Tensions in rhetorics of presence and performance

This dissertation draws on theories of survivance and rhetorical sovereignty to document and interrogate interactional tensions in rhetorics of presence and performance occurring between selected American Indian students and non-Native faculty, staff, and graduate research assistants within a research-extensive university context. Tensions arise, I argue, because participants hold discrepant beliefs concerning the goal and function of education and the role sovereignty plays in achieving that goal. Discrepancies affect the way participants enact, receive, describe, and interpret presence and performance and determine how effectively Indigenous epistemologies are incorporated within the university. Utilizing tenets of Critical Indigenous Research Methodologies, the study rejects deficit views while remaining cognizant of colonized histories. It gives voice to Indigenous knowledges in practical and applicable ways as it accounts for contemporary educational realities, and it reconceptualizes research and educational praxis from an intercultural perspective. The study finds several factors crucial to supporting American Indian students: an understanding of sovereignty and trust obligations; Native faculty and personnel who are culturally invested, academically skilled, and able to effectively implement culturally responsive curricula; strength-based support; and, administrators and teachers whose praxis addresses Native-identified need and honors Indigenous difference. If university systems are to live up to their rhetoric of support for American Indian educational success, they must address interactional tensions and negotiate to more overtly indigenize the academy. They must suit canon, curriculum, and pedagogy to Native students' separate and specific needs as members of sovereign nations.

TENSIONS IN RHETORICS OF PRESENCE AND PERFORMANCE by Sundy Louise Watanabe A dissertation submitted to the faculty of The University of Utah in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Education, Culture, and Society The University of Utah August 2012 Copyright © Sundy Louise Watanabe 2012 All Rights Reserved The Univers i ty of Utah Graduate School STATEMENT OF DISSERTATION APPROVAL The dissertation of Sundy Louise Watanabe has been approved by the following supervisory committee members: Frank Margonis , Chair 5/18/12 Date Approved Bryan Brayboy , Member 5/18/12 Date Approved David Quijada , Member 5/18/12 Date Approved Wanda Pillow , Member 5/18/12 Date Approved Dolores Calderon , Member 5/18/12 Date Approved and by Harvey Kantor , Chair of the Department of Education, Culture, and Society and by Charles A. Wight, Dean of The Graduate School. ABSTRACT This dissertation draws on theories of survivance and rhetorical sovereignty to document and interrogate interactional tensions in rhetorics of presence and performance occurring between selected American Indian students and non-Native faculty, staff, and graduate research assistants within a research-extensive university context. Tensions arise, I argue, because participants hold discrepant beliefs concerning the goal and function of education and the role sovereignty plays in achieving that goal. Discrepancies affect the way participants enact, receive, describe, and interpret presence and performance and determine how effectively Indigenous epistemologies are incorporated within the university. Utilizing tenets of Critical Indigenous Research Methodologies, the study rejects deficit views while remaining cognizant of colonized histories. It gives voice to Indigenous knowledges in practical and applicable ways as it accounts for contemporary educational realities, and it reconceptualizes research and educational praxis from an intercultural perspective. The study finds several factors crucial to supporting American Indian students: an understanding of sovereignty and trust obligations; Native faculty and personnel who are culturally invested, academically skilled, and able to effectively implement culturally responsive curricula; strength-based support; and, administrators and teachers whose praxis addresses Native-identified need and honors Indigenous difference. If university systems are to live up to their rhetoric of support for American Indian educational success, they must address interactional tensions and negotiate to more overtly indigenize the academy. They must suit canon, curriculum, and pedagogy to Native students' separate and specific needs as members of sovereign nations. For those who have gifted their stories and for George who always gives his all. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT………………………………………………………………………………….iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS…………………………………………………………………...vii Chapters 1. SELF DETERMINATION THROUGH SELF EDUCATION....................................... 1 Contextualizing AITE and Sovereignty ............................................................................. 5 The Recurring Narrative.....................................................................................................15 Interchapters........................................................................................................................20 Interchapter 1: Observable Tensions................................................................................23 2. DEFINITIONS, DEBATES, AND A DISH OF SEVEN-LAYER BEAN DIP .........31 Presence................................................................................................................................33 Performance.........................................................................................................................35 Layered Overlap...................................................................................................................39 Colonization and Deficit.....................................................................................................41 Complications of Integration and Separation .................................................................46 Survivance .............................................................................................................................50 Nationhood Complications in Integration and Separation ...........................................54 Rhetorical Sovereignty ........................................................................................................63 Rhetoric in Rhetorical Sovereignty....................................................................................67 Interchapter 2: More Power and More Life ....................................................................75 3. AN INTRICATE AND DELICATE METHODOLOGICAL WEB.............................81 Turning Back the Gaze .......................................................................................................84 Alliance on Middle Ground ...............................................................................................89 Critical Indigenous Research Methodologies ..................................................................92 Rivaling as Method/Process ..............................................................................................99 Community Literacy Center...................................................................................100 Dialogic/Practical Hermeneutics ..........................................................................102 Discrepant Communities and Willing Interpretation ........................................103 Interchapter 3: Nicia's Reflections on Separation and Identity..................................107 4. DATA GATHERING PROCESSES AND PROCEDURES.........................................109 vi Five Stages of Data Gathering.........................................................................................112 Reflections on Data Gathering ........................................................................................119 Challenges and Limitations ..............................................................................................122 Confidentiality ....................................................................................................................124 Interchapter 4: The Eye Rollers.......................................................................................126 5. A DEEPER LISTENING TO NEGOTIATED MEANINGS.....................................134 Enacting Survivance ..........................................................................................................136 From Survivance to Rhetorical Sovereignty ..................................................................144 Norming the Norm ...........................................................................................................151 Interchapter 5: Talking About Community ...................................................................169 6. WISDOM IN DIFFERENCE...............................................................................................175 What We Know .................................................................................................................176 "We're all more alike than different in the end, no matter what.".............................182 Understanding (Comm)unity Differently.......................................................................185 An End Note......................................................................................................................189 Interchapter 6: Dana's Reflection on Wisdom Sits in Places ……………………….191 REFERENCES….………………………………………………………………………… 192 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The work of this dissertation has not been accomplished alone. Throughout the process, many have inspired and strengthened me. Heartfelt thanks goes to Frank Margonis, chair of my committee, who introduced me to hermeneutics and trusted my vision even when I was struggling to make it clear to myself. He will laugh, knowing I have placed a vinyl sticker above my computer at eye level that says (simply) SIMPLIFY, as he knows only too well how I struggle (delight) in complexity. The quality of this document greatly benefitted from his careful responses and his ability to unfailingly provide the right balance of challenge and encouragement. Similar expressions of gratitude go to Bryan Brayboy, who mentored my introduction to Indigenous Studies as well as my attempts to understand a worldview not my own and whose scholarship has provided much of the foundation for this work. Bryan exemplified the respect and relationality so important to research by, with, in, and for Native communities. Special thanks as well to committee members David Quijada, Wanda Pillow, and Dolores Calderon. They are exceptional scholars whose interest in and deep engagement with the ideas and possibilities in this document will help fuel my future work. I am grateful as well for the financial and academic support offered by the Department of Education, Culture, and Society, the Writing Program, and the Steffensen Cannon Family. I thank them for structuring programs, constructing curricula, and marshalling resources so that my attention could be focused on scholarship and professional preparation. As I look to the future, I think of hands back/hands forward and wish to acknowledge that this document's very existence was established through the generosity of its research viii participants and all those who came before. Although to keep confidences I do not list them by name, I honor them for their many gifts: courage, knowledge, friendship, and resiliency, to name a few. I am deeply indebted to them for sharing their life experiences and for providing the socioaccupuncture of insightful interpretation so that we all might benefit. A collectivity of other scholars has also offered questions and provided answers, feedback, and support at critical junctures. Many thanks to Maureen Mathison, Doris Warriner, Daniel Emery, Catherine Emihovich, Beverly Moss, Reza Crane Bizzaro, Joyce Rain Anderson, Angela Haas, Rose Gubele, and Luana Uluave. I also express heartfelt thanks to Emma Maughan, Jessica Solyom, and Kristin Searle who have the paved before me, as well as Beth Godbee and Rasha Diab who walk beside me on a peaceable path. To Judith Flores Carmona, Kim Hackford-Peer, Barbara Kessell, Belinda Otukolo Saltiban, and DeeDee Mower-thank you, valued friends and colleagues. My life is continually blessed by your presence in it. Your influence is immense, your hearts true and good. Thank you as well to the many other friends and neighbors whose hearts and hands have reached out in support. I think especially of Tonya, whose kindred spirit and gift of a wooden art block inscribed with the words, "Your Story Matters" motivated me and helped me focus during the last year of writing. Finally, I express immeasurable gratitude and love to my dear husband and partner, George, my children and grandchildren, and my extended family. Without their love, help, patience, and sacrifice nothing would have been accomplished. They are the joy of my life and my constant polar star. They are why I do the work I do. A birthday letter from my mother notes a blessing I received in which I am reminded that I "stood up for the right." In the letter she adds, "That's our Sundy!" I hope to always merit her confidence in me. CHAPTER 1 SELF DETERMINATION THROUGH SELF EDUCATION The history of American Indian education can be summarized in three simple words: battle for power (Lomawaima, 2000, p. 2). This dissertation documents and interrogates interactional tensions in rhetorics of presence and performance occurring between selected Native1 and non-Native persons within a research-extensive university context. Interactional tensions arise at this site, I argue, because Natives and non-Natives hold discrepant beliefs concerning the role sovereignty plays in the education of Native students. Discrepant beliefs affect the way participants enact, receive, describe, and interpret presence and performance within this system of higher education and determine how (in)effectively Indigenous epistemologies2 are incorporated within the university. In analyzing participant data, I find that discriminations made in academic environments tend to more highly value demonstrations of European American presence and performance, while ignoring or discrediting Native attempts, including enactments of survivance and rhetorical sovereignty. Ultimately, the tensions participants experience as a result of discriminations 1 While noting the debates surrounding naming terminology concerning First Nations people of North America-some may take exception to the terms used in this document or use others-I have chosen to use "American Indian," "Native," and "Indigenous," following current Indigenous Studies scholarship. These terms are used interchangeably in this dissertation. 2 In this document, I rely on certain key Indigenous Studies scholars' definitions and explications of epistemologies. These scholars assert that, in Indigenous thought, axiologies (ways of valuing) and ontologies (ways of being) are not separable from epistemologies (ways of knowing) and that Native people utilize this understanding to meet the daily challenges of life in their communities. (Brayboy & Maughan, 2009; Gegeo & Watson-Gegeo, 2001; Maughan, 2008; Meyer, 2003; Nicholls, 2009). 