Skoden: Rhetorical Sovereignty, Survivance, and Bilanguaging in Indigenous Literature
By Zak Sheppard
Works such as Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle’s Even As We Breathe actively and noticeably show at least two languages existing side-by-side that paint the portrait of a people. This stylistic and culturally significant move situates the reader in a world that is either representative of their history, or in one that will expose them to something entirely new from what they know. Poets like Kimberly Becker who writes in English with Cherokee integration and Paula Nelson who creates multi-modal verse in Cherokee and English, further showcase the movement to not only enliven Indigenous languages but to have them used artistically and knowledgeably in traditional colonial forms. This blend goes beyond what could be described as bilingual into what is known as bilanguaging.
Bilanguaging and code-switching are rhetorical acts of survival that both resist the erasure of Native languages and represent a multilingual present, creating a space that allows for diverse voices that challenge imposed colonial constructs. This paper analyzes three Cherokee writers and acknowledges that this position guides and underpins any juxtapositions made and does not confine trans-Indigenous literary studies. Working from a singular position creates a more palatable measure of comparison across languages for non-Native speakers (which the writer identifies as), while simultaneously engaging with the recovery of the Cherokee language at the various levels of each author.
Bilanguaging is difficult to define in constrained terms. It is an intentional disruption of the colonial imaginary of national languages and seeks to recognize the variety of languages spoken by people around the world. Bilanguaging is a process to show that not only the core imperial languages (English, Spanish, French, Latin, etc.) express intelligence or civilized thought; it is both an effort to keep Native languages from dying and to continue collaboration with the linguistic trends of the modern world. Where bilingualism attempts to be as symmetric as possible in use, think of direct translations, bilanguaging encourages asymmetry. Walter D. Mignolo explains the difference in terminology:
The asymmetry of languages is not a question of a person knowing one better than the other, but it is a question of power within the diachronic internal structures of the modern world system and of its historical external borders (the colonial difference)… Bilanguaging, in other words, is not precisely bilingualism where both languages are maintained in their purity but at the same time in their asymmetry. (Mignolo 231)
Chadwick Allen, in the introduction to Trans-Indigenous: Methodologies for Global Native Literary Studies, describes Mignolo’s definition of bilanguaging as “not simply the grammatical act of translating from one distinct language to another but rather the political act of operating between two or more languages and cultural systems, actively engaging in the politics of their asymmetry within (post) colonial relations (xxx). This transition is difficult to grasp for non-speakers of a language. We expect symmetry. When a reader comes across a stanza that has English words with Native words adjacent, they assume that the meaning of the two adjacent words is the same. But it is simply that, an assumption. The actual stylistic act of code-switching (the ability to bounce between languages and cultural ideologies) and bilanguaging is not a compromise of the writer. Rather, it is an example of rhetorical sovereignty. Rhetorical sovereignty can be explained as the “inherent right and ability of peoples to determine their own communicative needs and desires, to decide for themselves the goals, modes, styles, and languages of public discourse” (Lyons 449–450). Allen continues to discuss resistance to colonial constructs of expression by the ways Indigenous artists “work in multiple media and…often juxtapose genres and forms, such as a written poem and a drawing, painting, sculpture, carving, textile basket, photograph, moving image, or live performance” (xxii). The writers included in this paper break form, merge styles and mediums, and engage in various methods of artistry elsewhere in their lives. For a pop-culture reference, the “Skoden” meme depicting a First Nations man from Alberta holding up his fists acts not just as a linguistic unifier for Cree members, First Nations, and American Indian people, but as an act of “survivance” (Hoover 172). “Skoden” is associated with other terms such as “stoodis” and “kayden,” typically spoken before a fight or conflict. The man from the meme was Pernell Bad Arm, and it is believed that the photograph was taken without his consent and used to portray Indigenous people in a negative light. The reclamation of the term in a digital capacity, the widespread stoppage in using his picture, and the “Skoden” graffiti on the Sudbury, Ontario water tower show Native peoples’ presence despite dominating society’s pursuit of their absence (Labrecque-Saganash). Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle, similarly, writes about moments where white people have never met an Indian and the psychology of existing in a world that actively and aggressively tries to forget you and control the narrative of your culture.
