Engaging with Powell’s “Rhetorics of Survivance: How American Indians Use Writing” and “Listening to Ghosts: An Alternative (non)Argument”

Malea Powell describes “survivance” as the process by which Native Americans wield a uniquely effective rhetoric that conveys the ideas of survival and resistance. Powell uses Charles Alexander Eastman’s autobiography From the Deep Woods to Civilization in one of her examples. She claims that by “using dominant discourse, Eastman marks himself as a subject within it, not just as a victim subject to it. In doing so I hear him imagine a new Indian-ness, one that is not a ‘fictional copy of the past’…,but an Indian-ness in which he encounters his enemies ‘with the same courage in literature’ as his ancestors ‘once evinced on horses’” (“Rhetorics”425). In this way, the Indian might come to represent himself or herself as a survivor of the attempt at complete assimilation, while at the same time using English, the language of the colonizers, to maintain a position of power and resistance through rhetorical sovereignty.

            Referring to historical Natives who became adept practitioners of rhetorics of survivance, in “Listening to Ghosts,” Powell decribes those people as “those who encountered Euroamerican culture, learned the language of the colonizers, and negotiated the demands of ‘civilized’ life as they critiqued, resisted, and survived its impositions” (14). Rhetorics of survivance.

            If language is the means through which we articulate our thoughts, beliefs, and stories, is there something of Native culture, including thoughts, beliefs, and stories that we are unable to communicate if we no longer speak our Native languages? In this way, I wonder if there is a divide between the culture of our ancestors and our own due to some lost meaning that never made its way into our understanding. Is there a profound difference between our idea of Native culture and our ancestors’ idea of Native culture due to the invisible wall of language? Personally, I can’t say that I feel that a part of my identity is missing in the absence of any knowledge of Potawatomi language. English is the language I know, and it’s the language that feels like it most belongs to me. If I were trying to communicate my thoughts to you right now in Potawatomi, you wouldn’t be reading this—because I wouldn’t be able to say the way I understand it in my English-language mode of thinking. When I do try and learn and speak Potawatomi, the words taste unfamiliar and I hesitate in their utterance. So I take comfort in the words of Joy Harjo and Gloria Bird in Powell’s “Listening to Ghosts.”

We are coming out of one or two centuries of war, a war that hasn’t ended. Many of us at the end of the century are using the “enemy language” with which to tell our truths, to sing, to remember ourselves during these troubled times…But to speak, at whatever the cost, is to become empowered rather than victimized by destruction…These colonizers’ languages, which often usurped our own tribal languages or diminished them, now hand back emblems of our cultures, our own designs: beadwork, quills if you will. We’ve transformed these enemy languages. (20)

            So at the same time I wonder if something is lost in the reverse transfer of language. I’ll look at my own tribe for an example. For the majority of us who don’t know Potawatomi language, but have an understanding of our tribal culture and stories in English, do we lose something of our understanding of the culture we’ve always known through our use of Potawatomi language? Not to say that learning Potawatomi is a bad thing—no language should be forced out of existence. But at the point we are now, a generation that has been Potawatomi in the language of English, are we somehow claiming that there is something about the language that will make us more Potawatomi than we already are? What does that even mean? How can we be more of ourselves than what we are? I think the only possible answer to any of these questions is that we can only go about “reinventing ourselves again, in the indigenous languages that named this continent” (“Listening” 20). After all, it’s not beyond the scope of the Indian’s ability to reconfigure her identity in the face of circumstantial changes.

            There’s no doubt that Indians’ acquisition of English has empowered our rhetoric. Powell points out that through the federal government’s attempt to assimilate Natives into Euroamerican modes of thought and language,

Eventually they created Indian doctors and lawyers, activists and politicians, scholars and teachers. Instead of being at the mercy of white translators, Indian lawyers understand the intricacies of the legal ties that bind us and are invested by the system of Euroamerican justice with the authority to do something about it. (“Rhetorics” 427)

             By using this new rhetorical sovereignty we can renegotiate Indian policy and retell a national history that includes Native Americans in pivotal roles.

But in looking at Powell’s explanation of Winnemucca’s ideas of Indian reform, specifically her insistence that Indians should have individual control over tribal land, I wonder if Winnemucca acted against the interests of Indian tribes. She claims that her tribe, the Paiutes, "can enjoy lands in severalty without losing their tribal relations, so essential to their happiness and good character, and... citizenship, implied in this distribution of land, will defend them from the encroachments of the white settlers, so detrimental to their interests and their virtues" (qtd. in “Rhetorics” 407). I understand the idea that owning land as individuals will keep others from taking over tribal land, but the overall implications of such reform do not represent the best interest of all tribes. Perhaps I’m passing judgment on her because of my knowledge of what happens as a result of that reform, and maybe that’s not fair. The Citizen Potawatomi, too, desired the individual allocation of tribal lands, but in the end many of them ended up losing their land and their money. So I guess my overall question is: how did Natives wind up believing that individual land allotments were a good thing? Was their nineteenth-century rhetoric a little too much like that of the Euroamericans?

