ABSTRACT
A conventional rhetorical analysis of Wesley Clark's apology might contextualize the situation in terms of the genre of apologia and the historical relations among the Lakota Sioux and the United States (US) government and military, shaped by Native American tropes. The veterans' arrival in Standing Rock was marked by a reconciliation ceremony in which Clark delivered an apology for the US military's historical mistreatment of Native Americans to the Lakota's Chief, tribal activist Leonard Crow Dog. Practices of digital activism demonstrate why contemporary rhetorical studies, and studies of digital rhetoric in particular, must move beyond the text and intertextuality, as well as beyond the individual actor, to understand distributed rhetorical processes of symbolic action. Rhetorics of embodiment have attempted to transcend the distinctions, but have typically remained trapped in the production/consumption binary, as well as in the visual biases that undermine attempts to conceive actual interaction. Digital rhetoric scholarship, nevertheless, does attempt to embrace the performative character of digital rhetorical practices.