In Even As We Breathe, Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle writes about a young Cherokee man, Cowney Sequuoyah (a namesake of the man who invented the Cherokee syllabary), coming of age during the summer of 1942. While working at the Grove Park Inn in Asheville, NC, Cowney struggles with problems at home, problems at work, problems with identity, with love, and problems with being seen and heard. Multiple times in her book, Clapsaddle shows the reader the active forgotten identity of Cherokee people in the eyes and minds of whites. One of Cowney’s coworkers claims he believed all Indians had been wiped out, whilst speaking to an Indian with the Qualla Boundary two hours away. Later in the story, Cowney is confronted with racism at a movie theater. The ticket-teller demands that no Indians are allowed to enter. Cowney’s Irish employer asks the teller if she has ever seen an Indian, she says she has not. “Then how you supposed to know if y’all serve Indians or not?” (216). Cowney also narrates moments of feeling invisible to the main world and the guests of the hotel. Throughout the novel, Clapsaddle integrates Cherokee words — some translated and some left to context — “‘People back home call it a-na-to-ki-as-di-yi.’ ‘The place where they race?’” (Clapsaddle 85), “‘Toughen up, tsu-ts!’ She called me son just like she did Bud, probably just like she had my father” (88). At times, she integrates a more modern Cherokee dialect, “rezervashun” (25). And at other times, she brilliantly illustrates the duel identity of her characters, such as when Lishie, Cowney’s grandmother, begins to sing “Amazing Grace” in Cherokee,
U ne la nv i u we tsi
I ga go yv he i
Hna quo tso sv wi yu lo se
I ga gu yv ho nv. (87)
Clapsaddle’s subtle yet obvious code-switching, and shifting use of translations, exemplify the continued and persistent existence of the Cherokee language and its people. Clapsaddle’s use of bilanguaging is a representation of her physical and linguistic liminality, culminating in her rhetorical sovereignty. She is operating between the two identities of herself and her work. She is writing both as a contemporary Appalachian author and as a Cherokee storyteller. Her work exists in the traditional canonical medium of a novel while simultaneously existing as a ceremony of recovery. While her dual languages can at times be symmetrical, they act more as complementary components to the greater pursuit of her work (whether that be intentional or inherent is for her to claim).
Kimberly Becker’s poetry comments on many of the same issues Clapsaddle presents in her novel and does so with nuanced language. In Flight, Becker breaks up her poems into sections labeled under Cherokee names which are separated in two parts by English names. In “Remember” the sections are: “Sogwo, Tal, Tso, Nvg, Hisg, Sudali, and Galgwoq.” “Release” is broken up into the sections: “Sogwo, Tal, Tso, and Nvg.” Becker’s bilanguaged structure represents her double consciousness. All of the poems have English titles, but many of them are greatly inspired by Cherokee culture and customs. Even in poems without Cherokee terms present, there is an inherent blend of culture and language. From “Ceremony in Lieu of a Funeral,”
You keep picking through the alphabet for words to say goodbye
for words to bless the ICU and oxygen tube…
Prayers ascend with smoke
Circling this way you remember
circling that way you release (Becker 88)
Becker expresses a sense of inhabiting seemingly different worlds: spiritual and scientific. Her commenting on being in the ICU yet performing a ceremony contradicts the colonial belief of these acts functioning separately. In “Morning Song” many Cherokee words are working together with English words to illustrate her imagery. Yet, she does not translate the Cherokee within the stanzas. Yet again, she does not leave the reader guessing. In the back of her book, Becker has a notes section informing the reader of historical facts they might be unfamiliar with, translations for Cherokee language, and slight cultural insights to better contextualize her work for non-Native audiences. In “Triptych: Creation, Dove, Raven,” Becker is speaking as the creator — a turkey vulture or buzzard (105) — about the formation of the landscape and humans, “It was, as they say heaven — / the thrust of our wings/ molding what humans call valleys…/ People had not yet been made/ And they would emerge from a place/ those Real People, AniYvwiya” (Becker 6). In translation, AniYvwiya does mean Real People; however, the intention is deeper, more biological than what can be interpreted from a first read by a non-Native person. This can be seen in the poem “Questing” under the sub-heading “Earth” when Becker writes, “From me came the Real People” (Becker 98). Here Becker is speaking directly as the Earth, telling its story. Her perspective of the natural world is not objectified as it often is in English literature, but has agency. The world, from Becker’s poetic vantage point, is a living, acting force.
Cherokee artist, poet, singer, and historian Paula Nelson also anthropomorphizes the land in her poems “A-ni-no-gi-I De-s-gv-i” (Trees Are Singing) and “Land Song” included in the collection Sing: Poetry from the Indigenous Americas. Like Becker, Nelson’s world is alive and humans are part of that living world. We are descended from the land and forever tied to its fate. “A-ni-no-gi-I De-s-gv-i/ Wa-na-i A-ni-ne-ga” (Trees are singing/ Soft they speak) (Nelson 164). It is important to note that Nelson’s anthropomorphic language is not mystical or fantastical, it is biological. She does not grant the trees the ability to speak human language, humans are able to listen to the tree’s language,
Similar to literacy being transcendent from the written word into visual forms, language is not confined to the vibrating of throat muscles pushed out in accepted tones and annunciations. In this way, Paula Nelson’s bilanguaging is not just transnational, but trans-species. It is not the fault of the trees that we lost the gift of understanding them, their language persists. In her poem “Land Song,” Nelson is playing with point of view. She is both speaking about the land and as the land.
