On Being “Here” or “There:” Grandmas Making Theory
Geri laughs and replies, “well, I’m there. It’s a job that I really like.” She takes the kids to school
and makes their lunches. Also, she shares that she had her naming ceremony with her
granddaughter, Amelia. Geri doesn’t theorize her role as grandmother or elder through passing
down Odawa traditions, but by her spatial relationship with the grandchildren.
By explaining to the audience, that Geri is in grandma care, she draws attention to the
luxury of being a grandma in this time period—in the urban environment. When she explains her
relationship to her parents, she says, “they died alcoholics trying to be white.” I notice Geri
reflect on the circumstances that she grew up in and relates these experiences to the space she
creates for her grandchildren. Through this relational juxtaposition, Geri argues that she cannot
address her current relationship with her grandchildren without addressing her own relationship
to her parents and grandparents.
Geri passes the microphone to Debbie DeLeon, Ingham County Commissioner and future
tribal chair runner. Debbie comments, “I’m learning to be grandma. It’s sometimes more difficult
to learn how to be a grandparent and make that transition from being a mom…and when they are
old enough, I will teach them the traditions. I don’t want them to yearn for that when they are
older—I might not have my memory then.” Debbie furthers Geri’s argument about being a
grandma. She shows her spatial relationship, yet argues that being a grandmother—being an

12

elder does not magically happen with age or grandchildren. This role requires a special type of
education and knowledge. It’s an awareness of one’s own bodily limitations in relation to time.
Loretta Singel, mother to Wenona and the youngest of the grandmothers, furthers the
theory by explaining that she did not have a relationship with her family because she was
adopted; “I was not there.” Loretta relates the story of finding her sister to her current
relationship with her daughter and grandchildren. Loretta develops her grandmother role from
her history of finding the family she lost and building a relationship with them. She insists that
she will teach her grandchildren the value of surrounding oneself with her relations.
Rosie, mother to Roxanne and grandmother to Carolyn, transitions the theory by sharing
a story on what it looks like to pass down Odawa traditions to grandchildren. She says, “We
didn’t say “can we?” We just took her. We never left her at home.” Rosie literally moves the
spatial metaphor to a discussion on place and knowledge sharing. By showing the active role she
had with Carolyn, Rosie argues that “home” is not a place, but a relationship to one’s relatives.

Le Anne says, “this question is for the youngsters: what role do our elders play in your lives?”
In thinking about what she looks forward to when she comes home from university,
Carolyn says that her grandmother, Rosie is always there to sit at the kitchen table with and drink
coffee—to learn beadwork from. She says, “They’re there and that’s the biggest thing.” She
passes the microphone to her mother, Roxanne who provides a background of their family
history, “My husband wanted to build the house bigger so my parents could move in and it is
such an honor to have them in my house.” Later, in another story, we learn, that many of the
circle women go to the Phillips/DeLand house for gatherings and holidays. Roxanne further
shows the family’s dedication to keeping their relations together. Roxanne passes the

13

microphone to Wenona Singel7. She responds, “My mom is so wonderful at being helpful and
supportive, we can always laugh together. I have so many friends who want to live far away
from their family, but from [mine and my husband’s] perspective, it’s the opposite. We want
them to be as involved as they want to be.” By sharing the joy she feels when she is with her
mother, Wenona shows that her relationship with her mother allows her to recognize and honor
the knowledge they make and share together. Jannus replies,
I’m glad that this was a respondent question. All I can think of is that it continues to be a
positive impact to have my mom in my children’s lives…She represents our Native
element that would not be there otherwise. I remember being dragged to functions like
this, but she still brought me everyday, and eventually you come home to that. I have
confidence that these children will come home to that when they are ready. Even if it’s
doing something mundane.
Jannus reminds me of what I already know to be true, but felt unsure to say aloud, Native women
knowledge making is made and shared in both the domestic space as well as the university. It is
through the relationships cultivated and share, the honoring of the knowledge becomes visible—
more apparent. The circle women remind me about the type of places and spaces our elders live
and work in, but are overlooked. We must notice where Native women create theory like the
home, as they give presentations to first graders for American Indian History month, or while
traveling the powwow circuit and how these spaces inform their practices. Native women’s
knowledge sharing occurs over a cup of coffee, while gathering the cedar for ceremonies,
tending the garden, doing the dishes, and making the lunches. These spaces encourage deliberate
positions beyond oppositional identities like academic vs. non-academic, urban vs. rural, and
7

In September 2011, President Obama nominated Wenona Single to serve on the national board,
Saint Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation (SLSDC).
14

traditional vs. feminist. The circle women have a role in academic discourses regardless of
whether or not they hold a tenure track position or have published an article in American Indian
Quarterly. We need to remember and honor this8.
To be there becomes inscribed in American Indian Studies as a trope to be used to discuss
how older generations and younger generations understand the roles and responsibilities of their
grandmothers and elders. To be there celebrates the current presence and relationships of these
grandmothers, daughters, and granddaughters, but also draws attention to the fact that our elders
will not always physically be here. I hear the older generations of women enact to be there, as a
reminder that elders—grandmothers couldn’t always be with their grandchildren to make school
lunches, offer advice about being bullied at school, or chat over beadwork and coffee. To be
there becomes a cadence—a way to tell the history of Native women sharing knowledge with
each other; the stories that acknowledge the pain and trauma of being absent from American
Indian history as well as each other’s lives. To be there is a theory on how the circle women
build a strong presence in their community while acknowledging their historical absence from
discourse.

8

In “Urban Clan Mothers Key Households in Urban Cities,” Susan Lobo shares stories from her
research (an ethno-oral history) with Native women elders in the Bay Area. She shows how Clan
Mother roles and practices are adapted for the urban environment. In doing so, she argues that
“traditional” practices have changed and can be enacted while living in an urban area. By making
this argument, Lobo urges us to further theorize “what” traditional practices look like in the 21st
century. Furthermore, she draws attention to the presence of Native women within selfdetermination movements. Lobo’s essay is crucial to my research because she recuperates the
stories of Native women and acknowledges their theoretical agency. Also, she encourages
researchers of Native studies to think about how space influences practice. I will further examine
this essay in my second chapter, “Give the Project Longevity,” while drawing attention to an
indigenous-centered approach to community-based research.

15

Education: A Seat at the Table
During our last circle, “education and leadership,” the women offer stories from their lived
experiences to make theories about the importance of receiving a formal education. They also
explore the challenges of negotiating formal education with informal and traditional teachings.
This is our last talking circle and the only one where all the mothers and daughters have been
able to attend. Le Anne asks the women, “How do you see the role of education in the lives of
Native people?”
Debbie, who is sitting next to her daughter Athena, speaks first, “It’s important, to change
policy, we need to be at the table and be seen as equals, I’ve always believed that being equal, in
terms of any kind of education, we always have to try harder and be better to be equal.” By this
point, the audience knows Debbie’s relationship to making policy, specifically her twenty years
of experience creating programs. Debbie’s argument for a seat at the table becomes even more
complicated when remembering that Michigan State is only five miles away from the capitol.
The table is a literal place that reflects her lived experiences as an Odawa woman negotiating
policy with non-Natives.
The table represents a practice on how to advocate for the survival of Native peoples.
Jannus continues, “My responsibility as a Native American woman is to have a seat at that table
and a responsibility to myself and my family and to hope that for my children.” By continuing
the metaphor, Jannus theorizes her lived experiences in relation to Debbie’s personal
experiences. This is theory making in the moment. In both stories, the women relate their history
to their hopes for future generations. These theories are difficult to hear because the women
engage in complex rhetorical moves where they are speaking both figuratively and literally,
personally and communally, and referencing both the historical past as well as the personal

16

present to show future generations what these practices have entailed and will entail. I witness
these rhetorical strategies throughout many, if not, all of the circle theories, but I think it’s
especially significant for the women’s theories on education.
When Wenona speaks, she changes the metaphor from a spatial description to images of
mobility and fear. She shares, “When you have the formal degree, it’s like a key that unlocks that
door. In some ways, it’s unfair that so many opportunities arise with a piece of paper. We need in
our community, lawyers, doctors, and social workers, and scientists, we need them to give back
to our communities.” Instead of continuing the metaphor, Wenona changes it and in doing so,
she speaks to another discourse: the critiques Native peoples receive from their community when
they receive a formal degree. The change of metaphor happens almost seamlessly and in the
process, creates an opportunity for Rosie and Sarah to historicize what Native peoples’
occupations were before they were allowed to seek formal educations.
Rosie and Sarah share how they didn’t think they needed formal education. Rosie tells us
that, “Native people relied on the factories for good work.” Rosie’s observation resonates for the
community members of Lansing because she is referring to the Big Three Factories in Southwest
Detroit and the Oldsmobile Factory in Lansing. She reminds us that the factories served as
important opportunities for Native peoples, but for Michigan residents. I think back to my
paternal grandfather who ran away from residential school and started working at Ford. He met
my grandmother, a cafeteria worker, and courted her soon after. My maternal grandparents
worked as janitors and cafeteria people soon after immigrating to Detroit from Baghdad. The
factories hold the histories of Michigan—of Michigan Indians. These histories remind us of what
we had, what we lost, and what we had to do to build again—to survive.

17

Sarah shares that “college” only came up once when she was about to graduate high
school. She says, “It’s the first and only time I had ever heard someone mention “college.” I
didn’t go, you had to have money, you had to have everything.” Sarah and Rosie offer historical
perspectives from when college was not a possibility or an obvious path. In result, they create a
Michigan Indian rhetorical history where Odawa women are more visible.
As Geri responds last to this question, she acknowledges the significance of taking up
space in an educational institution:
Formal education is necessary and it gives us an opportunity to be present in the
community—kinda like, holding up your head and saying “I’m here.” When my daughter
was going to U of M, I would take a day off from work and go with her, find out where
she parked, meet her professors, and have lunch with her. The education gets higher with
each generation, my mother went up to 6th grade, I went to high school and then
Davenport, and then my daughter… Just us being here is evidence that we are doing the
right thing and are on the right track.
I find this an extraordinary complex statement because she simultaneously engages in
mobilization and spatial rhetoric. Historically, the Anishinaabeg have a strong relationship with
all the Great Lakes, especially Lake Superior. This relationship resonates as Geri reminds the
circle audience about the exchange of knowledge and thus, the exchange of power. I hear Geri
recognize the spatial importance of this discussion, of the women traveling to the university to
share knowledge—to sit in the Lake Superior Room and share stories. But, I don’t know this last
part until I read Janice Gould’s essay, “The Problem of Being Indian: One Mixed-Blood’s
Dilemma” where she argues that there is not a university in “America” built on what was once
Native land (81). And, I don’t know about Janice Gould’s essay until I am sitting with Malea

18

Powell and Kimberli Lee. Until we start sharing stories over lunch in response to my own
difficulty with taking up space in academia. Until we are in Tucson, attending the Native
American and Indigenous Studies Association conference. After, Susan and I just presented our
research on the talking circles.
As the women speak about their experiences with education, they emphasize their
relationships to each other as the focal point for their achievement. I learn this as they address
their tenuous, complicated, and traumatic relationships with traditional or informal education.
The women use their stories about informal education to discuss how the relationships between
generations of women reflect the roles they practice and the positions they take.
We begin with Sarah, who has voiced conflicting ideas for most of the talking circles
from the rest of the women. She shares that she encouraged her children to not learn the
traditions because she didn’t think that type of education was necessary. She says, “Emily got me
involved in that.” Sarah reminds me of my parents because she has witnessed the violence of
being a person of color and trained herself to blend in—to hide.
Rosie recalls, “For years we have traveled the pow-wow circuit. It helps keep us who we
are.” For Rosie, it’s her relationship to traveling to the pow-wows that has encouraged and
cultivated a connection to Native teachings and practices.
As the younger generations offer their stories, I begin to notice a complex discussion on
negotiating formal education and traditional knowledge. The women recognize the discursive
implications of learning traditional teachings as well as balancing these teachings with formal
education. Wenona, Harvard graduate and current tribal judge argues:
So often, when you attend a university, you do not have the opportunity to learn about
your tribe’s language or culture. I was thinking about a student’s experience, like Indian

19

law, what do you learn when you study Indian law? For the most part, consists of cases
that were drafted by the Supreme Court that denigrate the tribes on so many levels. As a
Native student, that’s very difficult if that’s your primary case of inspiration. That’s why
informal or traditional education is very important, the opportunity to learn from elders,
participate in the same ceremonies that your parents or grandparents got to participate in.
Like many current generations, we didn’t have that opportunity available to us. The
stories that we learn from our family or our community is critical, it grounds us, it gives
us a deeper sense of values, and feeling more confident, that you have a purpose or
calling to life.
From Wenona’s perspective, she addresses the gaps regarding how academia values and uses
Native theories and practices. Instead of offering alternative disciplinary spaces for Native
students, she encourages us to return to communities outside of the university and seek value in
the supplemental education—the strategies they can offer us on navigating institutional rules. I
hear Wenona’s encouragement to look outside of the university as a way to begin a conversation
on the complexity of honoring multiple types of indigenous knowledge practices. Jannus
explains her relationship to traditional teachings as well,
My mom was a boarding school generation person, we come from a detached relationship
with the community. The traditional education, every time we have the opportunity, we
take as much as we can. I feel very much like a child in that sense. They very nicely
compliment each other and it gives us a language to share with other communities. It
bridges some of those gaps, the Native American experience and the book education.
Where Wenona encourages Native peoples to go outside of the university, Jannus explore why
she came to the university to theorize the challenges of balancing multiple knowledges. Jannus

20

recognizes that few Native peoples can so easily be near traditional teachings due to our colonial
past—that tribal communities can be made anywhere.
Thinking back to Gould’s argument, Native people are drawn to the university partly
because of our relationship to the land it was built upon. The younger generation women theorize
the desire to be a Native in the university by acknowledging how the university serves as a
symbol for the relationship between institutional knowledge and colonial impact. Athena offers a
realization on what can be lost while pursuing a formal education,
I like that you said everything compliments each other. The balance between informal
and formal needs to be negotiated on a personal level. My skin was white enough so no
one questioned me, but I wasn’t supposed to bring that world in the classroom. Now that
I’ve gone further and further with my formal education, I’ve lost it, now that I’m back
home, I can be connected again. As everyone’s been talking, I’ve realized that I lost it,
something’s been missing, but I think I realized what it was. Getting a formal education
helps you become interculturally competent.
Athena addresses her fears of losing the traditional teachings. She encourages me to think about
how institutional discourses encourage forgetting instead of memory9. Athena’s mother, Debbie
reminds her, “That what you might think is lost is still in your heart.” It’s always in these last
moments of the DVD where I find my breath catching—unable to exhale, in fear of not hearing.
As Debbie looks to her daughter, who is wiping away tears, I too, wipe tears from my cheeks.

9

In my third chapter, “Taking Up Space,” I address how indigenous feminists, like Paula Gunn
Allen, theorizes the complicated relationship between cultural memory and forgetting within
rhetorical histories.

21

A Conclusion: Females, the Strong Ones

Le Anne asks “what is the role of women in family and communities and is it different than the
role of men?”
As the women choose Jannus, Debbie, and Wenona to answer this question, I think back to
Rosie’s theory regarding her own family. She has only daughters and all female grandchildren,
females, the strong ones. Of course, Rosie offers this theory as a way to get a laugh out of her
audience, yet, I cannot help but repeat this theory to myself or bring it up while sharing stories
with fellow Native women academics. I find solace in Rosie’s theory as I write and teach and
survive academia. Rosie persuades her audience to listen through laughter—a reminder of what
we already know to be true. It’s the laughter that brings it to the surface. Females, the strong
ones. Jannus responds first,
Our role as Native American women is what we are doing here—we are transferring
knowledge to the next generation. With each bit of information, we are attaching our own
experiences and allowing it to grow with our children and hoping our children will do the
same for the next generation.
As Jannus discusses the politics of making history—making theory, she connects it not only to
the personal, but to the belief that future generations need to continue making and sustaining it
for the theory/history to be viable. Like Geri, Jannus refers to the “here” as the knowledge
exchange occurring in the moment as well as the personal present. “Here” describes their spatial
relationship in the Lake Superior Room, Lansing, and the domestic space that the women
inhabit. Debbie follows,
Sometimes, we just have to keep the boys in line…I’ve learned that even though the men
who were the so-called leaders of our tribe, it was the women who picked them…Women

22

didn’t dance in the arena, it was their job to stand outside the arena and watch the men
dance to pick the leaders.
Debbie takes a more historical perspective by referring to a moment in time that has long passed
and yet, for me, it still feels current as well as metaphorical. Debbie encourages me to ask what
does our arena look like now? What does it look like for men to dance and for women to pick
them as “leaders” in the urban area? Also, Debbie speaks to the heart of Geri’s theory,
“remaining in the background.” To practice their roles, the community has to acknowledge the
validity and ability of the women to make decisions—to create something.
Lastly, Wenona says, using her marriage as an example, “We are egalitarian, but it does
seem in our families that the women have more focus on the glue that keeps us together, whether
its taking the initiative to plan events so connections can remain strong.” It’s in these last few
moments where I notice how all of the women refrain from using Westernized language to
justify or rationale themselves as knowledge sharers, mothers, watchers, and planners. They do
not tell us why they chose these positions, but how they practice them and know them to be true.
In doing so, they don’t seek permission, but draw attention to how their practices can be
recognized—to encourage us to take the time to honor the seemingly mundane. Their stories are
an exercise in patience.

It’s Stories All the Way Down: A Beginning
These stories do not sum up my relationships to the women or the lives of the circle women. The
stories don’t stop here. Our lives are continuing on. In a few weeks, many of us will gather for
Geri’s annual Halloween/Birthday party. I am still trying to pick out a costume. Geri will make
her famous corn soup. I am looking forward to seeing the women and catching up. I know they

23

will ask me about this project and I am excited to tell them what I have written thus far. These
stories are an opening to a pre-existing and continuing history. My relationships with the
women—with their theories do not create a bridge or a path, but a map on how to navigate
academia, research, and my daily life. In one hand is a map, and in the other, are my materials
and I am ready to continue building.

Indigenous Rhetorical Practices: Gathering My Materials
In this chapter, I use material gathering and assessing as an indigenous rhetorical practice to
show how I hear, see, and feel the stories the circle women tell as rhetorical theories. These
practices are informed from material rhetorics where I enact the same practices from making
something (like crochet, baking, or sweetgrasss braiding) and use these practices within my
writing. Material gathering and assessing, as an indigenous rhetorical practice is important
because it is used to build something instead of supporting a framework dedicated to destroying
something that already exists. I struggled using this practice because it’s harder for me to talk
about what and who I love than to talk about what displeases me. This struggle relates to my
disciplinary training because I’ve been given a language to attack and it is easily assumed that
my attack is a practice of critique. Yet, I have to rely on a set of practices to draw out a language
of love, respect, and accountability, which is also a language of critique, but one less widely
accepted within academia.
In the following chapter, “Give the Project Longevity,” I create a more traditional
academic narrative to map out my dissertation, how I use a cultural rhetorics methodology, and
how I situate it as a Native Rhetorics project. I use this map to argue for a re-orientation to
community-based research like ethnography and oral history. I trace how American Indian

24

Studies and Rhetoric and Composition examine its relationship to community-based research.
Through a cultural rhetorics approach to community-based research, both fields can develop
strategies to use ethnography and oral history to sustain the fields.

