ABSTRACTTHEORY BEGINS WITH A STORY, TOO: LISTENING TO THE LIVED EXPERIENCES OF AMERICAN INDIAN WOMENByAndrea Riley-MukavetzThis dissertation argues that the stories American Indian women tell about their lived experiences are rhetorical theories used to survive institutional spaces like academia. One community-based study is central to this argument: my research with a group of multi-generational Odawa women who live and work in Lansing, Michigan. By listening to the stories from the Little Traverse Bay Band women, I hear their stories as theories and use them as the primary framework for the dissertation project. Their theories draw attention to how Native women take deliberate positions that resist Euro-centric identities and practices. Yet, these positions affect how tribal and mainstream discourses acknowledge American Indian women's roles and responsibilities. I build a relational theory of visibility by weaving the theories from the Odawa women, the writing of indigenous feminists, and rhetorical histories written by or for American Indian women into each other. This theory examines how American Indian women negotiate the challenges of being visible in the community, at work, or while living and working in the university. This dissertation develops a cultural rhetorics methodology to continue to disassemble colonial rhetorics and cultivate a space to examine what practices should be used to rebuild our tribal communities inside and outside of the university. By drawing upon indigenous rhetorical practices, I show how researchers are complicit in using colonial rhetorics and provide a model to decolonize how we live and work in institutional spaces.
Read
