In 1901, Zitkala-Sa, a Lakota Sioux woman, noted that she translated traditional Sioux stories into English since America had “in the last few centuries acquired a second tongue.” Using that second tongue, Scott Lyons describes rhetorical sovereignty as “the inherent right and ability of peoples to determine their own communicative needs and desires in [the pursuit of their own possibilities], to decide for themselves the goals, modes, styles, and languages of public discourse” (449-50). As Lyons notes, the achievement of rhetorical sovereignty has been and is still thwarted by a rhetorical imperialism that determines the language of debate and identifies the contestants as, for example, when Native Americans are described as belonging to “tribes” rather than “nations” in debates about land. Still, as Lyons also acknowledges, American Indians continually resist rhetorical imperialism with the language of survivance to assert their rhetorical sovereignty. This session examines the concept of rhetorical sovereignty by considering language and Indigenous people from three different perspectives: historical, pedagogical, and community-based.

Angel DeCora’s Survivance Stories

Anne Ruggles Gere considers the language of boarding schools. Thousands of youngsters were taken, sometimes forcibly or deceptively, away from their families and delivered to schools where they were subjected to military-style “education” designed to erase their languages, culture, and dignity in order to become assimilated into Euro-American society. But the assimilation project did not succeed. Many factors contribute to the fact that Indigenous people did not become assimilated and continue to preserve their language, culture, and dignity, and this presentation will focus on one of them: the effects of Indigenous women teachers in boarding schools. By looking at the specific case of Angel DeCora, a Winnebago women who taught art at Carlisle Indian School, this presentation will show how DeCora employed a language of sovereignty in America’s “second tongue” to tell stories of survivance that engendered students’ motivation, cultural and linguistic knowledge, and creativity so they could become successful producers of Indigenous art.

Pedagogical Implications of Rhetorical Sovereignty for Non-Native Faculty

Kelly Sassi will discuss the pedagogical implications for Lyons’ conception of rhetorical sovereignty in a summer writing program on the Turtle Mountain reservation. Lyons defines sovereignty as “the guiding story in our pursuit of self-determination, the general strategy by which we aim to best recover our losses from the ravages of colonization: our lands, our languages, our cultures, our self-respect” (449). What is the role of non-Native teachers in supporting rhetorical sovereignty? This question is explored through the development of a summer writing program drawing from a National Writing Project-funded workshop at Circle of Nations Boarding School that put Native teachers at the center of the writing workshop. By listening to and learning from the Native teachers in an interdisciplinary project centered on the Fort Totten Boarding Schoo was developed for Turtle Mountain youth, many of whom had family members who had attended that school. Together, we explored how indigenous boarding school history affects teaching and learning today. The project led to the development of pedagogical programming for North Dakota teachers and students to explore and decolonize the history and legacy of the Fort Totten Boarding School and its effects on today's people and schools.

Rhetorical Sovereignty and the 4 R’s: Indigenous adaptability and community needs

Kenlea Pebbles will apply the 4 R's, Respect, Relevance, Responsibility, Reciprocity, to demonstrate how rhetorical sovereignty is central to communication between community and government on local, state, and federal levels. She will show how centering Indigenous belief systems and practices can create an inclusive and adaptable framework that allows diverse populations to benefit and participate. This application of a wholistic Indigenous framework is flexible and adjusts to community needs, just as Lyons outlines the necessity for the adaptability of rhetorical sovereignty to be. The 4 R's framework does not treat all Indigenous Peoples as the same but shows how the diversity of Indigenous understandings of place, language, and cultures relates to the individual.. and community, both institutional and Indigenous communities within and outside the institution.”This methodology, like other Indigenous methodologies (both qualitative and quantitative) is designed to be adapted to, for, and by Indigenous communities, but we are increasingly finding these practices are helpful when applied to diverse communities. Current case studies of the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin and Flint, Michigan will explore how rhetorical sovereignty is central to governmental and community communication.