THE POWER OF HOZHǪ́: SPOKEN WORD POETRY AND THE RESURGENCE OF NATIVE AMERICAN LANGUAGES

Résumé

In the history of colonization of the North American continent, the imposition of colonial languages over native languages and the renaming and remapping of the landscape were used to eradicate Indigenous ancestral knowledge. Impeding the transmission of knowledge, language deprivation and language imposition affected the relationship of Indigenous people with their own identities, cultures, and land. The expression “Education for Extinction” used by D.W. Adams in 1995 can still be considered appropriate to describe the systematic attempt to annihilate Native American knowledge performed and 20th-century boarding schools in the U.S. and in Canada. Alongside the profound psychological and socio-cultural impact of such an educational system on Native communities, Native American scholars have also emphasized the role played by these institutions in fueling their resilience and awareness. Against this background, this article examines the significance of resurgence in the processes of transgenerational community healing, self-determination, and political empowerment, with a specific focus on the work of Lyla June Johnston. A performance poet, environmental scholar, and community organizer of Diné, Tsétsêhéstâhese, and European descent, she focuses on Indigenous ways of knowledge, which were devalued and marginalized for centuries by colonial powers, and places them at the center of an epistemic revolution that is not centered on the concept of survival. Along with other Indigenous scholars and artivists, she reclaims ancestral teachings and languages and fuels the debate on the possibility for non-Indigenous communities to embrace Indigenous knowledge, which is based on a more sustainable relationship between humans and the environment. In “Hozhó” and other poems, she combines the poetics and politics of resurgence using spoken word as an artivistic tool, a powerful cultural practice for Indigenous people who belong to the tradition of orality and storytelling.