The Letter: Fidelity in Researcher Positionality to Exhume Dispossessed Voices for Leavy’s Concept of Coherence in Feminist Narrative Research

Robin Throne

doi:10.31532/gendwomensstud.2.1.003

Abstract

This feminist narrative research explored the fidelity of researcher positionality and Leavy’s coherence to consider an archival personal letter from the Sauk warrior Black Hawk’s great great daughter, Mary Kakaque, written to John Henry Hauberg, an Illinois philanthropist. Future research is needed to characterize Mary’s educational experiences amid an era of cultural annihilation and assimilation within the collective narrative of Hauberg’s interpretations, paraphrases, and summaries of Mary’s existence, and a phenomenological study to explore Mary’s lived experience within the full archival Hauberg collection to consider the constructs of voice or resilience as the lived experiences of Black Hawk’s female descendants remain limited. In addition, a critical ethnography may be warranted for ancestral effects of relocation and assimilation from the perspectives of living Black Hawk and Mary’s female descendants to contribute a contemporary perspective on voice, culture, and the legacy of land dispossession.

Highlights

In 1940, Mary Kakaque, the great great granddaughter of the renowned Sauk Warrior Black Hawk (Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak, 1767-1838) wrote to John Henry Hauberg in response to his query about Black Hawk’s daughter; yet, only Hauberg’s transcribed version exists among his papers
Even before John Henry Hauberg began a lifelong pursuit of portraying an authentic heritage to Rock Island County (Warren, 2009), Black Hawk shared his version of life story with a trusted white fur trader and the manuscript was later translated by a newspaper editor, which has left some researchers to speculate that it is a work of subjectivity, memory, and imagination, and what is left unsaid or redacted is a device the warrior utilized to protect the Sauk people (Raheja, 2006)
Mary’s letter to Hauberg remains as a singular contemporaneous narrative outside of Hauberg’s personal writings by a direct female descendant of Black Hawk, and one example that represents a filtered voice based on the cultural interventions of the dominant culture on a subculture’s relocation, acculturation, assimilation, and reconstruction

Summary

Introduction

In 1940, Mary Kakaque, the great great granddaughter of the renowned Sauk Warrior Black Hawk (Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak, 1767-1838) wrote to John Henry Hauberg in response to his query about Black Hawk’s daughter; yet, only Hauberg’s transcribed version (including his successive footnote about her daughter’s death) exists among his papers (see Figure 1)

Background

Method and Framework

Conclusions