Indigenous Feminist Pedagogy Disorienting Whiteness as Disappearance: Passage of the Violence Against Women Act of 2013

Abstract

This project brings together rhetorical theory and law to construct a grounded theory named critically sovereign feminist methodology (CSFM). It draws upon rhetorical theory, legal cases, and the rights of Indigenous women (“Native women,” hereafter, reflecting these activists’ self-identification). It examines literacy activities deployed by various Native women activists related to VAWA 2013 and explores why these activities are invaluable pedagogical tools for future activists and social-change strategists. It does so by adapting a critical race theory approach to illuminate the pedagogical frameworks deployed by these Native women activists in their literacy activities to transform the prior limits placed on Tribal Nations’ inherent sovereignty and characterized by tactics of disappearance. Drawing out principles of a critical feminist pedagogy, this project explicates these features through rhetorical analysis of the play, Sliver of a Full Moon and Amnesty International’s report, “Maze of Injustice: The Failure of the United States to Protect Native Women.” This project also provides the deep historical connection of “Indian” rights and legal cases to contemporary social movements of Indigenous women, offering a framework for import by activists in the areas of law and rhetoric.