This story probably won't change your life

“But don’t say in the years to come that you would have lived your life differently if only you had heard this story. You’ve heard it now” (King).

Thomas King demonstrates through his narrative The Truth about Stories that oral storytelling techniques may also be utilized through a written story. He introduces each chapter with a story about a storyteller telling the story “about the earth and how it floats in space on the back of a turtle,” and a listener’s questions about how many turtles are underneath that turtle, to which the storyteller always replies, “No one knows for sure…but it’s turtles all the way down.” The repetition of the story throughout his book is reminiscent of oral storytelling technique, certainly, but more importantly, the continuous reference to turtles upon turtles upon turtles emphasizes his overall claim that “The truth about stories is that that’s all that we are,” stories upon stories upon stories.

Stories determine our identities. They define our experience, our beliefs, and our histories. King quotes Gerald Vizenor’s assertion that “You can’t understand the world without telling a story. There isn’t any center to the world but a story.” Our current ideologies in some way originate in a story. There’s at least one story to justify each of our thoughts and actions. Somewhere we got the idea from. Take for example King’s reference to creation stories. He posits that the Christian creation story conveys a very different sense of the world than the Native creation story he tells:

Finally, in Genesis, the post-garden world we inherit is decidedly martial in nature, a world at war—God vs. the Devil, humans vs. the elements. Or to put things into corporate parlance, competitive. In our Native story, the world is at peace, and the pivotal concern is not with that ascendancy of good over evil but with the issue of balance.

So here are our choices: a world in which creation is a solitary, individual act or a world in which creation is a shared activity; a world that begins in harmony and slides toward chaos or a world that begins in chaos and moves toward harmony; a world marked by competition or a world determined through cooperation. (King 24-5)

The dichotomy of these creation stories parallels the significant distinction between ideologies of the nation of the United States (Canada, too) and Native nations. United States ideology emphasizes individual power and competition, whereas Native nations generally promote interest in the prosperity of the community as a whole, with any individual decisions made being done so in the genuine best interests of the entire people. (I recognize that this is a broad generalization of the beliefs of various Indian tribes on the part of King.) With the passing of the General Allotment Act in 1887, the United States demanded that tribes split up the land they communally owned, shaping individual Indians into competitive Americans—who would surely learn that the opportunities of capitalism were a vast improvement on their original real estate holdings. Can you see the parallels between these stories yet?

When we consider the continuous chipping away at Indian identity by the government, first through cheating Indians out of their land, then changing the definition of what it means to be Indian (basically, any definition that would be sure to exclude most Indians), instituting Indian boarding schools to replace Native culture with American culture, and so on, we might wonder how things could get any worse. But they do. What results is the stereotypical assumption that if you don’t look like an Indian, don’t speak like an Indian, don’t act like an Indian (whatever that means), or don’t live on an Indian reservation, you aren’t an Indian. And sadly, Indians often judge other Indians’ status as Indian on those very ideas, those very stories, that the government perpetuated. King laments, “the reality of identity legislation has not simply been to erase Indians from the political map of North America, it has also had the unforgivable consequence of setting Native against Native, destroying our ability and our desire to associate with each other. This has been the true tragedy, the creation of legal categories that have made us our own enemy” (149).

This part I don’t understand. Well, I do. Maybe. I guess I can only raise some questions. Is there

something frightening to certain Indians about seeing white faces on people who are supposed to

be Indian? What are the proper criteria for identifying people as Native Americans? What harm

could possibly come to one Indian because another defines oneself as Indian? I guess I was right

in my initial reaction…it doesn’t make sense.

King shares his thoughts on the ways we determine the “authenticity” of Indian identity in a rather perfect way.

This is no longer true as it once was, for many Native people now live in cities, with only tenuous ties to a reserve or nation. Many no longer speak their Native language, a gift of colonialism, and the question of identity has become as much a personal matter as it is a matter of blood. N. Scott Momaday has suggested that being a Native is an idea that an individual has of themselves. Momaday, who is Kiowa, is not suggesting that anyone who wants to can imagine themselves to be Indian. He is simply acknowledging that language and narrow definitions of culture are not the only ways identity can be constructed. Yet, in the absence of visual confirmation, these “touchstones”—race, culture, language, blood—still form a kind of authenticity test, a racial-reality game that contemporary Native peoples are forced to play. (55)

Why? The way I see it, if we cease to think of ourselves as Indian, if we abandon our (however delicate) ties to Native culture, if we forget our (hi)stories, we succeed in fulfilling the mission North American government began. We make the Indian disappear.

Is that what we want? Who are we without our stories?

Without my stories, I am not Indian. Without my stories, I wouldn’t be writing this now, and you wouldn’t be reading it. Without my stories, I am not me.

