CHAPTER 1
"I Speak like a Fool, but I Am Constrained"
Emancipating Samson Occom's Intellectual Offspring with American Indian Hermeneutics and Rhetorics
When outsiders can read between every stitch of beadwork, every wrap of quillwork and every brushstroke, then our stories will be told.
— Dakota artist Del Iron Cloud on his philosophy of art
In 1997, I was sitting on a panel at the Native American Symposium in Durant, Oklahoma, listening to one of the other presenters, Clifford Crane Bear (Blackfoot), then director of the Glenbow Museum in Calgary. He said some words that I keep returning to in my ongoing theorizing about American Indian literatures: "Theories are somebody's guess. Through our oral history, we were told never to use theories. We were told to use what we were taught. The first thing my grandfather taught me was that the Earth is our Mother. Respect her." In the intervening years, very little has changed in the academy or in Indian Country regarding theory. Academics, Native or not, have been pressured to "jump on the theory bandwagon," as retired University of Oklahoma Native literature professor and my longtime mentor Geary Hobson (Cherokee/Quapaw descendant) puts it, and many of us have subsequently learned to appreciate, use, and subscribe to the work of non-Native theorists and thinkers — Bakhtin, Foucault, Freire, Bhabha, Said, and many, many more. Moreover, in that twenty-year period, an increasing number of American Indian and tribally descended scholars have authored and are still producing a significant body of theory and criticism. If people were ever under the false impression that there was only one "Native perspective" on American Indian literatures, surely they have been disabused of this notion by now. Clearly, we have multiple Native perspectives about multiple Native ways of reading and writing about American Indian literatures, and traditionally speaking, making room for a multiplicity of voices and perspectives is a positive value in American Indian cultures. As Craig S. Womack (Creek/Cherokee) pointed out in Red on Red: Native American Literary Separatism, "There is such a thing as a Native perspective and ... seeking it out is a worthwhile endeavor. ... Native perspectives have to do with allowing Indian people to speak for themselves ... with prioritizing Native voices" (4). The field of American Indian literary and cultural studies has come a long way in that regard.
But theory, typically framed in circumlocuting, obfuscating, philosophical discourse, tends to feel alienating to those outside the academy. Grassroots American Indians, who quite arguably feel a more vested relationship in the work of the discipline of American Indian studies than the general populace does in other areas of the academy, have a similar relationship to theory, or rather the idea of theory. While Crane Bear disavows the idea of theory, theories themselves are certainly implicit in languages, ways, artifacts, and stories, and moreover, a theory is implicit in his statement. Scholars outside the field of Native studies may see no problem with this disconnect between community and academy. While many academics view their work as separated from communities outside the "ivory tower" of the university, Native and Native-descended scholars, among them myself, have in recent years staked a claim in the academy for pragmatic approaches to our research that have application for Native peoples and communities. If we are to follow the call that Maori scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith set forth in 1999 in her foundational text Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples — by "'reporting back' to the people and 'sharing knowledge'" (15) — then we need to find theory that is appropriate for Native studies subjects from the perspectives of the Native peoples and communities for whom we attempt to be useful. As Anishinaabe critic Kimberly Blaeser suggested in "Native Literature: Seeking a Critical Center," we need
a way to approach Native Literature from an Indigenous cultural context, a way to frame and enact a tribal-centered criticism ... [to] seek ... a critical voice which moves from the culturally-centered text outward toward the frontier of "border" studies, rather than an external critical voice which seeks to penetrate, appropriate, colonize, or conquer the cultural center, and thereby, change the stories or remake the literary meaning. (53)
Traditional literary criticism posits both the artist and the product as objects to be analyzed, rather than recognizing the artist as an agent negotiating meaning with an audience, placing the critic in the role of archeologist or anthropologist, a role that historically has led, in the opinion of many Indigenous people, to cultural imperialism and exploitation. This "anthropologism" happens when well-meaning critics explain cultural aspects of American Indian texts, attempting to catalog discrete chunks, fostering misrepresentation of the whole in the same manner as museum exhibits of artifacts, and leading to the same sense of transferred ownership: the artifacts now belong to the exhibitors, to the viewers, and the cultural "knowledge" now is the "intellectual property" of the critic.
