Signs of Resistance, Signs of Resurgence: Indigenous Literacies and New Media in Native American Literatures, 901 AD to the Digital Age

FAIN: FT-291496-23

Birgit Brander Rasmussen
SUNY Research Foundation, Binghamton (Binghamton, NY 13902-4400)

Research and writing for a book tracing the origins and resurgence of pictographic literacy in American Indigenous cultures. 

My project responds to this year’s theme by centering Indigenous literacies in a new history of American literature from 901 AD to the digital age. Europeans did not bring literacy to Natives. The colonial conflict brought multiple forms of literacy into contact and conflict. Using innovative methodologies developed in this “textual conflict zone,” I show how Indigenous literacies, like pictography, become signs of resistance in the colonial era and of resurgence in the digital present. By explicating literary forms through tribal epistemologies, I connect the dots to demonstrate how ancient Indigenous literacies and media are continuous with the digital present.