2 embodied in interpretations of Native presence and performance impede the (re)centering of Indigeneity within higher education and influence the success/failure cycle of some Indigenous3 programs. If American Indians are to be more successful in completing higher educational degrees, university personnel and programs must address these tensions and negotiate to more overtly indigenize the academy. They must suit canon, curriculum, pedagogy, and administration to Native students' separate and very specific needs as members of sovereign nations. One program at Western States University4 attempted such a course of action between 2003 and 2009: the American Indian Teacher Education program, hereafter referred to as AITE. Situated within the College of Education, AITE constituted a site wherein tensions of presence and performance played out in very public ways. AITE began in 2003 with aspirations of providing a top quality university experience for Native students pursuing degrees in education. It was dismantled in 2009. I was a research assistant and writing mentor for students in the program from 2006 to 2008. Along with all involved, I experienced interactional tensions caused by its "self-determination through self-education" approach, an approach I will explain further as I move through this introductory chapter. Because of my unique insider/outsider positioning, I was allowed immediate and visceral access to these tensions. I both participated in and stood apart from them. Some of the tensions I understood; some I did not. Many students I mentored became my friends even as they remained degrees of distance from me. I was an advocate who often inadvertently or by association nevertheless negatively symbolized Whiteness and the results of colonization, those long-standing systems that I came to see often prevented people in the institution and College from seeing sovereignty as a crucial aspect of the program and 3 "Indigenous" can refer to any or all First Nation peoples across the globe. In this document, the term will be used to specify North American Indian populations unless otherwise noted. 4 To protect privacy, names of both the university and the program have been changed. 3 American Indian education more broadly. Sometimes it prevented them from seeing Indigenous students as fully present and competent scholarly performers. During my time in the program, I was surprised and often dismayed by the ways interactions worked at cross-purposes and created misunderstandings or tensions rather than facilitated communication and productive action. Having recently spent quite some time immersed in Indigenous Studies coursework, I felt especially attenuated to at least some of the undercurrents in these intercultural exchanges. I felt compelled to better understand them. From what was highlighted in my scholarly studies and from what I was experiencing and observing in my intermediary role as research assistant and AITE mentor, I thought I recognized interactional patterns arising from different educational values and goals. I saw these as related to notions of sovereignty, including survivance and rhetorical sovereignty. After the program was dissolved and as I prepared for my dissertation project, I began reflecting upon my observations and experiences in the AITE program in earnest. AITE thus became the site of this dissertation research, and my reflections allowed me to pose my central research questions: 1. How are tensions in participant constructions of presence and performance related to deeply held convictions concerning sovereignty, including iterations of survivance and rhetorical sovereignty? 2. How are these tensions enacted, received, described, and interpreted by study participants, and with what consequences? While much could be studied in relation to the program itself and while the program contextualized the study in a specific way, I was mainly interested in Native and non-Native pedagogical interactions within the program. With research questions in mind, then, I began to invite participants involved in and with AITE, namely, American Indian students from 2003- 4 2008 cohorts along with American Indian project directors, coordinators, research assistants, and staff members from the same time period. I also drew participation from non-Native graduate teaching assistants, students, faculty, and other university personnel involved in program decisions, courses, ancillary work, and events for American Indian students. Then, to provide additional perspective, I asked newspaper reporters and columnists, Writing Center personnel, and Native students not involved in the teacher education program to participate as well. Ideally, participants would be identified by specific tribal affiliation. However, I have chosen not to identify participants in this way for reasons of confidentiality and only note that tribal affiliation varied, as participants came from multiple geographical regions across the United States. While I drew upon a fairly large number of participants for initial observation and interviews, I selected a smaller number to participate further in the research work. Those I selected most often came from the set of participants with whom I had most contact during the timeframe of the study and those who exhibited the most interest. In conducting this study, I felt an imperative to question and understand so that "next time" we could perform our roles more effectively and promote more productive educational experiences for American Indian students. In this introductory chapter, I give brief background information concerning AITE. I place the program alongside a brief history of sovereignty as understood by particular scholars working within the U.S. educational system. I do so to explain how an understanding of sovereignty is applicable in educational settings and why it requires a tailoring of the education experience to Native needs. This juxtaposition of the program and the larger history of sovereignty also allows me to explore the ways in which meeting the educational needs of Native students can evoke interactional tension. Both are key to understanding the data accumulated during my research, data that allowed me to begin answering my research questions. 5 Contextualizing AITE and Sovereignty Title VII of Public Law 107-110 (115 STAT. 1907), also known as the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, states, "It is the policy of the United States to fulfill the federal Government's unique and continuing trust relationship with and responsibility to the Indian people for the education of Indian children" (20 USC 7401, p. B 27). According to this federal law and as a result of historic treaty agreements made in exchange for land and access to other natural resources, it is the government's duty to provide for "the training of Indian persons as educators and counselors and in other professions serving Indian people" (p. B 28). Drawing on this trust relationship policy as well as Section 7121: Improvement of Educational Opportunities for Indian Children (20 USC 7441), a Native scholar and staff members in the College of Education at Western University applied for grant money to create a program whereby American Indians could pursue degrees leading to certification and licensure in the educational fields of their choice. Subsequently, in 2003, the United States Department of Education's Office of Indian Education (OIE) awarded a grant of just under a million dollars and thereby provided funding for AITE. In a show of support, the provost's office at Western University allocated an additional $90,000 to assist in funding a center and to cover tuition fees for Native students in the program. Awarding the grant created an opportunity for American Indian/Alaskan Natives to participate in an educational program initiated, implemented, and administered by American Indian faculty and staff under the guiding principle of self-determination through self-education. Understanding the concept of sovereignty as it applies here requires understanding that Native tribal units hold national sovereign status apart from U.S. federal and state governmental organizations (Lomawaima, 2000; Lomawaima & McCarty, 2002). After Europeans arrived on the North American continent, they made treaties with the tribal groups already residing there. 6 The earliest of these treaties occurred between 1722 and 1805 and the last occurred in 18685. These treaties were recognized as legally binding contracts between sovereign nations whereby groups of people were allowed to coexist within designated spaces. As European settlers began to claim land and rights beyond original agreements-maintaining an epistemological rule of might, Manifest Destiny, and private ownership-the U. S. government attempted to change established treaty agreements, resulting in violent struggles and the eventual colonization of the continent (Burkhart, 2004; Deloria, V. 2001; Medicine, 2001; Wilkins, 2002). Despite conquest and colonization, legally binding documents currently state that, in exchange for lands held "in trust," the U.S. government is bound to provide for the health, the welfare, and-of special importance to this study-the education of tribal nations (Wilkins, 2002; Wilkins & Lomawaima, 2002). Sovereignty, in other words, refers to the power or authority of Indigenous nations to exercise self-governance and independence. David Wilkins (2002) notes that American Indians are the only racialized group in the United Stated to have both a legal and political relationship with the federal government. Other racialized Indigenous groups, such as the Native Hawaiian organization Free Hawaii, are working for similar recognition but have not yet achieved it (see www.freehawaii.org). The "Apology Bill" signed into United States Public Law in 1993 rhetorically regrets the illegal overthrow of Hawaiian monarchy in 1893 but adds a disclaimer stating, "Nothing in this Joint Resolution is intended to serve as a settlement of any claims against the United States." More recently, the Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act of 2011 (Akaka Bill, S.675) "provides[s] for a process " whereby the "special political and legal relationships" promoting the welfare of Indigenous Hawaiian people might be recognized 5 See http://earlytreaties.unl.edu and also http://www.firstpeople.us/FP.Html- Treaties/Treaties.html. 7 (emphasis added). Sovereignty, whether for American Indians, Native Hawaiians, or other Indigenous peoples, advocates the advancement of at least some form of legally recognized nationhood6 (Barker, 2005; Bilosi, 2005; Brayboy, Fann, Castagno, & Solyom, 2012; Grande, 2000; Shockey, 2001; Wilkins, 2002). This history of sovereignty places American Indian tribal nations in a difficult situation. On one hand, they assert (indeed, are recognized as having) self-determination, i.e., the right to decide for themselves how they will live their lives and govern their communities. On the other, all aspects of their lives and communities are controlled by a powerful, (one might even say foreign) governing entity. The conflict between these two realities, as one might imagine, has led to sovereignty being a highly contested term. The how and why of its implementation is debated as much within Native communities as between them and non-Native communities (see Weaver, Womack, & Warrior, 2006; Rizvi, 2007; UN Draft Declaration of Indigenous Rights, 2007). Yet, in spite of contesting how and why, this much is clear: sovereignty affirms a Native identity separate from that established by the U.S. government (Lomawaima, 2000) although it is a nation-to-nation identity and status not widely recognized or countenanced in much public rhetoric. Ojibway scholar Scott Lyons (2000) calls sovereignty "an ideal principle," suggesting that the ideal may not always be achieved but indicating that through at least attempting to achieve it Native peoples can "see the paths to agency and power and community renewal" (p. 449). Many Native peoples today work to reinvigorate legislation whereby the U.S. must recognize these government-to-government trust relations, consequently loosening their 6 Nationhood is a modern, Western construct that existed in Europe and arose in North America as a result of war and conquest (1812, Civil War, World War I, World War II); in a later chapter, I will more fully detail how the concept of nationhood applies in an American Indian context (Lyons, 2010) and influences integration/separation debates. 8 controlling grip on Native land, natural resources, and monies7 as well as living up to contractual agreements concerning self-governance and independence. But the stakes linked to historical and contemporary legal struggles and claims for sovereignty are high. One of these struggles has to do with "land versus property" issues (Grande, 2004, p. 40). As Creek writer Craig Womack (1999) states, "America loves Indian culture; America is much less enthusiastic about Indian land title" (p. 11). We could look to the Eloise Cobel case (Volz, 2010) and the Sardis Lake case in Oklahoma (Barringer, 2011) as recent examples. The Cobel case is a class-action law suit filed in 1996 accusing the Interior and Treasury departments of "stealing and squandering" royalties due American Indians as part of the 1887 Dawes Act, which placed land "in trust" for individual American Indians and promised royalties for oil, gas, grazing, or recreational leases (Nelson, 2011). Although American Indians are owed an estimated $47 billion in royalties, a relatively meager but still welcome $3.4 billion settlement was reached in 2009. In the Sardis Lake case, Choctaw and Chickasaw tribes are currently negotiating for recognition as joint owners with the state of Oklahoma of Sardis Lake water, an act that would help protect the tribes' water rights. At question is whether water claims must be tied to specific land grants and how land allotment and reservation status figures in these claims and grants. As these political contestations suggest, sovereignty is inherently "tied to land and the people that are linked to the land. Any tactic or strategy employed for the purpose of pursuing Native possibility and power, then, should be tribally specific and . . . should unite the topics of land, sovereignty, and the word" (Gubele, 2008; see also Alfred, 2011; Battiste, 2002; Coffey & Tsosie, 2001). Womack (1999) notes a specific tribal case: the belief that Creeks are "placed in a particular landscape for a reason, not as a matter of chance, that land is the very life and breath of [the Nation], and if [they] part with it, [they] part with [their] blood" (193). Keith Basso (1996) 7 See for examples Grande, 2004, pp. 76-77. 9 says relationships with the land are established "most often in the company of other people, and it is on these communal occasions-when places are sensed together-that native views of the physical world become accessible to strangers" (p. 109). Landscape thus performs a rhetorical function when, through intercultural exchanges, it becomes imbued with "transcultural" qualities (p. 148). It becomes a space whereby Native views become accessible to non-Natives and vice versa. Since community is often experienced through local geography, the landscape involved in this dissertation becomes a "symbolic vehicle" of communication (Basso, 1996, p. 109), whether in the form of the university campus, buildings, and housing or the local and/or home spaces students have temporarily left. With this understanding, Cherokee scholar Jace Weaver's (1997) term "communitist" also becomes useful in that it merges the ideas of community and activism to name a commitment to advocacy (Cox, 2006, p. 205). Sovereignty becomes communitist to the degree that it exhibits a "proactive commitment to Native community" (Stromberg, 2006, p. 7; see also Coffey & Tsosie, 2011, on "cultural" sovereignty). Those who criticize sovereignty fear what it allows American Indians to pursue: existence on their own terms, both within Indigenous communities and "in the presence of others" (Lyons, 2000, p. 457). Those who downplay the importance of sovereignty in educational venues (self-determination through self-education) obstruct and curtail Native "possibilities" and power (p. 449; see also Powell, 2002). "Sometimes," says Lyons (2010), pursuing sovereign communities "means adopting new ways of living, thinking, and being that do not necessarily emanate from a traditional cultural source . . . and sometimes it means appropriating the new and changing it to feel more like the old. Sometimes change can make the old feel new again" (p. 33; see Deloria, 1970, for a similar argument). In this way, Lyons indicates that beneficial change can arise from strategic applications of both traditional and contemporary epistemologies. 