Though a great deal of the cultural literacy necessary for outsiders to understand Native American texts has come from critics writing in the mainstream, and though the scholarship has been done with honorable intentions, the appropriation, the cutting away, the splaying necessary to mainstream modes of criticism, is offensive to many Native people. Hobson says, "The assumption seems to be that one's 'interest' in an Indian culture makes it okay for the invader to collect 'data' from Indian people when, in effect, this taking of the essentials of cultural lifeways, even if in the name of Truth or Scholarship or whatever, is as imperialistic as those simpler forms of theft, such as the theft of homeland by treaty" (Hobson et al. 101). A good number of non-Indian scholars who have been part of the American Indian literary critical community for years have begun to see themselves as allies, acknowledging and adopting Native-centered theoretical approaches as they have recognized the validity of their colleagues' frustrations. Senior scholar David Payne's description of his experiences with American Indian literatures is a good example:
Like most scholars old enough to worry about their cholesterol, I was taught to believe that good criticism spoke with the anonymous voice of a master rationalist, a sort of also-ran scientist, who dissected literary works like dead cats fresh out of the formaldehyde. I have since not only learned more ways to skin a cat, but to develop enough respect for cats to leave them fuzzy and contrary. I like them living in disdain of me (like stories) far more than splayed out on a lab table (like texts). And no matter how sharp a critic may hone in on a work/writer/movement, I now believe he's always telling me a personal story, not a universal narrative aimed at decoding a text. (85)
These comments, though, demonstrate that our issues with mainstream approaches are as much methodological as they are theoretical.
Some readers might argue that these distinctions apply only to the works of the New Critics. However, as I do not see either myself or the scholars upon whose work I build in this section — Kimberly Blaeser, David Payne, and Geary Hobson — as intending our critiques to be that narrow. Other theoretical approaches such as those of feminist, Marxist, and poststructuralist critics also have limitations in regard to Native studies. My discussions of Bakhtin later in this chapter, of Marxism's limitations regarding Almanac of the Dead in chapter 2, and of semiotics in chapter 4 demonstrate these limitations. Other readers might find my approach of incorporating eisegesis similar to reader-response theory. My discussion of the work of Graton Rancheria tribal chairman, scholar, and creative writer Greg Sarris later in this chapter explains what I see as the differences between reader-response approaches and eisegesis, in that Indigenous hermeneutics are grounded not merely in the individual experience but also in tribally specific and intertribal collective cultures, and their specific signifier sets and interpretive practices as tribal cultures can and have rejected individual interpretations — not all "readings" are accepted as "valid" in the way that they are in reader-response. While this admits a sort of "tribal hermeneutical imperialism" akin to Scott Lyons's "rhetorical imperialism" that I explore in chapter 4, a practice that occurs in culturally specific situations as well as extratribally, it also ultimately relates to this chapter's discussion of intellectual sovereignty and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People as well.
As a body of scholars, we have not taken the time to consider that multiple generations of cultural practices not only are informed by the philosophicalbases upon which theory is grounded but also perhaps give rise to different reading praxis, to a hermeneutic methodology that can differ from the mainstream and relies on other literacies. Though we have written and published much American Indigenous–authored literary theory and criticism, no one has articulated a more Indigenous hermeneutic or a corresponding way in which the readings offered by such a practice could be explained in writing. For that reason, before proceeding any further, I would like to posit such a philosophy of hermeneutics, a theory of reading and interpreting "texts" that is more in line with traditional American Indian teachings, without arguing that this is the only way American Indian readers make meaning from stories, texts, signs, and objects. My reasoning is twofold: (1) the separation between how we interpret meaning and how we encode meaning is artificially imposed, for the two are intrinsically tied in a meaning-making system; and (2) examining both hermeneutics and rhetoric is profitable for American Indian and Indigenous studies as a whole in validating models grounded in culture that serve not only American Indian and Indigenous scholars and students but also non-Natives. As scholar Donald Fixico (Shawnee, Sac and Fox, Muscogee Creek and Seminole) suggests in The American Indian Mind in a Linear World: American Indian Studies and Traditional Knowledge, teaching alternative models of thought opens up worlds of new ideas in the academy and beyond. This chapter, therefore, posits both a hermeneutic and a scholarly rhetoric for American Indian studies; examines how examples of such a rhetoric have already been used to some extent by American Indian and American Indian–descended scholars; grounds my theorizing in a rhetorical analysis of the work of one of our intellectual elders, Samson Occom; and concludes with my eisegesis that explores how such intellectual work can affect our greatest natural resource as American Indian and American Indian–descended peoples, our future generations.
Reading Red: American Indian Performative Hermeneutics
An American Indian–based hermeneutic has to address several elements, all of which are intertwined. The relationships between text, reader, author, and "reality," which directly bear on the function of story — and thus literature — in American Indian cultures and what this implies about reading and purpose, must be articulated. The manner in which those relationships affect the waythe reader makes meaning out of the text and how this way of reading is complicated by its contradictions with the needs of mainstream academic discourse about culture and cultural production must be explored. Finally, conclusions about this hypothetical American Indian hermeneutic and the ideas examined in this volume regarding American Indian rhetorics in English and postulate a scholarly rhetoric will need to be drawn together. This scholarly rhetoric must validate the ways traditional American Indian students discuss and write about American Indian literatures in college and university classrooms. It also must be helpful to critics of American Indian literatures who wish to create literary criticism that is acceptable and understandable to the grassroots American Indian people to whom this body of literature belongs, as well as be helpful to scholars whose work engages other aspects of American Indian and Indigenous studies.
