Rhetoric of Indigenous People

Note: The entire issue of the September 2011 journal College Composition and Communication is devoted to the rhetorics of indigenous people. For example, several articles deal with the American attempt to educate the Cherokee.

One of the authors defines the term “survivance” as coined from “survival” and “resistance.” The message is plain: The native peoples used their indigenous rhetorics to analyze and criticize  and discredit the European and Western concept of colonialism to marginalize native people by trying to assimilate them into the dominant culture. In reading about these native authors, students learn the power of writing to resist. 

 Comment: This issue of College Composition and Communication (September 2011), is a keeper. You might skim it to begin with, but you will come back to it again. The articles are significant and well written, too. RayS.