25

Enough of that talk. There is a story in every line of theory. The difference
between us and European (predominantly white male) scholars is that we admit
this, and present theory through story. We differ in the presentation of theory, not
in our capacity to theorize. ~Lee Maracle, “On Oratory”

26

Chapter 2
Give the Project Longevity:
An Indigenous Orientation to Community-Based Research

December 25, 2011
During Christmas, I had a conversation with my aunts about their work with our tribe: the
Chippewa of Thames of Muncey, Ontario. Recently, the tribe won a huge settlement over land
claims and there has been a huge fuss about whether or not to accept the money or keep the land.
So, during dessert, we started talking about my dissertation because they already asked me about
my weight, how much my husband makes, and when we are going to have children. Aunties: the
ones who ask the questions no one wants to answer. My Aunt Delight (or Dee) says, “So,
Andrea, what are you writing about?” And so, I give her my usual pitch:
“Oh, Aunt Dee, I’m trying to argue that the stories Native women tell about their lives are
important theories—lessons that we can all learn from, especially people in academia.”
Silence. Aunt Jan takes a sip of decaf coffee and nods.
“You know, I don’t think people know how to listen to Native women. I think that
academia and people in tribal communities ignore Native women because they don’t act like
men, but take on their traditional roles. You know, like aunties.”
Aunt Dee looks at me and says, “That sounds about right.”
Deep sigh of relief
And then, she tells me a story:
“Me and Jan are having the same problem with the men in the community. We’ve been
attending the trust meetings and they don’t like what we have to say.”
She takes a sip of her coffee, caffeinated.
Aunt Jan continues for her, “They even try to reschedule the meetings so we won’t
come!”

27

I ask, “Why do you think that happens?”
Aunt Dee responds, “it’s because we went to college, because we ask questions—they
don’t like the questions we ask. They’ve discouraged the women from going to college.
They’re angry with us for leaving and coming back.”
I say, “Give ‘em hell”
***
Theory Begins with a Story, Too
I began this project because I am dissatisfied with how American Indian Studies and Rhetoric
and Composition value the intellectual knowledge of American Indian women. I am unhappy
with how American Indian women are underrepresented, cast aside, or forgotten when
historicizing decolonial movements both inside and outside of the university, especially as these
stories are told by the “major” scholars (all men) of our field. I have a different understanding of
how the field of American Indian Studies has been cultivated and sustained, especially from a
Native Rhetorics perspective. Each year, I sit in a medium-sized conference room where the
American Indian Caucus at the College Composition and Communication Conference takes
place. The entire room is filled with women and two-spirit people. I sit and listen to older
generations of Native women run the meeting, make space for future generations of young
scholars, and create plans for inclusion, resistance, and knowledge making. These are the people
who have nurtured the field, who have made space for me to do the work that I love, and I worry
that no one hears them the way I do. These women are also my aunties, asking the questions
Native peoples are afraid to answer because the answers will hold them accountable.
In this dissertation, I build a relational theory of visibility to satisfactorily hear, see, and
feel the stories American Indian women tell about their lived experiences as rhetorical theories. I

28

make this theory by listening to stories gathered during my research with a group of multigenerational Odawa women from the Little Traverse Bay Band (LTBB) and weaving these
stories within intellectual sites where American Indian women negotiate visibility like
Indigenous Feminism, community-based research, and the field of American Indian Studies.
These stories draw attention to how American Indian women negotiate visibility at work, in the
community, and while pursuing a formal education. These theories teach us how to make, share,
and use indigenous-centered theory within our research, teaching, and everyday life.
Furthermore, the rhetorical theories of American Indian women are important lessons on how to
manage visibility and responsibility within academia—within our research, teaching, and
everyday life. There are teachings within each of these stories regardless if you are native or nonnative. All I ask, is that you listen and try to carry these stories with you the way I carry them
with me.
When I began this project a long time ago, I was interested in how or if American Indian
women identify as leaders. I wanted to know why they didn’t use the word “leader” or if “leader”
had a different definition and set of practices than what I was familiar with. It was through my
relationships with the LTBB women and my experiences creating and participating in the talking
circles where I realized how American Indian women contend the role of leadership for more
deliberate, tribal roles and responsibilities. Within scholarly discourses, we re-name Native
women as modest or humble. This re-naming overlooks how their choices are strategic,
rhetorical, and theoretical. As I spoke with the women, I began to make connections from their
stories with stories I heard in academia, either the ones we tell over lunch, during meetings, or
the ones we share through publication.

29

I build a relational theory of visibility chapter by chapter to show how American Indian
women complicate what identity and visibility mean throughout different discourse
communities. One of my fears when starting this project was that, I would be in danger of
generalizing American Indian women through the experiences of the LTBB women. I was afraid
that I would only be addressing one type of identity and one form of visibility. I know that there
are Native women who do identify as leader or activist and even though I do not incorporate
their stories within this project, I do not want to erase their identities or their approaches to
survival. It’s just another story to tell, for another time.

:Listening to the Lived Experiences of American Indian Women
My dissertation, the project itself, is a cultural rhetorics approach to working at the intersections
of community-based research and rhetorical theory. I use a variety of indigenous rhetorical
practices to build a relational theory of visibility and mark many of these practices within each
chapter. For example, at the end of my first chapter, “Females, the Strong Ones,” I reflect on the
practice of material gathering. In the third chapter, “Taking Up Space,” I theorize weaving as an
indigenous rhetorical practice and use it similarly to how I crochet (even though I am terrible). In
my fourth chapter, “To Be There,” I examine how a theory of there-ness complicates an
indigenous-centered approach to community-based research. Yet, I want to be clear about the
language I use to mark indigenous rhetorical practices. I use the following phrases “I see,” “I
hear,” or “I feel” to make distinctions for how I form relationships with my object of study.
When I see something, I bring on my training from academia, which is largely emphasized at
paying attention to what’s in the text; what the text makes visible. When I hear something, I
mark another orientation to listening, one reliant on my relationships with the circle women.

30

Also, as theorized by Malea Powell, listening allows me to pay attention to “what is below or
above scholarly discourses,” what has always been present, but has been banished or made
invisible (Listening to Ghosts). When I feel, I pay attention to how my body forms relationships
with my object of study. This is a method that I am still learning and it’s taken a lot of time and
energy to practice. At this time, I cannot distinguish between embodiment and my actual
physical body because I don’t have the language to do so, but I am trying to learn that language
throughout this dissertation10. I make this learning most apparent in my conclusion, “Females, the
Strong Ones,” when I share a series of research stories on developing a cultural rhetorics
approach to working within Native Rhetorics. These stories are the B-sides to this dissertation;
I’ve carried them with me while researching, presenting at conferences, teaching, or writing.
Throughout the dissertation, I use footnotes to include stories that cannot or should not be
present in my main narrative. This practice began as I struggled to build theory. I found myself
privileging traditional academic stories and storytelling practices (like literature reviews) and not
making space for the theories of American Indian women. I use the footnotes to create
opportunities to address the complexities of storytelling; to be direct about what stories I
privilege and what knowledge I value. In this space, I illuminate how I think and theorize the
making of writing. I honor the multi-vocality of writing.

***
In this chapter, I speak back to one conversation prevalent in both American Indian Studies and
Rhetoric and Composition. I begin by examining how both fields form relationships with
community-based research like ethnography and oral history. I argue that American Indian
10

In This Book Called My Body, Daisy Levy gives us this language. I cannot wait until she makes
this language and theory public so we can all learn from her.
31

Studies and Rhetoric and Composition cannot reorient themselves to community-based research
because of how their disciplines include (or exclude) culture within their research. Then, I show
how a cultural rhetorics approach answers some of the concerns about community-based
research raised by both American Indian Studies and Rhetoric and Composition. Ultimately, I
use this chapter to position the dissertation in relation to both scholarly fields. I take the
opportunity to show what it looks like to work within a Native Rhetorics space at the
intersections of community-based research and rhetorical theory.

American Indian Studies & Ethnography
In Red on Red: Native American Literary Separatism (1999), Craig Womack asks “Do
ethnographers ever depoliticize the narratives they record?” (50). Womack puts forth this
question because he hears oral traditions, oral histories as narratives on tribal sovereignty; on the
relationship between the political and social. In Red on Red, Womack creates a theory to
examine indigenous narratives through a framework of tribe and nation11. Literary separatism, an
indigenous theory, contextualizes and examines Native literature within a tribal context. By
reading Creek authors, Womack argues that authors are influenced by tribal stories, tribal
members, and ancestral land. Literary separatism has changed how the field of American Indian

11

Although I really appreciate how Womack takes the time to teach his readers how to think
about literature in a tribally specific context, I take issue with how he does not recognize the
complexity of membership and enrollment from a contemporary perspective. For example, urban
Indian identity and the narratives they produce do not as tidily fit into Womack’s theory of
literary separatism. Womack does not address how blood quantum and the Dawes Act
complicate the idea of tribal membership, nation, or identity. There is a slight rhetorical advantage
to not making identity an issue because it allows Womack to leave the idea of tribal membership
and nation arbitrary. Yet, I need to make this critique because I am working with urban Indians
who have complicated relationships with their tribe.
32

Studies creates scholarship and reads literature12. Womack’s question regarding ethnography is
an important one because he draws attention to where the stories of American Indians live in the
academic institution. In doing so, he can draw out what many of us already know: ethnography
has been used as a tool of the colonizer to create narratives studying Native people instead of
Native-centered narratives. Womack creates literary separatism as a theoretical framework to
emphasize the political and social within Native narratives. Although Womack does not truly
reconcile the role of ethnography within literary separatism or the field of American Indian
Studies, he returns to it years later.
In his new book, Art as Performance, Story as Criticism: Reflections on Native Literary
Aesthetics (2009), Womack continues to examine ethnography, but through a new question: Can
the artistic instead of the ethnographic be used as criteria for Indian creativity? (75). Womack
argues that he is not an ethnocritic, but a storyteller—a performer, which leads to the project of
his book to theorize how performance is criticism. Although Art as Performance, Story as
Criticism is a fairly new book, I believe that like Red on Red, Womack will change the way the
field talks about Native intellectualism, especially as he engages with indigenous rhetorical
practices through the triad of body, place, and culture13. Regarding the tensions between art and
ethnocriticism, he writes,

12

Womack argues that Literature is not just poems and fiction, but essays, songs, and oral
narratives. In American Indian Studies, many scholars use the “Everything is Literature”
argument to justify their research to academia. This positioning further demonstrates how
American Indian Studies continues to use a framework of liberal humanism to make scholarly
work. Yet, through a cultural rhetorics framework, I hear American Indian Studies actually
thinking about literature as rhetorical theory, but not marking it as so. This marking relates to
how disciplines value categories of history, story, theory, and literature.
13
In an interview with Andrea Davis, Malea Powell describes this triad as an orientation to
indigenous rhetorical practices and argues that this triad is possible for all rhetorical practices:
“So, this new idea of a triad—space, body, culture—helps me explain how our discipline created
33

The theme is especially crucial to Indian art because artistic performance has been the
major means of breaking away from the ethnographic gaze, and the former has been
associated with creativity, deviance, and defying anthropological expectations; whereas
the supposed rationality if criticism has been associated with the act of ethnography itself,
as if criticism were a synonym for anthropology. Some critics have even suggested terms
like “ethnopoetics” or “ethnocriticism,” which conflate both fields. I have tried to deviate
from ethnography in criticism, yet I have not completely succeeded at avoiding its
voyeuristic gaze which seems somewhat avoidable, and this is no less true of art (50).
Here, Womack creates a common parallel to ethnography as the tools of Western forces and
indigenous performance as tools to contend and trick Western forces. Performance as criticism,
like literary separatism, uses indigenous epistemologies as the framework to create and share
knowledge. Although I value Womack’s project, I am not ready to move away from
ethnographic work. I do not see a difference between ethnographic and artistic criteria to
examine indigenous intellectualism and more so, I do not see these concepts as oppositional.
Instead, Womack’s concern reflects how the field of American Indian Studies represents
ethnography as a tool that gets in the way of decolonization.
In Queer Indigenous Studies: Critical Interventions in Theory, Politics, and Literature
(Driskill, Finley, Gilley, Morgensen 2011), Andrea Smith makes a similar argument on how the
field of American Indian Studies is ethnographically entrapped. In her essay “Queer Theory and
Native Studies: The Heteronormativity of Settler Colonialism,” Smith examines how the alliance
between Queer Theory and Native Studies will change how Gender Studies and Indigenous

the narrative about our history that we have, what’s at stake for people to inch away from that
history…I can see how those things are connected and it’s just a question of literalizing it in a
more critical way” (Composition Forum).
34

Studies do scholarship. In order to begin this conversation, she thinks about how Native Studies
needs to move away from using ethnographic methods—to stop studying Native people:
Consequently, Native studies often rests on a Native subject awaiting humanity…If
people simply understood Native peoples better, Natives would then become fully
human—they would be free and self-determining. Unfortunately, the project of aspiring
to “humanity” is always already a racial project; it is a project that aspires to a
universality and self-determination that can exist only over and against the particularity
and affectability of “the other.” Native studies thus becomes trapped in ethnographic
multiculturalism (44).
Here, Smith relates the goals of area study programs like American Indian Studies to the goals of
ethnographic work. I find this comparison effective because she draws out the idea that both the
field and a methodology (or research product) are responsible for proving its intellectual worth.
Both remain in a defensive posture as it produces scholarship based off of recuperation efforts.
Yet, where I see the possibilities of both the field and ethnography as being able to move from
recuperation efforts to indigenous-centered scholarship, Smith’s solution seems to be to stop
using ethnography. It’s in this moment where I see another example of how scholars within
American Indian Studies conflate ethnography, as a tool or methodology with a static construct
of how anthropologists, like many researchers across disciplines, use colonial tools for colonial
gains.
I chose to incorporate Smith and Womack because they are respected in the field,
produce what is considered “theoretical” scholarship, and have made arguments on how their
research can impact tribal communities both inside and outside of the university. Smith and
Womack raise real and important questions regarding the future of the field and how American

35

Indian scholars have used research to justify their existence to non-Native people. Although they
are both working to build another set of frameworks to create, share, and value indigenous
knowledges, they both make space for their projects through the practice of disqualifying the
work of the past. This practice is a strategy of liberal humanism, a Euro-centric framework. As a
field, we cannot free ourselves from colonial discourses. In fact, these discourses are a part of
our web of relations. I want to encourage us to pay attention to what has come before and what
will come after us.
Although I mark my work as community-based research and not ethnographic, these
methods and research products are all related and come out of the same discipline. Thinking back
to my conversation with Jannus and Geri about the talking circles, I remember Jannus asking me,
“What are you going to do with them?” I think that Jannus’ question relates to the issues both
Smith and Womack raise regarding how the field of American Indian Studies uses and relies on
ethnographic or community-based research. To remind all of us, Jannus’ concern arose out of the
fact that as a child, Jannus witnessed events like the talking circles occur and nothing resulting in
them, except the event itself. With this question, Jannus reminds me, reminds American Indian
Studies scholars that research like the talking circles has been done for a long time. We need to
find another approach to making that research meaningful to both academia and tribal
communities inside and outside of the university. But, she is not saying we shouldn’t do research
like the talking circles or oral histories projects. We need to give the project longevity. We need
to nourish our projects to impact the generations before and after us.
I know where the stories of American Indian women live within the structures of
academia. They live in ethnographies, oral histories, baskets, quill work, museums, our bodies,
poetry, and so on. The lives of American Indian women have been the subject of countless

36

ethnographies, oral histories, and anthropological studies. We cannot ignore the genre and
narrative style American Indian women chose to have their stories told in or how so many
American Indian women have chosen the field of Anthropology and spent their careers working
with American Indian women inside and outside of the university—recording, making, and
sharing stories. I argue that there is a strong relationship to how American Indian Studies talks
about ethnography and how they value the intellectual work of American Indian women’s lived
experiences. With the exception of a handful of scholars, I see Native women’s intellectual work
divided into two categories: ethnographic or creative. Both categories are used as evidence of
recuperation, but not theoretically useful. It’s too easy—too simplistic to argue that American
Indian Studies doesn’t value the lived experiences of American Indian women or that they don’t
include them in their conversations. Instead, I believe that the treatment of American Indian
women’s experiences partly relate to how Native Studies scholars have been disciplined or
discipline their peers to engaging in Euro-centric forms of meaning making.
In Tribal Secrets, Recovering American Intellectual Traditions (1995) Robert Warrior’s
goal is to develop a framework for moving American Indian Studies into a critical and mature
field (xiii). Warrior asks, “how does construing the field in the terms of intellectual history rather
than literary or generic history change the critical landscape?” (xiii). He doesn’t attempt to define
a framework to answer these questions or read texts written by Native authors, instead he shows
this through the reading and comparative interpretation of the work written by Vine Deloria Jr.
and John Joseph Mathews. Warrior critiques the use of essentialism as a critical approach to
reading and writing about American Indian texts because it limits more tangible issues of the
“economic, social, and cultural realities” (xvii). Although Warrior is correct in assessing how
Native Studies scholars rely on Western theoretical frameworks, he as well, cannot move out of a

37

liberal humanism framework to make this critique. He frames his work as “critical” through the
contextualization of close readings with small amounts of historical work done through
comparative and suggestive readings. In Tribal Secrets, Warrior develops intellectual
sovereignty as a framework to critically discuss texts written by Native authors: a theory used to
show that an American Indian intellectual tradition is developed, maintained, and faces loss
through conversations of sovereignty. Warrior suggests that by acknowledging the intellectual
sovereignty of American Indian writers and developing an American Indian intellectual tradition,
it will lead to community renewal.
I read Tribal Secrets as a distinct representation of what the field of Native Studies
considers a crucial theoretical text. I believe Warrior as he works to re-position the field of
Native Studies towards an emphasis on writing about the complexities of sovereignty. Yet, I
have difficulty ignoring how Warrior builds his framework from all male authors or how he
undermines his own argument for community renewal by destroying the path made before him.
We cannot sustain and cultivate a field and make this work meaningful to tribal communities by
creating scholarship through negation or in the name of “new-ness.” We can never escape
Western constructs or Euro-centric forms of meaning-making, but we can hold ourselves
accountable to interrogate how the field of American Indian Studies is embedded within and
participates in colonial discourses. Instead of acknowledging our complicity within colonial
discourses, we hold ourselves accountable by proposing new “more” indigenous—more
decolonial approaches to meaning making and disposing of the less decolonial, less indigenous
applications. Although I find these theories valuable and important and useful, I want to
encourage us to think about the path we are making for future generations. As Joy Harjo writes,
“there’s no such thing as a one-way land bridge.” As a field, we need to negotiate our priorities

38

to look towards the future and listen to how the past has been shaped for multiple discourses.
This negotiation can occur through re-orientation and alternative path building. I cannot abandon
or disregard the stories of American Indian women but develop a set of practices to hear, feel,
and see the theories.

