The Bearer of This Letter

"Morgan provides an excellent explication of the power of language/literacy in the reservation world and Indian efforts to manipulate literacy to privilege their cultures. Literacy was a colonial tool for domination, but American Indian societies may now be using it to anticipate a multilingual future as they turn their oral languages into written languages used for their own purposes, as at Fort Belknap. Anyone interested in the effort to revive indigenous languages will benefit from the summaries of issues and solutions."—G. Gagnon, Choice

"[The Bearer of This Letter's] ethnolinguistic relevance is obvious and central, but students of Indian history, culture, literature, and rhetoric will also find a good deal to occupy them. For educators and scholars focusing on Montana tribes, The Bearer of This Letter will quickly become an indispensable resource."—Matt Herman, Montana, The Magazine of Western History

"This book is an important and pioneering effort that brings ethnohistorical rigor to the task of understanding current literacy debates in the Fort Belknap (Montana) Indian community by understanding the evolution of relevant language ideologies there from pre-reservation times to current efforts involving language renewal."—Paul V. Kroskrity, Journal of Anthropological Research