Rhetoric is understood in Western traditions as the art of persuasion. A typical approach to rhetoric draws from ancient Greek and Roman theories on techniques, strategies, and forms of logic that best motivate desired conclusions from an audience. Although they are sometimes represented as a universal facet of human communication, editor Lawrence Gross (Anishinaabe) and the contributing authors of Native American Rhetoric question Western rhetoric’s relevance to the analysis of Native American verbal performance. As such, a significant contribution of this text is the call to decenter Western rhetoric; the three major rhetorical appeals as outlined by Aristotle–ethos, pathos, and logos–are not named or discussed at length. Rather, contributors enact their decolonial intellectual project by decentering Western categories in both topic and, well, rhetorical choices. Native American rhetorical tools such as silence, narrative digression, and consensus are highlighted and contextualized through rhetorical goals usually associated with Western rhetoric, such as persuasion, establishing authority, and education. Authors argue that Native American rhetoric differs from Western rhetoric because it is drawn from land-based values and cultural knowledge. It is further distinguished from Western traditions through a refusal of confrontation and coercion in favor of what Gross identifies as Native American rhetorical goals: harmony, consensus, and unity (6). To situate the volume’s discussions within an intellectual history, Gross acknowledges landmark scholarship on Native American rhetoric, such as work by Scott Richard Lyons (Minnesota Ojibwe) on the concept of rhetorical sovereignty and by Gerald Vizenor (Minnesota Chippewa) on the concept of survivance.
Gross edited Native American Rhetoric to address the lack of literature on diverse, culturally embedded rhetorical practices among specific Native American communities. Authors in Gross’s collection–scholars of North America, primarily the United States, including doctoral candidates and professors emeriti–argue, as is stated at the outset, “that Native American rhetorical practices have their own interior logic grounded in the moral thinking and religious practices of the [speaker’s] tradition” (1). Gross argues that once rhetorical practices are situated within their cultural and historical contexts, “the phenomenological expression of the speech patterns make sense” (1). Native rhetoric as discussed in this text should not be understood as an extension of Western traditions. Rather, Native rhetoric is distinct and entails strategies that emerge from particular histories, cultural values, and religious perspectives. Religion and spirituality are of special interest to Gross, who, in the introduction, establishes that “Native American rhetoric [is] grounded firmly in the cultural and religious ideals of a given tradition” and “is imbued fully with the sacred power of the traditions” (3).
As with any discussion exploring Indigenous rhetoric, Native American Rhetoric includes several examples of storytelling as rhetorical practice, although the focus is on the specifics of rhetorical strategy rather than the story itself. In other words, how do stories persuade? And why are these methods especially Native American? To answer these questions, authors explore collaborative and narrative forms of argumentation in Native cultural and rhetorical traditions. Some contributors, such as Gross in his chapter “The Use of Digressions in Anishinaabe Rhetoric as a Moral Act: Connecting Speech to the Religious Idea That All Things Are Related,” and Felicia Rhapsody Lopez (Chicanx) in “Women, Childbirth, and the Sticky Tamales: Nahua Rhetoric and Worldview in the Glyphic Codex Borgia,” situate rhetoric as an extension of religious belief in Anishinaabe and Nahua communities. Religious stories and narrative genres motivate the discursive forms and ethical principles shaping persuasive verbal performances. Some chapters examine the complexity of rhetoric and other-than-human relations, such as Seth Schermerhorn’s piece “‘O’odham, Too’: Or, How to Speak to Rattlesnakes.” Cutcha Risling Baldy’s (Hupa, Yurok, Karuk) piece, “Why We Fish: Decolonizing Salmon Rhetorics and Governance,” describes how Native American rhetoric is used to persuade politicians and corporate representatives that salmon in Northwest California are Indigenous kin deserving of sovereignty, health, and dignity.
Some authors take a discourse-centered, linguistic approach to the topic of Native rhetoric. Meredith Moss’s chapter “Sounding Navajo: Bookending in Navajo Public Speaking” draws parallels between Navajo discourse markers, “bookending” English speech events with Navajo openings and closings, and phonological markers (accent) as rhetorical tools used to persuade an audience that they are in a Navajo space among Navajo interlocutors. This approach illustrates linguistic anthropology’s special usefulness in analyzing language practice as cultural behavior. Several authors address language shift and how colonial languages such as English influence how rhetoric is understood and deployed. For example, the late Phyllis Fast (Koyukon Athabascan) looks at how narrative forms are adapted as linguistic and cultural landscapes change. She presents English-language Koyukon riddling as a land-based and seasonal genre drawn from Denaakk’e (Koyukon language) linguistic traditions. Riddles index Koyukon belonging through appeals to intimate knowledge of the local environment. “Riddling season” is a time of rich rhetorical innovation through esoteric metaphors. These idiomatic riddles function as pedagogical tools to test youth and encourage evaluative awareness of the natural world.
This collection underscores how critical it is to understand cultural distinctions between Indigenous and Western forms of argumentation–with consideration, of course, to the diverse particularities and land-based localness of Native American rhetoric. Given that many Native individuals today, especially those who rely on English or other non-Indigenous languages for communication, are well aware of Western rhetoric, it is time to prioritize what differentiates Native rhetoric from Greek traditions. Native American Rhetoric will be useful to any scholar thinking and writing about Indigenous discourse practices as well as to scholars of Western rhetoric interested in availing themselves of diverse strategies across time and place. Essays vary in topical focus, length, and conceptual complexity, providing syllabus options for both undergraduate and graduate courses.
Decentering Western traditions in North American scholarship is a difficult task, and this collection of essays is a worthwhile contribution to that larger project within academia, particularly Native American and Indigenous studies. Although I am open to and have personal interest in Indigenous rhetoric, I admittedly find it difficult to think of rhetoric outside of the Western traditions within which I have been educated. I often find myself slipping into Western conceptual frameworks as I process arguments urging one to deemphasize their significance. Whether or not a reader is convinced to question Western rhetoric and its conceptual categories may come down to one’s own situatedness, which I think reflects the success of this text to illustrate how culturally embedded our notions of argumentation can be.
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[Review length: 1055 words • Review posted on March 10, 2023]