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Reclaiming Indigenous Narratives Through Critical Discourses and the Autonomy of the Trickster

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Reclaiming Indigenous Narratives Through Critical Discourses and the Autonomy of the Trickster Michigan Technological University Digital Commons @ Michigan Tech Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open Reports 2014 Reclaiming Indigenous Narratives through Critical Discourses and the Autonomy of the Trickster Robert D. Hunter Michigan Technological University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.mtu.edu/etds Part of the Rhetoric Commons Copyright 2014 Robert D. Hunter Recommended Citation Hunter, Robert D., "Reclaiming Indigenous Narratives through Critical Discourses and the Autonomy of the Trickster", Dissertation, Michigan Technological University, 2014. https://doi.org/10.37099/mtu.dc.etds/746 Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.mtu.edu/etds Part of the Rhetoric Commons RECLAIMING INDIGENOUS NARRATIVES THROUGH CRITICAL DISCOURSES AND THE AUTONOMY OF THE TRICKSTER By Robert D. Hunter A DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY In Rhetoric and Technical Communication MICHIGAN TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY 2014 © 2014 Robert D. Hunter This dissertation has been approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in Rhetoric and Technical Communication. Department of Humanities Dissertation Advisor: Elizabeth A. Flynn Committee Member: Dieter Wolfgang Adolphs Committee Member: Kette Thomas Committee Member: Latha Poonamallee Department Chair: Ronald Strickland 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface ................................................................................................................................................. 5 Abstract ............................................................................................................................................ 10 Chapter I Promoting an Indigenous Cinema .......................................................................................... 12 A History of Repressive Representation .............................................................................. 22 The Postcolonial Lens ................................................................................................................. 24 The Critical Cinematic Lens ...................................................................................................... 27 Trickster Cinema ........................................................................................................................... 30 Chapter II The Hollywood Indian: A Repressive Representational Schema ............................... 34 Historical Overview ..................................................................................................................... 36 Whose Story Gets Told ................................................................................................................ 39 Servile Sympathies ....................................................................................................................... 42 Better Indian than the Indians ................................................................................................. 44 Who Gets to Tell the Story ......................................................................................................... 47 Chapter III The Postcolonial Lens ................................................................................................................. 54 The Genesis of Stereotype ......................................................................................................... 59 Other Marginalizing Stereotypes ............................................................................................ 65 Psychoanalytic Spectating ......................................................................................................... 70 Paternalism and Postcoloniality ............................................................................................. 77 Affirming the Anticolonial ......................................................................................................... 83 4 Chapter IV The Critical Cinematic Lens ...................................................................................................... 98 The Culture Industry ................................................................................................................. 102 Repressive Tolerance ................................................................................................................ 112 The Public Sphere: Reification and Rupture .................................................................... 125 Chapter V Reconsidering the Trickster ................................................................................................... 140 The Mystical Misinterpretation ............................................................................................. 146 The Trickster as an Animal ..................................................................................................... 149 The Narrative Smokescreen ................................................................................................... 153 Gendered Generalizations ....................................................................................................... 156 Organic Traces in Third Spaces ............................................................................................. 160 Affirmative Portrayals .............................................................................................................. 164 5 PREFACE It is with careful consideration that I approach the subject of writing about Native Americans in film. Keenly aware of the author’s unavoidable presence in any text, my attention is drawn to three important matters of authorship. First is the implicit understanding that no author can every really erase the trace of his or her own self-interestedness. This is the first order of deliberation, where the very decision itself—to write about something of interest—already renders some type of judgment relevant to that topic. Second are the parameters of the narrative position. Authors are confined to the binary of either the first or third person, and must choose between “speaking for,” or “speaking with,” those of whom the subject most relates. Finally is the acknowledgement that anyone participating in this type of work cannot avoid the entanglement of certain boundaries. The simple act of writing about something removed from one’s own experience prerequisites a self-reflexive understanding of the author’s encroachment into what is otherwise sovereign territory. While the research in this dissertation is not ethnographic in the strictest sense, it nonetheless hinges on some of the key cautions of ethnography. For example, I cannot erase the traces of my own self-interestedness, which is doubtlessly borne of twenty years of professional involvement in the field of tribal education. Serving as Dean of Instruction for the Alamo Navajo Community Schools in rural New Mexico has deepened my interest in the salient 6 issues of Indigenous advocacy and autonomy. As Peter Barry asserts, a “notion of disinterested enquiry is untenable,” and no matter one’s efforts to press lightly, “all investigators have a thumb on one side or the other of the scales” (34-35). The thumb administers the proverbial weight, while its print is responsible for leaving the residual trace. To deny how my professional experiences have influenced my personal perspectives is to pretend that I can ever be unbiased. The second caution concerns the linguistic binary of “speaking for,” or “speaking with,” those who collectively comprise the subject of this study. The issues are immediately apparent when confronted with the choice of which narrative position to use in locating my own interfering presence. The choices available between first- person and third-person points of view are ultimately unsatisfactory. Consider the limitations inherent in the compulsory selection of either one of them. If I use the pluralizing voice of the subject pronoun “we,” a transgressive sense of entitlement accompanies my actual stance as a nonmember of the subject group. Conversely, if I use the pronoun “they,” it is justifiably vulnerable to allegations of essentialism and paternalism. It is this very complication that lies at the heart of the authorial position, in which the question of who may speak on behalf of others should never be without controversy. Finally, another lesson learned from ethnography is that “it is always caught up in the invention, not the representation, of cultures” (Clifford 2). Where this is unmistakably evident in the world of film, especially such titles as discussed throughout this dissertation, it is also true of my own imagined understandings of 7 what it means to advocate for a more accountable cinema. Supporting the notion of a more accountable cinema might involve interrogating most major motion pictures with criticality, while simultaneously promoting a relatively obscure collection of lower-budget independent films that appear to demonstrate greater cultural coherence to Indigenous epistemologies. The inherent danger, of course, is in the presumption of my own expertise. Though it may come with altruistic intentions, Michael Barber cautions “the result is that the expert, who began in subservience to the Other, assumes the role of representing and speaking for the Other, who ends up subordinate to that expert. The philosopher’s near heteronomy before the Other leads
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