Rhetoric and Composition & Community-Based Research
Now, I will examine how Rhetoric and Composition writes about their relationship to
ethnography and oral history. Traditionally, Rhetoric and Composition pretends to have a
different set of relationships to race and culture discourses than ethnic studies programs like
American Indian Studies. Where American Indian Studies cannot move away from a discussion
on justifying how their work is intellectually relevant to non-Native peoples, Rhetorical Studies
creates its own divisions within the discipline where culture, language, and knowledge can
appear to be separate. For example, many scholars still believe that they can talk about their
research without having to bring “culture” into the conversation. In this section, I will begin by
focusing on how rhetoricians (who see a relationship between class, gender, and race) use
ethnography. Then, I examine ethnography through a cultural rhetorics framework, which seeks
to emphasize how meaning making is cultural and rhetorical.
In A Place to Stand: Politics and Persuasion in a Working-Class Bar, Julie Lindquist
writes about language and culture in a Chicago bar. Lindquist selected the Smokehouse Inn
because she had a pre-established relationship with the space and patrons. She worked there as a
graduate student and it’s just blocks from where she was raised. Ultimately, Lindquist provides
an ethnographic and rhetorical study of working class culture. On theorizing why she chose an
ethnographic study to frame her research, she writes:

39

….Ethnographic research in particular scenes is a productive way to apprehend the
dynamics of persuasion for a given culture is to understand how that culture establishes
itself as culture—how it invents and sustains its mythologies and what circumstances
must obtain in order for these mythologies to change –as well as the recognize that shifts
in public belief are contingent upon their value in the local marketplace of ideas.
Attention to the particulars of rhetorical practice enable such understandings (4).
Here, Lindquist situates ethnography within the discourse of Rhetorical Studies. Ethnography is
not just a study of culture, but how culture makes meaning, negotiates power, and uses language
to cultivate and sustain relationships within a culture. She further complicates ethnographic
studies within a rhetorical framework by examining how Rhetoric and Composition defines
“culture.” Lindquist draws from scholars like Peacock, Brunner, Burke, and Clifford to define
culture as “a narrative formation,” which means it
cannot be regarded as an isolated, or isolable, entity. It must be understood as relational
as well as distinctive, as a site of action and reaction. Such a dynamic conception of
culture makes it possible, in turn, to understand cultural practices as creative local
formations that emerge from the tense relation between exigencies of particular sites of
immediate, embodied experience and the larger political economy…(5).
By situating both culture and ethnography within Rhetoric and Composition, Lindquist is able to
show how ethnography is rhetoric—is rhetorical. Within Rhetoric and Composition, the
conversation changes from whether or not to do ethnography to how can we do it. This reframing allows us to examine our disciplinary relationship to the study of culture as well as
studying ethnography as a research practice and product.

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In “Writing Ethnography: Representation, Rhetoric, and Institutional Practices,” Carl
Herndl argues that ethnography comes into being already inscribed in discourse. Through a
discussion of Clifford Gertz and Hayden White, Herndl observes that ethnography is more a
“product of research rather than a research method” (321). This observation affords all
researchers, not just rhetoricians another orientation to conversations of reflexivity, relationality,
and responsibility. Although Herndl’s interest in ethnography as a discursive practice relates
mainly to the writing of ethnographic research, I believe that this conversation can teach us that
ethnographic research within a static model does not work. We need to be willing to create
another, more relational framework where ethnographic research has a variety of rhetorical
purposes. Thinking back to Julie Lindquist’s project, she writes, “My interest in telling an
ethnographic tale of the society at the Smokehouse is in learning something not only about what
it means to be working class but also about how language works to create, manage, and situate
cultures” (5). Here, Lindquist shows that through an ethnographic study, it can be designed to
teach the researcher about her own identity—to interrogate one’s history and relationship to
language as well as the academic field she lives and works in. It’s about giving the project
longevity.
Herndl examines the relationship between ethnography and institutional discourses by
drawing upon the work of Edward Said to “…recognize the sources and power of the desires,
repressions, investments, and projections of our academic community…As written texts they are
part of an institutionally maintained discourse authorized not by their relationship to fact, but by
their participation in the rhetoric shared by their community of readers” (322).” Herndl suggests
that researchers need to establish a way to identify the rhetoric of their own discourses and show
that rhetoric affects our textual and organizing structure of ethnographic writing. But more so,

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Herndl points to an issue within Rhetorical Studies that is not always fully examined or
interrogated outside of alternative discourses: disciplinary fields are cultural and produce cultural
and rhetorical texts. Lindquist and Herndl show how ethnography, through a rhetorical
framework, can complicate the goal of “studying culture” or in the case of this project, writing
about the Native instead of providing a Native narrative. By putting Lindquist and Herndl in
conversation with Smith and Womack, I am able to draw attention to the possibilities of
ethnographic work while understanding the limitations and risks.

Using Cultural Rhetorics for Community-Based Research
Cultural rhetorics is an “orientation to a set of methodological and theoretical frames used to
engage in teaching and scholarly practices (CR Theory Lab).” Cultural Rhetorics draws from
Rhetoric and Composition, American Indian Studies, Gender Studies, Anthropology, and many
others. In practice, cultural rhetorics scholars investigate meaning making as it is situated within
a specific cultural community whether it is a tribal community, digital community, an archive, or
a group of craftswomen. Ultimately, a cultural rhetorics approach interrogates how rhetoric is
culturally situated and how culture is rhetorical (CR Theory Lab)14”. A cultural rhetorics
approach draws attention to and critiques how Rhetoric and Composition creates alternative
rhetorics (coded as cultural) and canonized Rhetoric. This orientation values relationality—to
build theory out of one’s web of relations. This approach allows me to position my research
within Native Rhetorics, a space that works within and between American Indian Studies and
Rhetoric and Composition. By acknowledging and honoring my web of relations, I do not have
14

My discussion on cultural rhetorics, as a methodological approach and how I use it in my
dissertation reflects the collective work of the CR Theory Lab. Thank you to Marilee Brooks
Gillies, Jennifer Fisch-Ferguson, Daisy Levy, Dr. Malea Powell, and Douglas Schraufnagle.
42

to buy in to the origin stories both fields tell about their creation and importance. I do not have to
claim Aristotle as my father or intellectual sovereignty as my savior. I argue that through a
cultural rhetorics approach to ethnography and oral history, these research methods or research
products do not have to represent Western ways of knowing; like the following two examples,
ethnography has theoretical and indigenous-centered possibilities.
In “Listening to Legacies or, How I Began to Hear Dorothy Laigo Cordova, the Pinay
behind the Podium Known as FANHS,” Terese Guinsatao Monberg listens to the rhetorical
theories of Pinay rhetors like Dorothy Cordova to argue how oral history can further the goals of
feminist historiographers. She writes,
Feminist historiography has long been concerned with recuperating the rhetorical
contributions of women. Recuperation efforts have required feminist rhetoricians to
challenge traditional masculine notions of rhetoric, including dominant assumptions
about what it means to participate in public spheres…Assumptions meant to recuperate
women’s voices interest in complicated ways that still prevent many Asian/Asian
American women from being heard (84).
Like Smith and Womack, Monberg acknowledges how her sub-field, feminist historiography, is
stuck in recuperation efforts. Although these efforts are important, the scholarship continues
typical rhetorical frameworks or as Monberg observes, feminist historiographers continue to
work within a Western feminist theoretical framework of binary oppositions (84). Monberg
begins this conversation with an analysis of listening, a method defined and enacted by feminist
historiographers like Malea Powell, Jacquelyn Jones Royster, and Krista Ratcliff. As Monberg
observes, “most forms of listening have largely rested in seeing…But seeing is only one part of
the dynamic equation when listening for/to women’s voices that have been institutionally

43

marginalized in multiple, intersecting ways” (87). Monberg leads us through Malea Powell’s
work to show us how listening is not just seeing and hearing, but an embodied, relational practice
of space, body, and culture in order to draw out the stories “just above or below scholarly
discourses” (Monberg qtd. Powell 91). Monberg suggests that listening, as method can move
feminist historiographers past recuperation efforts, beyond a framework of binary oppositions.
Furthermore, Monberg shows us how oral histories have a place in the field of Rhetorical Studies
because they challenge “what” rhetoric is and “who” can be a rhetor. She writes,
Oral histories also give us a view into the arena of lived experience where subjects
actively make rhetorical choices, where categories are created, refused, and negotiated—
if we are wiling to really listen…Oral history narratives, then, reveal a speaking subject
actively negotiating, shaping, and building spaces, institutions, and histories of rhetoric
(91).
It’s through her discussion on how oral history narratives contribute to rhetoric, where I see her
answering some of the concerns raised by Andrea Smith and Craig Womack. Monberg
emphasizes that oral histories have the possibility of being Pinay narratives instead of narratives
about Pinay women, and so on. Monberg re-orients the purpose of community-based research
beyond having to engage in a rhetoric of “studying a culture” or using stories to teach
mainstream discourses about their culture. Instead, she emphasizes that to engage in this
framework, researchers have to find a different orientation or methodological practice to
enacting oral history. We have to be willing to duck and move with disciplinary and institutional
expectations. Monberg offers one way to do so: “I listened to my own voice as I typed my
dissertation, conference papers, essays for publication, striving to resist easy generalizations and
categories that academic work often fosters (93).” Through listening, Monberg incorporates

44

herself into the narrative, into the research, and into the data. Where we have been trained to
critique ethnographic narratives due to the role of the ethnographer, Monberg encourages us to
not only notice how the researcher is always present, but also, the working relationship is another
layer of data that needs to be examined and taken into account while we make our theoretical
framework. In doing so, she teaches us how to expand the possibilities of doing communitybased research as well as make space for the larger applications of oral history for Rhetorical
Studies. Within Native Studies, scholars are addressing the possibilities of an indigenouscentered approach to research through a discussion of research methods.
In Research is Ceremony: Indigenous Research Methods (2009), Shawn Wilson outlines
an indigenous research paradigm that reorients epistemology, ontology, axiology, and
methodology to a set of recursive and relational concepts. This paradigm reflects a cultural
rhetorics approach to research whether it’s working with people, texts, baskets, or our bodies. He
writes, “I believe that Indigenous epistemology and ontology are based upon relationality. Our
axiology and methodology are based upon maintaining relational accountability” (11). As
Wilson builds this paradigm, he shows us how he negotiates the tensions of being a First Nations
father, husband, community-member and scholar. He takes the time to theorize the complexity of
doing community-based work and being an Indian in the university. He writes, “Since I have no
way of knowing if the reader is from the same culture as me, I hope I will be excused if I am
being insensitive in this foreword. I come to you with a good heart” (7). Through an indigenous
research paradigm, respect, reciprocity, and accountability are not just things to do to be ethical,
but practices that enact relationality; a worldview that continues while one is doing research.
When community-based research is reoriented from an indigenous-centered perspective, there
isn’t a conversation about whether or not the framework is decolonial enough, but if we are

45

honoring our web of relations in ways that reflect indigenous approaches to the world. This is a
huge change from ethics conversations within Rhetorical Studies, which are mostly related to
how to please and pass another institutional structure, the IRB. Shawn Wilson reminds us of
something that American Indian people have always been saying and something that should be
obvious: research is about people and forming relationships with people. Wilson enacts relational
accountability by showing how he could not build an indigenous research paradigm without the
help of his colleagues, sons, wife, and scholarly elders. He writes letters to his sons, tells stories
about his parents, and includes conversations between him and his colleagues about research
journeys. By taking the time to make his relationships transparent, Wilson shares space with his
relations.
Throughout this dissertation, I enact relational accountability by making my relationships
with texts, people, and the land transparent. I want to show you how I struggle, mishear,
misunderstand, become obsessed with, and learn from the subjects of study. In doing so, I credit
them as collaborators in my research, writing, and theory making. I don’t just enact relational
accountability because I consider it to be the best way to be ethical, but because this
methodological approach teaches me how my relationships with the LTBB women—with my
Native colleagues can be used as a framework to make theory—to survive institutions.
Throughout the making of this dissertation (including participating in interviews, transcribing,
and communication my results), I have used Wilson’s indigenous research paradigm to build a
relational theory of visibility. I take what I know to be true, what I know to hurt me, and what I
am unsure about with me throughout the theory making.

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Working within Native Rhetorics
I have this fear that American Indian scholars forget that they too, are a part of a tribal
community, one dependant upon belonging to an institutional and intellectual space instead of
nation or affiliation. I fear that when Native scholars discourage ethnography they are working
within a set of frameworks that make strong boundaries between the institutional space they
work in (non-tribal) and the tribal communities they affiliate with (non-academic). Native
Rhetorics, as a field, emphasizes how universities are indigenous spaces and relational to tribal
communities outside of the university. Through the work of Malea Powell, Qwo-Li Driskill,
Linda Tuhiwai. Smith, Shawn Wilson, and Janice Gould, I understand that a Native Rhetorics
approach to working in communities requires me to pay attention to the very real circumstances
of being in academia. In “Rhetorics of Survivance: How American Indians use Writing15,”
Powell reiterates a similar concern as Scott Lyons: that Rhetoric and Composition will not really
take her seriously and that productive conversations on rhetorical sovereignty will happen away
from the university. Yet, she continues on, expressing that she plans to re-listen and re-consider
how Sarah Winnemucca and Charles Eastman, two nineteenth century writers use writing (399400). Through this re-listening, Powell draws attention to how Winnemucca and Eastman use a
rhetorical strategy of survivance to move themselves from object status to subject status (400).
Yet, Powell doesn’t re-listen to Winnemuca and Eastman for recuperation purposes, instead, she
shows how both authors speak directly to her and provide her with teachings valuable to working

15

My reading of “Rhetorics of Survivance” is informed by Powell’s other essays, “Listening to
Ghosts” and “Dreaming of Charles Eastman.” I tend to always read these three essays as
relational. In these essays, Powell further examines this space where nineteenth century writers
provide her teachings on how to negotiate multiple knowledge practices as well as negotiate these
practices while being the arms of an institution.

47

within Rhetoric and Composition. By making this acknowledgment, Powell limits the gap
between the historical past and the paracolonial present. She creates a space for Native
intellectuals working within the university to learn from their scholarly elders. This space draws
attention to and cultivates a tribal community within the university for indigenous peoples who
find themselves in this odd predicament of being the arms of an institution. Native Rhetorics is
not just an approach where we apply a rhetorical framework, but pay attention to a theoretical set
of relations reflective of our tribal practices. If we start treating academia as an indigenous space,
as a tribal community then we will rely on an indigenous-centered paradigm for teaching,
research, professional development, and our everyday practices. Maybe, this is just the idealist or
the old lady in me, but I believe that approaching academia through a set of indigenous rhetorical
practices will help sustain our field more than dedicating energy to constantly one upping our
colleagues with the new theory that will “change” the field. As I mentioned before, I will always
appreciate the work coming out of American Indian Studies. It has saved my life. Yet, I am
critiquing how scholars engage in scholarly manifest destiny by positioning their work as more
intellectually valuable than the research before them. Through this positioning, we destroy the
path made before us and reject our web of relations. We homestead our field and manage it the
way Euro-immigrants wanted us to mark ownership of land during colonialism. In the words of
Paula Gunn Allen, “we need to remember our mothers.” We need to remember them as we make
theory, teach, go to meetings, and design curriculum. Native Rhetorics expands the concept of
community-based research by looking inward and around us instead of “going out.” Now, I will
weave in research that marks itself as community-based to further theorize the relational space
between tribal communities inside and outside of academia and across historical time periods.

48

The following narratives have helped me shaped my argument about how American Indian
women contend Western identities like “leader” in favor of more deliberate, tribal positions.
In “Powerful Medicine The Rhetoric of Comanche Activist LaDonna Harris,” Amanda
Cobb examines the rhetorical strategies of LaDonna Harris, who “exemplifies a model of
leadership, that, I will argue in this article, springs directly from her Comanche worldview and
value system” (65). Through oral history and textual analysis of Harris’ writing, Cobb argues
that Harris’ sense of leadership is based off of “creating new spaces, using her abilities to
identify needs to bring together the right people…” (66). The strategy of creating spaces directly
relates to how Harris practices a Comanche worldview. By using oral history as both method and
research product, Cobb finds a way to research with Harris without engaging in voyeurism or
multiculturalism. Through a rhetorical framework, Cobb uses oral history to bring someone like
Harris into academia so we can learn from her while she continues her work outside of the
university. She provides a model on how rhetorical work can be both community-based as well
as collaborative by encouraging tribal members to work with academics on deliverables. She
writes, “Because people who have been internally or psychologically colonized are not people
who have written their own life stories by people whose stories have been written for them by the
colonizer, seizing the pen is an important step in the healing process” (77). Here, Cobb speaks to
how ethnographies and oral histories can be re-orientated to a decolonial framework. Like Terese
G. Monberg and her relationship to Dorothy Cordova, Cobb shows us how community-based
research can be based on perceiving our participants as researchers. I have tried to model this
collaboration while working with the LTBB women on the talking circles and with Geri on the
oral history project. By asking the women to help me set themes and create questions, the LTBB
women became fellow researchers and colleagues. When I approached them about the

49

dissertation, only a few of the women asked to read it after it’s finished, but did not want to
provide feedback while I wrote it16. I am sure that when Le Anne Silvey and I work on
developing the talking circle project into a deliverable, a different collaboration will occur since
the product will published.
In “Urban Clan Mothers Key Households in Cities,” Susan Lobo provides an
ethnographic study of middle age and older American Indian women in the Bay City area. By
weaving the stories of the clan mothers and their relations, Lobo argues that the women represent
more traditional images of the Clan Mother that resemble pre-contact characteristics, while
revising images of urban Indians. By examining how the clan mothers form relationships with
their relations and the practices they use to create and sustain a community, Lobo draws attention
to how the women negotiate visibility. She writes,
Urban Indian communities, may, because they are dispersed and based on a network of
relations, for the most part, be invisible or misunderstood from the outside and to
outsiders, but they are anything but invisible to those who participate in them. They are
viable communities, but structured on an American Indian-derived model of community
or tribe…(508).
Like the urban Indian community, the members, especially the heads, also negotiate visibility.
Lobo relies on the lived experiences of urban, Bay Area women to speak back to discourses on
American Indian identity, community, and urban areas. Lobo uses ethno-oral history to
contribute to the field of American Indian Studies beyond recuperation or multiculturalism, and
instead, use these stories to teach us about how Native people, especially women, negotiate
identity and visibility within the urban environment. Both Cobb and Lobo use the stories of
16

Correction: After getting together to honor Dr. Susan Applegate Krouse’s work on the
Wanamaker Exhibit, all of the women want to read my dissertation.
50

American Indian women as theoretical frameworks to speak back to assumptions of how
American Indian women negotiate identity and visibility, whether it’s within an urban
community, a newsletter, or a historical moment like AIM. By using a rhetorical framework,
both authors use community-based research to show how American Indian women engage in a
set of practices and theorize how these practices are meaningful to tribal communities inside and
outside of the university.

In this chapter, I examined how American Indian Studies and Rhetoric and Composition write
about their disciplinary relationship to community-based research like ethnography and oral
history. Through this examination, I have offered two strategies on how to do community-based
research through an indigenous research paradigm: cultural rhetorics as a methodological
approach and Native Rhetorics as a disciplinary space to work with tribal communities both
inside and outside of the university. It is my hope that these two strategies answer some of the
critiques of ethnography put forth by American Indian Studies. Also, I hope that by showing how
cultural rhetorics assumes rhetoric as cultural and culture as rhetorical, they become
inseparable—relational. A cultural rhetorics approach makes theory that critiques how Rhetoric
and Composition often rely on the disciplinary divisions of alternative/counter rhetorics (coded
“cultural”) and canonized rhetorics (coded Greco-Roman or without culture).

