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Abstract
Examining the interdependence between Indigenous rhetorics and kinship, this essay develops a rhetoric of relational word bundles. Relational word bundles are the rhetorical cousin of a significant Indigenous language structure - the holophrase (a one-word sentence or clause) - and function as the rhetorical embodiment of Indigenous notions of kinship, thus reflecting the interdependence between kinship and language. In a close reading of Cree writer Paul Seesequasis's "The Republic of Tricksterism," the essay further demonstrates how relational word bundles can be applied as a critical concept in approaches to Indigenous literatures that pay attention to national/tribal specificities, particularly kinship criticism.
Résumé
Examinant l'interdépendance entre la rhétorique autochtone et la parenté, l'article élabore une rhétorique des faisceaux de mots relationnels. Ces faisceaux sont le cousin rhétorique d'une structure linguistique autochtone importante, l'holophrase (phrase ou clause constituée d'un seul mot), et ils fonctionnent comme la concrétisation rhétorique des notions autochtones de parenté, reflétant ainsi l'interdépendance entre la parenté et le langage. Dans le cadre d'une lecture attentive de The Republic of Tricksterism de l'auteur cri Paul Seesequasis, l'article démontre comment on peut utiliser les faisceaux de mots relationnels comme un concept critique dans les approches aux oeuvres littéraires autochtones qui prêtent attention aux particularités nationales et tribales, et en particulier la critique de la parenté.
If words are the intricate bones of language - and if the spoken word is the first part of this ancient design, this construction that makes of us a family, a tribe, a civilization - we had better strive to understand how and why and (perhaps above all) that we exist in the element of language. [...] We know who we have been, who we are, and who we can be in the dimension of words, of language.
- N. Scott Momaday (309)
There's a story I know. "The Republic of Tricksterism" by Paul Seesequasis, a mixed-blood Cree writer from Melfort, Saskatchewan. "The Republic of Tricksterism" tells the story of Uncle Morris, a fictional character modelled on two Métis leaders, Louis Riel (1844-85) and the less well-known Malcolm Norris (1900-67), co-founder of l'Association des Métis de l'Alberta (1932) and the Métis Association of Saskatchewan (1964).1 In Seesequasis's story, Uncle Morris leads a revolution of mixed-blood, urban, Native people roaming the...