Discursive Discriminations in the Representation of Western Mono and Yokuts Stories: Confronting Narrative Inequality and Listening to Indigenous Voices in Central California

Abstract

This article focuses on academic representations of Western Mono and Yokuts traditional narratives by exploring examples of what Dell Hymes described as narrative inequality. The author demonstrate that the erasure and marginalization of indigenous narrative traditions was, in part, caused by the hegemonic blending of aesthetic and political economic criteria. But recent theoretical developments in ethnopoetics, critical literacy, language ideologies, and new ethnographic research provide key resources for projects of decolonization and cultural reclamation that were unavailable to salvage-era researchers. By providing more accurate and complete representations, people can both decolonize past representations and forge new ones, not only for the benefit of scholars but also for the heritage language communities that struggle for resources in their language renewal efforts. In so doing, people can use the ethnopoetic legacy of Hymes to create what he called mediative resources that enable them to better hear the voices of traditional narrators telling their stories in their heritage languages and in accord with the intertextuality of indigenous genres and storytelling ideologies.