ABSTRACTANISHINAABEK ABROAD:LITERAL AND LITERARY INDIGENOUS JOURNEYS IN THE 19TH CENTURYByNichole Marie Keway The 19th century marked the first significant wave of Native North American tribal peoples to gain spoken and written literacy in English. As first-language speakers of their own indigenous languages, authors approached the learning and use of written English from dual positions of empowerment and subjugation. Their compelling experience of the processes of writing and publication underscored how English as a spoken language displaced tribal norms of communal address. The implicit devaluing of oral tradition undermined the established, place-sensitive processes of decision- and meaning- making. The contrast between the heritage of interpersonal council and the introduction of non-placed authoritative letters offers a prescient look at contemporary understandings of how access is gained and denied within the public sphere. The traditional industry, rituals, and stories addressed in the oral tradition were based on the intimacy and immediacy of communion with an expanded sphere of influence not limited to the human. Direct interaction with fellow tribal peoples, deceased ancestors, spirits of land, air and water, as well as the corporeal and spiritual presences of animals all contributed to the establishment of communicative cultural norms. In contrast, a written tradition can normalize stepping away from the immediately shared commonalities of people and place. The validity and authority of this literate public sphere is largely based upon racial, cultural, and anthropologic hierarchies suited to the exploitation of people and resources. The power invested in face-to-face communication rests on a foundation of the situated relationships among diverse life forces. In the literate public sphere, papers and decrees are vested with an authority that overrules the formative influence of place-based relationships steeped in the unifying eco-diversity of the commons. This dissertation explores the implications of this key difference in expressive norms through the writings of the several featured 19th century Anishinaabek authors, as well as through the inclusion of pertinent traditional stories that reflect how unbalanced relationships between people, place, animals, and spirits are of the highest moral and ecological consequence.
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