Building Theory—Building a Path: Chapter Breakdown
In my first chapter, “Females, the Strong Ones,” I show my readers how I hear, see, and feel the
stories that the circle women tell about their lived experiences as rhetorical theories. Through the
relationships I have form with the women, with the spaces where we shared knowledge, and with

51

the land, I gather my materials to build a relational theory of visibility. In my third chapter,
“Taking Up Space,” I weave Jannus’ theory “Leadership is a Masculinist Construct,” the circle
women’s multi-vocal theory, “Education: A Seat at the Table,” and my “Coming to Indigenous
Feminism” narrative into the rhetorical theories of indigenous feminists to continue building a
relational theory of visibility. I examine how indigenous feminists make rhetorical theories of
historiography and “Coming to Indigenous Feminism” narratives. These theories provide a
framework to critique heteropatriarchy within tribal communities inside and outside of the
university. Indigenous feminists make rhetorical theories to reconstruct Euro-centric
historiographies into an indigenous-centered understanding of history that makes space for
present and future generations of Native peoples to practice Indigenous Feminism without
having to work in a defensive position. In chapter four, “To Be There,” I examine how American
Indian women make theory at the intellectual site of community-based research using oral
history and ethnography as methods and products. I include theories of there-ness within a
relational theory of visibility to interrogate how visibility and identity is managed within oral
historiography and research relationships. In my conclusion, “Females, the Strong Ones,” I
provide a series of stories about the process of writing the dissertation and my fieldwork with the
LTBB women. These stories are “b-sides” to this dissertation and will theorize a Native/Cultural
Rhetorics approach to research. I understand these stories as gifts to give the subjects of this
dissertation to read, examine, and interrogate as I have done with them.

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Leadership is a masculinist construct ~ Jannus Cottrell
Failure to know your mother, that is, your position and its attendant traditions, history,
and place in the scheme of things, is failure to remember your significance, your reality,
your right relationship to earth and society ~ Paula Gunn Allen

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Chapter Three
Taking Up Space: the Rhetorics of Indigenous Feminism

Imagine This
We are in Mount Pleasant, Michigan. It’s 2001.
It is my first semester as an undergraduate; my first time far from home. I’ve been corresponding
via email with a woman, Rosemary, from my reserve. It’s her job to assist university students
with their funding. Initially, our emails and phone calls focused around how to transfer Canadian
funds to an American bank or how to fill out scholarship forms. Soon, we start to talk about
gardening, books by First Nations women, the powwow trail, and speaking Ojibwemowin. She
encourages me to take advantage of the American Indian topic courses at Central Michigan
University. I enroll in Ojibwemowin and Native American History. I meet an Odawa boy whose
reserve is just down the road and he burns me a Ulali cd.
Two years later, I am sitting at a conference table in the prosecution office with the police
department, with a representative from Sexual Assault Nurse Examiners (SANE), and the
organizer of the Saginaw Chippewa domestic violence advocacy group. I’m the youngest person
in the room and I’m trying to organize a bunch of adults. We’ve decided to all march together at
Take Back the Night, but this symbol of solidarity is not easy to create. The tribal women do not
trust the SANE nurses and won’t go see them. No one understands how Native women could
mistrust free health care, except for the tribal advocate and myself. I want to say “Hello, forced
sterilization!” But, no one thinks I’m funny. We leave the meeting not knowing if the women
will join us. A week later, I am leading the march and as I put the megaphone to my mouth—I
feel something urging me to turn around. I see the tribal women join the crowd, in their regalia. I

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still have the newspaper clipping of me holding a megaphone with a fist in the air. In the far,
right corner, you can see a jingle dress.

Returning: This is a Coming to Indigenous Feminism Story
I’ve made it a practice to travel with the stories of American Indian women through my day-today life. I re-tell their stories as I teach, research with the circle women, cook dinner, or as I
write for this dissertation project. I am trying to learn how to form relationships with the stories
I’ve heard outside of the university and the stories I’ve felt from within the institution. I’ve
learned that these stories are not so separate, but are relational—braided together like sweetgrass.
These healing stories teach me how to work in the university, do decolonial work, and
understand my own position in relation to the world. In honoring these relationships, it’s fitting
to begin, not with my words, but with the words of two Native women: Jannus Cottrell and Paula
Gunn Allen who keep me accountable for my position as a mixed Anishinaabeikwe working in
the university, a land grant institution that has been built on the land of my ancestors, the people
of the three fires.
In chapter 1, “Females, the Strong Ones,” I showed how I hear the stories the circle
women tell about their lived experiences as rhetorical theories. In this chapter, I will begin with
Jannus’ theory, “Leadership is a Masculinist Construct” and end with the circle women’s theory,
“Education: A Seat at the Table” to examine how indigenous feminist scholars and activists
create rhetorical theories of Indigenous Feminism. I weave these theories together to continue
building a relational theory of visibility. Rhetorical theories of Indigenous Feminism are
teachings on how to survive institutional spaces and disseminate knowledge that fosters an
intellectual space for present and future generations of Native peoples. Jannus’ theory has been

55

instrumental in helping me see/feel/hear the stories of her mother and the circle women as
theories. As a reminder, “Leadership is a Masculinist Construct,” not only emphasizes why
American Indian women might reject the word “leader,” but theorizes a connection between
patriarchy and colonialism. Feminists, especially women of color like bell hooks, Cherr´ie
Moraga, Gloria Anzald´ua, and Andrea Smith have made similar arguments. By relating this
theory to the real practices of American Indian women like herself and her mother, Jannus shows
how everyday life is full of rhetorical strategies of survivance. These strategies complicate how
American Indian women form identities and take on responsibilities. The culmination of these
strategies creates theories useful to those of us learning to navigate institutional spaces while
creating intellectual knowledge. When Jannus looked at me and told me “Leadership is a
Masculinist Construct,” I felt something in my body shift. I felt something similar as the
Saginaw Chippewa women joined the Take Back the Night March. I continue to feel it everyday
as I learn how to make myself visible in academia.
I argue that the rhetorical theories of Indigenous Feminism draw attention to how making
oneself visible is a complex and often, unsafe practice for American Indian women. When we
engage in Western leadership practices, we can become more easily recognized by multiple
cultural systems, yet there is a pain that goes along with enacting these practices. For me, I feel it
in the middle of my chest as I try to inhale deeply, but cannot. As I breathe out, a flurry of
anxiety exhales. When American Indian women engage in indigenous feminists practices to
make themselves visible, they await critique from their tribal communities. Whether they take up
space in the university, the tribal reserve, or the urban area, as indigenous feminists share stories
about their lived experiences, they imagine a comprehensible space to live and work in.

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Authenticity Rhetoric, or What Gets In The Way
When I first began reading indigenous feminist theory, one of the first things I noticed was how
they spoke about the difficulty of identifying as an indigenous feminist. They expressed this
difficulty through sharing stories where authenticity critiques dismissed their practice and
identity as inauthentic, imperial, or anti-decolonial17. Similarly to how the circle women
strategize and re-position their identities against the politics of the (in)visible, indigenous
feminists use authenticity discourses as a way to address the survival of American Indian women
by interrogating the intersections of historiography and decolonial theory and practice. In doing
so, they re-direct the conversation from authenticity rhetoric, which distracts from the work we
need to do, to Indigenous Feminism as a viable practice for both Native women and men.
In “Indigenous Feminism without Apology: Decentering White Feminism,” Andrea
Smith acknowledges how authenticity rhetoric is used to dismiss indigenous feminist
movements. She writes,
When I started interviewing Native women organizers as part of a research project, I was
surprised by how many community-based activists were describing themselves as
"feminists without apology." They were arguing that Feminism is actually an indigenous
concept that has been co-opted by white women. The fact that Native societies were
17

In “Feminists, Tribalists, or Activists?” Devon Mihesuah engages in authenticity rhetoric
while attempting to discuss the roles and identities of American Indian women. Mihesuah
hierarchizes American Indian women’s identities through an arbitrary and problematic
understanding of “tradition” and “authenticity.” Mihesuah argues that Native women who claim
a Native feminist identity often have little to no knowledge of their tribal traditions (160).
Furthermore, Mihesuah conflates Feminism with White Feminism ignoring a strong and visible
history of women of color like bell hooks and Cherrie Moraga who theorize their relationship to
Feminism. I suggest reading both Mihesuah’s chapter out of Decolonizing Indigenous American
Women and Renya Ramirez’s article “Race, Tribal Nation, and Gender: A Native Feminist
Approach to Belonging” as they both cite similar authors with very different readings and
understandings of Feminism.
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egalitarian 500 years ago is not stopping women from being hit or abused now. For
instance, in my years of anti-violence organizing, I would hear, "We can't worry about
domestic violence; we must worry about survival issues first." But since Native women
are the women most likely to be killed by domestic violence, they are clearly not
surviving. So when we talk about survival of our nations, who are we including?
Smith depicts how authenticity rhetoric dismisses anti-violence work because of its relationship
to Indigenous Feminism. Smith critiques authenticity rhetoric by addressing how survival, as a
discourse, is used against tribal women who disobey—who claim deliberate positions that rely
on being visible, like Indigenous Feminism. By examining survival discourses, Smith makes an
argument that authenticity rhetoric persuades tribal leaders to make decisions on who survives
and who does not. Smith makes domestic violence visible and acknowledges how authenticity
rhetoric impacts the very real bodies of indigenous women.
Indigenous feminists also use authenticity rhetoric as a way to discuss alliance making. In
The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions (1986), Allen
imagines how Feminism allowed for alliance making between Euro-immigrant and Indigenous
women. This conversation arises out of acknowledging how the term Native Feminism has
received critiques by tribal peoples. By imaging how Native Feminism may have been practiced
during colonialism, Allen argues that it’s not a new practice, but old and another gift given from
Native women to Euro-immigrant women. She writes,
the earliest white women on this continent were well acquainted with tribal women. They
were neighbors to a number of tribes and often shared food, information, child care, and
health care. Of course little is made of these encounters in official histories of colonial
America, the period from the Revolution to the Civil War, or on the ever-moving frontier

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(216).
By imagining the relationships between Euro-immigrant and indigenous women, Allen is able to
draw attention to the gap in her cultural memory; a gap encouraged by authenticity rhetoric. But
more importantly, she shows what a colonial feminist alliance might have looked like. As Allen
acknowledges this gap in her cultural memory as well as American history, she provides space
for further research and contributions to indigenous feminist literature and theory. As I watch
and hear indigenous feminists draw attention to and critique rhetorics of authenticity, I am able
to feel the possibilities—the space they are making for me as well as present and future
generations.
In this chapter, I plan to incorporate texts written by indigenous feminists who examine
authenticity rhetoric to challenge how tribal peoples divide lines within their own communities.
By incorporating authenticity rhetoric within the stories of their lived experiences, it becomes a
trope within the theories of Indigenous Feminism—a tool on how to identify rhetorical strategies
used against indigenous feminists and how to speak back towards authenticity critics. In doing
so, indigenous feminist rhetorical theory historically contextualizes not only what the movement
has had to face, but what tribal communities inside and outside of the university must
acknowledge. Yet, for the remainder of the chapter, I will shift how I read indigenous feminist
rhetorical theory beyond authenticity rhetoric. I do not want to dedicate too much space to
authenticity rhetoric because it defers the movement—it serves as the muzzle on a discourse
from being heard and recognized. It takes away opportunities and forms divisions. Instead, I will
read for rhetorical strategies that seek to make, sustain, and nurture spaces, which I understand as
one of the main projects of Indigenous Feminism.

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Indigenous Feminist Historiography or Making Space for Future Generations
In The Sacred Hoop, Paula Gunn Allen creates an indigenous feminist rhetorical theory of
historiography to make space for American Indian women, like myself, to continue asking
questions about the forgotten roles American Indian women play in colonial history. For this, I
approach Allen’s work, my scholarly elder, with a good heart and gratefulness. Through
essentialism, Allen critiques Western historiography by showing how imperial rhetorical
histories are responsible for the presence/absence of American Indian women within historical
texts and tribal communities. Although Allen has been critiqued for an essentializing,
universalizing framework for understanding the roles and lives of American Indian women, I
believe that Allen uses essentialism as a rhetorical strategy; a way to broaden her cultural
memory and rely on her relations to critique Euro-centric historiographies18. More specifically,
18

A Story About Essentialism

I’m becoming more supportive of essentialism because it historicizes how people of color, queer
people, or women (those who are mainly critiqued for using essentialism) had to justify itself to
academia. I can come up with a series of answers to why marginalized people had to work within
certain theoretical frameworks to be heard, published, and tenured. But, I want to learn from how
they had to create scholarship to be heard. This type of disciplinary historiography has already
been done in fields like Women & Gender Studies. Diana Fuss (Essentially Speaking: Feminism,
Nature, and Difference) has done an extraordinary job theorizing the value and political
implications of essentialism for Feminism. She writes, “My own view is that essentialism can be
deployed effectively in the service of both idealist and materialist, progressive and reactionary,
mythologizing and resistive discourses” (xii). Fuss’ purpose is not to examine what feminist
scholars use essentialism to discredit their research, but to examine the functions of essentialism
within certain discourses. In doing so, Fuss expands the conversation of essentialism within
Feminism beyond a reading of “if this is essentialist, it’s ultimately bad scholarship,” but to pay
attention to how essentialism is a rhetorical strategy reflective of particular discourses and
historical time periods. In “On The Rhetoric and Precedents of Racism,” Victor Villaneuva
argues that multiculturalism efforts do not erase racism and prejudice in the university. Within
this essay, he examines how arguments against essentialism silence the research by people of
color. Through the work of Henry Louis Gates, Villaneuva realizes that when people of color use
nationalist or separatist arguments or scholars, especially from the 1960s, the academy reads that
framework as essentialist, especially as the institution forgets how white literature has been
grounded and foregrounded (656).
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Allen weaves the history of colonialism and the history of Feminism together to critique these
rhetorical histories. In doing so, Allen shows how an indigenous feminist rhetorical theory of
historiography is used to critique rhetorical histories that value and authorize stable origins.
In order to weave the history of colonialism and Feminism, Allen begins with a
meditation on memory and tradition in relation to making and honoring rhetorical history. She
writes,
The Native American sense of the importance of continuity with one’s cultural origins
runs counter to contemporary American ideas…Rejection of tradition constitutes one of

Yet, American Indian Studies has not re-examined its relation to essentialism, especially since
the field has worked extremely hard to legitimize itself by arguing that essentialism is antiintellectual and anti-theoretical. For example, in Tribal Secrets, Robert Warrior disseuds
American Indian Studies scholars from using essentialism as a viable framework. Warrior’s goal
is to develop a framework for moving American Indian Studies into a critical and mature field
(xiii). He critiques the use of essentialism as a critical approach to reading and writing about
American Indian texts because it limits more tangible issues of the “economic, social, and cultural
realities” (xvii). He cites the scholarship of Paula Gunn Allen as a main proponent of using
essentialism and then cites a series of American Indian women to back him up: pitting women
against women. Warrior offers intellectual sovereignty, as a critical and mature framework, to be
used to cultivate and sustain the intellectual future of the field. I know it’s not fair or right to pick
on Robert Warrior or Tribal Secrets, but I’ve become increasingly angry with how American
Indian men use their power within the discipline, especially as they do not hold themselves
accountable for their use of citation in relation to gender and sexuality. This isn’t about
inclusiveness or multiculturalism, this is about applying the ideas of an egalitarian or matriarchal
tribal nation to creating and sustaining a disciplinary field. If Warrior argues that intellectual
sovereignty is an indigenous theoretical framework to be used by all tribal people and for all
tribal people, he needs to pay attention to gender.
I am interested in how indigenous feminists create theory because their scholarship provides
answers on how to negotiate these feelings and create scholarship that addresses issues of
citation, power, and knowledge practices while managing the anger and frustration of working
within a patriarchal system.

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the major features of American life, an attitude that reaches far back into American
colonial history and that now is validated by virtually every cultural institution in the
country. Feminist practice, at least in the cultural artifacts the community values most,
follows this cultural trend as well…In short, Indians think it is important to remember,
while Americans believe it is important to forget (210).
By juxtaposing American (Western, Euro-centric) practices with Native practices, Allen is able
to recognize the dilemma of being “traditional.” At the center of indigenous rhetorical histories is
a complicated relationship between memory, tradition, and practice. American historiographical
practices rely on rejection and rebellion. By examining how both cultures make history, Allen is
able to draw attention to how historiography reflects cultural beliefs and practice. Yet, in order to
make this emphasis, she must separate the two histories and in the process, creates binaries
between indigenous and western historiographies. This framework further develops as Allen
examines practices of forgetting, nostalgia, and memory within historiography.
Allen distinguishes how history is made and honored between cultures by showing how
Euro-centric rhetorical histories have persuaded both tribal people and feminists to forget that the
history of colonialism and the history of Feminism should be read as relational. She writes,
We as feminists must be aware of our history…I think this is the reason traditionals say
we must remember our origins, our cultures, our histories, our mothers and grandmothers,
for without that memory, which implies continuance rather than nostalgia, we are
doomed to engulfment by a paradigm that is fundamentally inimical to the vitality,
autonomy, and self-empowerment essential for satisfying, high-quality life (214).
By making a distinction between nostalgia (Euro-centric) and memory (indigenous), Allen
unifies feminist and indigenous practice. In doing so, Allen shows how feminist practice is not

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separate from indigenous practice, but always woven together. It is through Euro-traditional
rhetorical histories, that we might mistake nostalgia for memory and thus perceive feminist and
indigenous practice as distinctly separable. Paracolonial historiography has permeated the daily
lives of Native peoples as we are stuck between cultural memory and nostalgia. Native feminist
practice, like remembering one’s mother, provides us with strategies to acknowledge our
positionalities within this intersection and begin conversations towards the future of our survival.
By making the distinction between memory and nostalgia, Allen shows how indigenous feminist
historiography provides the opportunity for tribal peoples to create our own rhetorical histories
using indigenous knowledge practices. While trying to read the two practices as separate and
then bringing them together, Allen weakens her goal of reading the two histories as relational.
This reading tidies how colonialism affects history and how indigenous peoples are just as
complicit in colonial practices as Euro-Americans (re: authenticity rhetoric). Yet, we can still
learn from her efforts, especially since this struggle reflects the difficulty of using indigenous
rhetorical practices.
In “Indigenous without Apology: Decentering White Feminism,” Andrea Smith continues
Paula Gunn Allen’s work by responding to critiques that Feminism is an Anglo-American
practice and thus, American Indian women should not be feminists. By offering an alternative
reading of the History of Feminism, Smith argues that a history of Feminism that validates itself
by its origin is an example of Euro-centric historiography. She writes,
These Native feminists are challenging not only patriarchy within Native communities,
but also white supremacy and colonialism within mainstream white Feminism. That is,
they're challenging why it is that white women get to define what Feminism is. The
feminist movement is generally periodized into the so-called first, second and third waves

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of Feminism. In the United States, the first wave is characterized by the suffragette
movement; the second wave is characterized by the formation of the National
Organization for Women, abortion rights politics, and the fight for the Equal Rights
Amendments. Suddenly, during the third wave of Feminism, women of colour make an
appearance to transform Feminism into a multicultural movement. This periodization
situates white middle-class women as the central historical agents to which women of
colour attach themselves. However, if we were to recognize the agency of indigenous
women in an account of feminist history, we might begin with 1492 when Native women
collectively resisted colonization. This would allow us to see that there are multiple
feminist histories emerging from multiple communities of colour which intersect at
points and diverge in others. This would not negate the contributions made by white
feminists, but would de-center them from our historicizing and analysis.
Smith challenges the origin of Feminism as Euro-American women’s right to vote and
reimagines Feminism as a tool used against colonialism and colonial rhetorics. In doing so,
Smith provides a framework where Feminism becomes a fluid and multi-vocal space that honors
all women as agents in making history. Similarly to how Allen imagines a colonial feminist
alliance between Euro-immigrant and Indigenous women, Smith creates a space for women to
form alliances by incorporating their feminist histories into dominant feminist discourses. To be
clear, these histories are not alternative or counter because they do not seek to work outside,
near, or across from dominant History, but to be weaved within. This purpose, itself, is a violent
affect of re-writing. By creating a multi-vocal history of Feminism, Smith argues that indigenous
feminist historiography creates a space where we can continue questioning the concept of
authenticity as a paracolonial creation while re-writing tribal identities as multi-vocal and

