In Speaking for the People Mark Rifkin examines nineteenth-century Native writings to reframe contemporary debates around Indigenous recognition, refusal, and resurgence. Rifkin shows how works by Native authors (William Apess, Elias Boudinot, Sarah Winnemucca, and Zitkala-Ša) illustrate the intellectual labor involved in representing modes of Indigenous political identity and placemaking.
These writers highlight the complex processes involved in negotiating the character, contours, and scope of Indigenous sovereignties under ongoing colonial occupation. Rifkin argues that attending to these writers’ engagements with non-native publics helps provide further analytical tools for addressing the complexities of Indigenous governance on the ground—both then and now.
Thinking about Native peoplehood and politics as a matter of form opens possibilities for addressing the difficult work involved in navigating among varied possibilities for conceptualizing and enacting peoplehood in the context of continuing settler intervention. As Rifkin demonstrates, attending to writings by these Indigenous intellectuals provides ways of understanding Native governance as a matter of deliberation, discussion, and debate, emphasizing the open-ended unfinishedness of self-determination.
Reviews
“Mark Rifkin examines important nineteenth-century Native literary figures' engagement with settler publics by laying out a nuanced introspection of their ‘portraits of peoplehood’ during tumultuous contexts and the costs of such representativity that foster tension in the present day. He resituates the discussion of recognition to this earlier period in order to detour from a settler stronghold on political definitions still used to impact the daily life of Indigenous peoples. Delving deep into the political spheres of violence and the nuanced political forms of Indigenous life that emerge, Rifkin gives us further grounds to explore the foundations and formations of slippery recognition politics.”
Mishuana Goeman
Professor of Gender Studies and American Indian Studies
University of California, Los Angeles
“Mark Rifkin examines important nineteenth-century Native literary figures' engagement with settler publics by laying out a nuanced introspection of their ‘portraits of peoplehood’ during tumultuous contexts and the costs of such representativity that foster tension in the present day. He resituates the discussion of recognition to this earlier period in order to detour from a settler stronghold on political definitions still used to impact the daily life of Indigenous peoples. Delving deep into the political spheres of violence and the nuanced political forms of Indigenous life that emerge, Rifkin gives us further grounds to explore the foundations and formations of slippery recognition politics.”
Mishuana Goeman
Professor of Gender Studies and American Indian Studies
University of California, Los Angeles
“Mark Rifkin examines important nineteenth-century Native literary figures' engagement with settler publics by laying out a nuanced introspection of their ‘portraits of peoplehood’ during tumultuous contexts and the costs of such representativity that foster tension in the present day. He resituates the discussion of recognition to this earlier period in order to detour from a settler stronghold on political definitions still used to impact the daily life of Indigenous peoples. Delving deep into the political spheres of violence and the nuanced political forms of Indigenous life that emerge, Rifkin gives us further grounds to explore the foundations and formations of slippery recognition politics.”
Mishuana Goeman
Professor of Gender Studies and American Indian Studies
University of California, Los Angeles
“Presenting new, insightful, nuanced, and persuasive readings of four key figures in nineteenth-century Native American literature, Speaking for the People is both timely and poised to become a classic study in Native and Indigenous studies, anthropology, and American literary studies. An interdisciplinary tour de force.”
Birgit Brander Rasmussen
Author
Queequeg’s Coffin:
Indigenous Literacies and Early American Literature
“Presenting new, insightful, nuanced, and persuasive readings of four key figures in nineteenth-century Native American literature, Speaking for the People is both timely and poised to become a classic study in Native and Indigenous studies, anthropology, and American literary studies. An interdisciplinary tour de force.”
Birgit Brander Rasmussen
Author
Queequeg’s Coffin:
Indigenous Literacies and Early American Literature
“Presenting new, insightful, nuanced, and persuasive readings of four key figures in nineteenth-century Native American literature, Speaking for the People is both timely and poised to become a classic study in Native and Indigenous studies, anthropology, and American literary studies. An interdisciplinary tour de force.”
