American Indians and the Rhetoric of Removal and Allotment

by Jason Edward Black

Overview

Jason Black examines the ways the U.S. government's rhetoric and American Indian voices contributed to the policies of Native-U.S. relations throughout the nineteenth century's removal and allotment eras. Black shows how these discourses co-constructed the perception of the U.S. government and American Indian communities and contributed to the relationship. Such interactions - though certainly not equal between the two - illustrated the hybrid nature of Native-U.S. rhetoric in the nineteenth century. That is, both governmental colonizing discourse and indigenous decolonizing discourse added arguments, identity constructions, and rhetorical moves to the colonizing relationship. Native Dualities demonstrates how American Indians decolonized dominant rhetoric in terms of impeding the removal and allotment policies. By turning around the U.S. government's discursive frameworks and inventing their own rhetorical tactics, American Indian communities helped restyle their own and the government's identities. During the first third of the twentieth century, Native decolonization impacted the Native-U.S. relationship as American Indians urged for the successful passage of the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 and the Indian New Deal of 1934. In the end, Native communities were granted increased rhetorical power through decolonization, though the U.S. government retained a powerful colonial influence through its territorial management of Natives. The Indian Citizenship Act and the Indian New Deal - where this book concludes - emblemize the prevalence of the identity duality of U.S. citizenship that amalgamated American Indians to the nation, yet segregated them on reservations outside the spaces of U.S. society. This duality of inclusion and exclusion was built incrementally and existed as residues of nineteenth century Native-U.S. rhetorical relations.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781628461961
Publisher:	University Press of Mississippi
Publication date:	02/10/2015
Series:	Race, Rhetoric, and Media Series
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	214
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Jason Edward Black, Northport, Alabama, is an associate professor in rhetoric and public discourse and an affiliate professor in gender and race studies at the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa. He is the coeditor of An Archive of Hope: Harvey Milk's Speeches and Writings and Arguments about Animal Ethics. His work has appeared in such journals as Quarterly Journal of Speech, Rhetoric and Public Affairs, American Indian Quarterly, and American Indian Culture and Research Journal.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction: Colonization and Decolonization in the Native-US Relationship 3

1 The Ties That Colonize: Rhetoric from Nationhood to Removal 19

2 Governmental Colonizing Rhetoric During Indian Removal 37

3 Native Decolonial Resistance to Removal 59

4 Colonization and the Solidification of Identities in the General Allotment Act 81

5 Pan-Indianism and Decolonial Challenges to Allotment 103

Conclusion: Identity Duality and the Legacies of Colonizing and Decolonizing Rhetoric 134

Notes 157

Bibliography 191

Index 210

Editorial Reviews

"In this treatment of allotment and removal, Jason Edward Black explores American rhetorics of paternalism and subjugation in a nuanced and subtle way. He locates these discourses in historical context, treats them with respect, and carefully parses their various manifestations and consequences. In so doing, Black demonstrates how native voices accommodated, resisted, and contributed to emerging American national identities. Importantly, Black's analysis invests indigenous people with agency, and thus adds to the growing body of work on decolonialization. This book is an important resource for scholars of American Indian and American national history, decolonialism, and political rhetoric."

—Mary Stuckey, professor of communication and political science, Georgia State University

"American Indians and the Rhetoric of Removal and Allotment represents the high-water mark of indigenous scholarship in rhetorical studies. Through fastidious archival research and careful attention to the complexities of Native rhetorical agency from contact to the Indian Citizenship Act, Black's analysis of Euro-Indian relations illustrates both the perniciousness of colonial benevolence but also the subtle and subversive ways American Indians decolonized Euro-American discourse, law, and policy. Black's careful contextual analysis confirms the centrality of Native voices to American public address and documents how the acumen of Native rhetorics at times successfully thwarted the American colonial endeavor. I believe that this ambitious project will be praised by readers as an impressive original contribution to indigenous, postcolonial, and rhetorical studies."

—Casey Ryan Kelly, associate professor of media, rhetoric, and culture, Butler University

"Jason Edward Black moves beyond the simple notion of a one-way form of oppressive and colonial communication from the US to American Indians to examine how American Indian rhetoric not only responded to colonizing efforts by the US government but also contributed to the rhetorical culture of the United States. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in historical and contemporary American Indian rhetoric."

—Danielle Endres, associate professor of communication, University of Utah

From the Publisher