Stories, Traces of Discourse, and the Tease of Presence: Gertrude
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University of Wisconsin Milwaukee UWM Digital Commons Theses and Dissertations May 2013 Stories, Traces of Discourse, and the Tease of Presence: Gertrude Simmons Bonnin as Orator and Indigenous Activist Paige Allison Conley University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.uwm.edu/etd Part of the Indigenous Studies Commons, Rhetoric Commons, and the Women's Studies Commons Recommended Citation Conley, Paige Allison, "Stories, Traces of Discourse, and the Tease of Presence: Gertrude Simmons Bonnin as Orator and Indigenous Activist" (2013). Theses and Dissertations. 675. https://dc.uwm.edu/etd/675 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by UWM Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of UWM Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. STORIES, TRACES OF DISCOURSE, AND THE TEASE OF PRESENCE: GERTRUDE SIMMONS BONNIN AS ORATOR AND INDIGENOUS ACTIVIST by Paige Allison Conley A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English at The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee May 2013 ABSTRACT STORIES, TRACES OF DISCOURSE, AND THE TEASE OF PRESENCE: GERTRUDE SIMMONS BONNIN AS ORATOR AND INDIGENOUS ACTIVIST by Paige Allison Conley The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2013 Under the Supervision of Professor Alice M. Gillam An accomplished writer, editor, musician, teacher, organizer, lobbyist, and political reformer, Gertrude Simmons Bonnin worked tirelessly during the first half of the twentieth century to enhance opportunities for Native Americans. Literary texts authored by Bonnin (writing as Zitkala-Ša) are well known, but her legacy as an early twentieth- century orator and indigenous activist receives little critical attention. Emerging histories within rhetoric and composition continue to recover generally ignored or previously marginalized voices, but we still lack studies specifically examining public speeches made by individuals, particularly women, who sought to both survive within dominant American society, and simultaneously maintain, if not advance, sovereign forms of identity, community, and culture. A careful review of Bonnin’s early twentieth-century efforts to advance indigenous concerns provides scholars with rich opportunities to examine rhetoric from perspectives beyond the Western Eurocentric canon. Her rhetorical maneuvers as an orator, particularly between 1920 and 1925, frequently invoked Dakota culture and continually reworked Western Eurocentric rhetorical forms—specifically epideixis and ethos—as sites of agency and resistance. Recovering this history enriches our ii understanding of survivance as articulated by Gerald Vizenor and continues to enlarge our understanding of multivalent, cross-cultural forms of rhetorical production. This project recovers and critically analyzes an important legacy of early twentieth-century political activism, illustrating powerful means for effectively resisting, essentially refiguring, and meaningfully confronting prevailing discourses of erasure, inequality, or exclusion. The rhetorical strategies Gertrude Simmons Bonnin devised and employed as a public figure are worthy of scholarly attention, most notably for their ability to create discursive formations which affirm and sustain indigeneity from both within, and beyond, dominant culture. iii ©Copyright by Paige Allison Conley, 2013 All Rights Reserved iv TABLE OF CONTENTS SECTION OR CHAPTER PAGE INTRODUCTION ……………………………………………………………….……....1 The Year-Which-Renews-Life CHAPTER ONE: TELLING A STORY OF PRESENCE GERTRUDE SIMMONS BONNIN AS ORATOR AND EARLY 20TH-CENTURY INDIGENOUS ACTIVIST………………………………………………………………………….……. 4 Overview…………………………………………………………………………. 4 Brief Background on Bonnin………………..…………………………………… 7 Bonnin as Orator and Activist…………………………………………………... 15 Theoretical Framework ………………………………………………………… 22 Feminist Rhetorical Studies ………………………………………….… 26 Indigenous Studies……………………………………………………… 36 Notes……………………………………………………………………………..47 CHAPTER TWO: TELLING STORY, REFIGURING CEREMONY A DACOTAH ODE TO WASHINGTON, TRACES OF DISCOURSE, AND THE RHETORICAL POWER OF PRESENCE AS ABSENCE…………………………….. 55 The Genre of Epideictic………………………………………………………… 57 Mrs. Bonnin as a Ceremonial Figure…………………………………………… 65 Washington’s Monument……………………………………………………….. 67 A Commemorative Ceremony………………………………………………….. 69 Ambiguity, Amplification, Metaphor, Story…………………………………… 74 “Hecetu” to Ohitika…………………………………………………………..... 88 Speech as Textual Artifact……………………………………………………… 93 Notes..…………………………………………………………………………..100 v CHAPTER THREE: (RE)TELLING STORY: STRATEGICALLY NEGOTIATING ETHOS AND ACTIVATING THE TEASE OF PRESENCE AS COLLABORATIVE FEMINIST RHETORIC…………………..……….