ABSTRACT. Contemporary Indigenous feminist alternative knowledge producers have only recently begun to articulate and insinuate their worldview onto the international intellectual stage. More adroitly than their predecessors, they strategically implement aspects of the rhetorical genres, and skillfully “erect rhetorical discourse” in order to eloquently convey their epistemology and advance a pressing political, cultural and social agenda of change. Providing a counter-hegemonic alternative perspective, their interrogation of identity uniformly takes into account ethnicity and gender issues while critiquing the failed modernist project. Bakhtin’s chapter “Discourse in the Novel” (1981) is an elaborate dissection of language and the panoramic functions of various modes of discourse, including the rhetorical form. This paper undertakes an analysis and partial explanation of the emerging influence and content of this contemporary Indigenous feminist writing, based on the concepts outlined by Bakhtin about heteroglossia, language and discourse. pp. 116–130
Keywords: heteroglossia; indigenous feminism; rhetorical genres