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dynamic.
In “Decolonizing Native Women,” Lee Maracle argues for the rematriation of her tribe,
the Stó:lō Nation. Maracle enacts an indigenous feminist historiography using her cultural
memory to seek counsel of the women who walked before her. She writes,
I need to retrace my own steps, the steps of my mother, my grandmother, my greatgrandmother, right back to our original selves. I need to re-view their journey and reclaim
the cultural base upon which we organized ourselves and our communities…I need to
know how it came to pass that “women’s issues” exist separately from men’s. I need to
know how our men came to decide what the standard of normal for women ought to be. I
need to know how it came to be that our women are the most violated human beings, the
least educated, the most overworked and underloved and unprotected human beings in
the history of Turtle Island (30).
To call for rematriation, Maracle must embody her female relations as a way to understand the
history of Stó:lō women’s roles and to make visible what has been forgotten or lost. In doing so,
Maracle is able to question how Stó:lō women make themselves visible, how they practice their
roles, and what they would say at the state of contemporary Stó:lō government. I imagine as
Maracle retraces the steps of her female relations, she brings them on her journey to examine
how Western and tribal societies govern themselves and address gender unbalance. I see a
connection with how Maracle embodies her relations to how I carry the stories of American
Indian women to survive academia. These stories do not just travel with me, but I embody them.
Maracle shows that using memory as a method requires her to retrace her and her ancestor’s
steps and examine both as relational. In doing so, she is able to enact an indigenous feminist
historiography to hold her tribal nation accountable for their unsuccessful commitment to

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decolonialism.
Maracle offers a complex discussion regarding Western influence on First Nations
leadership practices for both Native men and women. She writes,
We tend to view them as having some sort of opportunity to alter the political, social, and
economic relations that govern them. We tend to view them as possessing the permission
the fundamentally to alter the conditions from which they arise. Nothing could be further
from the truth…The power is rooted not in their own social reality but in the power we,
as those on the bottom, vest in (35).
Maracle argues leadership, as a title and positionality, is a dangerous, Western construct, but one
that is tempting for its false sense of power. She argues that reality and power are imagined
constructs. In doing so, Maracle illuminates what Jannus has already made clear: leadership is an
imperial construct—visible and at times, dangerous towards decolonial goals. By localizing an
indigenous feminist rhetorical history, Maracle is able to provide a complex discussion on how
Western knowledges compromise decolonial practices. Indigenous feminist rhetorical theory
draws attention to the sexist policies of tribal governments and argues for an indigenous feminist
approach to decolonial practice and theory. In the following section, I will show how “Coming to
Indigenous Feminism” narratives are used to address sexism in tribal communities inside and
outside of the university. Indigenous feminists rely on these narrative styles to theorize the
complexity of claiming a deliberate position in relation to the sexism they face on a daily basis.

Coming to Indigenous Feminism
In “Looking Back, Looking forward,” Maliseet artist and traditional healer Shirley Green
provides a history of her relationship to Aboriginal Feminism. She writes, “I think the seeds of
Feminism had always been with me, although it had taken them awhile to grow” (160). Through
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a series of moments, Green uses an indigenous rhetorical practice of “looking back” to include
her history within discourses of Indigenous Feminism and self-determination. She examines
what events encouraged her to claim and speak for Aboriginal Feminism. For example, she
recalls, “when Crystal Senk of Whitehorse, Yukon, was shot by her best friend’s husband
because she had helped his wife by driving her to a women’s shelter, I was horrified by a
comment made by a woman co-worker: “she shouldn’t have interfered” (161). Similarly to
Maracle and Smith, Green draws attention to the very real circumstances First Nations women
face. Green’s narrative provides a spatial opportunity to meditate on the silences of gender
unbalance. For example, by showing how First Nations women discourage each other to stand
together over domestic violence, Green draws attention to not only the tensions between Native
men and women, but how the relationships of Native women suffer. Green’s narrative allows her
readers and herself to question how Aboriginal Feminism creates rifts and forms bonds between
First Nations women. “Coming to Indigenous Feminism” narratives allow authors and readers to
meet in the silence as a space for contemplation—as a space to create stories together.
As Green contemplates what she has always known but taken so long to express, she
compares coming to Aboriginal Feminism to losing or not knowing one’s traditional teachings.
She writes,
How does one define identity? Is it the way we view ourselves or is it the way we are
viewed by others? How can we reclaim our heritage when who we were or who we were
supposed to be has been denied us during our formative years?...In order to reclaim our
heritage we must look back. We must examine and acknowledge both the good and the
bad and remember the injustices done to the women of this country by the colonizers, by
society, and by our own families, for the parts they played in denying us our birthright

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and the opportunity to know our identity (172).
Green contemplates how the decolonial practices she has witnessed (like reclaiming heritage) are
sexist because they deny what she knows to be true: the implicit relationship between indigenous
and feminist practices. By encouraging her audience to “look back,” Green argues that an
indigenous identity is informed by the past, present, and future of colonial history. Green
includes herself in a public discourse of decolonial knowledge making and in doing so, she
creates a space to discuss the impact of colonialism on First Nations identity construction.
Indigenous feminists within academia also weave their “Coming to Indigenous Feminism”
narratives within their research as a way to explore the alienation they feel in the academy.
In “Race, Tribal Nation, and Gender: A Native Feminist Approach to Belonging,” Renya
Ramirez provides her own “Coming to Indigenous Feminism” narrative as a way to examine
how Native Feminism has been dismissed by American Indian scholars, especially women. This
dismissal affects tribal communities both inside and outside of the university while Native
women and men struggle to come together to develop strategies for survival. Ramirez positions
herself within multiple spaces and engages in both traditionally academic and alternative
academic styles of making. She writes, “As an indigenous woman I have challenged sexism all
my life. Since I was a little girl I refused to act subserviently to men and believed that all Native
American women should be treated as full members in our homes, communities, and tribal
nations” (24). By tracing her relationship to sexism, Ramirez shows that Native Feminism should
be and has been practiced in varying tribal spaces, with multiple tribal knowledges. Yet, what
draws me to Ramirez’s narrative is how she engages in a similar meditation on identity as
Shirley Green. By contemplating the politics of the word, Feminism, Ramirez re-positions
indigenous feminist practice as a theoretical space where knowledge is created and shared

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instead of a discussion on “who” should be allowed to practice Feminism. She writes,
Some indigenous women, for example, choose not to use the word “Feminism,” since this
word cannot be found in their tribal language. At the same time, however, Smith’s study
of Native women organizing shows that many Native women argue that Feminism is
important. Some Native women assert that indigenous women’s unwillingness to call
themselves “feminists” is not only a result of theoretical and philosophical differences
with white feminists, but also demonstrates an unwillingness to focus on and confront
sexism and gender discrimination. In fact, I choose to claim the term “Native feminist” in
order to fight against the all-too-present reality of violence against indigenous women by
choosing to write about this important issue. Claiming the term has also empowered me
to teach about sexism in Native American communities within the context of the
classroom. It has encouraged me to speak out against gender discrimination in my daily
life. It has also motivated me to imagine a world where sexism no longer hurts both
indigenous women and men (32).
In this passage, I understand that Ramirez tells her “Coming to Indigenous Feminism” narrative
through her relationship to Native Feminism, specifically how claiming “Feminism” to describe
her practice is a deliberate position. By examining the politics of the word, Ramirez theorizes
how American Indian women engage in these conversations because they are ultimately
concerned for their survival; to claim a Native feminist identity encourages American Indian
women to question how their decolonial and survival goals will change. Ramirez’s “Coming to
Indigenous Feminism” narrative draws attention to how Native Feminism doesn’t limit
decolonial practices, but asks tribal peoples to reflect on their own accountability towards tribal
self-determination. In the following section, I will theorize how the rhetorical theories of

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Indigenous Feminism provide teachings to make oneself visible in the university and do the work
that we love without taking a defensive posture.

Beginning: This is a Coming to Indigenous Feminism Story
May 2011
The other day, I was talking to Debbie DeLeone: talking circle participant and Ingham
county commissioner. We met so I could give her a set of the talking circle DVDS and to discuss
how I will use the talking circles in the dissertation. We joked about how it took us over a year to
meet because we are both so busy: she won an election for county commissioner— I had
comprehensive exams. As I walked into the Bigby Coffee, I didn’t think we would sit and talk
for over an hour until she stood up and wrapped her arms around me. It’s been a hard week; I
welcomed the hug. After catching up, I finally explain my dissertation topic.
I told her, “I’m writing about American Indian women’s lived experiences as theory—the
same type of theory that we are supposed to read in schools and how this theory should be
treated just as importantly. I’m looking at the talking circles as the foundational theory to make
this argument.”
She looked to her arms and said, “Oh! I just got goosebumps. Really, you think that the
talking circles made this much impact?”
I respond, “To me it did, it helped me see myself in this world. Ya’ll gave me the words
I needed. I’m grateful for that.”
I’m back in the Lake Superior Room at Michigan State, listening to the second-generation
daughters express what they’ve gained and lost while pursuing a formal education. I watch as the
mothers reassure their daughters that they made the right choice in pursuing a formal education.
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The women take turns expressing disappointment at the absence of American Indian
epistemologies in their coursework. They recognize the isolation they experienced from Native
student organizations.
Athena, Deb’s daughter, remarks:
The balance between informal and formal needs to be negotiated on a personal level. My
skin was white enough so no one questioned me, but I wasn’t supposed to bring that
world in the classroom. Now that I’ve gone further and further with my formal education,
I’ve lost it, now that I’m back home, I can be connected again. As everyone’s been
talking, I’ve realized that I lost it, something’s been missing, but I think I realized what it
was. Getting a formal education helps you become interculturally competent.
I start to cry and almost lose it when Deb turns to her daughter and replies, “that what you might
think is lost is still in your heart.” Like many of the circle women, I didn’t grow up with
Anishinaabeg traditions, but began to learn them as an adult. As I started to learn Ojibwemowin,
my father, aunts, and uncles offered me their stories. They began to express gratitude that they
could see their children find a place for themselves in the university. Like Janice Gould, I think
that Native people are drawn to the university because it sits on the land of our ancestors.
Although we will struggle as we navigate multiple knowledge practices and institutional
discourses, the land heals us. This is a gift.
These stories linger as I tell Deb how I want to work with the Michigan Indian Board of
Education and as she shares her past experiences developing courses for urban, Native children.
We begin to plot strategies on how to teach our Native children how to advocate for
themselves—how to feel pride for their indigenous worldviews. Deb and I reflect on the stories
shared by Athena and Emily on how they felt invisible in the university and how they used that

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invisibility for survival. Debbie is frustrated. She wants us to be seen and heard, not just by
Native peoples, but everyone. All of us, Emily, Athena, Jannus, and I have shared stories on how
relationships with American Indian women formed in the university have encouraged us to make
space—to take up space. I think that, through these stories, we find strategies on how to survive
institutional spaces.
Excerpt from Stories Take Place (Malea Powell’s 4Cs Chair’s Address):
This is My Story:
Janice Gould once wrote “it is obvious that there is not a university in this country that is not
built on what was once native land.” We need to remember and honor this. We are the land.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how to do the work that I love: how to tell stories, do
decolonial work, and be the arms of an institution at the same time. While pursuing a PhD, I had
a hard time accepting the advice that I can do the work that I love before I receive tenure.
It might be because like many first generation college students or women of color, I was
convinced early on that I could never receive a PhD or become a professor; I was convinced that
academic writing could not contain stories or sound like poetry. Or, maybe it had to do with how
the institution values a certain set of knowledge practices. And, when I did the work that I love, I
found myself defending it for no reason except my fear that I did not belong in academia.
A few years ago, I attended a lecture by Victor Villanueva. Afterwards, I asked him how
he reconciles the pain and fear that comes with telling stories. I don’t remember what he said to
me, but I remember feeling unsatisfied19. I wanted an answer—a solution.
Telling stories doesn’t always feel good. It’s not easy to bring them into academic spaces.
For me, by working and living on my ancestral land—theorizing my relationships with the land
19 Actually, I do remember. He didn’t really answer me, but told me that the stories just have to keep

being told.

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and my ancestors has helped ease the pain. Through relationality, I can build another path—one
that resists a defensive posture and instead, honors the stories and bodies who came before and
will come after me. It isn’t a solution, but a worldview to tell stories, teach, and live in this weird
space called academia.
Take this story. It’s yours now. Do with it what you will.

Everyday, I struggle with working and living in academia. I struggle as I sit in Feminism classes
and try to obey the professor who asks me not to speak because I am too familiar with the texts. I
struggle as I succeed and my women of color friends distance themselves from me because I
don’t use the language of a victim. I struggle as I explain “what I am” to people who cannot see
the histories of my ancestors in my cheekbones, my jaw, or hear them in my laugh. I struggle
while listening to the people whom I trust when they tell me that I belong—that the work I am
doing is good, important work. There is a place for us. I already know I belong because our
identities will always be related to the university whether it’s a connection to land or negotiating
the tradition of academics writing about Native peoples. We’ve always been here. Healing is not
about no longer asking for permission, but recognizing how we have been persuaded to think that
we need to ask to do the work that we love. I didn’t come to this conclusion alone, but with the
help of American Indian women and our allies who continue to take the time to nurture me.
I bring this story into a “Coming to Indigenous Feminism” narrative because I see a
relationship to how indigenous feminists must make themselves visible without engaging in
authenticity rhetoric and how I try to take up space in academia without rationalizing my work or
taking on Western images of “leader.” I did this before and I was angry, loud, aggressive, and
worst of all, I didn’t choose my words carefully. The rhetorical theories of Indigenous Feminism

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offer a framework to examine the difficulty of doing the work that we love and rhetorical
strategies to communicate that work in a language that cultivates and nourishes instead of
destroys.
Indigenous feminists negotiate visibility differently than Geri, who prefers to remain in
the background, a theory that comments on using invisibility as a rhetorical strategy of
survivance. Geri directs from the background and in the process, creates a space for younger
generations of Native peoples to be visible. In many ways, I see a direct relationship to how Geri
practices her identity as elder to how indigenous feminists make themselves visible; we are the
generations who have benefited from Geri’s work. There are elders, like Geri, in all of our
communities. Yet, indigenous feminists examine the consequences of being perceived as “too
visible.” As indigenous feminists write about their lives to critique gender imbalance in tribal
communities, they challenge perceptions of how American Indian women should or should not
practice their roles and responsibilities. Again, this goes back to the word “leader.” Of all the
things authenticity rhetoric will achieve, it serves as a silencer—a piece of self-doubt to persuade
indigenous feminists to remain in a defensive position. Authenticity rhetoric dismisses rhetorical
agency: our scholarly and activist ethos. This dismissal is about claiming space—where
indigenous feminists work to cultivate and sustain a safe space to work, authenticity rhetoric
takes away that space and makes it dangerous and alienating not only for indigenous feminists,
but all peoples who work towards decolonial goals.

Frayed: Weaving as an Indigenous Rhetorical Practice
Like material gathering and assessing, weaving as an indigenous rhetorical practice for writing
reflects a similar process as weaving materials together. In “Doubleweaving Two-Spirit

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Critiques: Building Alliances between Native and Queer Studies,” Qwo-Li Driskill enacts
weaving through a Cherokee doublewoven practice “as a model for articulating the emergent
potential in conversations between Native studies and Queer studies” (73). In this chapter, I
enacted weaving by examining the theories of the circle women, indigenous feminists, and my
own stories in relation to each other and bring them together to understand how visibility is
complicated by colonial rhetorics’ impact on language and historiography. Through weaving, I
am able to enact relationality while building. These theories compliment, modify, and at times,
contradict each other to show how American Indian women resist colonial language and how
colonial language has a very real impact on indigenous bodies. Although I do not know how to
weave baskets, I understand the practice of crochet similarly especially as I use strands to create
stitches and then weave those stitches to build something. Whenever I tie off my crochet, I am
always faced with how to begin and how to end. My beginnings and my endings are always
frayed—always crooked. There isn’t much to do, but assess the strands. Of course, some are too
long and some are too short or I ended up using a double crochet stitch instead of a triple. So, I
just make a knot and say, “done is done.” I’m making a crazy-looking blanket, but I know it will
keep me warm.
In the following chapter, “To Be There, or, How I Came to Hear Our Grandmothers,” I
work at the intellectual site of community-based research, specifically through ethnographic
narratives and oral histories. I use theories of there-ness created by the circle women, Louise
Erdrich, and Deb Neff and Frances Manuel as a framework to argue that oral histories and
ethnographies are rhetorical theories. When reading oral histories and ethnographies as rhetorical
theories, a language becomes visible for hearing, seeing, and feeling the roles of American
Indian women in their language and on their own terms.

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There are more stories in me yet ~ Florence Edenshaw Davidson
The imagining needs praise as does any living thing. Stories and songs are evidence of this
praise... Stories and songs are like humans who when they laugh are indestructible ~ Joy Harjo

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Chapter Four
To Be There, or, How I Came to Hear our Grandmothers

A few months ago, Geri told me that she has more stories to tell. We made a list:
stories of recovery
stories of her relationships with friends and family
stories of her childhood (if she can remember them).
It’s not as if she hasn’t already told me these stories, but she needs to tell them again. I need to
hear them again.
***
It’s late October, her annual birthday/Halloween party has passed and the decorations have
changed from witches to turkeys and pumpkins—soon there will be red bows and a fresh pine
tree. Geri and I have been meeting more regularly. The changing seasons have given us a burst
of energy. We are both pushing to finish the book before I graduate and start a new job. Last
week, we talked more about her childhood, which is the smallest section of the book. I always
find it extraordinary when Geri is able to recall memories; to move past abuse in order to bring
back the stories from a time that contextualizes her history. During one of our sessions, she
recalled stories about her father chopping wood or the stoves her mother used to make stew and
skillet bread20. She drew the different stoves on a scrap of paper and I watched as she moved her
hands to remember. Sometimes, she pulls her crochet out to makes things, like gifts for her
grandchildren’s teachers or a holiday wreath. We have our best sessions when we both keep our
hands busy: her with her crochet and me with my fingers twirling pens or tracing the lines of her
oak table.
20 Skillet

bread is fry bread made in a skillet. Geri’s mother would use a regular fry bread recipe
and cook it in lard on top of a skillet. I want to eat it everyday.
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Geri teaches me about the difficulty of recreating a memory—of bringing a memory from
one’s body and creating it into story. In chapter three, I examined how indigenous feminists use
memory as a method for critiquing Western historiography and creating decolonial history.
When I started thinking about the relationship between how language and knowledge are
constructed and the deliberate positions American Indian women take in their stories, I didn’t
expect to dedicate so much space to the (re)creation of memory—to the making of history. But,
this is what happens from listening to texts the way I listen to the universe; my body knows the
path. My job is to try not to resist so much.

