Down by the River, or How Susan La Flesche Picotte Can Teach Us about Alliance as a Practice

The author challenges the rhetoric of “inclusion” of the voices of people of color, with its implicit reiteration of a hierarchy of center and margin, to suggest instead the more powerful possibilities offered by alliance. The example of Susan La Flesche Picotte, an enrolled member of the Omaha Nation with mixed ancestry and an unconflicted identity, who was able to ally herself with and participate fully in both European American and Indian cultures, illustrates this complex and productive rhetorical approach and its possibilities for what the author terms “survivance.”