Ellen CushmanNortheastern UniversityThose of us gathered in these pages met at a Rhetoric Society of America Summer Institute with the goal of creating knowledge that would help to re-place the mat...

Examining the chanupa, or ceremonial pipe, from a Lakota perspective reveals it as responding to a particular ontology and extends indigenous rhetorics to consider the ontological dimensions of communication. Distinctions between indigenous rhetorics and new materialist rhetorics bring greater attention to how groups and individuals constellate themselves as beings.