Gadipudi 1

Anusha Gadipudi

Professor Suhr-Sytsma

Eng 181-3

Making Waves

Autumn Peltier’s Fight to Save the Sacred Water

At age 13, children are just able to access websites like Facebook without parental permission. At

age 13, Autumn Peltier addressed the United Nations General Assembly in honor of World Water Day to

call for increased awareness of the importance of water to communities like hers. On March 22nd 2018, she

not only addressed the UN in New York, but also the whole world watching. In many ways, Peltier appears

to be a child battling issues that are much larger than her, but she stands up for what she believes in as a

person. When Peltier met Justin Trudeau, current Prime Minister of Canada, she accosted him for his

policies about the Trans-Morgan pipeline, telling him that she was “very unhappy with the choices

[Trudeau] has made”. She has been fighting for the water since age 8, propelled by her aunt, Josephine

Mandamin, who is also a water advocate. But Peltier does not only see herself as a water advocate, she also

calls herself “the voice of the children,” and she campaigns for other indigenous children who will feel the

brunt of the water crisis but are unable to speak up for themselves out of fear, or lack of resources. This is

reflected in Peltier’s rhetorical style during her speech at the UN general assembly. Her specific style echoes

aspects of earlier resistance narratives, such as the poems produced during the indigenous occupation of

Alcatraz in the mid-20th century. In this essay, I will specifically analyze the stylistic differences between

Peltier’s speech, and a report of Peltier’s speech produced in the form of a press-release by the Treaty

Alliance Against Tar Sands Expansion group, with regards to Dean Rader’s analysis of the Alcatraz poems.

I will specifically focus on how the stylistic devices of the two texts further different purposes, although

the main subject of both texts is the same.

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Dean Rader establishes two “important duties” required of all poems that distinguishes them from

essays or manifestos – “reinforce Indian poetry as indigenous performative texts that eschew abstracted

reality for a lived reality of their own, and second, they remind us of the ability of such texts to create a

sense of place, especially within and among contested spaces” (Rader, 20). I argue that Peltier does achieve

both of these criteria when making her speech. “I’m going to get right into this so you can feel where I am

coming from” (Peltier), within the first 10 seconds of her speech, Peltier established that her words are

about her experience, implying that her experience is distinct from the ideas the United Nations Assembly

members may have, satisfying the first criterion. Secondly, Peltier argues for the “contested space” when

she says “My heart is in my land and in my water. My heart is not for sale,” talking about how the

government wishes to infract upon her space for monetary gain. Therefore, although not in the conventional

sense, it can be established that Peltier’s speech is a form of poetry, an idea that is also seen in other aspects

of her speech.

“The battlegrounds have shifted from land to ethos; thus; the weapons Indians amass must be

commensurate with the context of the enemy” (Rader, 23). Rader discusses the importance of the speaker’s

portrayal in the context of resistance, claiming that it is important to acknowledge differences between “the

context of the enemy” and “the poet occupiers” (Rader 23), but ensure that they are both kept on an equal

standing. Peltier’s speech at the UN places a heavy importance on ethos. Ethos is defined as the “character

or disposition of a community, group, person, etc”. Peltier carefully crafts her ethos, reflected in her choice

of clothes to her choice of words. When she steps onto the podium dressed in traditional Anishnaabe clothes,

she implicitly states that she is proud of her heritage, and that she uses it as a vessel to stand up for her

beliefs, rather than hide it and portray herself as being more similar to her direct audience at the United

Nations. She shows that there is strength in difference and that only by embracing those differences, change

can come. Peltier also avoids appealing to logos, she does not cite any studies or numbers during her speech.

This may contribute to her ethos by helping the audience to perceive her as a young child with unique
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experiences, rather than an expert on the issue of water conservation. Peltier’s avoidance of logos is in

contrast to the Treaty Alliance’s press-release which is discussed below.

One of Peltier’s recurring themes throughout her speech is the personification of water, the idea

that water has a spirit. This is also related to Rader’s discussion of how “Native oral expression has always

fused people and land,” (Rader 24). This may be a two-pronged attack, aimed at gaining sympathy from

non-Native people and at furthering her ethos by using a classic rhetorical technique often employed in

Native poetry. Typical Western beliefs place human-kind above all other beings in nature, including water,

which is considered non-sentient, and so not worth caring about. By personifying the water, Peltier makes

it difficult for policy makers to ignore the plight of water. Peltier also acknowledges “The native American

ethic with respect to the physical world is a matter of reciprocal appropriation: appropriations in which man

invests himself in the landscape, and at the same time, incorporates the landscape into his own most

fundamental experience” (Native American Attitudes towards the Environment, 80) that argues for saving

water because it is a part of nature, not because it is key to human survival.

