“Tséyi' first, because Navajo language was here before contact”: On intercultural performances, metasemiotic stereotypes, and the dynamics of place

This article analyzes portions of an intercultural performance by Navajo poet Laura Tohe to a non-Navajo audience in rural Illinois. By analyzing Tohe's metalinguistic commentaries about the use of Navajo, as well as her actual uses of Navajo in her performance, it is argued that Tohe presents a metasemiotic stereotype of Navajo language users. In performing such stereotypic displays, Tohe also indexes her own Navajo identity and becomes iconic of such an identity. Paying close attention to the uses of Navajo language place-names also reveals the ways that Tohe connects her performance with larger concerns about Navajo claims to place and language shift.