Listening- Enough with Drowning out Voices

Most Native American rhetoric that’s looked at is from after the United States began to be colonized, treating it as if those peoples didn’t have rhetoric before, as if it only exists as a response to Europeans. AS far as they’re concerned, the only Indian rhetorics that exist are those that combine Native culture with European rhetoric, creating hybrid of the two. Hybrid rhetorics are a common thing, and appeal to a broad audience, but they are hardly all there is. In spite of this, “Many people have not considered, and are perhaps unaware, that the indigenous peoples of this country have and use rhetorical strategies” (421). Of course, the notion of any society being arhetorical is ridiculous- every culture has some form of government or leadership, has religion, has influential people of some sort, and those influential people are using some sort of rhetorical strategy. And yet “there are few- if any- comprehensive collections on Indian rhetorics” (421).

So how can this problem exist? It seems obvious, at least to me, that Native Americans and other indigenous peoples must have rhetoric of some sort, and it just boggles the mind to think that such an enormous oversight could be committed. But on the other hand, “Indigenous people in the Americas were never silent, even if they were rarely heard by Euro-Americans(151)” (421). European settlers never have been very good at paying attention to the people they invade. It seems to me that there is a simple- if unlikely- solution to this problem. We need to start listening- really listening to each other. I think these voices have been drowned out long enough.