Early Indigenous Literatures

Exclamations and the use of withheld information

I draw attention here to the Native rider's potential exclamation. In her piece on "Ethnographic Refusal," Audra Simpson argues for "a mode of sovereign authority over the presentation of ethnographic data, and so does not present "everything." This is for the express purpose of protecting the concerns of community" (Simpson 105). I extend Simpson's conception of refusal here by considering art as part of the "ethnographic data" which is also subject to attempts as exposure, but which has the most grounds for refusing that exposure given the complicated grounds of narrative, affect, aesthetics, etc. In Howe's "Fleeing a Massacre," we see this in the open mouth of both the Native person and the horse. Both are linked together by their open mouths, but the audience lacks insider information--what noises are coming out. Those noises, as sites of refusal, exist in their plurality; they could be screams the artist refuses to allow to reach our ears, yells of victory or pain, calls to battle, or the names of loved ones. What they cannot be in subject to colonial linguistic categorization.

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