| This dissertation investigates issues of representation surrounding the American Indian (NDN) and the mixedblood. By conflating images of the trickster as described by NDN scholars with the postmodern theories of Donna Haraway, I explore in my dissertation how the trickster provides a way of viewing formerly accepted boundaries of identity from new perspectives. As cyborg, the trickster is in the "system," but it is also enacting change by pushing against those boundaries, exposing them as social fictions. I create a cyborg trickster heuristic, using it as a lens with which to both analyze how NDNs construct online identities and the rhetorical maneuvers they undergo. Moving beyond access issues, I show how NDNs are strengthening their presence through social media. Ultimately, I argue that the cyborg trickster shows how identities (NDN and non-NDN alike) are multiply-created and constantly in flux, transcending the traditional boundaries of self and other, online and offline, space and place, to allow for a new understanding of the individual in society and society within the individual. |
