'This Is Our Land!': Indigenous Rhetoric and Resistance on the Northern Plains

This thesis examines Indigenous rhetorics of resistance from the Treaty Six negotiations in 1876 to the 1930s. Using methods from Comparative Literature and Indigenous literary studies, the thesis situates the rhetoric of northern Plains Indigenous peoples in the context of settler-colonial studies, Indigenous literary nationalism, and Plains Indigenous concepts of nationhood and governance, and introduces the concept of rhetorical autonomy (an extension of literary nationalism) as an organizing framework. The thesis examines the ways Plains Indigenous writers and leaders have resisted settler-colonialism through both rhetorical and physical acts of resistance. Making use of archival and published works, the thesis is a literary and political history of Indigenous peoples from their origins on the northern plains to the period of political organizing after World War I.