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Early Indigenous LiteraturesMain MenuThe Child Who Would be Sovereign: Settler Colonial Frustrations and the Figure of the Child in Gertrude Simmons Bonnin's American Indian StoriesBy: Kai ChaseIllicit Relations: The Challenges and Possibilities of Black and Indigenous Relationssoumya rachel shailendraLegibility and Ambivalence in 19th Century Indigenous Women's WritingAn exhibit on E. Pauline Johnson and Sarah Winnemucca by Emma CohenLyric Histories: An Investigation of Early Black (and) Native America through Poetic Vignettesby Kira TuckerMarriage and Empire in 19th Century Native American Women's Literatureby Angad SinghNot-not blood quantum: the Dawes Act and ambivalent Indigeneityby Yasmin YoonReading Indigenous Authorial Presence in 18th- and 19th-century ParatextsTitle Page for Isabel Griffith-Gorgati's ExhibitResistance on and off the Page: A Collaborative Conversation between Black and Indigenous Literary ContributorsFeaturing James Printer, Katherine Garret, Phillis Wheatley, and John Marrant (17th-18th Century Early Print Culture Participants)- By Lauren JohnsonSpiritual Armies, Resurrected Bones, and “Boundless” Continents: How Indigenous Activists in Early New England Reconfigured Puritan Millennialist NarrativesFeaturing texts of Samson Occom, William Apess, and the Wampanoag Bible. By Surya MilnerSovereignty or Removal: The Conflicting Indigenous Policies of 1835 in the Continental United StatesJulia GilmanWhat Does Water Do For Indigenous Peoples of the Great Lakes Region?Featuring Heid E. Erdrich, Simon Pokagon, Black Hawk, and Simon Kofe by Sarah Nisenson(Re)introducing Black Hawk and The Life (1833)BHR 1-IntroYasmin Yoonf7f231e474bf43796f973cd0ee560919050f7427Lydia Abedeen321b94302eca10e499769fd0179e64cd33bc4cd5Kira Tuckeracf97d948460e98cd439646cc2db7ae17c5ebd9dsarah nisenson7cb5d2c1682fbd145e76716f3924f03bf25c616aKai Chased7cab5968a3a916efd1a14a48cc4832d5d5514aeSoumya Shailendra86c246fcc4aea83787381bffd2b839885bef5096Bennett Herson-Roeserc8289125445a56c819045a0091daf0402b3e0875Surya Milner077f837f3d662fd5ef9055f8258e5c47bb11f714Julia Gilmanb860a8277eea484f91a1a9e0423cab4b52bae522Lauren Johnson98dac03e7c9c1ad41e1c0a8583704e55802f98baAngad Singhd2b8d1d68ec374981c9e99b7cb400803bc678231Emma Cohen146e757b9fc3b3b416edecbf79592e8d743d4ba1Charlotte Goddu2d4c020870148128c7824ece179e04cffe180d95Isabel Griffith-Gorgati985a05928a67a856791fffac3dbba8acc85f6f37
12022-12-11T18:31:08-08:00Kai Chased7cab5968a3a916efd1a14a48cc4832d5d5514aeLaughter and flagging, limp hands.Kai Chase2plain2022-12-11T18:38:57-08:00Kai Chased7cab5968a3a916efd1a14a48cc4832d5d5514ae
12022-12-11T18:39:15-08:00Kai Chased7cab5968a3a916efd1a14a48cc4832d5d5514aeContests and battle sitesKai Chase2plain2022-12-11T18:48:27-08:00Kai Chased7cab5968a3a916efd1a14a48cc4832d5d5514ae
12022-12-11T18:26:17-08:00Kai Chased7cab5968a3a916efd1a14a48cc4832d5d5514aeWhite flags and red anger waveKai Chase2plain2022-12-11T18:30:04-08:00Kai Chased7cab5968a3a916efd1a14a48cc4832d5d5514ae
12022-12-11T18:34:10-08:00Kai Chased7cab5968a3a916efd1a14a48cc4832d5d5514aeRefusing easy markers of resistanceKai Chase2plain2022-12-11T18:38:55-08:00Kai Chased7cab5968a3a916efd1a14a48cc4832d5d5514ae
Follow the annotations as you move through the images to interact with this source! *all images come from the public domain from the following: Zitkala-Ša, American Indian Stories. [Internet Archive] Brigham Young University, Washington: Hayworth Publishing House, 1921.*
To consider the role of the child in Bonnin's American Indian Stories, I turn first to her most obvious pieces on childhood--that of the "Indian girl" whose tales open the book. I focus here particularly on her "School Days" section whereby the audience sees the constant battles the child must face as she moves between her reservation home and the missionary school system (which we soon find is not neatly separated). By paying attention to the missionary school as a particular ideological site, we can see how the battles of the individual narrator extend beyond and out into her Nation's fight for sovereignty and survivance in midst of painful, infuriating attempts at assimilation. As the young narrator grows, she sharply demonstrates what Leanne Betasamosake Simpson in As We Have Always Done marks as refusal--an "appropriate response to oppression" that is "always generative...always the living alternative" (33). Through the process of refusal, the narrator finds physical expression of bent up anger and pain while not providing either the other characters not the (presumably white) audience the comfort of easy answers. In this section of the exhibit, I follow the narrator's repeated struggles in school as varied ways in which the figure of the child is the site upon which resistant assimilations--refusals which complicate flat understandings of acquiescence and subversion--are (re)produced.
