A Predicament of Appropriation: An Indian in a Box and the Rhetoric of Re-Appropriation

After having read Powell's explication of Vizneor's work, and then reading Vizneor directly, I keep contemplating the concept of a "paracolonial" native.  I keep questioning whether or not agree with what Vizneor has to say, and I’m finding faults within Powell’s own explication of Vizneor’s concepts.  However, this week I’d like to try to understand the term “paracolonial” by understanding it through the colonial phenomena of cultural appropriation.

Cultural appropriation is a rhetorical/political tool of colonization.  Yet communication is somewhat skewed because cultural appropriation is a form of dominance that caters to the hegemonic force in control. I say it is rhetorical because although it may not be a direct written or spoken speech, there is always a certain audience in mind, and there is always someone promoting a certain colonial agenda.

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Before I get deeper into this post, I want to quickly provide a working definition—of the word cultural appropriation—that will serve as the basis for my analysis of the assigned readings.  Oxford Ref. Online defines cultural appropriation as “a term [that is] used to describe the taking over of creative or artistic forms, themes, or practices by one cultural group from another. It is in general used to describe Western appropriations of non‐Western or non‐white forms, and carries connotations of exploitation and dominance” (The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature 3ed).  Because Indian stories were traditionally oral, as we have learned through some of the narratives we have read so far, I am mostly interested in the appropriation of the native voice.  Voice is important to any culture, and sometimes it is vital to examine how the voice of a culture is appropriated by another.

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Vizneor, in the “Introduction” to Manifest Manners: Narratives of PostIndian Survivance, defines how the colonial phenomena of Manifest Destiny became act of dominance and appropriation instilled through social/political/artistic discourses. This form of appropriation is what Vizneor calls “manifest manners.”  I want to examine this passage. Vizneor says that:

Manifest Destiny would cause the death of millions of tribal people from massacres, diseases, and the loneliness of reservations.  Entire cultures have been terminated in the course of nationalism.  These histories are now simulations of dominance, and the causes of the conditions that have become manifest manners in literature.  The postindian simulations are the core of survivance, the new stories of tribal courage. The simulations of manifest manners are the continuance of the surveillance and domination of the tribes in literature. Simulations are the absence of the tribal real; the postindian conversions are the new stories of survivance over dominance. The natural reason of the tribes anteceded by thousands of generations the invention of the Indian.  The postindian ousts the inventions with humor, news stories, and simulations of survivance. (4-5)

This passage is full of the words simulations, dominance, the invention of the Indian, and finally the postIndian. But what does Vizneor mean by all of this terminology, and how does it have to do with the appropriation of the Native voice?  This passage represents three rhetorical strategies specific to colonization and its two aspects—one is specific to the Colonizer, and the other specific to the Colonized (Colonizer=Europeans, Colonized=Natives).  First, the concept of manifest destiny didn’t just appropriate Native culture it destroyed it.  Yet, as long as culture is able to be voiced—in this case Vizneor is most concerned with the colonized who do this and calls them postIndian warriors—than it can survive.  The second concept stems from the fact that the Indian was a European invention, and as such it was a simulation of control.  Not only was native culture appropriated it was reinvented and forced on Indians through manifest manners. Finally, this passage suggests a re-appropriation.  Re-appropriation is specific to the colonized because it works at reclaiming what was taken in the first place.   Thus, Vizneor works at analyzing the narrative appropriation of the simulations that have worked to keep the Indian invisible, yet substantially real.  

I’d like to explicate the authenticity of Indians because I think it makes it easier to understand appropriation, and the process of re-appropriation by the postIndian.  

Pre-Colonial Native—Authentic Indigenous culture before European colonization

Simulated Indian—European Invention, Inauthentic, an appropriation through manifest manners

PostIndian—Invisible, considered inauthentic with a desire for authenticity, re-appropriation is the means by which postIndians are able to survive.

As you can see, there are 3 stages of appropriation, with the postIndian representing the concept of re-appropriation. If appropriation is the process by which a dominant controls another culture, then re-appropriation is the counter of the controlled culture.  The culture be suppressed takes back their own culture, yet they are forced in a space of inauthenticity, not of their own making.


Is it right to explicate the Native experience, am I guilty of appropropiation just through my analysis?  The answer would be NO, because in order for re-appropriation to take place one has to understand the rhetoric and experience of appropriation in the first place.  However, I am guilty of boxing the Indian into certain categories, but I do so for the purpose of understanding the discourses that defined the Indian experience in hopes that I can foster re-appropriation.  

In the “Preface” of Vine Deloria, Jr’s Custer Died for Your Sin, Deloria talks about the appropriation of Indian culture and history in the exact same way as Vizneor. By doing so he calls for Indians to re-appropriate what has been taken in the first place.  Deloria states that “the legend of the Indian was embellished or tarnished according to the need of the intermediates to gain leverage in their struggle to solve problems that never existed outside of their own minds…White society concentrated on the individual Indian to the exclusion of his group forgetting that any society is merely a composite of Individuals” (10).  Deloria is referring to the simulated Indian that Vizneor theoretically outlines.  In doing so Deloria also outlines the appropriation of Indian society through the “individual” image of the Indian.   Once gain this is the rhetoric of cultural appropriation. Assumptions become truth, and many by into the inauthenticity of such assumptions.


So what is the way towards a post-colonial freedom for Natives?  Vizneor calls on re-appropriation by taking the written narrative and imbuing it with the oral traditions of Natives, hybridity seems to be the goal.  Deloria however wants to set aside all aspects of rhetorical appropriation—appropriation has caused nothing but misunderstanding and trouble.  Instead she argues that what Natives need is not to be placed in a box and pitied, nor do they need to reclaim a certain image.  Instead she says “What we need is a cultural leave-us-alone agreement, in spirit and in fact” (21).


Personally I agree with Deloria even though I find power in re-appropriation. Maybe it’s time we stop trying to understand, and just listen in “spirit and in fact.”  Why can’t we stop determining what Indians need, and just let them be.  Re-appropriation of voice would be awesome, but that only creates more problems.  I think Indians should be able to determine their own needs without any interference of other cultures.

To re-appropriate or not, that is the question that must be answered by postIndian survivors.