10 Given what many Native scholars consider an Indigenous epistemological stance, attempts at sovereignty are undertaken with an accompanying sense of community responsibility and need (see Deloria, 2001; Medicine, 2001). Indigenous Studies scholarship often refers to this sense of community responsibility as self-determination (see Lipka, 2002; Reyhner, 1989). While acknowledging that not all agree on how the term is used or defined, I take self-determination to mean Native communities' abilities to choose, despite external power differentials, collective courses of action that are in their own best interests whether socially, politically, economically, or educationally and to operationalize those choices for highest benefit. Different ways of naming and addressing sovereignty exemplify the ways concepts of national- and self-determination are debated and argued. They are at once politically and rhetorically constructed. In this introduction, I sketch out points pertinent to sufficiently understand and suggest that sovereignty, whether political or rhetorical, is as Creek scholar K. Tsianina Lomawaima (2000) asserts, "the bedrock upon which any and every discussion of Indian reality today must be built" (p. 3). This brief sketch also makes evident the connections between federal policy and local practice; that is, by providing monetary support for Indigenous education in general and for AITE specifically, the United States government acknowledges sovereignty and a trust relationship with Indigenous Nations as their obligation. This acknowledgment may be subject to change according to the interpretations governmental officials' give at any given historic moment and is thus limited and liminal, but federal policy today nevertheless affirms these obligations (Coffey & Tsosie, 2001). Understanding that AITE was conceived and implemented with sovereignty in mind illustrates how tensions concerning sovereignty relate to other accompanying concepts important to this dissertation: presence, performance, survivance, and rhetorical sovereignty, for instance. These concepts will be addressed in following chapters of this dissertation. Indeed, the 11 most basic tension interrogated in this dissertation involved what it meant for Indigenous populations to be present and to perform survivance and rhetorical sovereignty during their educational pursuits within a White dominant higher education system and what that pursuit demonstrated about differences or discrepancies related to self-determination in their education. At its inception, AITE intended to build upon the possibilities afforded Native students when historic sensibilities and culturally relevant curriculum are addressed at the same time that students are participating in existing AngloAmerican institutionalized programs. The idea was to work from the argument espoused by Linda Cleary and Thomas Peacock (1998), among others, which is that "The key to producing successful American Indian students, . . . is to first ground these students in their American Indian belief and value systems" (p. 101; see also Brayboy & Castagno, 2008). Such an approach was designed to counteract the challenges that, according to current scholarship, impede American Indian success in educational endeavors (see the National Study of American Indian Education, 1967-1971 and Special Senate Subcommittee on Indian Education Summary Report, 1969 as cited in Reyhner & Eder, 2004). Scholars have variously named these challenges as poor preparatory education, lack of community role models, alienation from self and community, resistance due to hostile environments, and psychological and educational withdrawal (see also Brayboy, Fann, Castagno, & Solyom, 2012). AITE attempted to acknowledge these challenges and address them where possible. A Native scholar worked as Director and Principal Investigator on the federal OIE grant, and other Native persons worked as staff (Project Director, Project Coordinator, and Administrative Assistant). The program drew participation from multiple and varied tribal communities across the U.S., yet it was designed to work from a premise of epistemological commonalities across those communities. Understanding epistemologies in this way does not imply sameness across differing tribal traditions, histories, and languages. It does, however, suggest that across these 12 tribal cultures and geographies, Indigenous peoples value relatedness, respect, reciprocity, and responsibility. These values in turn influence how and why Native peoples come to be, do, and know. As Wallace Coffey and Rebecca Tsosie (2001) note, different Native communities may have distinct cultures and traditions yet maintain the "profound significance" and common valuation of "sovereignty, tradition, and history" (p. 197). In a like manner, the educational environment AITE students participated in together was designed to include Indigenous systems of knowing, being, and valuing broadly. Native faculty, staff, and students made a point to follow, for example, the "group-based structure of tribal societies" (p. 197) and encourage social cohesiveness. Program participants convened informally in offices, apartments, and the American Indian Resource Center, which reinforced reliance on one another as resources and acknowledged a Native valuing of nurturing relationships. The original grant provided funding for a three-year program. Students were provided access to material support and resources: moving expenses, tuition, a stipend, a laptop computer and printer, health insurance, childcare assistance, books, educational fees, tutoring services, and close mentoring (one might even say supervision) until they completed their academic programs. They also received individual and group mentoring for math, writing, and educational examinations such as the nationally standardized PRAXIS exam. This academic, social, financial, and emotional assistance was offered to help students be more fully present in a sometimes unfamiliar academic environment and enable them to focus more completely on their studies, thus increasing the chance of success in the performances the institution would require of them. Students who had already completed their sophomore years of study applied to the AITE from rural, urban, and reservation communities all across the United States. They qualified for admission into Western University under regular admissions policies and entered in cohorts as college juniors. They subsequently completed upper-division coursework within the 13 various education programs of their choice before attaining licensure and finally entering Indian-serving school systems as teachers, counselors, or administrators. In most cases, salaried faculty members of the University taught the pre-existing series of courses. If instructors agreed to teach during the summer, they were given an additional stipend, as per university protocol. While AITE provided numerous supports and resources from an Indigenous perspective, neither course-of-study instructors nor curricula were changed to accommodate AITE students. The various departments that undertook to work with them assumed the reverse. They assumed Native students would accommodate the already established instructors, courses, and schedules of their chosen departmental studies. A student who participated in one of the early cohorts aptly described the goal of AITE as improving the quality of university experience for Native students and giving back to Native communities. Speaking of his fellow cohort, he said: "We all talk about wanting to go back to our towns and reservations." Bettering individual educational experience and giving back to the community was thus not only the goal, it was the stipulation of this payback program. Participating students agreed to teach in Indian-serving schools (1.5% of population as defined by the OIE) for the same number of years as they received support. If they failed to achieve licensure or failed to teach, they were obligated to reimburse the federal government for services received during the program. To assist them in making the transition from students to teachers, they were also afforded professional mentoring during their first year of employment, their induction year as teachers, for a total of 3 years of support. The success of the program was quite remarkable. In the 6 years of its existence at Western University, AITE graduated 4 cohorts of more than 40 American Indians prepared to teach, counsel, or provide leadership. To put that number in perspective, from 1979 to 2002- the 24 years previous to AITE-the College of Education awarded degrees to a total of only 14 14 Native students: two BAs and twelve MAs ([Western University] Office of Budget and Institutional analysis, 2007). From 14 to 40 is a notable difference especially given the difference in the number of years it took to accomplish, and it means that 40 Native graduates have worked or are currently working in Indian-serving communities from Alaska to Michigan. When the first grants ended, additional grants were secured in 2004, 2005, and 2006. In 2007, two additional applications for OIE grants were written by AITE directors and staff members: one to provide distance education for paraprofessionals hoping to become licensed teachers and one to train new math and science teachers. These applications were made so that the College of Education could provide the money necessary to continue the program, and they could have done so since OIE granted funding for these two projects and the University initially accepted it. University administrators wrote letters of support, as did the Chairman of a local tribe. With the statistical fact of success and the support of the University, one would think the program would be hailed as a stellar model of American Indian education. It was publically touted as evidence of the University's support of Indigenous populations and a site of important educational research. Various documents, conference presentations, articles, and dissertations were produced during this time on culturally relevant education, standardizing practices in American Indian education, and rhetorical sovereignty under disciplinary and institutional constraints. Yet, in spite of facilitating the means of educational success for a significant number of American Indian teachers, counselors, and administrators, as of spring semester 2009 AITE ceased to exist. Key faculty members and personnel took positions at other universities, and the 2007 grant monies, totaling slightly over two million dollars, were returned to the OIE by College of Education and university administration. Since the demise of AITE, at least three attempts by College of Education faculty and staff to secure OIE funding through similar grants 15 have been unsuccessful, an indication of how economic, national/tribal, social, and educational politics often become an issue in American Indian education. The Recurring Narrative The short history of AITE thus serves to establish in a localized setting a recurring narrative of American Indian education: the success/failure story so often (re)recorded and (re)enacted when American Indian persons and communities attempt to enact self-determination within predominantly AngloAmerican institutions. To better understand this educational history, we could look at the example of the Rough Rock Demonstration School. Rough Rock Demonstration School officially began on the Navajo Nation in 1966, and it continues today although politics of the type described above have periodically interfered with its success. As with AITE, funding was an issue for Rough Rock, but it was not the main issue. As with AITE, the main issue was self-determination or sovereignty. Administrators in the U.S. educational system held discrepant beliefs about its existence and its role in the education of American Indians. In an initial report of the state of the school, Director Robert Roessel, Jr. (1968) outlined the "ifs" and "shoulds" concerning the ways sovereignty affects Native education in this way: If the Bureau of Indian Affairs and public school systems believe the answers to problems facing Indians in the field of education lie in ‘more of the same,' and if they believe that the solution to these problems rests primarily in more money, the significance of Rough Rock will have been lost. Unfortunately, there are many signs today that many people in high places in Indian education are of the opinion that Indian education can best be improved through more efficient centralized administration combined with more money placed in the hands of professional educators. On the other hand, if the BIA and public school systems finally recognize the problems affecting Indians in schools demand not more of the same, but a radial new departure and new approach, then Rough Rock stands vindicated and its significance will never be lost. In a very real way, the significance of Rough Rock is based on two factors: First, control of Indian education by Indian people, and second, the incorporation into the school curriculum of positive elements of Indian life and culture. (emphasis added) 16 Should the agencies and individuals having responsibilities for Indian education realize that Indian people must control and direct their education, and should the Congress of the United States see fit to act upon the President's message on Indians and provide funds to carry out the suggested programs, then certainly Rough Rock's future ought to be assured by becoming perhaps the first ‘Model Community School.' (p. 7 web, emphasis added) Twenty-six years later, Galena Sells Dick, Dan Estell, and Teresa McCarty (1994) reflected on the challenges experienced at Rough Rock, noting it as a story of struggle in the face of inadequate and inconsistent federal funding, teacher turnover, curricular instability, and "erratic" language and culture instruction (p. 1 web). In a concurrent article, Nancy Hornberger (1994) noted that site instability and uncertain federal funding were key factors working against the success of Rough Rock. However, as Dick, Estell, and McCarty (1994) reiterate, Rough Rock could still be said to demonstrate success because the program was able to maintain i) a core of administrative and teaching staff who were members of the community, ii) funding at levels that permitted staff development, iii) long-term collaborations with outside professionals, and iv) program development by those responsible for implementing it (p. 10, web). Successes such as these could not have occurred if they were viewed as top-down, short-term processes. Rather they had to "emerge from sustained collaboration in which educators [were] supported in constructing learning environments similar to those they [were] building for their students" (p. 10, web): i.e., control of Indigenous education by Indigenous persons and implementation of culturally responsive and respectful curriculum. Curriculum could not simply be brought in from sources outside the community