"You Could Speak the Truth with a Tongue of Fire": The Cultural and Political Work of Indigenous Periodicals

Abstract

ABSTRACT: From the nineteenth century to the present, Indigenous periodicals have served as mediators for both complex citational practices and decolonial translations, as well as an important archive documenting and representing Indigenous people and issues. This special issue of the journal American Periodicals brings together scholars working on Indigenous periodicals to provide a glimpse into the vast array of Indigenous periodical writing as continuous repositories of Indigenous knowledge. The contributions highlighted in this special issue, emerging from an MLA roundtable session and a symposium on Indigenous print cultures, show that Indigenous periodicals serve as distinct material carriers of Indigenous information and visual-graphic spaces of communication, knowledge production, and community-building. They are complex media artifacts whose relation to the construction of sovereignty is articulated through periodicity, network, mediator, and archive. As special issue editors, we seek to broaden existing understandings of Indigenous textualities and interpretative traditions by offering a fresh approach to analyzing periodicals and the role they play in the expansion of Indigenous print, while also highlighting Indigenous periodicals' ongoing political and cultural work of sharing diverse viewpoints, expressing identity, establishing and participating in traditions, and asserting sovereignty.