Mending baskets: The process of using indigenous epistemology to reinterpret Sacagawea

Selene G Phillips, Purdue University

Abstract

This dissertation is an interdisciplinary study that applies indigenous epistemology to a study of Sacagawea, the Shoshone woman who traveled with the Lewis and Clark expedition. The research addresses the problem of misrepresentation of Sacagawea and other Indigenous Peoples. It incorporates indigenous epistemology toward alternative social action, language and rationality. This study refined seven categories that describe an indigenous epistemology research agenda. Those include recognition of community; oral tradition; building constructive connections between disparate cultures; cultural fluidity and processes not evident in dominant culture; and a need to persist, survive and heal. It also calls for replacing patriarchal constructs with egalitarian or feminist structures and making connections between places of origin, landscape and spirituality. This paradigm is used to critically analyze three different Sacagawea “texts,” which include scholarly research about Sacagawea, books authors have written about her and the images in those books. Findings indicate that portrayals of Sacagawea are more representative of American dominant ideologies like manifest destiny than they represent cultural signifiers of Indigenous Peoples.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Targ, Purdue University.

Subject Area

American studies|American history|Minority & ethnic groups|Sociology|Biographies

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