but rather had to "reinforce concepts developed at home and in the community, while still meeting state and federal requirements" (Watahomigie & McCarty, 1994, p. 40). The literature suggests that when difficulties are encountered in educational contexts such as these, they should be resolved by "going into the community and discussing the program 17 and its objectives with parents and elders" (Watahomigie & McCarty, 1994, p. 38). They should be resolved through community meetings as well as individual, face-to-face communication-by talking and listening-and by incorporating "community values" (p. 38). The kind of talking and listening referenced here requires self-reflexivity and a willingness to maintain the needs of the community ahead of individual and financial interests (Meyer, 2003; Powell, 2002; Ratcliffe, 2011). Such an approach affords flexibility, adaptability, and ultimately success. Notably, in 2009, while attending ceremonial groundbreaking for a $52.5 million Recovery Project at the Rough Rock site, then Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley remarked that Rough Rock stands as "a symbol of tribal self-determination." Shirley's remark is notable in that it reminds us of the school's community involvement and culturally relevant curriculum at the same time that it points toward the project's source of funding, funding that allows Native curriculum to continue. In this case, the "project is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) and is being carried out under the Indian Affairs Office of Facilities, Environmental and Cultural Resources (OFECR) in conjunction with the Bureau of Indian Education (BIA), the Navajo Nation and the Rough Rock Community School" (web).8 If universities, Indigenous communities, and researchers today are striving for sustained, long-term "collaborations" (Lipka & Ilutsik, 1995, p. 196) to benefit Indigenous education, as the initial implementation and rhetoric surrounding programs like Rough Rock and AITE suggests, then we need to think carefully about how to implement the long term factors many find crucial for their success, factors which point directly toward the importance of Indigenous sovereignty (see also Watahomigie, 1995). These factors were and are equally visible at other 8 Article retrieved from http://recovery.doi.gov/press/2009/09/project-underway-to-replace-rough- rock-community-school/. 18 sites, sites such as the Hualapai community's bilingual/bicultural education program at Peach Springs (Watahomigie & McCarty, 1994). To reiterate, these factors include the following: • Trust obligation funding • Indigenous governance and control • Culturally responsive curriculum • Culturally invested and academically skilled administrators and teachers • Community involvement and communication • Problem-solving through talking and listening Given how crucial these factors are, it becomes necessary for AngloAmerican administrators and institutions to change their current understandings of what Indigenous self-determination entails and how it can or should be implemented within university systems. Changing understandings and approaches to accommodate these factors, however, requires a good amount of community (re)education in the form of "reverse brainwashing"9 to counteract contradictory stances regarding how worthwhile these changes are (p. 38). (Re)education means attending to tensions concerning the viability and effectiveness of sovereign approaches, including broad levels of academic, social, economic, and political support. In the case of this dissertation, (re)education means attending to tensions between educational administrators, faculty, staff, students, and communities. While AITE presents a different site and context than Rough Rock and Hualapai-it occurred in a postsecondary educational institution rather than a primary one, and its funding was returned to the OIE by university administrators (an historic precedence) rather than continued and increased-the comparison nonetheless underscores some of the specific tensions surrounding American Indian education. Native and non-Native interlocutors need to examine together discrepant and deeply held convictions about what it means to be self-determining and to enact sovereignty, what it means to be "present" and to perform as "good" 9 See Grande (2004) and Smith (1999) on decolonization. 19 or "competent" students, teachers, authority figures, and/or community members in an educational context. Interlocutors must work to communicate and negotiate those convictions more effectively. This is the work of my dissertation. A core and contested component of these rhetorical negotiations originates in the implications of power and control residing in sovereignty. As understood by most non-Natives, sovereignty is only a vague concept having to do with, as one participant says, "ruling" and as another says, "ownership." For still other non-Native participants, sovereignty connotes the "freedom" extended by the U.S. government to Indigenous people that enabled them "to make choices." In most public rhetoric, sovereignty is defined in terms of the individual and is a tool whereby individual rights are maintained, rather than in terms of "the group-based structure of tribal societies," in which case sovereignty has "‘instrumental' rather than ‘intrinsic' value" (Coffey & Tsosie, 2001, p. 197). Womack (1999), however, points out that sovereignty "is inherent as an intellectual idea in Native cultures, a political practice, and a theme of oral traditions; and the concept, as well as the practice, predates European contact" (p. 51). Looked at in this light, we can see that sovereignty regarding Indigenous populations really has as much to do with recentering Indigeneity within U.S. social, and, for the express purposes of this study, educational contexts as it does with current politics and legalities. Indeed, Deloria (1976) writes that sovereignty is more usefully defined as a "process of growth and awareness" characterized by Native peoples "working toward and achieving maturity" in community relationships (p. 28). If structured solely in a legal-political context, sovereignty becomes a "limiting" and adversarial concept, "which serves to prevent solutions" and "precludes both understanding and satisfactory resolution of difficulties" (p. 28). My discussion of sovereignty, then, necessarily broadens in Chapter 2 to include presence, performance, survivance, and rhetorical sovereignty 20 and the ways these concepts help us understand processes of (re)centering within educational contexts. Interchapters One way the sense of this project will be communicated in text is through the use of interchapters. Interchapters are short chapters inserted between the more conventionalized ones normally found in dissertations and other publications.10 I use interchapters to present and re-center scenarios, transcripts of interviews, rivaling excerpts, interpretations, and scripted poetic stanzas from research data. Some interactions presented in the interchapters occurred early on in data collection and others occurred later. Because this study deliberately focuses on intercultural exchanges, interchapters become a useful tool in helping readers more fully envision (perhaps even participate in) the exchanges. This choice brings form to function in that, "We no longer just write culture. We perform culture" (Denzin & Lincoln, 2011, p. x). In this case, interchapters perform intercultural negotiations. For the idea of using interchapters I owe much to Harry Denny (2010), who, in Facing the Center, states he was inspired to "attempt to transcend the boundaries of conventional chapters" (p. 29) as a way to model "a different way of doing critical exchange" (p. 30) through text. Denny credits his inspiration to Donna LeCourt (2004), Joseph Harris (1997), and Mark Hurlbert and Michael Blitz (1991) whose texts provided readers with innovative ways to slow down and think carefully about how disrupting conventions helps us envision different possibilities regarding how we perceive the presentation of content, concepts, and experiences. In the use of interchapters, I also draw on the interim chapter forms found in Gian Pagnucci's (2004) Living the narrative life: Stories as a tool for meaning making and Gregory Michie's (2009) Holler 10 Because of institutional thesis office formatting constraints, interchapters will be presented here as subheadings at the end of chapters rather than as separate entities between chapters. 21 if you hear me: The education of a teacher and his students. I use interchapter formatting to create presence and to unpack performance. Interchapters allow the reading audience to vicariously (re)enact and embody moments of tension. Interchapters help readers more fully listen and respond to the immediacy of the moment and/or event. Inserted in places between, interchapters additionally remind readers of liminal spaces and those who inhabit those spaces. It makes readers aware of difference and makes visible their reactions when their notions of difference bump up against conventionalized authority. Some scholars, such as Abraham Romney (2011) resist ideas of between-ness because they imply an inside/outside binary. Romney proffers instead the terms "within" or, like LuMing Mao (2010), "coterminous" (p. 18), thus hoping to disrupt connotations of in(ex)clusion. To my mind, these distinctions with their representational connotations only serve to amplify the ongoing debates regarding integration and separation as I discuss them in Chapter 2. I argue these distinctions must not be lost in the debates. To do so would be to ignore the actual political sovereign status of Native tribal units as set apart from AngloAmerican nation states. The buffering (softening) implied in any of these terms, to some degree reinforces the myth of a single, unified nation and disregards the very real differences experienced by Native and non- Native communities. It also disregards the very real material consequences that accrue because of these differences. Attending to difference via interchapters-whether regarded as liminal, between, within, or coterminous-is an innovation drawn from an Indigenous epistemological approach that will be discussed further in following chapters. Hence, such a format is highly applicable to how this research project is presented textually. Theory, methodology, and method are extended in this way. To outline, Interchapters 1 and 2 present interactions between AITE students, graduate mentors, and instructors that were recorded as field notes. They introduce key research 22 participants and present Native and non-Native exchanges that occurred in a mandatory, supplemental instruction setting. Interchapter 1 focuses on illustrating survivance. Interchapter 2 focuses on illustrating rhetorical sovereignty. Interchapter 3 is a reflective document written by a non-Native participant in response to a focus group rivaling session. Then, in Interchapter 4, I offer data that scripts, juxtaposes, and overlaps interview excerpts to demonstrate how textual rivaling occurs and how participants interpret the excerpts to evoke meaning from the data. In Interchapter 5, I move from rivaling field notes to presenting interview data as conceptual chunks. I present selected quotes from transcribed participant interviews that illustrate overlapping concepts related to ideas of community: community as survivance, as presence, and as performance, for instance. Finally, I present one Native participant's reflection concerning discrepant Indigenous and EuroWestern epistemologies. It is constructed as a poem and used as an end piece. Because of their rich detail, the interchapter scenarios and texts move us from reflecting on introductory, macro level context to examining core, micro level exchanges. Interchapters introduce Native and non-Native interactions that are subtle but rife with tension. They allow us to see how sovereignty or self- and community-determination frame both the focus and findings of this study. They also prepare us for fuller methodological and method explications and analysis. I provide these interchapter exchanges realizing there is much to attend to in terms of issues undergirding interactional exchanges: assumptions about ability, including (in)ability to see competence; obligation and reciprocity; trust; and, finally, marked resistance and acquiescence, to name some of the most salient. Throughout these scenarios we find participants attempting to wield elements of control, with Native students struggling toward self-determination through self-education. The questions readers must ask at this point are how, exactly, do we pay attention to these elements in this context, and how do we interpret them? These questions will be 23 answered in greater depth as this dissertation proceeds, with the methodology and methods section providing valuable ways to help us look at and understand presence and performance in the liminal spaces of this research site. Interchapter 1: Observable Tensions The "Supplemental Instruction for AITE Students" (SI) is held on the main floor of the College of Education building. On its three floors, the building houses various departments, offices, classrooms, an instructional media lab, and the Education Network. A computer lab is also on the main floor, easily accessed just across the hall and down a couple of doors from where we are meeting. Since my colleague, Lisa,11 and I received word only minutes before that we have been approved to observe the session, we arrive a little late. We are both research assistants and writing mentors for the AITE. Lisa has been with the program from the beginning, while I have only worked seven months thus far. We check the room where we have been told the SI will be held but see no one. We then check a couple of adjacent rooms, thinking we may have been given the wrong room number, but the rooms are empty. We are relieved when Mahalia, an AITE student, shows up and directs us to the right room. As we enter, we chat briefly about who should be coming and whether we have been given the correct time. Mahalia tells us that, yes, we have the right time. She speculates why others are late: problems with childcare, she guesses, or a car broken down, or maybe studying for another exam. She says everyone typically pulls chairs into a circle for discussion; so, the three of us bring nine chairs from the standard block of eight by eight into a circle at the front of the room. Lisa sits at the south point of the circle. Mahalia sits to one side of her and I to the other. 11 All participants have been given pseudonyms to protect confidentiality. 