Birgit Brander Rasmussen
Author
Queequeg’s Coffin:
Indigenous Literacies and Early American Literature
"Speaking for the People is as useful for scholars and students of contemporary indigenous studies as it is for those pursuing the study of 19th-century literature, politics, and indigenous peoples. Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty."
J. J. Donahue
Choice
"Speaking for the People is as useful for scholars and students of contemporary indigenous studies as it is for those pursuing the study of 19th-century literature, politics, and indigenous peoples. Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty."
J. J. Donahue
Choice
"Speaking for the People is as useful for scholars and students of contemporary indigenous studies as it is for those pursuing the study of 19th-century literature, politics, and indigenous peoples. Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty."
J. J. Donahue
Choice
"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 . . . consciously stage the 'legitimacy of their entry' into the discursive frameworks of coloniality."
Caitlin Simmons
Western American Literature
"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 . . . consciously stage the 'legitimacy of their entry' into the discursive frameworks of coloniality."
Caitlin Simmons
Western American Literature
"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 . . . consciously stage the 'legitimacy of their entry' into the discursive frameworks of coloniality."
Caitlin Simmons
Western American Literature
"Speaking for the People reasserts the usefulness and relevance of literary studies in fashioning Indigenous political theory. Rifkin demonstrates how nineteenth-century Native texts have had to navigate settler worldings to express peoplehood and how their intellectual labor of negotiatedness should inspire present-day scholarship. His demonstration is as compelling as it is unsettling."
Mathilde Louette
Transatlantica
"Speaking for the People reasserts the usefulness and relevance of literary studies in fashioning Indigenous political theory. Rifkin demonstrates how nineteenth-century Native texts have had to navigate settler worldings to express peoplehood and how their intellectual labor of negotiatedness should inspire present-day scholarship. His demonstration is as compelling as it is unsettling."
Mathilde Louette
Transatlantica
"Speaking for the People reasserts the usefulness and relevance of literary studies in fashioning Indigenous political theory. Rifkin demonstrates how nineteenth-century Native texts have had to navigate settler worldings to express peoplehood and how their intellectual labor of negotiatedness should inspire present-day scholarship. His demonstration is as compelling as it is unsettling."
Mathilde Louette
Transatlantica
"Speaking for the People . . . is valuable for literary scholars and Indigenous scholars alike to articulate the complexity of Indigenous activism in a settler state."
Alison Russell
New England Quarterly
"Speaking for the People . . . is valuable for literary scholars and Indigenous scholars alike to articulate the complexity of Indigenous activism in a settler state."
Alison Russell
New England Quarterly
"Speaking for the People . . . is valuable for literary scholars and Indigenous scholars alike to articulate the complexity of Indigenous activism in a settler state."
Alison Russell
New England Quarterly
"Speaking for the People has generated a rich set of coordinates and queries for analyzing nineteenth-century Native writing, and Rifkin’s readings model how these questions take us deep into nineteenth-century Native political discussions while resonating in contemporary NAIS scholarship."
Kelly Wisecup
Native American and Indigenous Studies
"Speaking for the People has generated a rich set of coordinates and queries for analyzing nineteenth-century Native writing, and Rifkin’s readings model how these questions take us deep into nineteenth-century Native political discussions while resonating in contemporary NAIS scholarship."
Kelly Wisecup
Native American and Indigenous Studies
"Speaking for the People has generated a rich set of coordinates and queries for analyzing nineteenth-century Native writing, and Rifkin’s readings model how these questions take us deep into nineteenth-century Native political discussions while resonating in contemporary NAIS scholarship."
Kelly Wisecup
Native American and Indigenous Studies
Other Books
The Cambridge Introduction to Queer and Trans Studies
The book provides a detailed analysis of important work in queer and trans studies over the past thirty years. Stretching from early figures (such as Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Judith Butler, Cathy Cohen, José Muñoz, and Sandy Stone) to the most recent scholarship, it offers a rich account of these fields’ major ideas and contributions while indicating how they have evolved.