Working Between Disciplines: An Opening
In my second chapter, “Give the Project Longevity,” I traced how American Indian Studies and
Rhetoric and Composition write about their relationship to community-based research like
ethnography. I showed how both fields struggle to use ethnographies and oral histories due to
how each discipline negotiates a problematic relationship to culture and theory. In this chapter, I
examine how American Indian women make theory within ethnographies and oral histories.
These theories negotiate visibility of both the participant and the researcher. I will not be reading
these texts from an anthropological approach, but through cultural rhetorics. In fact, I am
building a framework useful for both scholars within Rhetoric and Composition and American
Indian Studies to come together to examine how stories are made and shared. I urge us to
examine our own rhetoric of community-based research and reconsider the stories we tell about
this practice; to look at the narratives that have always been in our universities and think about
our relationship to them and to institutionalized knowledge.

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Community-based research has brought the stories and lives of Native women into both
popular and academic discourses. In fact, there are countless narratives written by or about
American Indian women. Some of my favorites are Night-Flying Woman (Ignatia Broker),
Mabel McKay: Weaving the Dream (Greg Sarris), Desert Indian Woman (Deb Neff and Frances
Manuel), and Keeping the Campfires Going (Susan Applegate Krouse and Heather Howard). I
believe that these narratives are directly speaking to me and fellow American Indian women who
are trying to figure out how to survive; how to locate her web of relations. These texts are
important teachings and we need to treat them as such. Scholars like Margaret Blackman
(During My Time) and Deb Neff (Desert Indian Woman) have tried to elevate oral history by
recommending it to be used as a supplement for ethnography or to read oral history as literature.
Yet, these re-positionings continue studying the Indian (Blackman) or emphasize recuperation
efforts (Neff). Furthermore, the purpose of these narratives becomes about justifying the value of
American Indian women into pre-existing frameworks. For me, this is why so many of us rely on
describing American Indian women as leaders when they so clearly reject that position. Instead,
through a cultural rhetorics approach, I will read these narratives as rhetorical theory. Through
this re-orientation, American Indian women create frameworks in their language and on their
terms. Yet, this re-situating requires me to pay attention to the making of oral history (oral
historiography).
One of my major critiques about how researchers use ethnographic and oral history
practices is that we privilege a mono-narrative, often from the researcher’s perspective talking to
the field about their participants. Due to this, we use Western frameworks for sharing knowledge
and thus create a structure that frames the stories of American Indian women using Western
ideas about history, the self, and survival. Within both fields, we are too focused on text and on

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the research product. We erase the rhetorical implications of the research and only offer “what”
we discovered. In this chapter, I will examine how theories of there-ness interrogate the
relationship between language, memory, and power and teach scholars about patience,
understanding, and relationality in ways that Rhetoric and Composition and American Indian
Studies has yet to acknowledge. Rhetorical theories of there-ness provide a framework to
negotiate both the process and the answer of research as equally intellectual and theoretical. In
fact, theories of there-ness have the possibility to create a framework where the roles of
researcher and participant become relational and in the process, produce a collaborative research
product. Of course, this is just good practice for ethnographers and cultural anthropologists who
strive to reorient the possibilities of the discipline. I believe that the work of Bea Medicine,
Rayna Green, Susan Applegate Krouse, Heather Howard, Susan Lobo, and Julie Cruikshanks
have provided important theoretical models on how to do ethnographic and oral history work
through an indigenous-centered paradigm. They have taught me about the importance of
patience, friendship, accountability, and respect. I hope that you, dear readers, also have the
opportunity to learn from them as well.

This is a Research Story
I first read Margaret Blackman’s ethnography, During My Time: Florence Edenshaw Davidson
A Haida Woman (1992), as a first semester PhD student. To be honest, I felt partly enraged and
disappointed as I watched Blackman justify Davidson’s narrative to the field of Anthropology.
Although Blackman marks During My Time as life history using both oral history and
ethnography as methods, only 60 out of 200 pages are dedicated to Davidson’s perspectives.
Instead, we learn that Davidson’s narrative is valuable because it provides extra insight to

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unknown or lost traditions, like menstruation cycles or Blackman uses the Anglican missionary
period to contextualize Davidson’s lived experiences. On the relationship between life history
and ethnography, Blackman observes that
“Culture” as lived by the individual represents the ultimate inside view, and the life
history thus serves as a useful complement to the standard ethnography. The life history
also complements the ethnographic accounts by adding to the description an affective or
experiential dimension…The life history is also an appropriate medium for the study of
acculturation (4).
For Blackman, the life history of Florence Davidson offers a “truth” about her life that could not
be gathered from a traditional anthropological approach to learning about culture. But this isn’t
really the point of the story. It’s just the part that I need to tell.
I return to this text because the research relationship between Margaret Blackman and
Florence Davidson can teach us to notice how we cannot rely solely on textual examples to make
an argument. In During My Time, there are many examples of the naming and claiming of roles
like granddaughter and Nani. For example, Blackman recalls how this text has impacted both of
their lives, she writes,
“I must be the world’s Nani,” [Florence] says. “The whole world calls me Nani, Nani
Florence. That’s what I like.” Though, as I noted in the first edition, such statements
bespeak her universal “grandmother-ness,” they also testify to her perceived significance
beyond the Queen Charlotte Islands (161).
From Blackman’s perceptive, I can see how Davidson positions herself as a Nani, a role
reflective of Haida traditions. I could use this excerpt to show how American Indian women
reject Western identities for more deliberate positions and thus, continue to prove my argument.

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Yet, I refrain from using this form of analysis because it doesn’t actually highlight how Davidson
forms a deliberate position, but emphasizes that one exists. I hear Blackman use this claim to
legitimize Davidson’s identity as universal and thus, relevant to academic discourses.
Furthermore, this emphasis arises from the researcher’s perspective and not the participant (a
very clear line made by Blackman). As readers, we don’t know what Davidson means by
claiming to be the “world’s Nani” and Blackman doesn’t give us a chance to find out. Instead,
we do see how the creation of the book and its impact on both academic and tribal communities
affected Nani’s responsibilities. As Blackman reflects on her relationship to Davidson, a similar
textual inconsistency occurs:
The book is a tangible link between us. As it has become incorporated into Florence’s
continuing life story, so also, professionally and personally, it has become part of mine,
leading me to additional life history research and drawing me back to the Queen
Charlottes each year (162).
Here, I see Blackman show how the book is not just a product, but a representation of a
continuing relationship. Yet, I still do not know how Davidson feels about her relationship with
Blackman as a Nani, as a friend, or as the subject in a life history. Although these examples are
tempting, I feel that there are too many stories left out. I realized that I couldn’t bring “Nani” into
my research in her own words, but through a framework created by Blackman.
Yet, this is not a colonial story about the bad researcher and the unsuspecting First
Nations woman. Instead, I want to use this story to teach us to notice how Western frameworks
for knowledge making impact the stories we tell and how they are valued. I used to see this
research story as an example of failure or a waste of good writing time because it took me two
years or two months to figure this out. Yet, through a cultural rhetorics approach, I realize that

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Blackman’s framework is an unsatisfactory one. Instead, I need to build another path to examine
oral historiography through indigenous rhetorical practices.

Oral history, Why?
To Remember Our Ancestors (with)21
In The Common Pot: The Recovery of Native Space in the Northeast (2008), Lisa Brooks relies
on a set of theoretical frames, including body, place, and culture to map how Native people use
writing to reclaim and reconstruct communities. For Brooks, mapping is a tool of
rememberment—one to navigate a fragmented world (xxii). To frame her mapping, Brooks cites
another map of Native space, Louise Erdrich’s Books & Islands in Ojibwe Country (2003), to
weave a discussion on how Native writers theorize the relationship between orality and literacy.
To contemplate this relationship, Brooks begins with a scene inspired by Books & Islands. She
leads us to a making moment where she is outside on the land of her ancestors, the Abenaki, with
her family and laptop. She writes,
We are sitting on the grass, stretching our legs, talking about birchbark scrolls, Mayan
codices, and the intertwining of writing and the oral tradition. “I always knew,” Natalie
says, “that there were things that were taken from us, kept from us…knowledge that was
hidden. Deep inside me, I always knew…” This book is only an attempt…to weave
together fragments found, fragments of words written down, recorded by our ancestors
(xx).
21

The following discussion has been developed and influenced by my work with colleagues from
AL 805 (History of Rhetoric) and a guest visit to AL 853 (The Essay). I thank the following for
their participation in the classrooms and for creating a space for me to think through these ideas:
Dr. Malea Powell, Doug Scraufnagle, Chelsea Moats, Rachael Hodder, Jennifer Fisch-Ferguson,
and Beth Keller.
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Brooks relies on Erdrich to assist her in developing a map to remember her ancestors—to
understand how Native people of the Northeast use writing. I begin here or there, with Brooks
contemplating her relationship to the land of her ancestors and including Erdrich into her web of
relations because mapping, as an indigenous rhetorical practice, contributes to a rhetorical theory
of there-ness that can be used within community-based research.
In Books & Islands in Ojibwe Country: Traveling in the Land of My Ancestors, Louise
Erdrich weaves personal history as mother, book reader, and writer within her travels of the Lake
of the Woods islands to create a rhetorical, relational history of Ojibwe traditions. Books &
Islands, published as a part of the National Geographic series, is full of trickster moments as
Erdrich keeps the promise of being a travel writer by acknowledging how she is recording her
journeys, but provides another orientation to the genre by approaching travel writing through the
worldview of an Anishinaabe mother. She writes, “Indeed, though I haven’t mentioned it, I have
been filming everything I’ve described all along, as well as somehow brandishing a pen and
notebook, all while nursing. One grows used to it” (65). Erdrich makes many arguments within
her narrative, about the complexity of being a mother again at the age of 50 or how to do travel
writing through an Anishinaabikwe worldview. For this chapter, I will focus on how she creates a
theory of motherhood to argue that the lakes are a library. Erdrich shows how the Anishinaabeg
have a certain set of literacy and writing traditions weaved into Lake of the Woods Islands.
Throughout her non-argument, Erdrich shows how the rock paintings are alive, how books are
islands, and islands are books. To begin this discussion, she describes the Ojibwe’s relationship
to birch bark. “The Ojibwe people were great writers from way back and synthesized the oral
and written tradition by keeping mnemonic scrolls of inscribed birchbark. The first paper. The
first books” (xx). Here, Erdrich contends an origin story of literacy beginning with the printing

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press and thus, intellectualism rooted in Western ways of knowing. Instead, she shows how
paper—books and the practices associated with these materials expand further back and are
culturally and historically interconnected22. And so, when Erdrich reads the rock paintings of
Niiyaawaangashing, she includes the making and storying of rock paintings within Ojibwe
histories of literacies and writing up to the present. She writes, “A man leans over and scoops a
handful of tobacco from a pouch, places it before the painting, and then maneuvers his boat and
goes on. Akawe aesma”(50). As I hear Erdrich read the rock paintings as stories (or storied) and
the lakes as a library, she enacts a set of practices to form relationships with books and texts the
way I want to form relationships with people; these sets of relationships inform each other and
should not be separated. I bring Erdrich into a conversation about oral historiography and the
deliberate positions American Indian women form in community-based research because she
provides a framework on how she negotiates her own visibility in relation to her subjects, the
Lake of the Woods Islands. Erdrich uses her visibility, her extremely noticeable presence
whether it’s as an award-winning novelist or as a mother publicly breastfeeding her child to
provide teachings to her readers, whether they are scholars, tribal members, or the casual reader.

Books, why?
To create relationships (with).
In Books & Islands in Ojibwe Country, Louise Erdrich asks, Books, why? She uses this playful,
meaningful question to build a rhetorical framework of her travels through the Lake of the
Woods Islands. For this trip, she travels with her 10 month old daughter Kiizhikok, books, and

22

I realize that some scholars might disagree with how Erdrich uses Ojibwe language to discuss
birch bark literacy practices. But, I believe that Erdrich approaches this discussion with a good
heart and awareness of her identity in relation to these conversations. Due to this, I find it more
fruitful to listen and learn from Erdrich.
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her ancestors. Erdrich argues that the Ojibwe were always writing, always made up of books and
things. She writes,
Mazina’iganan is the word for “books” in Ojibwemowin or Anishinaabemowin, and
mazinapikiniganan is the word for “rock paintings.”…As you can see, both words begin
with “mazina.” It is the root for dozens of words all concerned with made images and
with the substances upon which the images are put, mainly paper or screens…The
Ojibwe had been using the word mazinibaganjigan for years to describe dental
pictographs made on birchbark, perhaps the first books made in North America… (6).
In order to ask “books, why?” Erdrich must first examine her relationship to books and to
reading. By beginning with Ojibwe language, Erdrich argues against a canonized history of
literacy and literature and re-writes literacy and literature from the historical memories of the
Anishinaabeg. Yet, I think it’s important to notice a linking moment between how Erdrich
creates rhetorical history and how indigenous feminist historiography contends historical
narratives that rely on origin. Origin rhetorics rely on and sustain colonial frameworks for
making history. It might appear that Erdrich engages with this rhetoric as she describes birchbark
biting as the “first” books. Yet, through her examination of the definition of Ojibwe, Erdrich reorients “first” to mean indigenous. She writes,
Ojibwe is also slurred into the word Chippewa and in its original form, Anishinaabe, it is
pronounced “Ah-NISH-in-AH-bay. The word is very loaded and bears a host of
meanings and interpretations and theories…I’ve heard that Anishinaabe means “from
whence is lowered the male of the species,” but I don’t like that one very much. And then
there is the more mystical Spontaneous Beings. The meaning that I like the best of course
is Ojibwe from the verb Ozhibii’ige, which is “to write (11).

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As the Ojibwe are indigenous to turtle island, they have always been writing—been making.
Erdrich’s Ojibwe language lesson draws attention to how indigeneity is constructed within
stories without engaging in origin rhetoric.
As Erdrich poses questions regarding her relationship to books, I am reminded of how
DeCerteau theorizes his own obsession with ghosts—with phantasms. In The Writing of History,
Michel DeCerteau theorizes the practice of making history. He asks, “What alliance is there
between writing and history?” (xxvii). DeCertreau answers his question as he sets upon his quest
to examine the creation and celebration of the book. He creates this path for examination by
beginning with a meditation on how history functions in History of France by Michelet.
DeCerteau connects the practice of making history to a ritual with the dead. He writes, “These
ghosts find access through writing on the condition that they remain forever silent” (2). By
beginning with this ritual (a relationship of there-ness) with the dead, DeCerteau makes an
argument that historiography is about traveling and living with ghosts. As DeCerteau forms
relationships with these ghosts—phantasms, DeCerteau is able to ask, “history, what?” or
“history, how?” Through this framework, DeCerteau forms a connection between historiography
and the material product of the book. For the book signifies the emphasis on the product of
history and not the production (30). In other words, the book itself encourages a certain, static
telling of history that DeCerteau takes issue with. I’ve brought The Writing of History into this
narrative, not to bring value to Erdrich’s history of literacy, but to draw attention to the echoes—
the apparitions between an Ojibwe/German historiographer and a French theorist—whose
ancestries are much more linked than at first appearance. Like DeCerteau, Erdrich uses books as
ghosts—as ancestors to theorize indigenous rhetorical practices. The relationships she forms with
her ancestors emphasize a theory of there-ness; one that destabilizes the book into a fluid and

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chaotic history. As I travel through these pages, I too, remember the ghosts that travel with me—
who protect me as I live and work on my ancestral lands.
Books, why?
“So that I will never be alone” (Erdrich 141).
Through answering “Books, why?” Erdrich builds a rhetorical history that theorizes the
history of the Ojibwe language; a language with cultural and historical traditions embedded and
embodied throughout the Lake of the Woods Islands. In the following section, I will examine
how Erdrich makes herself visible through a theory of motherhood. She contributes to the
discourses of reinventing the enemy’s language—an Indian woman writing—creating history
through motherhood—through islands.

Books, why?
“Because our brains hurt (4).”
By sharing how she teaches little Kiizhikok Ojibwe traditions, Erdrich creates a relational space
to make a rhetorical history. She invites the audience in to learn from her teachings. She writes,
The word for “tobacco” is asema, and it is essential to bring some for this reason: Spirits
like tobacco…Before I take a trip like the one I am taking now, I always buy a pound or
two of this tobacco and divide it into smaller bags. Some are for the baby to give to other
people and some are for the spirits of the places we’re going to visit…Whenever I offered
tobacco I was for that moment fully there, fully thinking, willing to address the mystery.
Therefore, I’ve taught my children to offer tobacco (At the same time that I rail at them
not to smoke it). The baby is adept at dipping her hand into the bag and waiting for the
right moment to scatter the flakes. If allowed to, she’ll keep offering tobacco until the
bag’s used up (15-16).

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With the baby, we learn the significance of laying down the tobacco. This is just one example of
how Erdrich uses a theory of motherhood to relate Ojibwe traditions to the Lake of the Woods
islands. These teachings provide an opportunity to form relationships with Erdrich, her child, and
the book islands. These relationships contribute to a theory of there-ness within Lake of the
Woods and the narrative product. This theory of there-ness is further complicated as Erdrich
practices reflexivity to re-examine her relationship to Ojibwe traditions from her perspectives as
a mother.
At the age of 47, Erdrich is a “new-old” mother, with her previous children already
reaching teenage and adulthood. Throughout her narrative, Erdrich meditates on these
circumstances in relation to her journey and to the islands. She writes,
A period of emptiness, unusual to my life, now begins, in which I can either fret or
accomplish that rare thing, the doing of nothing. Or rather, with the baby, the doing of
what the baby wants. This kind of doing is very much part of the trip, and although there
is a dreamy blankness to it—the hours merge and the edges of the days grow fuzzy—
these times when I devote my whole self to Kiizhikok are also times of great complexity
and learning (28).
Here, Erdrich draws attention to the challenges of motherhood—to the complexity of being both
selfish and selfless. Erdrich negotiates her own desires as a woman, traveler, and book reader
with the desires to take care of her baby and to make things more complicated, the actual desires
of the baby to play, read, or put stones in her mouth. By dedicating oneself to the caring for and
teaching of another being, Erdrich considers these moments as opportunities to learn from her
child, to reflect on her circumstances, and listen to the universe. Erdrich complicates these

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desires as she narrates her experiences climbing to see the thunderbird paintings in Spirit Bay.
She writes,
Like all women are accused of doing, I claw my way to the top. Sweaty, heart pounding,
I finally know I’m there. All I have to do is inch forward and step around the edge of the
cliff, but that’s the thing. I have to step around one particular rock and it looks like
there’s nothing below it or on the other side. I could fall into the rocks. My children could
be left motherless…So I don’t go around the rock, but seek another route…Again, I
nearly take the change and lower myself over the cliff but I can’t see how far I’d fall…I
know I am a mother and I just can’t do it (67).
Although she has waited her entire life to see these paintings, her new position as a mother
requires her to rethink her desires for the safety of her family. The father of her child continues
the climb and Erdrich cannot help but feel angry with him for jumping off the cliffs and almost
endangering himself. Erdrich juxtaposes her responsibility as mother with her partner’s
responsibility as father to show that a theory of motherhood is different and perhaps, more selfsacrificing.
Erdrich’s theory of motherhood provides a set of indigenous rhetorical practices for
living one’s life whether I am developing curriculum, designing a research project, or learning
how to do loomwork. I see a theoretical and experiential difference between approaching life
through a theory of motherhood and approaching life the way I would take care of a child. Since,
I’ve yet to take care of a child, I can see and at times, feel that difference, but I do not know it
yet. As I explore the indigenous rhetorical practices within Erdrich’s theory of motherhood, I can
feel my own training as a feminist tugging to critique—to be appalled at the idea of motherhood
as a framework for academia or in general. It’s important to recognize this pull—this possible

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objection because this is the type of institutional/disciplined framework that has gotten in the
way of hearing American Indian women’s stories as rhetorical theory. The role, theory, or
practice of motherhood is vital to American Indian women and the survival of tribal
communities23 and it looks differently than how non-Native women practice mothering.

