Presidential Lecture: Discourse and Authority in Histories Painted, Knotted, and Threaded

Abstract

This essay argues for the study of histories that are executed in graphic registers other than alphabetic writing, specifically histories that are painted, knotted, and threaded. As the products of the recording systems of the indigenous people themselves, they are inherently closer to indigenous epistemology than are alphabetic documents. They reveal the indigenous framework for conceptualizing and recording the past. As objects, they are the sites of discourse about the past, and they convey the authority of that past.