Rhetoric as resistance: discursive contestation and the 1918 incorporation of the Native American Church in Oklahoma

Abstract

The historiography of Peyotism lacks an adequate explanation of contested efforts to preserve a Native American cultural identity. There is a need for an alternate paradigm to view the Peyotists as possessing cultural agency to contest the efforts to prohibit the use of Peyote. An examination of the larger historical context of the period offers insight into a contestation by Native American Peyotists against the dominant culture, ironically with the use of the rhetoric of the dominant culture. In response to the opposition of the Peyote practive and religion from the dominant culture, the incorporation of the Native American Church of Oklahoma exemplified a pan-Indian discursive contestation by adopting rhetoric from the dominant culture, including the terms "Native American," "church," and "sacrament," and using them as a foil of resistance.