This biological connecting language manifests itself in the English as much as possible, with obvious limitations. English reads metaphorically. If you attempt to transfer the sentiment of actually being bound to and a part of the land, of being composed of earth and water, the English language begins to do something that it has not traditionally done. The words begin to have power. Nelson translates her own words from Cherokee to English, lending to a more accurate and intentional bilanguaged reading. In a 2012 interview with Silas House, Nelson described the process of her recovering her Cherokee identity after an upbringing distanced from the culture. Even though she grew up on the Qualla Boundary, Nelson states that her family did not engage in the history of the Cherokee as deeply as some of her neighbors. She says that she had to seek outwardly to learn inwardly. Attending Pow-Wows and sitting with, often white, university professors gave Nelson the hunger of inquiry needed to dig further into her own identity (House).
As noticeable from the excerpts presented in this paper, Nelson’s use of Cherokee is vastly different that Becker’s and Clapsaddle’s, while still similar. Nelson is able to compose original verse in Cherokee and symmetrically translate that into English without losing depth, yet Becker and Clapsaddle are accomplishing the same recovery. All three writers allow the Cherokee in their works to exists without footnotes or parenthetical translations. The English and Cherokee are situated in a way that creates both independence and dependence. Not through a power dynamic defined by coloniality, but through representation and negotiation of identity. These writers live in a liminal space between two cultures and languages, fully in both. These aspects of being cannot be separated, nor should they be. To properly recover the language of their Cherokee identity, these writers understand that it needs to coexist with their English language identity. Both need exposure and attention. Both have power. And they are free to traverse patterns and styles as they so choose to fulfill their communicative needs.
In modern times, colonial languages that follow a traditional canonical line are seen as universal modes of communication, ready to propel the world into the next level of society. Native languages like Quechua, Maya, Cherokee, and Bröran have been categorized as signifiers of ethnic regionality, historically important but ultimately exclusive in their usage. But what is lost and what is gained by these bordered understandings of language is the essence of a people’s identity. Mignolo states, “it is not the place of birth of a writer that makes him or her of one particular “nationality” but rather it is the language that he or she inhabits that gives the writer a place of belonging” (230). In a transnational world (one where global interconnectedness is steadily and unceasingly on the rise), language remains a powerful reminder of that belonging. Through bilanguaging Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle, Kimberly Becker, and Paula Nelson are determining the rhetorical sovereignty of themselves, Cherokee speakers, and Native language champions across the globe.
Works Cited
Allen, Chadwick. Trans-Indigenous: Methodologies for Global Native Literary Studies. U of Minnesota P, 2012.
Becker, Kimberly. Flight. MadHat, 2021.
Clapsaddle, Annette Saunooke. Even As We Breathe. U of Kentucky P, 2020.
Hoover, Jessica Safran. “Rhetorical Sovereignty in Written Poetry: Survivance through Code-Switching and Translation in Laura Tohe’s Tséyi’/Deep in the Rock — Reflections on Canyon De Chelly.” Survivance, Sovereignty, and Story: Teaching American Indian Rhetorics, edited by Lisa King et al., UP of Colorado, Boulder, 2015, pp. 170–187. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt17t75dm.15. Accessed 16 Apr. 2021.
House, Silas. “Head of the Holler with Paula Nelson.” Uploaded by Berea College, 9 Feb. 2012. https://youtu.be/e6NK1noiENE.
Labrecque-Saganash, Maïtée. “Tea & Bannock: The Legacy of Skoden.” The Nation: Cree News, 3 Aug. 2018, formersite.nationnewsarchives.ca/tea-bannock-legacy-skoden/.
Lyons, Scott Richard. “Rhetorical Sovereignty: What Do American Indians Want from Writing?” College Composition and Communication, vol. 51, no. 3, 2000, pp. 447–468. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/358744. Accessed 13 Apr. 2021.
Mignolo, Walter D. Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking, Princeton UP, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/hunter-ebooks/detail.action?docID=999946.
Nelson, Paula. “A-ni-no-gi-I De-s-gv-i” (Trees Are Singing) and “Land Song.” Sing: Poetry from the Indigenous Americas edited by Allison Adele Hedge Coke. U of Arizona P, 2011.