Representing the Museum and the People: Rhetorical Sovereignty and the Representational Genres of American Indian Museums

Abstract

This study addresses questions surrounding American Indian representations, specifically how Native nations use standard museum communicative structures to forward those communities' needs and goals, thus enacting what Scott Richard Lyons terms "rhetorical sovereignty." Using rhetoric studies' genre theory as the methodological tool, the genres of publicity/orientation literature, exhibits, and gift shops at three sites, the National Museum of the American Indian, Haskell Cultural Center and Museum, and Ziibiwing Center of Anishinabe Culture & Lifeways, are analyzed for how Native peoples employ these genres for their own purposes for multiple audiences. The analysis suggests these genres are retailored depending upon the cultural and rhetorical context of each site, revealing that "rhetorical sovereignty" grounds itself in the context of an individual community. Furthermore, while positive changes have occurred in American Indian representations through the adaptation of museum genres by Native communities, the potential for communicative contradictions across genres and audiences still occurs.