The Politics of Kinship
Race, Family, Governance
What if we understood the idea of family as central to representing alternative forms of governance as expressions of racial deviance? The Politics of Kinship shows how ideologies of family recast Indigenous and other forms of collective self-organization and self-determination as disruptive racial tendencies in need of state containment and intervention.
Speaking for the People
Native Writing and the Question of Political Form
Speaking for the People examines nineteenth-century Native writings to reframe contemporary debates around Indigenous recognition, refusal, and resurgence. It shows how works by nineteenth-century Native authors illustrate the intellectual labor involved in representing modes of Indigenous political identity and placemaking.
Fictions of Land and Flesh
Blackness, Indigeneity, Speculation
In Fictions of Land and Flesh Mark Rifkin explores the impasses that arise in seeking to connect Black and Indigenous movements, turning to speculative fiction to understand those difficulties and envision productive ways of addressing them.
Beyond Settler Time
Temporal Sovereignty and Indigenous Self-Determination
What does it mean to say that Native peoples exist in the present? Beyond Settler Time investigates the dangers of seeking to include Indigenous peoples within settler temporal frameworks.
Settler Common Sense
Queerness and Everyday Colonialism in the American Renaissance
The book explores how some of the most canonical of American writers take part in the legacy of displacing Native Americans. It shows how these texts’ queer imaginings rely on treating settler notions of place and personhood as self-evident, erasing the advancing expropriation and occupation of Native lands.
The Erotics of Sovereignty
Queer Native Writing in the Era of Self-Determination
The Erotics of Sovereignty looks at how contemporary queer Native writers use representations of sensation to challenge official U.S. accounts of Native identity. It illustrates how these authors affirm the significance of the erotic as an exercise of individual and community sovereignty.
When Did Indians Become Straight?
Kinship, the History of Sexuality, and Native Sovereignty
The book explores the complex relationship between contested U.S. notions of normality and shifting forms of Native American governance and self-representation.
Manifesting America
The Imperial Construction of U.S. National Space
The book explores the creation and extension of U.S. jurisdiction in the antebellum period, particularly over Native Americans and former Mexicans.
Other Books
The Cambridge Introduction to Queer and Trans Studies
The book provides a detailed analysis of important work in queer and trans studies over the past thirty years. Stretching from early figures (such as Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Judith Butler, Cathy Cohen, José Muñoz, and Sandy Stone) to the most recent scholarship, it offers a rich account of these fields’ major ideas and contributions while indicating how they have evolved.
The Politics of Kinship
Race, Family, Governance
What if we understood the idea of family as central to representing alternative forms of governance as expressions of racial deviance? The Politics of Kinship shows how ideologies of family recast Indigenous and other forms of collective self-organization and self-determination as disruptive racial tendencies in need of state containment and intervention.
Speaking for the People
Native Writing and the Question of Political Form
Speaking for the People examines nineteenth-century Native writings to reframe contemporary debates around Indigenous recognition, refusal, and resurgence. It shows how works by nineteenth-century Native authors illustrate the intellectual labor involved in representing modes of Indigenous political identity and placemaking.
Fictions of Land and Flesh
Blackness, Indigeneity, Speculation
In Fictions of Land and Flesh Mark Rifkin explores the impasses that arise in seeking to connect Black and Indigenous movements, turning to speculative fiction to understand those difficulties and envision productive ways of addressing them.
Beyond Settler Time
Temporal Sovereignty and Indigenous Self-Determination
What does it mean to say that Native peoples exist in the present? Beyond Settler Time investigates the dangers of seeking to include Indigenous peoples within settler temporal frameworks.
Settler Common Sense
Queerness and Everyday Colonialism in the American Renaissance
The book explores how some of the most canonical of American writers take part in the legacy of displacing Native Americans. It shows how these texts’ queer imaginings rely on treating settler notions of place and personhood as self-evident, erasing the advancing expropriation and occupation of Native lands.
