I am a writing and rhetorics scholar whose works explore the intersections of Indigenous, digital, and cultural rhetorics. In my research, I explore three key themes: Identity, community, and story gathering. These themes inform the questions that drive my research, specifically 1) 1) How is identity formed and enacted in community spaces, both online and in-person, and what rhetorical practices are created in these spaces? 2) How do cultural practices and knowledges influence the ways in which identity is understood, especially in Indigenous spaces? (and?) 3) How are digital and social media tools being used to reclaim and encourage Indigenous sovereignty as well as identity?

For my dissertation project I enact a decolonial object analysis informed by a cultural rhetorics lens. To do this work, I turn to the Oklahoma and Tulsa Historical Society archives to gather images and stories created for and presented at the 1957 statehood Semi-Centennial events. This archived ephemera includes damaging stereotypical images of indigeneity, an indigeneity represented as antithetical to progress. Using a research methodology and theoretical lens drawing from both Indigenous Studies and Cultural Rhetorics, I investigate how curated ideas of history and authenticity are used to control narratives of the past and of people, and further, how this control enacts power. Through chapters that specifically explore methodology, land, and identity, and by engaging with stories about places and peoples curated in specific environments, I offer a model for how a cultural rhetorics methodology can illuminate and enrich composing and rhetorical practices that more thoroughly include relations between places, lands, and peoples.

My published and in-progress works explore the creation of identity and the ways in which communities and cultures shape that creation. In my video essay, Every Word is a Prayer, I discuss three Indigenous graduate students’ use of digital tools like online classes and phone apps to learn their heritage languages. I will submit this project to constellations: A Cultural Rhetorics Publishing Space. While making the video essay, I also wrote a companion methodological model that discusses my intentional use of only theoretical and methodological source material written by Indigenous authors. This piece, “Every Word Is a Prayer: Heritage Language Literacy and Indigenous Identity” is forthcoming in a Spring 2020 edited collection, published through STAR Scholars Network.

Looking ahead, I plan to produce a monograph based on the archival work of my dissertation, where I will extend my visual rhetorical analysis of the material and the images of Indigenous people that were found in the materials. Drawing on stereotypical tropes like the “noble savage” or the “r*dskin,” I will discuss the ways Indigenous people in Oklahoma were invoked for capitalistic gains while they were being killed to gain control of the oil beneath their lands. Additionally, I plan to partner with the Oklahoma Historical Society to pursue an Implementation Grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission to help make the archival materials from the 1957 Semi-Centennial materials digitally available. I am excited about continuing to explore the intersections of Indigenous, digital, and cultural rhetorics.