February 14, 2016 - 16:11
Reclaiming Native Narratives: Applying Tribalography in Diverse Spaces
I find myself in a suspended state of mind the week that I am supposed to be going into the Center for Creative Works for the first time. I have just finished writing a piece for the College News about containing secrets between two worlds and found it difficult to compartmentalize. I tend to academize my personal stories, giving them just as much importance as any other academic narrative. It got me thinking about the concept of communication and process that Kuppers examines in Disability Culture and Community Performance. For this essay, I explore some central questions before walking into CCW: How will I consolidate the concept of creating legends while also acknowledging the complexity of people’s stories and experiences? How can storytelling be a source of empowerment?
The legend that Kuppers describes is the guide to the physical and emotional landscape in which people dwell. “These maps became tools in the illumination of our individual experiences…hovering on the limits of shared expressive capacity” (42). He commends the explicit destruction of some iterations of these maps and legends, stating that their framework was poised for destruction, outdated. In other frameworks, the legends should be acknowledged, understood as non-static codes of space. As a person who thrives on having a framework, a structure to push back on, I would like to establish that using a “legend” in order to navigate spaces in my placement will be useful to me. Through using a preliminary, structural legend that can be altered depending on the individual, I think I will better adapt to the process of working with diverse bodies and minds. The quick modifications of this preliminary legend will happen through the listening process. The juxtaposition of the two connotations of “legends” – one being a guide to understanding the map of another person’s body and experiences, the second being the stories that people contain in their bodies – show that in order to understand complex personhoods, listening to the stories becomes just as necessary. These legends that make us who we are may or may not be true; in fact, whether or not they are true hardly makes a difference. There is instead an empowerment in finding identity through storytelling.
This ties into the concept of tribalography, which is a way of thinking in indigenous studies that places stories as a forefront of understanding the way that indigenous histories are created. It does not discriminate between legends and history, because the two are intertwined in native psyche and identity. This is a process that can also be applied to disability studies, in placing value on individuality of stories as verbally told. It is also important because of its versatility; these stories can be made accessible to a wide range of people with different abilities. In an examination of tribalography, prominent Indigenous theorist Jodi Byrd states,
“In the end, LeAnne Howe’s tribalography, with its emphasis on the power of Indigenous stories to create, to mnemonically connect past, present, and future…is a powerful analytic tool through which to confront, challenge, and reconfigure the stories colonizers like to tell about themselves and their place in the world” (62).
By acknowledging the ways in which colonialism also plays into disability culture and the ways in which the othering of indigenous bodies parallels that of disabled bodies – storytelling can be applied in similar ways through many kinds of marginalized beings. It allows a rewriting of stories that have only been seen from the mainstream. The mainstream demands stories of disabled bodies that embody the “supercrip” identity, or exist only as pitiable stories. Storytelling allows a subversion of these stereotypes and give the power of autonomy over narrative back to the marginalized being.
In the space of CCW, I hope to be a healing presence by being an active and positive listener, especially when it comes to these “legends” and stories often devalued by the mainstream. Being a healing presence is a concept that can be construed in different ways when applied to different groups, and I believe that at CCW, listening is the best place to begin.
Works Cited
Byrd, Jodi A. "Tribal 2.0: Digital Natives, Political Players, and the Power of Stories." Studies in American Indian Literatures 26.2, Special Issue: Tribalography (2014): 55-64. JSTOR. Web. 14 Feb. 2016.
Kuppers, Petra. Disability Culture and Community Performance: Find a Strange and Twisted Shape. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Print.
Miller, James E., and Susan C. Cutshall. The Art of Being a Healing Presence: A Guide for Those in Caring Relationships. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print.