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Indigenous Rhetorics and Pedagogies Meet the 'Block Quote'

A big part of what my book advocates for is the inclusion and valuing of the American Indian cultural practice of “Talking in a Good Way” in the academy as a way to both explore different ways of thinking among non-Native students and of encouraging American Indian and Indigenous students to give ongoing life to a tradition that has much to offer to the world. However, this is not a suggestion that comes without challenges. Today, I’d like to address an aspect of Indigenous academic rhetorics that clashes with mainstream academic expectations. Historically, Indigenous orators were often trained to repeat verbatim stories taught to them by their elders. Dakota physician and writer Charles Alexander Eastman (1858-1939) wrote in Indian Boyhood:

Very early, the Indian boy assumed the task of preserving and transmitting the legends of his ancestors and his race. Almost every evening a myth, or a true story of some deed done in the past, was narrated by one of the parents or grandparents, while the boy listened with parted lips and glistening eyes. On the following evening, he was usually required to repeat it.

–Charles Alexander Eastman. Indian Boyhood (Kindle Locations 410-413).

My late adopted Southern Cheyenne grandfather of nearly twenty years, Eugene Blackbear, Sr., whom I fondly refer to still as Namšem (“my grandfather” in Cheyenne), stressed the importance of this practice in the endless hours we spent together over the years telling, listening to, and sometimes recording, translating, and transcribing his stories. When stories that have been transmitted to storytellers by others who came before them are told, they are often bookended with speech from the speaker’s voice him or herself, but retained as discrete pieces of discourse that quote the original authoritative voice as closely as possible. To do otherwise in the oral tradition can be considered disrespectful in some Indigenous communities—paraphrasing demonstrates a lack of valuing what was handed down. This carries over in the stylistic practices of many Indigenous writers in the academy in what might be seen as an overuse of ‘block quotations’, but what is indeed part of Indigenous rhetorical traditions now manifested in our written work.

I am not the only one who has made this observation. Anishinaabe-Métis FMNI rhetorics scholar Gail Mackay also makes this claim in her 2017 dissertation from the University of Saskatchewan, Finding Indigenous Rhetorical Survivance and Sending It Forward. She says of Cree writer Maria Campbell’s Halfbreed:

The line following this identification of Cheechum [grandmother] is the first direct quote of her speech. This brings into focus a very important characteristic of Cree counselling text that is foundational to the power of the teaching potential of Halfbreed: the idea that Cheechum is one of two narrators. The use of two narrators is a convention found in recorded Cree historical, factual, prophetic and counselling texts. Wolfart (2000) notes that ‘Cree texts seem to have a high proportion of directly quoted speech’ (145-146). Further repetition of quotatives accentuate the fact that the story is another person’s first person narrative. The secondary storyteller adds commentary in a) the form of parenthetical asides, b) the use of third person, and c) the use of direct speech that authenticates the orally transmitted dialogue (Ahenakew & Wolfart, 1987, p. xiii-xiv; Wolfart, 1998, pp. 171-174, Wolfart, 2000, p. 145-146). Maria, the first narrator in Halfbreed uses all these devices to subtly incorporate Cheechum’s voice. The book began as a search for peace of mind and it is culturally appropriate to recall elder’s discourse and weave it into the narrative to achieve this effect. (Mackay 134-35)

This rhetorical device adds to, not detracts from, auctoritas in traditional Indigenous discourse, and we need to make room for it in the academy, even when permissions fees become necessary in order to make allowances for this at the professional level at which publications are involved. However, I think this is something we need to start thinking about in the context of the American Indian and Indigenous studies classroom. In what ways can we as teachers not merely take this convention into account, but actively utilize it and the pedagogies that underlie it in what we do?  How can we construct assignments and activities that engage rote memory as a positive rather than the negative it has become in some educational thought while teaching about it as a practice in context with our existing course content? How can we utilize drawing on authorities in writing or in multimodal discourse in ways that align with the traditional use, meant to be respectful from cultural perspectives?  

I’m interested in your thoughts on this.

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"For thousands of years, American Indian cultures have recorded their truths in the narratives and metaphors of oral tradition. Stories, languages, and artifacts, such as glyphs and drawings, all carry Indigenous knowledge, directly contributing to American Indian rhetorical structures that have proven resistant—and sometimes antithetical—to Western academic discourse. It is this tradition that Kimberly G. Wieser seeks to restore in Back to the Blanket, as she explores the rich possibilities that Native notions of relatedness offer for understanding American Indian knowledge, arguments, and perspectives. Back to the Blanket analyzes a wide array of American Indian rhetorical traditions, then applies them in close readings of writings, speeches, and other forms of communication by historical and present-day figures. Wieser turns this pathbreaking approach to modes of thinking found in the oratory of eighteenth-century Mohegan and Presbyterian cleric Samson Occom, visual communication in Laguna Pueblo author Leslie Marmon Silko’s Almanac of the Dead, patterns of honesty and manipulation in the speeches of former president George W. Bush, and rhetorics and relationships in the communication of Indigenous leaders such as Ada-gal’kala, Tsi’yugûnsi’ni, and Inoli. Exploring the multimodal rhetorics—oral, written, material, visual, embodied, kinesthetic—that create meaning in historical discourse, Wieser argues for the rediscovery and practice of traditional Native modes of communication—a modern-day “going back to the blanket,” or returning to Native practices. Her work shows how these Indigenous insights might be applied in models of education for Native American students, in Native American communities more broadly, and in transcultural communication, negotiation, debate, and decision making." Available now for pre-order . . . https://www.amazon.com/dp/0806157275/ref=tsm_1_fb_lk

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Here’s the new book in the Fall 2017 catalogue for the University of Oklahoma Press!  Things are feeling real!

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Finally, I’ve got a book blog!

Welcome to Back to the Blanket, a blog for my new book that will be upcoming from OU Press this November 2017!  This book has been a longterm project, with some parts of the writing and research beginning nearly twenty years ago.  I am so excited about its completion, and I hope that readers will be pleased with the volume as well. 

On this blog page, I’ll be doing a number of things. I’ll be giving you updates on the book, book signings, and other appearances, but I will also be posting about issues related to American Indian and Indigenous Studies, particularly in regard to rhetorics and literacies, and offering more information on various subjects covered in the book that I simply didn’t have space to cover within the scope of the text. 

I’m hoping to be informative and lead you to other sources of information--like the Annotated Bibliography of American Indian and Indigenous Rhetorics that I began while working on the book that has grown into an ongoing collaborative project with our graduate students here at the University of Oklahoma and my colleague Gabriela Raquel Ríos. I am also hoping to stimulate discussion and growth in the field as I celebrate this project’s release. Thanks for reading!