Books, why?
To keep our memories
A few weeks ago, I asked to sit and listen to a group of my colleagues discuss Books & Islands—
they asked me to sit and talk with them about the book. Our conversation triggered my memory
about how we use the word “leader” to describe the women we admire.
And, we can’t stop talking about how Erdrich invites us, the reader, into her narrative. Or,
how she speaks to us, using the strategies of an elder; how she moves from lessons to teachings.
During the seminar, I write in my notebook furiously and pay attention to how my colleagues
write in their notebooks, in Books & Islands, in a google document, or on their ipad.
Notebook, why?
To remember what we feel is true.

23

In “Revision and Resistance The Politics of Native Women’s Motherwork,” Lisa Udel
theorizes motherwork as a reform strategy that Native women enact in reaction to Western
Feminism. By paying attention to how both discourses write about motherhood, Udel focuses on
the tension between Native women’s understandings of responsibility and mainstream Western
Feminism’s understandings of rights. This tension is mostly focused in discussions of the body,
the domestic space, and motherhood. Motherwork, originally applied by Patricia Hill Collins
recognizes the tasks applied to women/mothers of color. Motherwork acknowledges that most of
the destruction of the family comes from outside forces and not from within the family. Udel
extends this concept to how Native women valorize their identities and roles as mothers and that
this terms allows for racial ethnic women to positively identify as mothers in public and private
spaces. Udel acknowledges that Anglo-American Feminism has yet to understand the
importance of motherhood for Indigenous American women.

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My colleague makes a comparison to Erdrich’s “leadership role as elder in relation to her role as
mother.” And, in this moment, my colleague triggers my memory to previous graduate seminars
where we read and discussed the writing of American Indian women. I remember when my peers
and I struggled to relate to women like Florence Davidson and in the process named her a leader.
Yet, these stories cannot be found through textual evidence and so, we have to rely on other
practices.
I smile to myself as I jot her observation down in my notebook. I don’t ask my colleague
to explain herself—to discuss why she picked the word “leader” because I already know: it’s the
only word we have. In thinking back to Jannus’ theory, leadership is a masculinist construct, I
am reminded of how she relates the images of leadership to Western and Euro-centric language
and structures. The word “leader” exists within and perpetuates a colonial structure for
knowledge making. And so, this means that for those of us within institutional spaces, we must
pay attention to how we are complicit in continuing colonial frameworks even when we think we
are doing decolonial work. This word “leader” is a reminder of how we are disciplined to use
institutional language. We speak the language of the institution, a language that already does not
reflect our lives and lived experiences. And so, we rationalize and justify the presence of
American Indian women and the positions they take in our writing or our classrooms.
Like my colleague, I notice that roles like mother and elder are positions of power and
look different than power positions within Western hierarchies, yet, we don’t really have a
language to describe that tension—that distinction. We perpetuate colonial structures when we
bring the stories of American Indian women into academic discourse and re-name them. As we
re-name American Indian women, we re-create the noble savage from a contemporary, historical
perspective. Similar to my experience reading During My Time, we have been trained to provide

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evidence with only what we see and like a lack of language, we need to develop strategies to reorient the way we understand the world. Jannus’ leadership is a masculinist construct and how it
relates to colonial frameworks cannot be found through traditional textual analysis. Instead, it
can be found through the stories we tell about research and about our relationships to research.
This orientation can be found in our memories, our bodies, our relationships to each other and
the world we live in.

Oral Historiography
So far, I’ve examined how Erdrich’s theory of motherhood creates a rhetorical theory of thereness applicable to oral historiography and visibility. As Erdrich encourages readers to participate
with her rhetorical history of the Lake of the Woods islands, she teaches us how to approach
historiography through a set of relational, indigenous practices. These practices interrogate how
history is alive, fluid—a ritual with our ancestors; that there are layers of history and
participation strategies within the narrative product. History exists within books, within our
cultural memories, within the land the we live and work on, and within our bodies. This
framework does not have to change while examining oral historiography. Erdrich’s rhetorical
theory of there-ness illuminates an indigenous-centered approach to oral history, both the making
and reading of oral historiography. As a rhetorician, this theory is important because Erdrich
emphasizes a difference between book and text. She is not reading texts; she’s reading books and
islands—islands and books. Coming from two fields where “everything is considered a text” or
read using a particular textual analysis, Erdrich’s framework provides another language to
examine oral histories (research products) the same way that I approach the making of oral

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histories. Through a theory of there-ness, oral history as rhetorical theory depends upon the
language and practices used to make it as well as communicate its stories to multiple audiences.
Also, as Erdrich theorizes her mothering practices, she uses her visibility as both mother
and novelist to make a rhetorical history of the Lake of the Woods islands. Through there-ness,
Erdrich reminds me that American Indian women have always been present in their oral
histories, as researchers and participants. It’s the treatment of the text that has made this visibility
less noticeable. By reading oral history as rhetorical theory, we can make that negotiation
present. Even Geri, who prefers to remain in the background, makes herself visible within her
oral history. Geri makes her lived experiences public to provide indigenous theories of recovery;
to offer teachings for her grandchildren and future generations of Native peoples. Of course, this
visibility looks differently than how Louise Erdrich makes herself visible. In the circle women’s
multi-vocal theory, “To Be There,” Geri and the elders explain how they make themselves
present for younger generations of Native peoples. In the following section, I will examine how
Deb Neff and Frances Manuel use a theory of there-ness to negotiate visibility while
collaboratively making the oral history, Desert Indian Woman. For me, Manuel’s and Neff’s
theory of there-ness reflects both the strategies of the circle women and Louise Erdrich. This
theory of there-ness puts knowledge practices, space, and the body in relation to each other to
theorize oral historiography and the everyday practices of American Indian women.

Stories and Dreams: Weaving Theory through Indigenous Bodies
Desert Indian Woman: Stories and Dreams (2001), a co-authored text by Deborah Neff and
Tohono O’odham elder Frances Manuel maps Manuel’s life story of growing up and raising
children on the U.S./Mexican border throughout the 20th Century. This text is a product of a

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twenty-year relationship when Manuel and Neff first met each other at a cultural awareness
center in Tucson where Neff was the “Project Specialist” and Manuel was the resident basket
weaver. I bring Desert Indian Woman into the narrative because it marks my relationship with
Geri and Susan. We gave Geri this text as a possible example of what her life history could look
like. Also, this book enacts and theorizes a set of indigenous rhetorical practices complicating
oral historiography. In Desert Indian Woman, Manuel and Neff create a theory of there-ness as a
framework to teach readers how to be an oral historian and how to listen to the stories of
American Indian women as they talk about their lives. This framework is made out of stories
Neff and Manuel tell about their roles and their relationships to each other.
While speaking about her relationship to basket weaving, Manuel grasps for words, she
explains, “I don’t know how to put it but it’s THERE/ (softly) you’re all together when you are
making baskets/ there are no other things” (97). Through there-ness, Manuel explains how her
connection to basket weaving is embodied, which is why it is so difficult to articulate with
Western language. Since a Western language disconnects the soul and body, she must tell a story
instead. She explains,
I think when you talk about baskets, what is there to talk about? You tie a knot and you
go around and around, whatever’s in your mind, you’re just thinking about it when you
are doing it. It’s not like when it’s broken and you fix it, when you do different things in
the basket, it’s not there. It goes round and round, the design is in your head—what color
you’re gonna put in, how much bear grass you’re gonna put in, if you feel you need some
more, it’s just that…What I think about the basket is that nowadays, young ladies, even
older ladies—I’m talking about us. When they see pretty things or pretty house or pretty
furniture in there, they feel like making baskets to get some money to buy these things.

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So they are not really careful, they just hurry to get the things they want. That’s why the
baskets aren’t the same as they were before. Because at the time, there was nothing.
Ladies took their time, do their work, what was given to them. They work with their eyes,
their hands, their mind, their thoughts. They work hard, their body warms and they
sweat—that’s the real thing. Nowadays we hurry. Like me, I’m hurrying to save some
money to buy a sandwich. So this is what I want to say (102).
In this story, Manuel explains what making baskets looks like and how the practice of making
has changed from the colonial past to the present. Manuel makes indigenous women’s bodies
visible while discussing how baskets were made and valued before colonialism. Also, she draws
attention to how contemporary indigenous bodies have become invisible with contemporary
weaving practices. As Manuel examines how the practice of basket weaving has changed, she
draws attention to her thoughts and stories created while basket weaving, which is an important
aspect to the weaving itself. Through story, Manuel emphasizes the body in basket weaving. By
paying attention to the weaver’s body, Manuel is able to argue that through weaving, she is able
to trace the visibility of one’s identity within both mainstream and tribal societies.
Yet, what is missing from her stories are her accomplishments. Manuel doesn’t mark her
theories on basket weaving by the awards she has won, but through the relationships she has
formed with the materials, with the world, and with the people she has met during her
demonstrations. I see this negotiation as an example of how Manuel positions herself and makes
herself visible to both Native and non-Native peoples. To be a weaver is to put forth a certain
type of visibility that is an awareness of one’s body and the bodies of fellow weavers. This
awareness reminds me of how Debbie describes how she is “learning to be grandma” in the
theory “To Be There or Here.” She reminds us that passing down indigenous traditions relate to

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one’s own bodily limitations—the pressure to remember and share knowledge before it’s lost. I
see how Manuel carries a knowledge—
a history about the relationship of one’s body to basket weaving and thus, to colonialism. From
Manuel’s perspective, history, knowledge, and practice are held in the bodies of basket weavers.
In preparation for telling the story of her husband’s death, Manuel reflects on her identity
and what it might look like to outside perspectives. She recalls, “Raised six kids. I’d call myself
a strong woman, even if nobody thinks I’m a strong woman. [Softly, thoughtfully] I went
through a lot sometimes” (60). Here, I hear Manuel refer to strength both literally and
figuratively: the embodied strength to carry six children to term and raise them as well as the
strength to live in Tucson on the income made from cleaning houses and making tortillas. I am
still surprised by Manuel’s willingness to describing herself using words like “strong.” Like the
word “leader,” I rarely hear elders, especially women, identify as such. Manuel theorizes and
identifies as “strong” due to building a theory out of embodied and material experiences. For
example, Manuel is strong because her fingers are strong from weaving, her hands are strong
from patting tortillas, and her body is strong from bearing and raising children. By examining
identity beyond character or metaphor and through our bodies, we can pay attention to how our
bodies take up space and move as they endure colonial impact. This teaching serves as an
important reminder for those of us who do research: we need to pay attention to our bodies and
its presence throughout the research process and product. A theory of there-ness is further
exemplified as Neff and Manuel reflect on their research relationships.

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On Stories and Dreams: How Can I Tell My Grandmother What to Do?
Throughout the narrative, Neff and Manuel transparently negotiate oral historiography that
contends many of the criticisms Native studies scholars have rightfully given regarding the
relationship between Anthropologists and Native peoples24. In fact, this text teaches us how we
can research with and for Native people. Neff writes,
It has not been common practice to credit the native speaker with coauthorship of life
histories. Over one hundred collaborative works about Native Americans have been
written in the “as told to” format, with the non-Indian as sole author. We have departed
from this tradition on the basis that oral tradition is literature” (xviii).
Neff and Manuel challenge how oral histories are made and its possibilities. Unlike Margaret
Blackman, author of During My Time, Deborah Neff doesn’t spend time in the introduction rewriting Manuel’s history or rationalizing it to readers in her disciplinary field. Instead, the
introduction serves as a series of stories about how the project began and draws out the silences
normally brushed away during a research process. Neff writes, “For the reader less interested in
lengthy introductions and an afterword, these can be skipped or read later; Frances’s words stand
on their own (xvii). Manuel’s words do not need to be rationalized or justified because she, too,
is an intellectual.
For this section, I will pay attention to a series of conversations where Manuel and Neff
take turns telling stories about their relationships to each other and how the relationship impacted
I understand that this is common practice for Deb Neff and it is her goal to encourage
anthropologists and ethnographers to continue enacting these approaches. Yet, this is not
common practice within Rhetoric and Composition or American Indian Studies. Through a
cultural rhetorics approach, I incorporate practices from multiple disciplines and intellectual
communities to create a methodology to form relationships with multiple intellectual
communities while sustaining a connection to American Indian Studies and Rhetoric and
Composition.
24

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their research process. One of my favorite stories is from Neff’s journal excerpts from the three
months she lived with Manuel. She writes,
In spite of our difficulties, we have a lot of fun! I love our jokes about the coffee pot
being jealous of the pan, and how hard it is to get it to boil….Through play, I am learning
how events have life, bring things into creation or negate those things, or join with new
things, transform them…But being here, things are way out of my control, I’m just
waiting. Frances is busy, tired, sick, resting, not in the mood, disorganized, and waiting
on me, too. I think she seems me as directing things, but how can I tell my grandmother
what to do? I tried meeting the same time every day, but that turned out to be impossible.
Well, like Frances says, if it’s not real, it won’t come out—the time has to be right. So, I
need to just be there. Is this what it is all about? I keep asking myself what is this thing
that we are doing? (200).
Through there-ness, Neff examines the complexities of a grandmother/granddaughter research
relationship. Neff emphasizes something important about researching with people, something
that it took me a long time to realize as I set times to meet with the circle women: research is not
about meeting the task at hand. A theory of there-ness emphasizes the necessity of taking the
time to play—to use play to make theory. Play and exploration have been encouraged when
working with texts, but seldom with people, because once work is collaborative there is a risk of
time wasting; we are impatient and fear making messes. Yet, a theory of there-ness also draws
attention to the difficulties and frustrations of research. Neff uses there-ness to connect her own
frustrations and Manuel’s observation about “realness.” Like relationships, data collection
thrives upon patient nurturing and cultivation.

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As Neff notices that her relationship with Manuel has developed into a
grandmother/granddaughter research relationship, the position of power is difficult to negotiate.
Neff, as an academic and a woman from a Euro-immigrant background, has a much more visibly
accepted position than Manuel. But, it’s clear from the passage that Neff is trying to de-center
her own power to privilege Manuel’s story. It’s through a passage like this where we can learn
about the rhetorical complexity of making oral history and transcribing oral narratives into a
book for publication. In the same way that I see American Indian women negotiate the
challenges of visibility in their everyday lives, researchers make similar negotiations with Native
women on the project itself, on the language, or on the framework. Furthermore, Neff and
Manuel draw attention to something important regarding community-based work: what happens
when research relationships represent grandmother/granddaughter relationships? What does a
grandmother/granddaughter relationship look like? How does that relationship impact how
knowledge is made and shared?
Where Neff identifies Manuel as her grandmother to explain the complexities of research,
Manuel talks about her identity in terms of her knowledge making practices like dreaming,
weaving, storytelling. By situating herself as a weaver and a dreamer, Manuel relates the
significance of her every day tasks to how stories get made—to how she expects her interviews
with Neff should happen: it’s about the practice of patience, listening, and watching. These
attributes are not always emphasized in academia. She recalls a dream in order to make this
argument:
I don’t really believe in dreams, but sometimes the dream is so clear, so sometimes I
think it is true. The other night I dreamed that a tall man in shorts came in with a
notebook and he asked me if I wanted to die and I said, “Of course not, I’m afraid to die,”

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and then he marked something and he turned around to my friend, Lorenzo, and asked
him if he wanted to die, and he said, “yes.” Then he turned around to me and said, “well,
you’re going to live to be ninety.” Then I looked at his shoes, they were so raggedy and
the toe was peeping out. And I was wondering all day why I dreamed that and I
remembered it, and what it means. I don’t usually remember my dreams so clearly. I was
in bed, dreaming I was laying on the couch and Lorenzo was sitting in the chair. My
recent life is almost the same, get up in the morning and do cooking. If I’m lazy, I don’t
do anything. I just do things that has to be done. And, um, if I really feel like working on
baskets, I’ll just soak the yucca and wait. Sometimes, I don’t get to it until afternoon. And
um, some days I work and some days I play. But I’m not the kind of person who gets to
somebody’s house and sit and talk. That’s the way I am from way back. Because I don’t
have enough things to say, and I don’t say things that I feel they won’t be interested. I
don’t like to talk for just the sound, without meaning anything to them, when it’s not part
of their ways.
And I don’t try to make things interesting, I don’t add anything, I just talk about things
the way it happens. I don’t lie, but sometimes I say I don’t know, but I just don’t want to
talk about it. If I don’t feel like talking about it, I don’t talk about it. It just goes on like
that. And another thing, I don’t just come out and ask for all of the details, I just…slowly,
little by little. It’s a lot easier than asking a question straight out, it just loses something!
That’s why the people don’t get straight answers (199).
Manuel’s identity is rooted in practice. For example, if I want to understand how she identifies as
a weaver, I have to listen to her talk about gathering materials and making baskets. In the same
way that Neff is frustrated with how to proceed with the oral history, Manuel recognizes the

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difficulty of collaborating on making one’s lived experiences public. And so, Manuel provides a
teaching on how to approach research similarly to how we practice weaving, storytelling, or
forming relationships with the people whom we share space with.

On There-ness: A Relational Theory of Visibility
By including there-ness within a relational theory of visibility, the language around visibility
modifies depending upon the space in which knowledge is made and disseminated. As the space
changes, as the relationship changes or is renegotiated, we have to use a different language to
understand the roles and responsibilities of American Indian women. In this chapter, I have
examined how a theory of there-ness is used as a framework to make and read oral history as
rhetorical theory. “There-ness” will never be the new jargon used to please institutional desires.
It shouldn’t be. It’s not supposed to be. It’s an adverb. It answers questions. It modifies. It is
difficult to classify. “There-ness” is one piece of language used by American Indian women to
theorize how they form deliberate positions within oral histories. For me, theories of there-ness
resonate into other aspects of institutional living. It’s the answer to those moments when I have
to be at an exhibit, a feast, a student conference and I don’t want to because it’s cold outside, I’m
tired, or I have a deadline. I know that being there will make me feel better as soon. It modifies.
There-ness is a set of practices to makes us visible, present, and active in the communities we
belong to.
This dissertation has always been a story about relationships and how to live and work in
a space that persuades us that we are not people; that our colleagues are not people and the
research we produce is not about people. The rhetorical theories of American Indian women
remind us of what we always knew to be true, but have had difficulty admitting. These theories

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help us locate and make visible those gut-feelings we’ve buried deep into the pinkness of our
bellies. Through there-ness, an indigenous rhetorical practice, we develop strategies to remain
our whole selves while surviving institutional (re: colonial) spaces.
I have never been one to properly conclude. Like weaving, I make a mess of the ends and
the beginnings. In my conclusion, I will share a series of research stories about the dissertation.
These stories are methodological b-sides. The stories that I continue to carry with me. I offer
these stories as gifts to my readers and to the circle women to participate with, interrogate, and
theorize, as I have done throughout the dissertation.

