RECLAMATION AND SURVIVANCE: DINÉ RHETORICS AND THE PRACTICE OF RHETORICAL SOVEREIGNTY
This dissertation includes a contextual analysis of two female Diné poets who use storytelling and writing and includes a chapter on the pedagogical implications of Native American student storytelling and writing. I first examine poetry written by two Diné women, Luci Tapahonso and Laura Tohe to understand the ways these poets, particularly the poetry, reclaim and revive Diné literacies and rhetorics. My analyses are informed by the historical and cultural contexts that shaped Diné philosophy, particularly, the philosophy that informs and is shaped by the practice of Diné literacies and rhetorics. I draw from mythical, historical, and contemporary Diné, Native American, and other minoritized scholars for lenses of analysis to show how these poets define and reclaim the female Diné voice and identity. Colonial and neocolonial changes in Diné lifeways and traditions and the encounters between Diné and other groups and the imposition of the English language (written literacy) are pertinent to these contextual analyses and pedagogical implications.
Luci Tapahonso, Navajo, English, Dine, Laura Tohe
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