This essay describes my design and implementation of a composition course focused on the Native American rhetorical device of survivance at work in debates on Indian removal and U.S.-Indian relations in general. Using a contact zone approach, I found that the course improved writing and thinking skills by pushing students out of their ideological…

Sketches a key mechanism called "Substitute Vocabularies" whereby practitioners of democracies seek to reconcile contradictions between democratic political principle and repressive political action. Illustrates this by identifying the Richard Nixon administration's political principles regarding Native Americans as articulated in…

At the third annual Cal-State Hayward Conference in Rhetorical Criticism, 22 upper division and graduate students from 16 colleges and universities of the western states presented papers on rhetorical theory, history, and criticism. Panels of faculty members from the same colleges and universities, acting as editor-critics, rated four of these…

Examines "Logan's Oration" as an example of native American speechmaking and reaffirms this piece of rhetoric as a useful sample of native oratory and a culturally authentic artifact. (JMF)

Studies the nature and effect of the rhetorical strategies of Sarah Winnemucca, a Paiute Indian (1878-1884), and Bright Eyes, "the Ponca Girl" (1879-1882) who both served as spokeswomen for their tribes' struggles for Indian rights as citizens and human beings in post-Civil War America. (MH)

Analyzes the American Indian Movement (AIM) with respect to (1) the role of tradition in AIM demands; (2) militant Indian rhetoric as a form of ritual self-address; (3) how Indian religious/cultural beliefs restrict the ability of language to persuade Whites; and (4) how militant Indian rhetoric fulfills its function. (PD)

Examines the Smith John case--in which the United States Supreme Court secured official recognition of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw as a tribe--as an example of "rhetorical games" used by different cultural groups to manipulate each other. Suggests alternative rhetorical strategies that would benefit the state and the Mississippi…