For thousands of years, American Indian cultures have recorded
their truths in the narratives and metaphors of oral tradition.
Stories, languages, and artifacts, such as glyphs and drawings, all
carry Indigenous knowledge, directly contributing to American
Indian rhetorical structures that have proven resistant - and
sometimes antithetical - to Western academic discourse. It is this
tradition that Kimberly G. Wieser seeks to restore in Back to the
Blanket, as she explores the rich possibilities that Native notions
of relatedness offer for understanding American Indian knowledge,
arguments, and perspectives. Back to the Blanket analyzes a wide
array of American Indian rhetorical traditions, then applies them
in close readings of writings, speeches, and other forms of
communication by historical and present-day figures. Wieser turns
this pathbreaking approach to modes of thinking found in the
oratory of eighteenth-century Mohegan and Presbyterian cleric
Samson Occom, visual communication in Laguna Pueblo author Leslie
Marmon Silko's Almanac of the Dead, patterns of honesty and
manipulation in the speeches of former president George W. Bush,
and rhetorics and relationships in the communication of Indigenous
leaders such as Ada-gal'kala, Tsi'yugûnsi'ni, and Inoli. Exploring
the multimodal rhetorics - oral, written, material, visual,
embodied, kinesthetic - that create meaning in historical
discourse, Wieser argues for the rediscovery and practice of
traditional Native modes of communication - a modern-day ""going
back to the blanket,"" or returning to Native practices. Her work
shows how these Indigenous insights might be applied in models of
education for Native American students, in Native American
communities more broadly, and in transcultural communication,
negotiation, debate, and decision making.
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