…………… 104 Indian Welfare and the GFWC…………………………………………………105 Atwood, Bonnin, and the GFWC……………………………………………….108 The 1921 Council Meeting, Americanization, and Citizenship……………… 111 Bonnin (and Atwood) Speak to the GFWC…………………………………… 114 Navigating Absence: Race, Americanization, and the American West……….. 120 Further Navigating “Indian Play” in Order to Play the Indian (Princess)..…… 124 Ethos as Strategically Negotiating Essence…………………………………… 130 Reading Ethos through a Textual Fragment ………………………………… 138 Collaborative Feminist Rhetoric………...…………………………………….. 151 Notes……………………………………………………………………………158 A CONCLUSION, OF SORTS ………………………………………………………..165 BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………….…………………………...181 APPENDIX: KEY SPEECH TEXTS…………………………………………………. 199 vi LIST OF FIGURES FIGURE PAGE Figure 1. “Students at White’s Indiana Manual Labor Institute, 1886” 9 Figure 2. “Students at Santee Normal Training School, ca. 1890” 10 Figure 3. “Photographs of Bonnin by Gertrude Käsebier, ca. 1898” 11 Figure 4. “Bonnin, Washington Post, ca. 1918” 66 Figure 5. “Official Seal for the State of South Dakota” 69 Figure 6. “South Dakota Adds Stone to Washington Monument” 70 Figure 7. “Women to Hear Indian Princess—Princess Zitkala-Sa” 127 Figure 8. “‘Indian Group.’ Pen Women’s League, April 1920.” 129 Figure 9. “Americanize the First American: A Plan of Regeneration” 149 vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My deepest thanks must be given to Dr. Alice Gillam, whose steadfast support over the years has been a tremendous source of strength and inspiration for me. As committee chair, Dr. Gillam pushed me to become a better scholar and a more effective writer. Her generosity, her compassion, her wisdom, and her infinite grace will continue to shape and influence my professional endeavors as well as my personal journey. Heartfelt thanks must also be given to the other outstanding members of my doctoral committee, including Dr. Kim Blaeser, Dr. Charles Schuster, Dr. Cary Miller, and Dr. P. Jane Hafen for the substantial gifts of precious time, insightful review, and keen interest they each brought to this scholarly project. This dissertation could not have been completed without the invaluable resources provided to me through the D’Arcy McNickle Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies at the Newberry Library and the Newberry Consortium on American Indian Studies offered through the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. I am particularly indebted to the Consortium and several key members, including Dr. Scott Manning Stevens, Jade Cabagnot, Dr. David Beck, Dr. Robert Dale Parker, and my Milwaukee contacts, Dr. Cary Miller and Dr. Kim Blaeser (again!) for seminar training, fellowship funding, and critical opportunities for scholarly research. Thanks must also be extended to the General Federation of Women’s Clubs and the helpful staff associated with the Women’s History Resource Center. To my dear friends, Jennifer, Sarah, Sandy, Meg, Marcy, Gina, Claire, Lisa, Patty, Kathleen, and Karylmary; to my kind sister, Kim; and to my patient daughter, Katherine: no words can fully express my gratitude for your love, care, concern, and encouragement. Let me just say here, you all have my back and that means the world to me. viii 1 INTRODUCTION The Year-Which-Renews-Life Here is one way to begin this story: In the fall of 2008, during an introductory graduate course on rhetoric, Dr. Alice Gillam happened to mention that scholarship addressing the art of discourse still fails to account for effective practices and long- standing traditions which exist beyond the “classical” Western Eurocentric rhetorical canon. I went on to circle that sentence in my notes at least three times. As I review my notes today, I see that I also managed—rather uncharacteristically for someone with my disposition—to mark that section of my notes with exclamation points. I remember searching throughout that fall for voices which could begin to define rhetoric for me in new ways—voices other than Plato, and Aristotle, and Cicero, and Quintilian, voices besides St. Thomas Aquinas or Erasmus, voices in addition to Thomas Hobbes or Hugh Blair, voices beyond Lloyd Bitzer and Kenneth Burke. One day in late October of 2008, I found myself searching through the “Non- Circulating Storage” shelves at our university library, hoping to find copies of the Congressional Record from the 1920s. I can no longer recall how I first came to learn of Gertrude Simmons Bonnin and her recitation of the “Dacotah Ode” before the Washington Monument in June of 1922, but I do know that my initial encounter with this speech text sent me immediately to my local archive. I felt compelled to know more about this speech—its context, its constraints, and its modes of production, if not its