24 The room is standard in classroom design: rectangular, in decent repair (no cracks in the tan brick, no stains yet on the white, painted wall, no gouges in the linoleum flooring), but like the entire building, the room shows definite signs of age. Nothing has been updated in quite a while. Three large paned windows cover most of the west wall and look out onto a canopied walkway leading to the main entrance of the building. Under the windows, a bank of medium-sized radiators, also painted white, ping and hum. The windows are covered with old, tan curtains, parts of which are unhooked and hanging unevenly at the top. They are pulled shut to block some of the cold seeping in from this brusque February afternoon. They block the cold, but also most of the natural, outside light. The SI has been scheduled for one hour every Monday afternoon and participants have been meeting since the beginning of the semester. Our recent invitation has been extended for the rest of the semester at the insistence of AITE directors since sitting in will help us better understand the assignments and thus assist the students in completing them. Attendance at the SI is considered mandatory for AITE students. The three instructors responsible for overseeing the session manage what happens during the activity, and they are quite concerned about its success. Today, they have instructed students to bring any written assignments due for a legal issues class they are currently taking. This is meant to forestall the possibility of failing an assignment; unfortunately, it indicates instructors are perhaps unwittingly operating under an assumption of underlying deficit. That assumption, along with the extra measure of control a ‘mandatory' session like this exerts, doesn't sit very well with at least two of the five students, and earlier-while in AITE office space-these students expressed some resentment about it. To be expected to attend this meeting in addition to already packed-to-the-brim course schedules (not to mention family and other community obligations) is almost an insult, one they swallow because they know it is well-intentioned. My sense of the situation is they feel they 25 should be grateful; after all, their education is being paid for, so they should reciprocate by being present. Earlier in the day, I worked with Mahalia on a paper due for the class to be held that evening. We worked for an hour and a half, and she seemed to feel pretty good about the results. I did too because she seemed much more prepared for her writing consultation this week. A couple of weeks ago, we had a session that did not help her progress much at all. She had only a rough, hand written draft to work with, and I did not have a good idea of the assignment requirements. After today's session, she worked another hour by herself. Now, when I ask her about it, she comments that right now she is more concerned about an assignment for another class, a vocabulary test. She mentions building flash cards to help her study, shows them to us, and begins to quickly and silently work through them. Mary, a Native student and SI facilitator who has recently finished her MA exams, enters and sits one chair away from me. Lisa has worked extensively with Mary on her writing for the past couple of years while Mary completed her certification. I have worked occasionally with her over the last few months. After a few minutes, another participant, Janet, comes through the door with her 4-year-old son in tow, apologizing for having to bring him, and telling us she has made arrangements for babysitting in the future. She worries in an aside to me that he will have a hard time sitting still. She sits down. He begins to explore the room. Ruth, a graduate instructor, arrives with two more students, Connie and Dana, apologizing for being a little late. She tells us the other faculty members are excused today. They are preparing for a conference presentation on campus that evening. Ruth sits next to Mary and engages her in a conversation about a conference she attended during the summer. She addresses some comments directly to me because I indicate I am familiar with the work of the conference presenters she is speaking 26 about. She says these scholars' work might be important, considering the students' cultural backgrounds and future work with Indigenous populations. Dana sits across the room on the west side. She crosses her legs, then crosses her arms, and then puts her head down into her hands, letting her hair fall across her face. She begins to tap her foot. Connie sits to Dana's right. Her bag of books and papers remains closed. General informal discussion begins between the students: Where are you with the assignment? Are you coming over to the apartment later? Did you get the power point from class yesterday? Ruth gets the session started. "Does anyone have anything they'd like me to take a look at?" No up-take. "Do you all have your papers for this evening?" A couple of heads nod. Janet says she has a draft that needs editing and asks Lisa if she will take a look. We entered the session prepared to merely observe; but, since Janet has asked for assistance and the instructors do not object, we become participants. Whether Ruth sees this as a good-faith move of inclusion, a test to see how well we perform, or a taken-for-granted part of our being there, I am not sure. Neither am I sure whether we are viewed as colleagues or as apprentices. We could be both. As PhD students and research assistants, we are fairly savvy about academic discourse in general, but we are not nearly as knowledgeable in this specialized content area. I have also not progressed as far in my program of study as Lisa, and I think it is apparent. Additionally, I suspect students may not trust me yet. They are respectful but seem to value Lisa's advice more. They try to make consultation appointments first with her or others and then me if no one else is available. She has established a rapport with the students I wish I had. That said, neither of us have as much clout as instructors when it comes to writing instruction in the formalized, highly standardized genres of their course of study, and rightly so. It is not personal; it is mostly a disciplinary function. Then, too, we are both White; we need to prove ourselves: our 27 understanding, respect, knowledge, ability, and desire to work with them. I wonder how aware the instructors are of this dynamic. Janet says she just needs to go print off her paper and receives permission to go to the computer lab. She asks if we will keep on eye on her son until she gets back. He scoots a couple of chairs together, pushes them across the floor with a screech, and then climbs up to fiddle with the buttons on the media center fixed to the wall. Connie tries to distract him with some paper and a pencil. Others try to ignore the commotion and concentrate on the session. Ruth asks Mahalia about her paper. Mahalia mentions that she worked on it with me earlier in the day. Ruth nods, but then suggests that she should also take a look, so Mahalia moves over to the desk on my right and they begin to work. At that point-15 or more minutes into the session-one more student, Lillian, comes in. She sits on Dana's right but keeps her coat on. Dana finally looks up at Ruth and asks: "So, I have a question. About the assignment. Does [the professor] want us to just read the text and regurgitate the information?" "Well, I think she wants you to use the text and class discussion to answer the question." "So regurgitate it." "Well, let's look at the question. It has three parts. Right? So, you'll want to be sure to answer each part. I think she wants to make sure you understand each of the parties' responsibilities concerning inclusion." "Yeah, like summarize." Ruth begins to outline what students might say in each of the three sections of the assignment and specifically asks Dana, "Do you want me to look at what you have?" "No. I need to go work on it." "Do you want to print off what you have?" 28 It is more a restrained command than a question. Connie speaks for Dana, saying, "Her thumb drive is messed up." Dana concurs and explains, "It was working fine the last time I used it." Connie says that it looks like a part is bent. Everyone chimes in then, worried that they might lose information and homework if their thumb drives also go bad. They begin talking over one other. Is everyone else's USB drive working? Yes, but printer cartridges are out of ink. What should we do about that? Are there other places to print besides the lab across the hall? Who is responsible for buying cartridges? How much does it cost? Where can you get refills? How can we get the computer lab technicians to help us when we have a problem? In the mounting noise, Dana's frustration erupts: "Well, can I leave and go work on it?" To which Ruth replies, "Okay," and both Dana and Lillian leave. Janet returns and Lisa prepares to help her with her paper. She tries to walk her through correcting some of the mechanical errors. Janet excuses herself to stop her son from running around the room and jamming chairs into other chairs. She picks him up and stands next to Lisa, trying to pay attention. Lisa begins again, talking about why something in the paper needs to be changed. Janet's son begins to whine. She tries to quiet him. Lisa tries to continue, but Janet's son begins to cry. Lisa still tries to address the next element. He cries louder and attempts to wiggle out of Janet's arms. She holds him tighter. The crying escalates. I suggest she send the document to us via email, but she and Lisa agree that since there's only a paragraph left and because it's due this evening, they should try to finish. Meanwhile, Mahalia and Ruth on my right ask me a question about ending a sentence with a preposition. I assure them that it is now considered a viable sentence option, but Ruth asks how it might be reworded anyway. We figure it out. I ask Mahalia to send me a copy of the corrections made during the session so I will know how to better address specifics the next time. 29 Janet sighs and apologizes to everyone about the distraction. The hour is over. We all pack up, put on our coats, and leave. Lisa and I walk back up to the AITE offices. AITE is housed in what is called the Annex, a two-story clapboard building with four wings that was originally built during World War II. It was supposed to be a temporary structure but was never torn down. In addition to AITE, it houses the Upward Bound/TRIO program, ESL classrooms for international students (where they are taught U.S. language and culture) and the Utah Opportunity Scholarship offices. Students joke it is the place to segregate students of color from White ones. On the way up the hill, we talk about what went awry in the session, noting the resistance from students and the pushback from the instructor. We have to admit that we ourselves experienced internal resistance, and we try to analyze why. I remind Lisa of something Connie said during an introductory mentoring session, something about realizing early on that the department thought AITE students' writing skills "were not up to snuff" or "good enough" and that students hadn't "earned [their] spot at this table." At the time, Connie expressed some resentment at the need to "prove [herself] worthy to be in this White environment," but also an intense drive to "prove" that she had indeed "earned [her] spot here." Another student expressed similar concerns and said, "I'm not going to be the one that proves what they thought. I'm going to prove them wrong." If there was a perception of ‘deficit' in the students, we concluded, maybe it had more to do with lack of time and/or resource management skills, and unidentified genre expectations or disciplinary apprenticeship as much as "writing problems" per se. Instructors-and I include myself in this category-are already fluent in their disciplinary genres and rhetorics, so much so that they have trouble conveying how to acquire them to others, specifically these students. I also have to wonder, 30 though, about a history of colonization and epistemological difference as well as degrees of preferred integration and separation. CHAPTER 2 DEFINITIONS, DEBATES, AND A DISH OF SEVEN-LAYER BEAN DIP Big Man was say, ‘Ain't that a little naïve? A Red book?' Rabbit was answer, ‘Only if you believe white always swallows up Red. I think Red stays Red, most ever time, even throwed in with white. Especially around white. It stands out more.' (Womack, 1999, p. 24). [S]overeignty is not a separatist discourse. . . . It is a restorative process (Grande, 2004, p. 57). Scholars have used the key concepts of this dissertation-presence, performance, survivance, and rhetorical sovereignty-in different ways and for different purposes. It therefore seems wise to begin this chapter by offering the definitions that guide my usage along with explanations to help concretely imagine their meaning and how they will be useful in understanding research data. In offering these definitions, I discuss prominent Indigenous Studies scholarship regarding current and ongoing debates as well as overviews of related literatures coming out of Philosophy of Education, Social and Cultural Anthropology of Education, and Rhetoric and Composition scholarship. I review these literatures to link the document both backward and forward: backward to the introductory information and forward to the discussion of methodology and methods. First, however, I would like to say something about the problematic nature of definitions in general. While providing definitions is an accepted academic convention, there is some risk in delineating concepts this way. Doing so suggests they can be reliably distinguished with no messiness or overlap. This is an inaccurate portrayal that may even do some linguistic violence. When employed as a EuroWestern perspective, definitions often function to divide, establish control, exhibit mastery, and keep everything neatly in its ‘proper' (status quo) place. While the 32 concepts presented here can be thought of as delineated-indeed, it is helpful to think about them that way so we get a firm grip on each one-they can also be thought of as parts of the same whole taken up in multiple acts. In thinking about the conceptual relationships between presence, performance, survivance, rhetorical sovereignty, and community, I encourage us to envision a dish of 7-layer bean dip (Brayboy, personal communication, December 3, 2008). We can think of these concepts as residing in layers "all the way down" (King, 2003). When we first bring the bean dish to the party, it has a neat and orderly presentation. Each layer is distinct. Think about the quote that introduces this chapter, Craig Womack's Red staying Red especially around White. When we put in our chips, scoop the ingredients up, and begin to eat, our palates experience each flavor (concept) as separate and distinct, and it tastes pretty good. As the party continues, however, things begin to get messy. The layers begin to slide into one another, and the different flavors and textures-not so much distinct now as complimentary to one another-actually give us a better sense of how the whole dish works (or in other instances does not work) together. This is when the experience gets really good. Later in the evening, it occurs to us that when the dish was originally put together someone made a decision to spread sour cream over everything else-White covering up Red-and then we have to think hard about what that decision implies. So while definitional divisions are expected conventions, I repeat my request to envision the concepts not as falling along a linear continuum but rather as existing in layers within the same relational space. As these definitions and explanations work in relational layers, not only do they disrupt the neatness of the status quo, they also better reflect an Indigenous worldview wherein all aspects of life-whether animate or inanimate-are considered interconnected. With that said, I turn now to provisionally defining the concepts important to this project as they will be used in this dissertation, beginning with presence. 