Native AmerIndian Theor(h)etoric: The Periphery Speaks.

Rhetoric scholars must open space for the unheard counter-stories of American Indians, which exist alongside the echo of American-ness that implicates all people in this country. As the scholarly discourse of the academy itself is situated within a framework of the American narrative of conquest and imperialism, scholars must recognize that they are part of the system of denial, the "un-seeing" of the American Indian and his or her story that challenges this master narrative. Michael Dorris points out the "conviction that the West holds a virtual monopoly on 'science,' logic and clear-thinking" writes a singular narrative for the Indian scholar whose work is about some aspect of Indian culture. The academic valuing of Western "objectivity" is used to narratively mark (usually with asterisks and italics) the Indian who studies his or her own culture. Limited by the type of story he or she can tell, the American Indian is in an impossible bind. However, there are some stories that can be told, mixed blood stories told from the borders of Indian-ness, American-ness, and Scholarly-ness. These stories operate across institutions and ideologies constructed by narratives, across frontiers/borders/boundaries. This is a place for the "theorhetoric," a mixed blood rhetoric that works through theories of history, anthropology, and literature to assemble a border-situated web of tactics with which various constructions of American Indian rhetorics can be accessed. (TB)