An exploration of the relationships between text, reader, author, and "reality," I think, must begin with the distinct idea of the power of words in American Indian cultures. Unlike in speculative fiction, in which words can change reality by changing the way the reader perceives it, in Indigenous worldviews, words actually change reality. Unlike in structuralist and poststructuralist thought, words are not merely signifiers; they are inherently performative, always enacting meaning. Renowned Kiowa author N. Scott Momaday says:
At the heart of the American Indian oral tradition is a deep and unconditional belief in the efficacy of language. Words are intrinsically powerful. They are magical. By means of words can one bring about physical change in the universe. By means of words can one quiet the raging weather, bring forth the harvest, ward off evil, rid the body of sickness and pain, subdue an enemy, capture the heart of a lover, live in the proper way, and venture beyond death. (15–16)
Because of this power, the role of the American Indian or Indigenous author — or storyteller or filmmaker or visual or performing artist — is quite different from the role of the mainstream author. S'Klallam poet Duane Niatum says:
As a tribal poet, the word is a sacred object. ... [T]he words are the carriers of the culture from past generations to the present, and on into the future. The values of the tribe are fused into the songs and stories. ... [T]he word, if used respectfully, is invested with power and magic. ... [Narrators] are merely the vocal reeds for the expression of their people, and ... a higher power than themselves gave them the gift to give back to the people something they had lost long ago on the road we are forever following into the next century. (65–66)
These qualities of words are part of the reason why Namšem always taught me that, as "Indians," we try to say things "in a good way." Words and symbols have power. When we put them out into the universe, they have an effect. We have to be careful of the words we use because good and bad creative energies can be sent into the universe.
The author participates in the sacred act of creation, but this is not an exclusive role. As my late mentor Lee Francis III taught me, "Creator gave all of us a piece of the story. It is our responsibility to give it back." Vine Deloria says, "We are, in the truest sense possible, creators or co-creators with the higher powers, and what we do has immediate importance for the rest of the universe. ... [T]he responsibility is always there for [all entities] to participate in the continuing creation of reality" (Spirit 47). Reality, then, is an ongoing metanarrative, one story that encompasses all story, in which all things are connected. This paradigm is evident in American Indian writings, such as Almanac of the Dead (see chapter 2), as well as in American Indian reality, showcased by the more radical rhetorical strand of the Indigenous activist movement Idle No More (see chapter 4).
I would suggest that this sort of thinking, which is far more holistic than discrete and linear, places those of us with this eschatology in a unique interpretative situation. On one hand, we are "listening" to the words of an author actively changing reality. On the other, we are co-creators, participants in change, synthesizing this "new" information with our previous knowledge/experience. In other words, we are actors in "ceremony," something Leslie Marmon Silko hit on very early with her first novel, Ceremony, which is still widely regarded as one of the most important American Indian novels. Deloria says the purpose of ceremony is "to make whole again what has now become disassociated and chaotic" (Spirit 55). In Cherokee terms, it is to restore duyukta, to put entities, including the self as a reader, in the proper place. Qwo-Li Driskill has already posited duyukta, or , as a part of a Cherokee methodology (Yelesalehe 28–29), but an explanation of this concept helps, I believe, to show why it would be applicable to an American Indian–based hermeneutic. Many American Indian languages have equivalent words. Laguna Pueblo scholar Paula Gunn Allen says, "Right relationship, or right kinship, is fundamental to American Indian aesthetics. Right relationship is dictated by custom within a given tribe or cultural grouping, but everywhere it is characterized by considerations of proportion, harmony, balance, and communality" (Spider Woman's Granddaughters 9). Seeing reading as evoking change in the reader and in reality, in the way ceremony evokes change in the participant and in reality, as all are interconnected, would certainly be in line with traditional beliefs regarding the role of story as delineated by Allen as well: "Stories ... make pertinent points to some listener who is about to make a mistake or who has some difficulty to resolve, and hold the listeners' attention so that they can experience a sense of belonging to a sturdy and strong tradition" (Spider Woman's Granddaughters 1). We interpret as much, if not more, by eisegesis, through synthesizing story with what we already know and have experienced, than we do by analysis, or exegesis. As demonstrated above, pure analysis appears clinical and offensive in Indian Country. In fact, the epistemic function of narrative in American Indian cultures is supposed to lead to eisegesis. We should each derive a personal truth or truths when we are told a story, and we have the right as sovereign individuals to the validity of our personal truth.
