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Literacy & Colonialism
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editSince colonialism began, literacy has been a factor in ensuring colonialization of Indigenous culture(s). Literacy has been used to berate, criticize and condemn Indigenous peoples. This stems from differing opinions on what literacy actually is - spoken, or written. Colonialism argues that literacy is having the ability to read and write and thus create with the hands. On the other hand, Indigenous peoples highly value oral literacy. Colonialism has sought to take away from the oral traditions of Native Americans by incorporating the use of written literature into Native American education.
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editLiteracy in different cultures has a different definition. For Indigenous folks, their literacy is perhaps overlooked. According to Maureen Konkle, it is because Indigenous and Native American cultures do not have an equal to literature. “it is the scholar who determines what counts as literary since, most critics agree, traditional [Native American] cultures do not have a concept equivalent to ‘literature.” (Konkle, 458) For Indigenous individuals, literacy is not being able to write or read as it is for colonials. It is their “inborn consciousness” as Konkle also notes on page 458. It is in orality; their spoken word. This is the issue that colonials have with Native American literacy.
For colonials, the ability to read and write are highly regarded as literary skills. The ability to add meaning and themes to what one is trying to say is what colonials find important, especially in education. Christie Toth borrows from Susan V. Meyers’ and talks about this dilemma as a type of resistance to settler colonial literacy. “Meyers states at several points that Indigenous knowledges, literacies, and histories of resistance to domination are part of the legacy Villachuato migrants bring to their negotiations of literacy.” (Toth, 502) This is yet another issue that settler colonialism finds with Indigenous literacies.
These problems with the definitions of literacy and what counts as literacy are still debated today. It is not just a colonialism vs. indigeneity issue, though colonialism sparked the beginnings of the debate. It is an issue that is perhaps being picked apart by scholars at the very moment these words are being penned. There are sources, such as Deborah Keller-Cohen’s work that suggest colonialists actually did understand literacy as a spoken word more so than written or read. “Although reading and writing were not perceived as constituting an integrated set of skills, colonials were taught that each was related to speaking.” (Keller-Cohen, 292) This suggestion opens up another can of worms about the debate of what literacy meant to colonialists.
References
editKeller-Cohen, Deborah. “Rethinking Literacy: Comparing Colonial and Contemporary America.” Anthropology & Education Quarterly, vol. 24, no. 4, [Wiley, American Anthropological Association], 1993, pp. 288–307, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3195932.
Konkle, Maureen. “Indian Literacy, U. S. Colonialism, and Literary Criticism.” American Literature, vol. 69, no. 3, Duke University Press, 1997, pp. 457–86, https://doi.org/10.2307/2928211.
Toth, Christie. “Seeing Settler Colonialism.” College English, vol. 78, no. 5, National Council of Teachers of English, 2016, pp. 496–510, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44075138.