Speaking for the People: Native Writing and the Question of Political Form by Mark Rifkin (review)

In Speaking for the People Mark Rifkin contributes to the ongoing critical conversation regarding Indigenous recognition. In richly historicized chapters he questions the process of how Indigenous leaders— Elias Boudinot, William Apess, Sarah Winnemucca, and Zitkala-Ša— consciously stage the “legitimacy of their entry” into the discursive frameworks of coloniality. He investigates the political philosophies of each leader as they take on the role of “speaker for the people” and as they seek recognition from colonizing powers. Rifkin argues that these leaders’ desire to attain “non-Native recognition of Indigenous peoplehood, governance, and territoriality” (3) reveals the effects of settler colonial epistemologies as well as “the struggles involved in narrating Indigenous collectivity under ongoing colonial occupation” (3).

As Rifkin argues, this rhetorical and performative “staging of legitimacy” means that extant existences of Native life are erased in favor of presenting a unified front. For example, in chapter 3 Rifkin describes how Sarah Winnemucca presents herself as the representative of a cohesive and centralized power in the Paiute community. In reality, her power was far more dispersed and contingent upon “Ghost Dancing,” a ritual that was neither understood nor respected by colonizers. Yet, the benefits of recognition of the Paiutes as a cohesive “nation” also carried with it a higher likelihood of Paiute survival and sovereignty. Rifkin questions the costs of prioritizing legibility, especially when doing so could result in the view of Native persons as homogenous “colonized subjects.”

In his first chapter Rifkin focuses on how Cherokee leader Boudinot declared himself representative, even while John Ross was considered the “principal chief” (35). Rifkin argues that Boudinot’s willingness to sign the Treaty of New Echota was based on his belief that the citizenship status of the Cherokee was more important than their diminishing territory. Boudinot determines that his superior knowledge of coloniality authorizes him to abrogate the desires of those Cherokee allied with Ross. Chapter two discusses the complex leadership strategies of Pequot Methodist William Apess and gives special attention to the perception of Indigenous communities as “childish remnant populations” (12), which justified settler colonial guardian systems. In his narrative Apess set out to present the tribe as worthy of sovereignty, and as a people with the ability to govern themselves. By attempting to create relationships of political proxying rather than paternalizing guardianship, Apess portrayed the Pequot as heteropatriarchal to make Native sovereignty more legible to non-Natives. Rifkin argues that Boudinot’s and Apess’s choices result in a limited perception of Indigenous communities, politics, and personhood.

Sarah Winnemucca’s chapter considers how her leadership strategies included a choice to deny prophecy as a foundational determinant for Paiute leadership. Nevertheless, Rifkin argues, because Winnemucca advocated for the Paiutes by positioning herself as a secular leader of a centralized political body, she gained access to “(geo)political recognition” (175). In the final chapter Rifkin examines how Zitkala-Ša confronts the perception that Natives and their tribal relations were barbaric or archaic. Unlike the trend in the 1920s of ethnographers visiting tribes to witness their “savage customs,” Rifkin argues that Zitkala-Ša declared herself an authentic “native informant” (179), acting as a synecdoche for all Native persons. Rather than attempting to establish a coherent polity, she aimed to represent Native culture through stories of civilized domesticity. She both refuses and appeals to recognition, attempting to show the legitimacy of the Yankton, while also demonstrating how the violence imposed on her community by colonizers is the source of any perceived “savagery.”

In exploring these nonunitary, varied approaches to politics, prophecy, and peoplehood, Rifkin makes a vital contribution to the discussion of Indigenous recognition. Perhaps his greatest contribution to the field is his statement that choices favoring Indigenous legibility often worked to erase matriarchal power and the role of women from settler colonial perceptions of Indigenous culture. Additionally, the narratives of each featured author may reveal only one performative and rhetorical...