33 Presence By presence, I mean both representation and embodied existence. Native representation and embodied experience tease each other, as Vizenor (1994) suggests, in that they force a simultaneous confrontation of "Indian" simulation and postindian actuality. I use scare quotes around the term "Indian" because it is an invention, of course, concocted by explorers who thought they had reached India. Louis Owens' (2001) essay, "As If an Indian Were Really an Indian," describes how settlers on the North American continent continued the term as a "loan word of dominance" (p. 15) and "surveillance . . . resulting in an utter absence of certainty of self" (p. 17). Simulation, then, refers to fabricated representations that have accumulated over the duration of contact, i.e., the "vanishing Indian" or "stoic Indian" or "Brave/Savage" figurations that are still present in much media, text, and imagination today and that can trick or tease Natives and non-Natives into questioning their roles in contemporary society (see Haas, 2010). It points to any representation that assumes, promotes, or continues the idea of a natural or inevitable European ("civilized") colonization of the exotic ("primitive") Americas. Conversely, postindian actuality refers to the concrete material lives of both historic and contemporary American Indians. A contemporary materiality, for example, includes AITE students sitting together in majoritarian classrooms for the duration of their coursework. In another instance, it refers to these same students inviting graduate student mentors into their residential dorms on a Friday night for a scrapbooking party, and impressing those mentors with their senses of humor, creativity, and ironic twists on popular culture. Although many would like to believe otherwise, "Indian" simulations have not disappeared. Imagine, for instance, the packaging of Land o' Lakes margarine, ubiquitous on grocery store shelves across the U.S.; imagine as well children following along as Disney's Peter Pan and the Lost Boys go "off to fight the Injuns, the Injuns, the Injuns;" or, imagine the 2009 34 movie hit Avatar as a spin-off of Pocahontas. Helmbrecht Breinig (2008) tells us that simultaneous confrontations with simulation and actuality in the context of "interethnic relations and discourses" can "result in a network of tensions" (p. 46). These are tensions I and the other participants in this research have felt, and each instantiation-whether simulation or actuality- brings to mind power relationships: the power to name and define who and what people ‘are' or what they ‘should be doing' and what this ‘being' or ‘doing' represents. One reason tensions occur is because historical conquest has led to the present demographic moment, by which I mean, as Malea Powell (2002) notes, the literal "absence of thousands of others . . . removed from the arena of daily American life" (p. 403) who would otherwise be present. Paying attention to the presence/absence and being/doing conundrum regarding the roles Natives and non-Natives play in this study thus becomes terribly important. Paying attention means we confront difference and the consequences of conquest. It means Natives can no longer be simply "imagined" as stereotypes or "storied back to an absence . . . in history" (Vizenor, 1999, p. 86). Native presence is felt in Amelia Katanski's (2005) explanation of Silko's photography. As representational art, it "encourages the storytelling that keeps the community alive-demonstrating the ability of Indian people to use Western form as part of their repertoires of representation to promote goals not sanctioned by European American society" (p. 24). An example of Native youths disputing stereotypes to keep their community alive recently occurred in response to the ABC documentary "Children of the Plains." Native high school students produced a documentary of their own wherein they storied simulations and/or absences (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhribaNXr7A&sns=fb) from their experiences. Similarly, Native participants in this study, through their active presence and performance, also storied simulations/absences. They did so in many ways, including those that might be called representational, and one way, as mentioned earlier, was by scrapbooking. Some might discount 35 the practice of scrapbooking as insignificant. I assert it can be a photographic and textual art form that promotes presence beyond the current moment. Through this art form, participants documented family and community histories. The ways they used scrapbooking demonstrated a knowledgeable and purposeful storytelling that counteracted dominant simulations. By representing their contemporary realities, participants struggled against discourses of dominance, tragedy, and "victimry" (Vizenor, 1994, p. vii). Further, by participating in AITE and this research, they contributed new stories they hoped would "[steer] the current course of events," whether political, social, or educational (Breinig, 2008, p. 56). In contributing to those new stories, Native participants are-to use Vizenor's (1994) term-postindian warriors, and their assertion of presence over absence and doing over being confirms an ability to affect the course of social, political, and educative events. Postindian warriors, Vizenor tells us, "surmount" and "counter" surveillance and "literature[s] of dominance" to "contravene the absence of the real" and provide stories of actual presence and performance. As Irving Goffman (1967) says, "Let a participant whom others would rather see silent make a statement, and [that participant] will have expressed the belief that [s/]he has a full right to talk and is worth listening to, thereby obliging . . . listeners to give a sign, however begrudging and however mean, that [s]/he is qualified to speak" (p. 33). Performance The idea of asserting presence through contributing and telling new stories leads us to the idea of performance. Performance works, as the Goffman quote above indicates, by insisting that authoritative presence be acknowledged. When people pay attention to performance, it can be restorative, to pick up Grande's usage from the chapter's opening epigram. It can work toward a restoration of self-determination or the enactment-Brayboy et al. (2012) would say "engagement" or "operationalization" (p. 17)-of sovereignty. When I use the term 36 performance, I follow Richard Bauman (1978) and Dell Hymes (1981), who designate performance as a social event or practice wherein certain individuals publically demonstrate (through communication or art) high degrees of competency in socially recognized forms or forums. For Bauman and Hymes, performances occur or are constructed in response to particular social and historical contexts. Performance includes both individual elements unique to performers, places, and times, as well as more generally accepted and expected social forms of expression as defined for particular performance genres or venues. As it relates to the project at hand, the entire educational experience can be considered a performance. A good student (performer) comes into the classroom (venue) early (time), sits in the front row of desks (place), raises her hand, looks the teacher (audience) in the eye, and answers questions clearly, concisely, and correctly (socially acceptable forms of expression). As an example of how performance figures in one instance of the study, I refer you back to Dana's posture in the scenario from Interchapter 1. She sits with her head down in her hands, her hair covering her face and eyes, her knees crossed, and her foot tapping. She cloaks or masks her presence by drawing her body tightly inward and down. In this instantiation, she is performing withdrawal and impatience-communicating a desire to be elsewhere-for an audience of authority figures. Her audience, however, silently but deliberately dismisses her performative action, which causes increased tension. Performative presence/absence in the interchapter scenario fairly calls out for reflective commentary on the scene as well as the social context in which it occurs. More will be said about this in a later chapter. When speaking of performance, I also find Andrew Cowell's (2002) work with the Northern Arapaho useful. Cowell analyzes interactional dialogues put together in a booklet form for the purpose of teaching the Arapaho language in a bilingual curriculum. Cowell's idea of performance includes events, practices, or rituals intended to demonstrate competency in a 37 socially recognized form, time, activity, and/or space. To Cowell, performance means an expected response using generally acceptable conventions that are "defined for the particular performance genre" or venue (p. 4). In his research, these conventions include the four key Arapaho values of bravery, generosity, listening, and adaptation (p. 9). Performing any one of these values might constitute a specific, conventional, acceptable performance in a given, particular context. In another context, however, the convention could call forth an opposite judgment. It could signal that which is considered incompetent, unexpected, and unacceptable. Evidenced by the tension it caused, Dana's posture in Interchapter 1 was an instantiation of unacceptable performance. Given the immediate context, it was equivalent to other unacceptable student performances in Interchapter 1, such as bringing a child into the classroom. Both performances in this case were deemed incompetent, unexpected, and unacceptable. Another similar performance, as suggested by a participant, was when Native students "being very tired, maybe, from doing something the night before" came to class but then "just cover[ed] themselves all up and sle[pt] in a corner." As Bauman (1978), Hymes (1981), and Cowell (2002) indicate, performance is about negotiating what is competent, expected, and acceptable. Negotiation, as Cowell suggests, serves "to establish, reinforce, open to questioning, criticize, or redefine social practices and modes of thought" (p. 4). Two additional performances from Interchapter 1 serve to criticize and open to questioning the mandatory supplementary instruction. In the first, Connie keeps her book bag closed and on the floor; in the second, Lillian keeps her coat on. In these performances, we see students negotiate the element of control/command exerted through the sessions' mandatory designation. They are present, although their performances suggest they would rather be elsewhere. They are only staying as long as they must, and that is not long enough for it to be 38 worth the trouble of pulling out study materials, settling in, getting comfortable, or getting ready to work. Performance also becomes a unit of analysis when it is viewed as per Ryan Claycomb's (2008) cataloguing for critical writing pedagogy. His catalogue of eight basic analytic terms includes metric, action, audience-centeredness, theater, embodiment, ritual, role, and uncertainty. Each term emphasizes a type of interactive dialogue that details ways in which students and teachers are constrained by specific social and historic relations. The terms adjust or direct learning situations toward action and "socially resistant praxis." I introduce and summarize these terms here, underlining each one. Metric, for example, is often synonymous with rubric systems of grading and becomes, by extension, a way to discipline actions both academically and socially. Action suggests movement and the kind of doing that is "always in rehearsal" (a practice, preparation, or trial-run) and that is often contested. Actions can erase presence as easily as they can construct it. As described above, Dana, Connie, and Lillian's actions could be considered audience-centered performances, as they indicate an awareness of immediate audience and context. They could also be thought of in terms of theater because they indicate ability to utilize expressive modes along with in-your-face "guerilla" tactics. Other participant performances not detailed here have, at times, moved explicitly-and sometimes explosively-into anger ("excess, or surplus"). Participants have at times performed powerful enactments of presence through speeches, poetry, and strongly worded letters. These participant performances show they were beginning to think about "defining, assembling and mobilizing" strategies and tactics for new (un)sympathetic audiences, whether faculty, administrators, peers, or my colleagues and me. As participants' "corporeal" (physical) and "ideological" (political) performances played out, they became "critical" in that they opened to questioning a curriculum or pedagogy of domination 39 and control. They disrupted the "ritualistic potential of schooling" by insisting that what was happening to them mattered and they wanted a say in that matter. They had a sense that their actions could positively "transform" events, even if their actions took the form of negatively (un)mask(ing) themselves or others. They deliberately crafted a "risky ethos" although they knew that ethos had uncertain consequences. "Disguises are necessary," Womack (1999) tells us, when negotiating with someone who has "more power" (p. 152). By attending to the ways presence/absence and doing/being are performed, we can begin to understand participant intercultural exchanges on a much deeper level. Doing is performative (inter)action. Performance "heighten[s] the immediacy, relevancy, and depth" of the interaction (Cowell, p. 7). This is especially so when the performance is meant to mark difference and when it occurs between participants of unequal authority or status. Performance is further heightened by the uncertainty principle (Claycomb, 2008) in that it is "elusive, oppositional" and "resistant to discursive control." We cannot, in other words, "censor that which has already happened; what we discipline when we discipline performance is only ever a trace of that performance." Performance thus has radical potential and can be successfully studied and employed to understand participant interactional tensions. In all these ways, the concept of performance becomes particularly useful to this research. Layered Overlap Presence and performance can be identified as distinct from one another; but, as you can see from the examples of Dana, Connie, and Lillian, they can also be seen to overlap. Overlap in presence and performance will be further illustrated in Interchapter 4, where participants rival an exchange I label "The Eye Rollers." The exchange illustrates ways presence and performance intersect in terms of, for example, what Natives and non-Natives do in classroom venues, specifically why and where non-Natives propose Native students should sit and where they 40 actually do sit in classroom contexts, as well as how Native students' being/ideas (presence) are and are not silenced in those classroom contexts. Overlap is illustrated in an additional instance by looking at the ways AITE students' presence and performance was received when they participated in a yearly powwow, with its accompanying Navajo taco/fry bread fundraisers. To explain, AITE students worked alongside those belonging to other American Indian organizations such as the Intertribal Student Association (ITSA) and American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES) to sell fry bread tacos and fund the powwow. Their presence and help was expected as part of Native responsibility on campus. AITE students demonstrated heightened presence in this context because some were elected as organizational officers, and they helped to organize and conduct both the fundraisers and the powwow. Performance in relation to fundraisers and the powwow was deliberately enacted to assert presence: this is who we (Natives) are; this is what we do; this is how we maintain community loyalty; and this is how through the ritual and ceremony of powwow we celebrate tribal status, heritage, and history. Depending on levels of support and funding-whether, for instance, they received Cultural Awareness grants or whether other minority organizations on campus or the Office of Diversity agreed to help fund the event-these powwow performances signified the degree to which Natives were a part of the academic and/or local Native community. They signified as well the degree to which they were considered separate or absent. Reception and enactments of