Post-Contact Rhetoric

I read Stromberg's introduction before reading Bizzaro's review, and in doing so I ended up thinking about the same issue Bizzaro notes: post-contact versus pre-contact rhetoric. Initially when we began this section on Native American rhetoric I anticipated something like we found in Before and Beyond the Greeks. Like the impatient reader Bizzaro notes, who wonders why the texts don't identify and define characteristics of Native American rhetoric, I started wondering about the approach taken by the scholars we have read so far in this section on Native American rhetoric. While not always cut-and-dry, rhetoricians from our previous section--ancient rhetorics--typically discussed rhetorical traditions within their own particular cultures. However, it looks like our Native American rhetoricians are concerned with native rhetorical traditions within the Western tradition. To use the example of the parlor room, Before and Beyond the Greeks considered the rhetorical strategies used in various parlor rooms, each of which represents a particular time and culture. It looks like American Rhetorics of Survivance, on the other hand, is looking at how Native Americans have moved from their own parlor room into the Western rhetoric parlor room.

While I would like to see examples of pre-contact rhetoric, like Bizzaro, I understand some of the inherent limitations of Native American studies. For one, it is all too easy to push Native Americans together into a single group, when in fact, indigenous peoples of North America were numerous and vastly different. There won't be one single Native American rhetoric because different groups had very different beliefs and traditions. Also, because of the course of history we must treat Native American studies differently than, for example Egyptian studies. Native Americans were forced into assimilation (to continue the house of rhetoric metaphor, they were forced from their own parlor into our Western parlor), so we must address the rhetorical traditions which emerged post-contact in order to better establish the Native American identity, and the past, present, and future these peoples have. Perhaps after this is done, after Native Americans are no longer seen as iconic Indians of the Old West, rhetoricians can more productively consider pre-contact rhetoric.