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Just Keep Busy ~ Naijba Bakkal

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Chapter Five
Females, the Strong Ones:
Making Space for Indigenous Rhetorical Practices
Developing a Relational Scholarly Practice: Snakes, Dreams, and Grandmas
February 2011
Let me tell you a research story:

I am having coffee with Rosie DeLand, her daughter Roxanne, and one of their cousins. Rosie is
small in stature, but she’s the one you can always see at the powwows or at the front of the room,
providing the prayer before dinner. I am meeting with the ladies to get their input on the structure
and themes of the talking circles. The women don’t even bring up the talking circles until an
hour has gone by. I have learned the hard way that casual conversation is just as important, if not
more, than the agenda on my notepad.
Rosie tells me that the Little Traverse Bay Band is beginning to brain tan again, an
important harvest that hasn’t been practiced in decades. She says,
“The men are feeling icky about keeping the brains in their storage. I told them, that’s
tradition!”
We all laugh this low laugh that interrupts the conversations going on around us—we are
slapping our knees and the table.
After they leave, I take a moment and jot down the women’s concerns regarding the
talking circles—things I couldn’t answer immediately and will have to ask Susan later on. I find
myself writing about moon time and the Anishinaabeg word for tomatoes. This is a story for
another time. I hope I can tell it to you.

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***
I first came to Shawn Wilson’s Research is Ceremony during a CIC summer course titled
American Indian Rhetorics. I wasn’t a Rhetoric & Writing student yet. Each week, I’d wikipedia
“Rhetoric” and “Discourse,” just in case Malea spontaneously quizzed us. All I knew about
Rhetoric was Kenneth Burke and he wasn’t exactly welcome in this space.
I come back to Shawn Wilson because he plays a significant role as I narrate my journey
learning the discipline of Rhetoric, working in the sub-field of Native Rhetorics, and researching
with the circle women. He reminds me of something that I always knew, but it took this CIC
course to help me say it aloud: the stories we tell about research are important indigenous
rhetorical practices.
I came to Wilson’s text in the midst of transition, doubting my writing, doubting my
scholarly capabilities, feeling lonely and miserable with my choice of a graduate program. Now,
I see a future here for me—with you.
***
I am in a Cultural Rhetorics seminar at Michigan State University, I’ve been asked to come in
and talk about my research under the topic of decolonial and anti-paracolonial methodology. The
class is reading some great texts: Emma Perez’s Decolonial Imaginary, Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s
Decolonial Methodologies and Shawn Wilson’s Research is Ceremony.
At this point, post exams, ABD in waiting, I don’t really read Wilson’s and Smith’s
books again and again, but I dream about them. I put them in my purse while I go to campus.
The books occupy a space between me and the dog and the cat as I write. It’s in these spaces
where I am imagining stories—hearing the stories that can’t be heard from reading, but after
reading, after writing.

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One of my colleagues posted on her Facebook wall, “when is research not at the expense
of others?” I wanted to say never. But, I didn’t because it’s Facebook. So, I waited and this
conversation came out during the class visit when another colleague started to openly think about
community-based research. She was looking for a set of practices that de-emphasize the
researcher’s epistemologies—that was about the community.
And, in all of my grace and beauty, I blurt out, so forcibly, that research is selfish, a
comment that upset my colleague—a quick moment that shut down the conversation. My knees
are up against the desk, my arms behind my head, tits and stomach protruding; even my body is
saying it: research, the practice of and the conversations of, are about the Self. I should be
ashamed for my behavior—I should. I am. But, the thing is, I am okay with a certain type of
selfishness regarding research—I am okay with it because I work so hard to show it—to learn
from it.
***
Research is the work of grief and joy.
***
Shawn Wilson writes, that when taking on an Indigenous research paradigm, “relationships do
not merely shape reality, they are reality (5).” By enacting relational accountability, we need to
approach research and writing the same way we work to form and honor relationships with
teachers, students, colleagues, the land, and the living beings around us. We need to make these
relationships visible and present in the narrative product. For me, I struggle with relational
accountability when I have to share research with my scholarly audiences—those, like myself,
who have been trained to see and think and practice research as one thing—to commit to
defining, containing, restricting. It’s during these rituals where I notice myself debating about

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how to tell research stories and make them meaningful and purposeful. Research methodologies
need space to breath and think and cry.

***
Almost a year ago, Susan walked on. We first met when I took her class, “American Indian
Women.” A month later, she became my dissertation committee chair and my research partner.
By the end of the first year, she was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer. In the second year, I watched
her fight like hell and still commit to the research. During our meetings, not only did we make
plans, write grants, or discuss methods, but we also talked about the future—her future, my
future— what it all meant for the research—what it meant beyond the research. During these
meetings, we laughed a lot—we cried—we were silent.
I want to urge us to not only recognize the grief and joy of research, but to theorize these
emotions in the research product. How does grief or anger or joy complicate relational
accountability? How do these emotions become a part of our scholarly practice? For me, these
methods offer a strategy to tell stories our discipline strives to make invisible: the stories we tell
during lunch, to each other, our peers in the hallway while going to the mailbox, or during yoga.
***
Let me tell you what I am afraid of:
Snakes
and grief. I wasted the first three months of dissertation writing because I couldn’t work with the
talking circles. I composed draft after draft, talking around the rhetorical theories of the LTBB
women. I started someplace safer like the theories of Indigenous Feminism or how American
Indian Studies ignores American Indian women. Malea would pass back draft after draft with

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kind and encouraging comments, but with a “try it again.” Finally, she asked me, “What’s
stopping you from watching the talking circles?” I wasn’t ready to bring myself back to those
months before Susan’s passing. I never told her that, but I know that she knows.

***
March 2011
In my family, we spend a lot of our time together talking about dreams. I can still remember
spending mornings at the kitchen table with my parents drinking chai or coffee and sharing our
dream stories. In my family, the women have nightmares well into their adulthood. I can
remember so many times when my mother woke us with her screaming. In the morning, we
would find out that she thought she lost us or our father—that someone was trying to hurt her.
As a child, Freddy Krueger frightened me every night—lingering trauma from watching
Nightmare on Elm Street at four years old. But, when I got older snakes, rats, hybrid rat snakes
or snake rats taunted and haunted me.
Everyone thinks that my nightmares are the funniest: my sisters are unsympathetic when
I tell them that I had another dream about snakes. They laugh and laugh, slapping their hands to
their thighs.
But, I’ll call my mom and tell her after I check my email, after I walk the dog, after the
first cup of dark, black tea—bitter from steeping too long. It’s how the Riley women like their
tea. Like research, I am starting to understand how not to over brew my tea.
My mom understands. She’s always asking me, “What does it mean, Andrea?” I don’t
ever
really answer. At most, I’ll say, “whatever it means—I think I am nervous or afraid of

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something.”
But, the dreams that get the most attention are when our family members visit us. These
are the dreams that our family considers blessings; moments when we can remember our
deceased family member, reflect on our relationship to that person, and think about the
significance of the family member coming to us; to take the time to speak to us, guide us, and
teach us. When I talk about these dreams, even my sisters look up from their phones waiting for
the story.
Our stories are often positioned between a sense of loss for the deceased loved one while
negotiating the joy of being presented with another opportunity to revisit our relationship to the
family member, to fellow family members, to the old ways and the old world. I understand my
dreams similarly to how I understand my writing—the making of my writing.

This is the work of grief and joy: always intertwined, inseparable—in constant loss and renewal.

As I write, I write with the voices of my ancestors. I negotiate my sense of what to put in, what
not to tell, and what to take out. I have always understood the responsibility of telling stories; I
know the difference between a secret and a pedagogical tale.
I blend the language of my home life: a broken language where the tenses switch with a
disciplined language, an academic language—one that I think I am never using correctly.
I hear my mom and aunties and cousin calling to me, requiring my presence, asking me
how I make my dolma as they not so silently judge me for using turkey meat. It’s the 15 text
messages, Facebook posts, missed phone calls from my mom, aunties, cousins, brother, and
sisters asking me “when will you be home Andrea?” I know why the women in my family never

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leave home; I know why we struggle to receive formal education degrees.

In my dream, my grandmother, Naijba told me to go and visit my paternal grandmother’s house
between Waverly and Jolly Road. I would spend my summers here as a young girl. I have
written about this place my whole adult life; reflecting on my relationship to the large plot of
land, to my grandmother and Great Aunt Sue. Both of these women share name relationships to
my sisters. Naijba encouraged me to sit on that land and write and I bet—to wait for snakes.
Naijba is helping me get to know the land as a scholar. I watch and listen to my
colleagues and the Native women within this dissertation historicize their relationships to the
land—bridging the colonial past to the precolonial and the paracolonial present. It’s beautiful and
complicated and in the process: me, my aunties, mom, and grandmothers are woven in. I reflect
about this relationship the most while walking my dog, Sookie—the red heeler—she who loves
the snow. While we walk, I remember memories, dreams, stories from my past. I begin to
contemplate the significance of these memories, dreams, stories in relation to walking in Lansing
as the snow falls or melts or freeze. For me, these details are just as significant to building a
relational theory of visibility.
On these walks, I think a lot about snakes: Will the slimy creature cross my path? Will I
step on one? Is it too cold or warm for the snakes to be out?
In the summer, a family of garter snakes live in the bushes outside of my apartment—its’
bushes. In the summer, I rarely leave the house. Occasionally, my husband will relocate the
snakes to a nice meadowed area a few feet away, but they always come back—sun bathing on
our steps and lawn—waiting for the dear tadpoles to surface and make way to dry land.
Sometimes, I will sit outside the window and talk to the snakes—apologizing, offering prayers

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and thanks. I’ll put tobacco down and gently ask them to leave. Sometimes, I watch the cat watch
the snakes. She is not afraid of them. She too, will sit by the window talking to them, but I am
not sure what she is saying.
But, here’s the thing. I’ve noticed a lot of Indigenous American women writing and
thinking about snakes too. In Borderlands/La Frontera, Gloria Anzald´ua writes that after being
bitten by a rattlesnake as a child, she believes the snake to be her animal counterpart, coiling the
Earth, Indigenous—woven (in)to land:
Since that day, I’ve sought and shunned them. Always when they cross my path, fear and
elation flood my body. I know things older than Freud, older than gender. She—that’s
how I think of la Vibora, Snake Woman…I know Earth is a coiled Serpent. Forty years
its taken me to enter into the Serpent, to acknowledge that I have a body, that I am a body
and to assimilate the animal body, the animal soul (48).
I hear Anzald´ua put her identities as writer, knowledge seeker, Chicana, Queer in relation to her
relationship to snakes. For Anzald´ua, how she reacts to the snakes (to seek and to shun) reflects
how she negotiates her scholarly practice. She sees a relationship between her compositions and
the earth.
Joy Harjo tells readers how snakes are understood from her peoples’ perspective. In “The
Flood,” she writes “Embedded in Muscogee tribal memory is the creature the tie snake, a huge
snake of a monster who lives in waterways and will do what he can to take us to him” (14). As
Harjo relates the story of tie snake to memory, I think about all of the ways in which tribal
peoples theorize their relationship to the land; to the intersection of the natural and spiritual
world. How do we misunderstand the land? Fear the land? How does the struggle to form
relationships with the land appear in our writing and research?

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Pomo basket weaver and dreamer, Mabel McKay tells a story about the woman who falls
in love with the serpent, but when she tells it, she explains how the audience matters. When nonNative scholars listen to her story, they are set on looking for the point and to analyze the serpent
as a symbol (35). Sometimes, a snake is just a snake. When Mabel McKay became a dreamer,
rattlesnakes were sent to her—to tell her that dreams were coming. She would find them in her
house in the sink or bathtub. Mabel honored these visits.
I am still trying to figure out my own relationship to snakes. Sometimes, I fantasize about
that moment when I am hiking and a serpent will cross my path. I will not cry or scream or kick
up my heels, but just greet the snake and continue on my journey. But, for now, I shun and run
from snakes.
While taking my comprehensive exams, I chronicled my illness. I knew that the
chronicling would limit my space to traditionally ground my work within scholarly discourses. I
was willing to take that risk. I wanted to practice listening to my body. I wanted to pay attention
to the vomiting and fatigue. I see a connection to these months of illness and to the seeking and
shunning described by Anzald´ua. She writes,
When I don’t write the images down for several days or weeks or months, I get
physically ill. Because writing invokes images from my unconscious, and because some
of the images are residues of trauma which I then have to reconstruct, I sometimes get
sick when I do write. I can’t stomach it, become nauseous, or burn with fever, worsen.
But, in reconstruction the traumas behind the images, I make “sense” of them, and once
they have “meaning” they are changed, transformed. It is then that writing heals me,
brings me joy (53).
As Anzald´ua pays attention to her body in relation to the practice of writing, she theorizes the

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complexity of doing decolonial work. I fear for how American Indian Studies talks about
decolonization. We’ve been persuaded to believe that to decolonize offers relief from the trauma,
that we will heal, or that there is an endpoint. But, we know this is not true. To do decolonial
work means to engage in a set of practices to make ourselves aware of how we are complicit in
colonial rhetorics and how to negotiate this complicity to produce work that will help our tribal
communities survive.
***
I’ve been missing my people a lot lately—I haven’t been around another Chaldean person since
December. Sometimes, I linger by the lamb in Meijer hoping to see another one like me—to hear
the cackle of her tongue.
In a few days, it will be March and in Michigan, there will be no signs of a permanent
thaw for a few more weeks. I’m waiting for the snow to melt and for the grass to re-grow before
I drive to that old, yellow three-bedroom house on Waverly Road, the house that my grandfather
and Uncle Mack built—the house that was supposed to be passed down to me, but never was. I
am waiting to put my feet to that ground—to feel the cold, damp land. I will (try to) wait for the
snakes.

A Theory of Gallbladders
April 2012
Two years ago, I was misdiagnosed with acid-reflux. Instead, I had a gallbladder that functioned
at about 9%. I started to get used to the pain and to the dietary limitations. Like my exams, like
the prospectus, I just had to get through it, push through the pain, and keep working. Everyday, I
regret not being brave enough to ask for a second opinion.

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On my way to the surgical consult, I drive past the yellow house on Waverly Road. The house
that I am supposed to go to, put my feet to the land, and wait for snakes. I didn’t even notice
where I was going until I saw the intersection with the Big Lots and the Quality Dairy. My
grandmother would give me a quarter to get an orange sherbet ice cream cone after helping her
shell peas or pick tomatoes.
After the consult, I drive to the house and park across the street. The owners are working
in the garden and I’m too afraid to let them know my business. For awhile, I sit and read Not
Vanishing by Chrystos because this is the type of book I bring to the waiting room. I take a walk
around the block and try to figure out what I’m doing there without being noticed. I don’t really
write anything. Instead, I feel good for the first time in weeks. Later, I go home and put the
Talking Circles in the DVD player.
After I had the gallbladder removed and things returned back to normal. I could eat again.
Writing became less painful. I started to enjoy the process. I started to tell writing stories again.
But, here’s the thing, as soon as I learned about my gallbladder, I started to hear stories about
more American Indian women, Chicanas, Latinas, even queer women, who all had their
gallbladders removed.
Here’s my amateur understanding of how a gallbladder functions: its role is to aid in fat
digestion. It holds bile concentrate produced by the liver. My doctor told me that a gallbladder is
supposed to contract, almost like how lungs inhale and exhale, but my sad little organ barely
fluttered.

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Weeks after my recovery, I visit Geri and Jannus. As we are catching up post-surgery, I
find out that they too, have had cholecystectomies. Our bellies all have five little scars from the
laparoscopic surgery.
“I have a theory about why so many indigenous women have disfunctioning
gallbladders,” I say.
“I think it’s because of the food—our bodies can’t properly digest it—we miss our
indigenous food,” Jannus replies.
“Yeah, that’s probably it, but I also think it’s because we Native women get tired from
holding all that bile from the world that we can’t hold the bile from our own liver,” I say.
Like bending over
backwards.
“That sounds about right, but how are you going to prove it?” Geri asks.

On Patience and Understanding
February 2012

All semester, I’ve been trying to learn patience: patience with the dissertation writing, with the
job market, with the world. I haven’t been doing a good job or, maybe I’m too hard on myself
(see Theory of My Knees). I’ve been trying to just let the universe do its job and listen to it as I
move through spaces. This is difficult for me: she who likes to control things.

I saw Geri a few weeks ago and after getting through our agenda of outlining programs to sustain
a Native American Recovery Group, I told her about my difficulty with patience.
“I’m trying to learn patience this year,” I say.
“Ugh, don’t get me started on patience. It’s about understanding,” she says.

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I stir my cold coffee and take a moment because I know I don’t have to ask her to explain. She
tells me she learned the difference between patience and understanding in the 12-step program.
“When I was being patient, I felt like I wasn’t doing anything, just waiting.”
Geri tells me a story about her daughter and granddaughter. Her granddaughter, age 10, will be at
the mall with her friends from 1-3pm and Geri has to trust that her daughter will pick her up at
3pm. With understanding, she knows that her daughter made the right choice to allow her
granddaughter to go to the mall and they will both get home safely. As always, I don’t quite get
it yet.
“When you practice understanding, you have a more active role; you understand what
you can control and what you cannot,” Geri says.
Then, she tells me a story where she relates recovery to negotiating control: what you can and
cannot control. Geri’s observation on the difference between patience and understanding is
significant to the practice of researching with people. She teaches me and I hope she is teaching
you an important reminder that, when you research, especially with people, there’s baggage. We
all bring our histories to the research table and there are things that cannot be controlled. We
have to let them play out, see what happens, and then react. I am not sure if this is the exact
teaching Geri was trying to pass down to me, but this is what I hear, for now. I am sure I will
hear something different next year.

My Whole Self: A Theory of Knees
March 2012

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I am extremely clumsy. I do a pretty good job collecting yellow and green bruises on my legs
and arms and not remembering how I got them. At first, I didn’t think much of the pain in my
knees and knuckles. The pain increased as soon as I finished my last chapter and sent it off to the
committee. For a week, I could barely type or sit without whimpering. My super intelligent
friend Daisy told me that I overextend my knees25. In fact, I think she knew before I knew
because she said, “I’m glad you noticed this.”
For me, the most difficult part of graduate school—of the dissertation has been listening to my
body. I’m stubborn and I don’t like to take care of myself. I’m impatient.
“I think I’ve been overextending my knees for a long time—like for as long as I
remember. I thought that my knees had to be straight. I thought this is what it looks like to be
straight,” I tell Daisy.
“What you thought of as straight is actually bending backwards,” she replies.

For as long as I can remember, I have been literally bending over backwards. I see a relationship
between how I have trained myself to overextend my knees and how I have struggled with not
taking a defensive position while working on this dissertation project, teaching, and going on the
job market. While pursuing a graduate degree, I was convinced that I couldn’t really do the work
that I loved or if I did the work that I loved, I would have to spend my entire career defending it;
this is such a waste of fucking energy.
But, this is a story about timing.
As I lay in bed or on the couch with a pillow under my knees (dissertation physical therapy), my
husband keeps asking me, “how did this happen? Why now?”

25

Daisy Levy, the genius who is writing a dissertation titled “This Book Called My Body.” She
is giving us a language to talk about our bodies through Rhetoric. Her work is brilliant and
important because she is talking about the actual, physical body and not body as metaphor.
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You see, he’s worried for me. I have a habit of waiting until the last minute to understand what
my body is telling me. See: A Theory of Gall Bladders.
Indigenous rhetorical practices are impacting how I move through this world. My knees
and knuckles are making themselves present. The rhetorical theories of American Indian women
provide me with strategies to move out of a defensive position. And now, as I revise, as I
conclude, as I prepare for the dissertation defense, I am learning another strategy to move
through this world where my knees can bend a little and everything will be okay.

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