Native presence and performance in these instances were influenced by ongoing debates about the necessity and or degrees of cultural integration and separation necessary to succeed academically. Although authoritative rhetoric concerning the powwow asserted, "We fully support you as an American Indian group," some faculty complained when AITE students spent too much time and effort on the powwow "to the detriment of their studies." They complained, 41 for example, when students had difficulty completing assignments on time during the time the powwow event was occurring and asked for deadline extensions. Dealing with these complaints was difficult for students both psychologically and academically. One even chose to forgo her graduation ceremony because she had been told she was not to miss any more hours at her student teaching site, hours she had missed (and received permission to do so) to contribute to the powwow. She was then chastised for not attending the ceremony. Some students also experienced material difficulty because of their performance in the powwow event. Organizations that had agreed to help with funding reneged or were slow to come through. This presented a hardship for those students who paid the expenses involved in ordering tee shirts ‘out of pocket' and then waited and hoped to be reimbursed months later. For Native participants in this study, then, their enactments of presence and performance garnered contradictory responses. Students were praised by non-Native faculty for their involvement but were also criticized [disciplined] for their involvement. Participants' presences and performances were therefore contested, and they most certainly had to be rhetorically negotiated given shared but differently constructed histories, statuses, goals, educational purposes, and epistemologies (Cajete, 2005; Deloria & Wildcat, 2001; Lomawaima & McCarty, 2002). Colonization and Deficit Building on preceding foundational ideas of presence and performance, I now turn to a discussion of colonization with its simulations and resultant erasures of Indigenous thought and tradition from academic contexts. Such an erasure provides exigence, as Karl Kroeber (2008) suggests, for counter imaginings, or the "processes of imaginative reconstitution" by which Native presence is (re)asserted in this dissertation (p. 29). Instances of contestation and erasure compel Natives to re(counter)imagine themselves and their roles and work to de-center deficit 42 constructions of Indigenous intellectual presence and traditions (see also Kaomea, 2003, 2005). Attempts at erasure call upon, as James Cox (2006) mentions, Vizenor's sovereign space of imagination, which allows Natives to "maintain a world beyond . . . where both Indians and non-Indians can reimagine, and therefore begin to remake, the colonial world" (p. 10). In spite of community members' and critical studies scholars' diligent efforts to counteract it, however, too much rhetoric surrounding Indigenous populations in academic settings continues a litany of non presence and non performance: absence, failure, and hopelessness. These deficit and defeatist representations are more often than not accompanied by accusations that suggest Natives aren't performing. As in the case of the powwow, it is suggested their loyalties are divided. They aren't trying hard enough. They need to work harder. When Native students respond to these exhortations, when they speak up about their difficulties or speak back to authoritative pressure, they are given the impression (or in some cases are explicitly told) that they should just pull themselves up by their bootstraps12 and get with the program. Bootstrap rhetoric implies complaint concerning (in)ability to fit in and being treated "like everyone else," (everybody has troubles, so what makes your problem so special/different?) both of which rely on contrasting the presence and performance of dominant populations with negative "Indian" simulations and erasures, the generalized/essentialized assumptions about who Native students are and what they should or should not be doing. The rhetoric implies that if they would just deny their experiences and histories (one could say deny their very selves and backgrounds) and become fully integrated into the academic community (act like everyone else), they would see success. Rhetorically, these discourses ignore the "complete failure . . . of the 12 Victor Villanueva (1993) discusses the contradictions inherent in American academic assimilation rhetorics. 43 claims of assimilation ideology" that promise access to the power held within dominant culture as well as material and educational success (Womack, 1999, p. 38). As one student participant told me in a mixture of tears and laughter, "I have tugged on these bootstraps. I have yanked them and stitched them and stapled them. Hell, I've even duct taped them! It doesn't make any difference!" Contemporary bootstrap rhetoric elides the fact that before allotment, before statehood, early-contact nations had greater presence and greater performance as literate communities than they do now. They were often "more educated than their white neighbors." They had their own school systems, created newspapers and other documents, and had been effectively and efficiently self-governing for at least hundreds, possibly thousands of years (Womack, 1999, p. 39; see also Weaver, Womack, & Warrior, 2006, p. xix). Many scholars-and not only Indigenous ones-have made these arguments. Osage scholar Robert Allen Warrior (1995), for example, notes a legacy of Indigenous intellectual tradition beginning in the 1700s and continuing through the 1990s (pp. 3-43). Cherokee/German rhetorician Angela Haas' (2007) research into the communicative force of wampum belts persuades readers that Indigenous intellectualism has existed among North American communities for at least a thousand years and provides a foundation for present-day Indigenous digital rhetorics (p. 77). More recently, Ellen Cushman's (2011) research into Cherokee writing systems and syllabary demonstrates these were not based on the EuroWestern alphabet. Rather, they were based on Cherokee syllables and meanings. Tsianina Lomawaima and Teresa McCarty (2006) address the often-negative metaphysical and material consequences of current educational policy and how the academy has historically figured in the lives of Native students (see also Deyhle, 1995; Francis & Reyhner, 2002; Meriam, 1928; Reyhner & Eder, 2004). Cherokee/Dine' scholar Brian Yazzie Burkhart (2004) explores how Indigenous epistemologies articulate ways of knowing or coming to know 44 that are rooted in cultural or community contexts (see also Barnhardt & Kawagley, 2005; Battiste, 2002; Deloria, 2001; Meyer, 2001a, 2001b), but pointedly discusses how EuroWestern knowledge systems disregard these. Because Indigenous knowledge systems are largely disregarded, it is unlikely that early intellectual Indigenous traditions will be connected to contemporary reality in public debate. If a person knows about these early intellectual traditions and their contested reality, it is most likely because of personal history or a scholarly interest in Indigenous literacy issues, not because it is widespread knowledge. As the literatures just mentioned and many other literatures indicate, reconstructions rooted in Indigenous epistemologies work to relocate histories of intellectual traditions (see also Tyeeme Clark in Mihesuah & Wilson, 2004), yet colonizers and generations of their descendants refuse to see evidence (presence and performance) of the "other's" complex culture and intelligence. This, exacerbated by a boarding school mentality of "kill the Indian in him, and save the man,"13 which continues today in the push toward assimilation, has in many respects negated (obliterated) Indigenous educational and political histories from much public rhetoric. Indigenous Studies scholars, Native and non-Native alike, agree that counteracting deficit and defeatist rhetoric involves confronting the "historical imbalances" caused by colonization (Marker, 2004, p. 20). As noted, these imbalances have at best marginalized Indigeneity and at worse erased it from academic contexts altogether. To resist this marginalization and erasure, scholars both early and late have plied cultural and historical 13 Retrieved from http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/4929/ March 14, 2011. Official report of the nineteenth annual conference of charities and correction (1892), 46-59. Reprinted in Richard H. Pratt, "The advantages of mingling Indians with Whites," in Americanizing the American Indians: Writings by the "Friends of the Indian" 1880-1900 (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1973), 260-271. 45 knowledge and memory to reconstruct history and reestablish an Indigenous intellectual presence in the academy.14 Rather than focusing on deficit and defeat, they focus on power, possibility, and hope. Hope, in this sense, is not "the future-centered hope of the Western imagination, but rather, a hope that lives in contingency with the past, one that trusts the beliefs and understandings of [Native] ancestors as well as the power of traditional knowledge" (Grande, 2004, p. 28). It is a hope that "believes in the strength and resiliency of indigenous peoples and communities, recognizing that their struggles are not about inclusion and enfranchisement . . . but, rather, are part of the indigenous project of sovereignty and indigenization" (pp. 28-29; see also Kana‘iaupuni, 2004). Given the history of colonization, not only does dominant culture enact contradictory stances about Native presence and performance, as the powwow performances and bootstrap rhetoric indicates, but Indigenous culture sometimes does as well. Indigenous individuals and communities engage in vigorous debates about how to continue and expand contemporary intellectual traditions alongside long-standing traditions and epistemologies. When Warrior (1995) summarizes various American Indian intellectual movements across time, he reports a "conflictual diversity" so pronounced that negotiation seems nearly impossible to effect (p. 34). On the one hand stand scholars and community activists concerned with identifying and detailing the intellectual and/or academic moves of an ostensibly unified (one body with one purpose) but separatist (set apart from AngloAmerican society) Nation and/or People. On the other hand stand more skeptical scholars and community members, theorists deeply wary of an approach that appears much too generalized to be useful, does not account for intercultural influence, and borders on a detrimental essentialism. What we see, then, are widely varying 14 Although Kaomea's (2003) reading of erasure due to colonialism focuses on Native Hawaiian school systems, it has applicability in American Indian educational contexts as well. 46 theoretical positions concerning degrees of integration and separation in both contemporary and historical contexts. Because different scholarly camps understand the "how-to" of re-centering differently, I now turn to unpacking and complicating prominent debates of the past few decades concerning integration and separation, particularly emphasizing what I see as their parallel counterparts: survivance and rhetorical sovereignty. Complications of Integration and Separation Some scholars argue that separation in any sense of the word is impossible. To their way of thinking, an assumption of a unified People with essential shared characteristics invalidates the ways individuals within identifiable groups such as tribal nations experience plural identities and participate in multiple communities. How, they puzzle, can a "one body" stance adequately address the nuanced life experiences of "mixed bloods," (Lyons, 1998), "cross-bloods" (Vizenor, 1991), or transgendered folks, for example? Similar concerns are raised about the difficulties of describing or theorizing the experiences of those Natives who identify as queer (see Driskill, Finley, Gilley & Morgensen, 2011). And what about the difficulty of establishing a separatist solidarity when histories are so intertwined, so integrated, across generations? Even Womack (1999) in his insistence on cultural resistance that promotes separation notes that because of Creek matrilineal traditions, Whiteness was "often subsumed, or at the very least modified by Creekness" through intermarriage (p. 144). Thus, separation-at least that based on authenticity debates and essentialism-is understood as reductive and limiting. It has inadequate explanatory power. Philip Deloria (1998) appears to align with an integrationist stance in his book Playing Indian, wherein he emphasizes a fluid type of integration. He suggests that radical separation is a misnomer, an inaccurate and unsustainable interpretation. When we consider AngloAmerican and American Indian history, he says, we must conclude, "the two stories are inseparable" (p. 47 191) because as Whites and American Indians "exchange[d] and share[d] cultural material" (p. 172) they jointly created an "ambiguous hybrid terrain" (p. 152). He reasons that, "The power to define and exclude, the power to appropriate and co-opt, the power to speak and resist, and the power to build new, hybrid worlds are sometimes one and the same, and that power flows through interlocked social and cultural systems" (p. 178). Mary Hermes and Chad Uran (2006) also suggest that separation is blurred in contemporary contexts because, as they argue, who can say when or whether "strategic employment of ‘tradition' as a means of coping with change . . . issues from an indigenous voice or a nonindigenous one" (p. 395). Fixing or containing Indigenous knowledge as something that belongs in the past forestalls movement toward increasing possibilities. Mary Hermes (2005) goes so far as to suggest that the "greatest error in Indian education" occurs under these circumstances (p. 48). In this case, she says, "[l]esson plans, subject areas, and course content all attempt to act as containers" instead of transformers, and they fix Indigenous cultural knowledge as static and of the past, thereby effectively erasing it as a contemporary reality (p. 44). By the same token, attempts to simply add Indigenous culture onto the template of EuroWestern structures, Hermes asserts, "distort[s] and diminish[es]" its power (p. 49). In these ways, Hermes seems to suggest that integration-whether identified in theory, practice, or product-is still colored by separatist notions, especially as these emerge in interactions between institutional and Indigenous stakeholders. Even when institutions create and implement culturally relevant curricula, for example, they are in most cases symptomatic of an "uneasy alliance" (Deloria, 1998, p. 191, emphasis added) because asymmetrical power relationships are still maintained. Hermes thus acknowledges the need for making the old seem new and for separation if Natives are to experience more power. Insofar as stances embrace hybridity and integration they can replace (swallow up) "truth" and "history" as understood by Native populations (Womack, 1999, p. 3). 