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
12022-12-05T08:17:50-08:00sarah nisenson7cb5d2c1682fbd145e76716f3924f03bf25c616aCyclone of civilizationsarah nisenson6plain2022-12-06T06:56:37-08:00sarah nisenson7cb5d2c1682fbd145e76716f3924f03bf25c616a
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12022-12-01T11:38:43-08:00"The Red Man's Greeting" Temporal Continuity26plain2022-12-07T06:11:25-08:00The language in “The Red Man’s Greeting” by Simon Pokagon (Potawatomi) emphasizes the temporal continuity between precontact America and settler colonialism in the same geographic space. Using what I refer to as watery terminology, Pokagon likens settler colonialism to water-based weather systems such as cyclones and storms in contrast to his use of “sea” which refers to Indigenous existence and persistence in place. By using watery terminology as the basis for comparison, Pokagon invokes Pexa’s first claim about what “critical relationality” offers, specifically its function as “temporality for linking to the past and moving toward the future” (22).
Even when describing settlers, Pokagon uses terms that convey how movement is not simply linear and unidirectional; it is a rolling, rotating thing that implies a return to the same point with difference. For Lisa Brooks, this rotation manifests in the form of a temporal spiral: “the spiral is embedded in place(s) but revolves through layers of generations, renewing itself with each new birth. It cannot be fixed but is constantly moving in three-dimensional, multilayered space. It allows for recurrence and return but also for transformation” (309). Thinking alongside Pexa and Brooks, Pokagon’s use of water systems implicitly engages this idea of recurrence and change, rooting this concept in the surrounding waterways of his homeland. This homeland, though, has been radically transformed by settler colonialism from the idyllic illustration entitled “Chicago in my Grandfather’s Day” to the site of the Chicago World’s Fair characterized by “these great Columbian show-buildings [that] stretch skyward” (2).
In imagining the connection between past and future in terms of water, the water cycle itself provides a method for rearticulating the ideas of vanishing and scattering that Pokagon notes. He likens overfishing to the way “morning dew [vanishes] before the rising sun” but vanishing does not quite accurately reflect what happens to dew in this scenario. Rather than disappearing forever, vanishing into nothing, the morning sun evaporates dew and transforms it into mist to rejoin other water particles in the air. Perhaps this phrase signals the protection obscurity offers; in light of settlers and fair attendees who could only understand “the production of modernity through purification of the landscape of Indians” positioning his peoples as vanishing despite their enduring existence suggests Pokagon’s awareness and negotiation of this colonial desire (O’Brien xx). Applying a similar water view to the word scattered, which connotes a disorganization of pieces no longer connected to the whole, water particles do not become less watery when they are separated from a larger body. Despite their disjointedness, they retain their inherent watery qualities, awaiting the moment that reconstitution into a whole becomes possible, similarly to the way Brooks imagines the spiral as something that “allows for recurrence and return but also for transformation” (309).