The Erotics of Sovereignty
Queer Native Writing in the Era of Self-Determination
The Erotics of Sovereignty looks at how contemporary queer Native writers use representations of sensation to challenge official U.S. accounts of Native identity. It illustrates how these authors affirm the significance of the erotic as an exercise of individual and community sovereignty.
When Did Indians Become Straight?
Kinship, the History of Sexuality, and Native Sovereignty
The book explores the complex relationship between contested U.S. notions of normality and shifting forms of Native American governance and self-representation.
Manifesting America
The Imperial Construction of U.S. National Space
The book explores the creation and extension of U.S. jurisdiction in the antebellum period, particularly over Native Americans and former Mexicans.
Other Books
The Cambridge Introduction to Queer and Trans Studies
The book provides a detailed analysis of important work in queer and trans studies over the past thirty years. Stretching from early figures (such as Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Judith Butler, Cathy Cohen, José Muñoz, and Sandy Stone) to the most recent scholarship, it offers a rich account of these fields’ major ideas and contributions while indicating how they have evolved.
The Politics of Kinship
Race, Family, Governance
What if we understood the idea of family as central to representing alternative forms of governance as expressions of racial deviance? The Politics of Kinship shows how ideologies of family recast Indigenous and other forms of collective self-organization and self-determination as disruptive racial tendencies in need of state containment and intervention.
Speaking for the People
Native Writing and the Question of Political Form
Speaking for the People examines nineteenth-century Native writings to reframe contemporary debates around Indigenous recognition, refusal, and resurgence. It shows how works by nineteenth-century Native authors illustrate the intellectual labor involved in representing modes of Indigenous political identity and placemaking.
Fictions of Land and Flesh
Blackness, Indigeneity, Speculation
In Fictions of Land and Flesh Mark Rifkin explores the impasses that arise in seeking to connect Black and Indigenous movements, turning to speculative fiction to understand those difficulties and envision productive ways of addressing them.
Beyond Settler Time
Temporal Sovereignty and Indigenous Self-Determination
What does it mean to say that Native peoples exist in the present? Beyond Settler Time investigates the dangers of seeking to include Indigenous peoples within settler temporal frameworks.
Settler Common Sense
Queerness and Everyday Colonialism in the American Renaissance
The book explores how some of the most canonical of American writers take part in the legacy of displacing Native Americans. It shows how these texts’ queer imaginings rely on treating settler notions of place and personhood as self-evident, erasing the advancing expropriation and occupation of Native lands.
The Erotics of Sovereignty
Queer Native Writing in the Era of Self-Determination
The Erotics of Sovereignty looks at how contemporary queer Native writers use representations of sensation to challenge official U.S. accounts of Native identity. It illustrates how these authors affirm the significance of the erotic as an exercise of individual and community sovereignty.
When Did Indians Become Straight?
Kinship, the History of Sexuality, and Native Sovereignty
The book explores the complex relationship between contested U.S. notions of normality and shifting forms of Native American governance and self-representation.
Manifesting America
The Imperial Construction of U.S. National Space
The book explores the creation and extension of U.S. jurisdiction in the antebellum period, particularly over Native Americans and former Mexicans.
ConTact me
mrifkin@buffalo.edu
Department of Global Gender and Sexuality Studies
1030 Clemens Hall
University at Buffalo
Buffalo, New York 14260
ConTact me
mrifkin@buffalo.edu
Department of Global Gender and Sexuality Studies
1030 Clemens Hall
University at Buffalo
Buffalo, New York 14260
ConTact me
mrifkin@buffalo.edu
Department of Global Gender and Sexuality Studies
1030 Clemens Hall
University at Buffalo
Buffalo, New York 14260
Copyright ©Mark Rifkin. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright ©Mark Rifkin. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright ©Mark Rifkin. All Rights Reserved.