Peltier also says “My heart is in my land and in my water. My heart is not for sale”. This sentence

serves to fuse her with the land. When Peltier says that her heart is not for sale, she means that the land and

the water are not for sale, and by blurring the line between herself and the land, Peltier creates a rhetorical

effect similar to that of the poetry Rader analyses, as discussed above.

The empowering nature of Peltier’s speech is also relevant with regards to Rader’s suggested

purpose of poetry to serve as a “catalyst for collective action” (Rader, 23). He discusses how “a poem

carries immediacy, a now-ness, that a narrative can’t replicate” (Rader, 24), which becomes particularly

relevant in the context of the press-release by the Treaty Alliance Against Tar Sands Expansion (TAATSE).

Unlike the speech by Peltier, the press-release cannot be classified as a poem because it does not satisfy

either criteria produced by Rader with regards to poems, however, the press-release does read like a

proclamation, albeit, without the sense of ‘now-ness’.

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The main purpose of the Treaty Alliance Against Tar Sands Expansion (TAATSE) website appears

to be calling the Indigenous people of North American to action in order to protect water, and to inform

non-Native people about the condition of drinking water on reservations. It is clear that the website has

Canadian roots because all of the menu options are written in both English and French to increase

accessibility. The press-release, however, appears to be mainly to inform people, both Native and non-

Native, about Peltier’s speech at the United Nations general assembly. This can be inferred by the

substantial background provided to the issue, with entire paragraphs spent introducing Peltier, the Treaty

Alliance’s purpose, and Trudeau’s policies with regards to Kinder-Morgan pipeline expansion.

The Press-release stands in contrast to Dean Rader’s analysis of the Alcatraz proclamation in the

sense that the press-release does not appeal to humor and does not appear to “invert the ethos of colonialism

by turning the condescending language back on itself” (Rader, 14). Important to note, however, is the title

of the Press Release, “ADDRESSING THE UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY,

INDIGENOUS YOUTH AUTUMN PELTIER HAS MESSAGE FOR PRIME MINISTER TRUDEAU

ON PIPELINES”. The last phrase may be read as mildly menacing, which may be interpreted as being a

power-stance employed by the Treaty Alliance in order to show dominion over the government, and a

refusal to back down. Although the main purpose of the press-release was only to inform, in a subversive

way, the press-release may also be read as empowering indigenous people who read the release, to feel

proud of Peltier and capable of making a stance themselves.

Here, it becomes evident that the key reason for the difference in appeal between the press-release

and Peltier’s speech is that the pieces were made with different audiences in mind, and so the respective

purposes are fundamentally different. However, one important factor that Rader did not discuss in detail is

the importance of the speaker’s role in the argument. Peltier’s rhetorical style was framed by her position

as a child, and the tone of the press-release may also have been affected by the context of the speaker with

regards to this argument. Future analysis may expand on the differences in rhetorical style with respect to

the authority of the speaker, especially with regards to indigenous youth movements. This may also be
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linked to the difference in tone applied by Native versus non-Native people when producing texts such as

the speech or the press-release, and how that may be related to the rhetorical effect.

In conclusion, it should be noted that Autumn Peltier’s United Nations General Assembly address

is fundamentally different from the press-release produced by the Treaty Alliance about her speech. This is

because of a variety of factors that may mainly be linked to the main purpose of each text – with the speech

being to empower Indigenous people and Indigenous young people, and the press-release being to inform

Native people about the speech and to use the speech as potential to further the Treaty Alliance’s goal of

stopping pipeline expansions in Indigenous territory.

Works Cited:

"ethos". Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random House, Inc. 21 Apr. 2018.

<Dictionary.com http://www.dictionary.com/browse/ethos>.

“Autumn Peltier | I am Indigenous” youtube, CBC News, 21 Jun 2017,

http://www.cbc.ca/news2/interactives/i-am-indigenous-2017/images/peltier.webm

“Autumn Peltier, Flanked by AFN National Chief Perry Bellegarde and AFN Elder Elmer Courchene

Presents a Water Bundle to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.” National News, APTN, 10 Oct. 2017,

aptnnews.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Autumn-Peltier-1000-x-560.jpg.

“Teen Activist Autumn Peltier Who Scolded Trudeau to Address UN.” BBC News, BBC, 31 Dec. 2017,

www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42358227.
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Alex, Carthy. “Meet Autumn Peltier — the 12-Year-Old Girl Who Speaks for Water.” 20 June 2017,

www.cbc.ca/2017/meet-autumn-peltier-the-12-year-old-girl-who-speaks-for-water-1.4168277.

Rader, Dean. Engaged resistance: American Indian art, literature, and film from Alcatraz to the NMAI.

University of Texas Press, 2011.