Sensory ways to indigenous multimodal literacies : Hands and feet tell the story

This chapter reports original research that asks the question: What are the ways of knowing, being, and communicating that are valued and practiced in Indigenous communities? Literacy curricula, internationally and nationally, typically do not take into account the multi-sensorial dimensions of non-Western forms of representation that go beyond narrow conceptions of print. For example, literacies are often conceived as drawing on print, visual, spatial, gestural, and audio modes, but the role of haptics and locomotion has typically received little attention. This chapter highlights examples of the multi-sensoriality of Indigenous literacies observed in participatory community research with an Indigenous school. It extends recent theories of sensory studies in the history and cultural anthropology of the senses, applying these principles to literacy education. Sensory literacies is a theoretical perspective that gives priority to the sensorial dimensions of the body and its role in communication in literacy practice, because without a sensing body, we cannot know about or communicate with the world. The data demonstrates how the forgotten role of the hands and feet in dominant theories of communication is central to Indigenous identity and literacies. Written by a white academic with an Indigenous researcher, the chapter problematises the privileging of narrow, logocentric, and Western forms of literacy and its implications for rethinking the role of the whole body in literacy and the literacy curriculum for Indigenous students

Empty Ritual: Young-Adult Stepchildren’s Perceptions of the Remarriage Ceremony

This qualitative study investigated 80 young-adult stepchildren’s talk about one of their parents’ remarriage ceremony. The remarriage event was celebrated in six types of ritual enactments, five of which celebrated the couple’s marriage and one of which was family-centered in its celebration of the beginning of the new stepfamily. Three factors led stepchildren to find the remarriage ceremony empty: (i) a ritual form that was too traditional or not traditional enough; (ii) a ritual enactment that failed to pay homage to either the stepchild’s family of origin or the stepfamily as a unit; and (iii) a ritual enactment that failed to involve the stepchild prior to and during the ceremony. Results support the characteristics of empty rituals posited in ritual theory