48 Beverly Klug and Patricia Whitfield (2003) promote a form of separation when they suggest that, ideally, Native students benefit from instruction given by those who understand their lived experiences both culturally and linguistically, i.e., by Native educators. Indigenous education scholars Malia Villegas (Alutiq/Sugpiaq), Bryan McKinley Jones Brayboy (Lumbee), and Angelina Castagno (2007) point this out as well. They argue that Pima students, for instance, require "Pima educators, a guiding knowledge system based in Pima values, a Pima community commitment for education, and a Pima social system with economic, ecological, health and other elements required to support a healthy educational system" (slide 7). Villegas, Brayboy, and Castagno also, however, argue that culturally relevant schooling can be misused and misunderstood. Rather than making culture the foundation of learning, it can be perceived as "something to be repaired, linked, or mined for resources." Under these circumstances, it "others" students and ignores relationships. It erases the contextual understandings needed to acquire knowledge. Students, families, and communities become secondary concerns and their cultures seen as obstacles to learning rather than resources. It is a complex dilemma. Even when Native students benefit from culturally relevant schooling, they are still primarily taught by AngloAmerican English-speakers who are required to administer heavily regulated federal policies and follow institutionally governed curriculums based on a very different set of cultural norms. This was true for AITE students, as we will see in a later chapter, and it is true in other university systems. The difficulty holds for tribal schools as well. This means that even when institutions attempt to initiate curricula with a Native cultural orientation, these often undergo an institutional transformation, and not in an empowering sense for Native peoples. Curriculums delivered via English as the template of instruction-however unwittingly-carry a EuroWestern angle of vision by means of institutional and linguistic structures. 49 Lyons (2010), too, complicates the integration and separation divide. He introduces a new term, x-mark, which is taken from the presence/absence of Native identity in the performance of signature or the signing of documents, often treaty documents. Lyons' x-mark signifies presence and performs agreement, although it is the type of agreement "one makes when there seems to be little choice in the matter" (p. 1). An x-mark indicates "a decision one makes when something has already been decided for you, but it is still a decision," and it "symbolize[s] Native assent to things (concepts, policies, technologies, ideas) that, while not necessarily traditional in origin, can sometimes turn out all right and occasionally even good" (p. 3). An x-mark is an adaptation or accommodation made for survival. Beyond survival, however, the assent of the x-mark values movement and return. Specifically, it values migration, an axiology/epistemology that accepts the need to shift or journey as seasons and situations demand. This valuation is based upon a "guiding vision" of the Great Migration and is imbued with, Lyons (2010) notes, "something we might call the ‘spirit of a people'" (p. 5). X-marks, Lyons says, are "commitments to living a new way of life, not only in the immediate present but ‘for as long as the grass grows and the rivers flow'" (p. 8). Using this term, then, Lyons (2010) takes exception to what he sees as pronouncements concerning the primacy of traditionalism (a concept he associates with separation) in a contemporary context because these types of pronouncements can encourage racist simulations and can mean internalizing "removal" and seeing a return to "pure traditionalism" as the only way to escape a "corrupt" White society and prevent loss of culture and identity (p. 10). He opposes this way of thinking and says, "the x-mark is never made out of fear of corruption. It simply works with what we have in order to produce something good. X-marks are made with a view of the new as merely another stopping point in a migration that is always heading for home, always keeping time on the move" (p. 10). I see the integration/separation debate 50 embedded in Lyons' notion of x-marks as related to hybridic transmotion, which Vizenor (1998) describes as "a sense of native motion and an active presence" (p. 15; see also 2009, pp. 108, 162). The key point is doing-as opposed to having or being-because motion or action brings more abundance, more possibilities. If Native populations focus on doing culture in the present rather than on having a culture of the past or being a culture (still implying fixedness), then there is movement and momentum that allows people to survive/live and, more importantly, to thrive, to find home. Even as Lyons makes a good case for integration, however, his emphasis on "the spirit of a people" (emphasis added) and "home" seems to indicate at least some acknowledgement of separation. But rather than nostalgically longing for an earlier, better time, his idea of separation would have American Indians draw on tradition for the purpose of engaging in meaningful actions that bring about "more life" today (pp. 84, 86). The notions of x-marks and transmotion do not, then, discount history or tradition. They do suggest it is not productive for contemporary Natives to dwell in the pain and loss of victimry. Nor should Natives employ surveillance in the form of "culture cops" who would punish those who wish to shift tradition and move in new directions (pp. 73-109). X-marks are made as a commitment to action, a doing for more life and they have a practical purpose: to assist community-determination now and in the future. Survivance The ideas of x-marks and transmotion allow us to see the ambiguity inherent in integration/separation stances, particularly as they are connected to survivance, an understanding of which is critical to a more complete understanding of the entire dissertation project. I use the term as Powell (2004) does, and she follows Vizenor's (1994) introduction of it in Manifest Manners. According to Powell's (2002) early archival research, survivance can be identified as a 51 type of doing, including moves made both knowingly and not. Vizenor (1999) calls them moves of "narrative chance" (p. 82) or "invention" (p. 85). Vizenor further describes survivance as an active "resistance" (2008, p. 11) that performs "new stories of tribal courage" (1999, p. 4). Survivance utilizes Native perspectives and includes actions performed within contested cultural spaces where Natives are at political and cultural disadvantage. Survivance in this sense describes a combination of Indigenous survival and resistance strategies applied for the purpose of countering colonization, the "surveillance and literature of dominance" (1999, p. 5). But survivance is something more than the potentially dangerous, precipitous act of (metaphorically) hanging on by the skin of your teeth, i.e., surviving. It also indicates more than the fixed state implied by the (also metaphorical) digging in of your heels, i.e., resisting. It encompasses more than happenstance or response. Vizenor (1999) conceptualizes survivance as a "natural presence" like that of the wind or rivers or animals. It is ever-present and variable, "always in motion" (p. 38) and always linked to or moving across some thing or some other. "Native stories of survivance" are the very "creases of transmotion" (Vizenor, 1998, p. 15). Acts of survivance work within the small fissures or cracks of history to ensure a future possibility. For Native peoples, survivance indicates creativity and an openness to change via Indigenous rhetoric (see Stromberg, 2006, p. 1). Indigenous rhetors, in other words, have to be cognizant of those creases of opportunity to be able to act, to take advantage of opportunity or chance. Indigenous rhetors have to understand the underlying principles involved in creation of multiple kinds (i.e. jokes, speeches, documents) to be able to invent response. When Native people story or interpret their contemporary acts of survivance (survival and/or resistance), the stories become connected, linked to, or crossed with the folds of history. 52 Here, let me interject one student participant's illustration of transmotion, her description of how she enacts survivance while participating in EuroWestern educational processes. "In terms of going along with the flow of school," she says, "I know what I have to do in order to get done with the program. I do what I have to do." Furthermore, she notes, she can adapt, accommodate, and still maintain tribal affiliation in the service of self-determination. She says, "I've played in the White man's world" and "I've had to [hold a professional position while] going off to Washington, DC to represent my tribe at the federal level." Survivance strategies in this student's case are linked to the verbal (and, I would suggest, textual and lived) "wrangling" or negotiation all Native students do to survive (Gubele, 2008). Through working the creases of opportunity, she can hold her own in the White world and at the same time fulfill a needed role in her community. Her survivance is skillfully crafted individual performance combined with historic understanding. Powell's (2002) research allows us to see additional, concrete qualities and/or modes of survivance, where, historically, Indigenous rhetors seized opportunity in order to invent and/or create rhetorical spaces for Indigenous presence and performance. Powell documents and explains, for example, Charles Alexander Eastman and Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins' use of dominant discourse in written form and in public performances or lectures to show the ways it afforded them the opportunity of public presence or visibility. To summarize, Eastman and Winnemucca Hopkins along with other Indigenous rhetors of the time strategically considered the contexts confronting them and acted accordingly. Given the situations they encountered, they appealed to their mostly AngloAmerican audiences' beliefs and values with fluency and acumen. They evoked pathos and, consequently, persuaded many people in their audiences. They utilized the vocabulary of Christianity. They appealed to commonly held notions of gender. If criticism was directed their way, they adeptly redirected it. They encouraged cultural 53 mediation. Finally, they played to non-Native people's ideals of their own goodness. (p. 407) They worked the creases available to them when the chance or opportunity presented itself. Brayboy's (2005a) ethnographic research also provides examples of survivance. It details how "John" and "Heather," contemporary American Indian students, negotiate constructions of presence and performance in university environments. Brayboy shows the ways John and Heather utilize Indigenous ways of knowing, being, and valuing to invent and create, to navigate the creases of educational scenarios in rhetorically savvy ways. In Brayboy's (2005a) case studies, John worked hard to develop "outside the classroom" relationships with his university professors through office hour visits and independent study courses. He increased his debate and oratorical skills in classroom settings by connecting them to the "intensity [and] confrontation" learned and developed in Native competitions (p. 200). This active participation in classroom discussions, while not typical of everyday habit, became a sport or game, and because his instructors encouraged it he performed the role of, as he says, "a good arguer, man" (p. 200). Heather exhibited a very different set of navigational strategies based on the tribal norms to which she was accustomed. In class, instead of drawing attention to her knowledge by making definitive statements or points, she learned how to ask clarifying questions in ways that were both academically appreciated and culturally appropriate. Out of class, she took advantage of one-to-one verbal interactions with professors, taking time to ask questions and further develop ideas raised in readings. Eastman, Winnemucca, Jon, and Heather were certainly visible in their respective public and academic spheres. Their examples help us understand how individual American Indians have been able to take advantage of possibilities to enact what their respective researchers have termed survivance and, consequently, establish more broadly understood competencies in regards to American Indian peoples. Survivance does not, then, deny the material realities of 54 Native lives; rather, it is a trickster move that counteracts victimry and wields presence and performance like wizardry, even though the performances/enactments may not all be interpreted as having the same measure of success. It bears pointing out that the acceptance rhetors and students received by utilizing these survivance strategies was only to the degree that they-people and strategies-could be identified as "fitting in" to conventionalized EuroWestern public and academic society. Whether these individual actions pushed boundaries for American Indians as a collective is debatable, and this indicates a need for encouraging more deliberate performance, more deliberate action/activism in public and academic realms. Nationhood Complications in Integration and Separation Discrepant stances concerning degrees of integration and separation are made more understandable when we consider historical contexts as related to the "complex, dynamic state of evolving nationhood" (Womack, 1999, p. 139). To this end, Lyons (2010) teases out a useful distinction between nationality and nationhood, and does so based on linguistic etymologies (Latin, French, and Ojibwemowin). The origin of the word nation comes from Latin natio and natura indicating a function of birth, nature, race, or breed. According to Lyons' research, the word has been used in English since the thirteenth century but by the seventeenth century was understood as having more a political referent than a racialized one. There is, however, no Native linguistic referent to the term "nation." There is no corollary, at least not in the Ojibwemowin language. This indicates that the tribal people living on the American continent before ‘1492' would probably not have understood themselves as nations. Political scholars suggest that nations as we know them are a modern development "whose logic cannot be discovered prior to the modern era" and are connected to "industrialization, mass literacy, public education, and other such modern developments" (p. 115). Modernity therefore "encouraged the modern nation and state to emerge" (p. 118). What Lyons' research suggests is that neither 55 Natives nor European settlers in the Americas were understood as separate nations until modern political concerns brought about the need for the concept. Then, when the need arose, the various groups began acting upon it by "treating" to establish their legitimacy as collective units. "For what is a treaty if not a legal contract between nations?" (p. 123). If the idea of a nation is distinctly modern, the question becomes whether it is really a useful concept for Native peoples to be taking up in service of maintaining separation based on traditionalism (Lyons, 2010, p. 116, 117). A more plausible claim, Lyons suggests, might arise based on "an ‘unbroken' descent" from an ethnic and cultural genealogy (p. 121). Beyond denoting nationality (political or legal status), claims of nationhood are then more about "the character and integrity of one's cultural identity" (Cohen cited in Lyons, 2010, p. 113). Hence, says Lyons, "The idea of an Indian nation may [only] be as modern as anyone else's nation, but that doesn't mean its origins aren't as old as the hills" (p. 121). Tracing the etymology of nationhood, Lyons suggests, shifts Native thought away from ideas of being separate by function of nationality (conglomerate groupings based on political geography) toward ideas of separation based on "ethnie" (groupings based on ethnic and cultural commonality). This remediation of nationhood has produced "a paradigm shift" that increasingly emphasizes tradition in a way that is "separatist" (p. 113), yes, but not in terms of a rigid return to tradition or "the old ways." Rathe