Even now, I am astounded by the variety in Native Americans’ conceptions and projections of their own identities. I listened to the contemporary stream on Native Radio last night and underwent an enlightening experience through contemporary Native sounds. The first song I heard, which I assumed to be typical of Native American musical performance, sounded similar to a meditation track—soft sounds, chimes, melodic vocals—and I thought, “I can tell this is an Indian singing.” I’d always believed Indians are such great singers (I never counted myself among them, mind you). Not only should I have determined that this generalization was borne out of the same stereotypes I condemn in others, but I was soon proven absolutely wrong with the next track. The harsh electronic sounds were painful enough, but the introduction of what can only be described as simply terrible singing was both jarring and awkward. Next song: a single drum, beat without rhythm, and the barely audible “Indian singing” of one man. I know, it’s terrible of me to call it that, but it’s the label that’s in my head that I can’t seem to get rid of. Soon I heard a spoken word track, with a severely cliché poem about the importance of children respecting the Earth. Ouch. Just when I thought I’d heard the worst, a country western song came on. But at this point, I can’t say I’m sure which song was the least pleasant. At the very least, I learned something about contemporary Native American music: the sounds, instruments, techniques, and vocals vary just as much as any music I’ve ever heard in my own experience. There is no quintessential Native American song. There’s just song. And the way we express ourselves is indicative of our own distinct, utterly human identities.

An Introduction

The Bodewadmi (Potawatomi), Ojibwe (Chippewa), and the Odawa (Ottawa) were once one people, called the Nishnabe, or Original People. Together, the three groups were known as the Three Fires Council, in which each group functioned to serve the Nishnabe as a whole. The Ojibwe were the keepers of the medicine and the Odawa were the keepers of the trade. The Bodewadmi were the keepers of the fire, and the word Potawatomi means “People of the Place of the Fire.”

The Nishnabe originally lived along the Eastern Seaboard, occupying the area from present-day New Brunswick, Canada to the state of Maine. It was during this time that the Nishnabe were visited by seven prophets. Each prophet spoke of a prophecy that would manifest in time. It is from this time forward that the Nishnabe refer to the prophecies as the Seven Fires.

The first six fires described the Nishnabe’s migration from the Atlantic Coast to the Great Lakes Region, and the critical loss of power within their religious medicine society, the Medewiwin Lodge. What they foretold has been interpreted as contact with the Europeans and the devastation that would soon follow: war, loss of lands, religious conversion, forced assimilation, and the rise of boarding schools.

The seventh prophet was the last to visit the Nishnabe. He was noticeably different from the others. He was youthful, vibrant, and spoke with an air of confidence. In the seventh fire, he told of a new people who would come forward to retrace the steps of their elders, gathering all that had been left on the trail for them. He explained that the new people would take what they had gathered and rebuild the old ways of their culture.

We are in the seventh fire. What we have gathered along the trail can be seen within our Cultural Heritage Center and other tribal programs, where we see how the old way of life has shaped the way we live today. This knowledge gathered is a tool used to teach our young ones not only what it means to be Bodewadmi, or Potawatomi, but also Nishnabe.

-“…since time immemorial…”: Timeline History of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation

            The assimilation of indigenous people into Euro-American culture has had the effect of diminishing the physical, cultural, and rhetorical presence of Native Americans throughout American history. Today, the Native essence primarily exists in echoes of generations past—the mixed-blood descendants of the former sovereigns of American soil. With European imperialism perpetually stomping out the traces of Indian history and culture, contemporary mixed-blood Natives often wind up in some sort of identity quagmire; where ethnic dualism exists, one identity may easily overcome the other, and sadly, the identity of the colonizers often becomes the only identity an individual can express (knowingly or unknowingly) to society—and themselves. How can Indians identify themselves as such when all they know of the world, culture, and language exists within the framework of colonization? Can a mixed-blood, white Native American stake any claim in the old ways of their people?

Even I have struggled with the task of identifying myself as Citizen Potawatomi within the confines of Euro-American culture.  The Indian part of me has always been lurking in the background of my projected identity, only coming forward within the closed spaces of strictly Potawatomi attendance and ceremony. When I look in the mirror I see a white woman with blonde hair and blue eyes, and no matter how closely I inspect my face, I can’t see any physical manifestation of Indian ancestry. When I speak, English shapes my worldview: I don’t know Potawatomi. When I try to study Potawatomi, I can’t seem to leave English behind, and I become frustrated with the structure of Potawatomi language, wondering how many consonants can possibly be strung together in one word before a vowel is needed. Is the Indian part of me buried so deeply in the past that I have no right to try to retrieve it?

When I spoke to my father of my conflicting thoughts on my identity as a Potawatomi and a descendant of Europeans, he shook his head and told me that this confusion was necessary: I was supposed to question my identity as a Potawatomi. He said, “Haven’t you heard the story of the seven fires? The prophecies of the Potawatomi?” At this point I hadn’t, and when I told him so, he smiled and continued, “There are seven prophecies, called the seven fires, that were given to the Nishnabe a long time ago. The first six fires told us of the coming of the Europeans and that the Nishnabe would lose their way. But the last fire, the seventh fire, said that a new generation of Potawatomi, of Nishnabe, would seek to revive the old ways and direct the people, who had been lost, back to the original path. You are a part of the seventh fire.” He allowed me to understand something about my heritage that I’d overlooked: that Indian part of me, somewhere in the background of my identity, lingered there for a reason—to come forward in the light of the seventh fire.