Critical Companion to Native American and First Nations Theatre and Performance: Indigenous Spaces (Critical Companions) 135003505X, 9781350035058

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CRITICAL COMPANION TO NATIVE AMERICAN AND FIRST NATIONS THEATRE AND PERFORMANCE

Jaye T. Darby is Co-Director of Project HOOP and a Lecturer in the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, USA. She has published widely in Native theatre and transformative studies. With Hanay Geiogamah, she co-edited American Indian Performing Arts: Critical Directions (2010) and two other volumes on Native performance. She is also co-editor of the collection Keepers of the Morning Star: An Anthology of Native Women’s Theater with Stephanie Fitzgerald. Courtney Elkin Mohler (Santa Barbara Chumash) is an Assistant Professor of Theatre at Butler University in Indianapolis, USA, where she directs for the department and teaches courses in Theatre Studies and Social Justice and Diversity. She has published widely in the area of Native American and Latinx Theatre and Theatre as Social Justice, and has worked as a director and dramaturge for Native Voices at the Autry. Christy Stanlake is a Professor of English at the United States Naval Academy, USA. Her various publications include Native American Drama: A Critical Perspective (2009), and her directing credits include the national production of JudyLee Oliva’s Te Ata (2012).

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Also available in the Critical Companions series from Methuen Drama: BRITISH MUSICAL THEATRE SINCE 1950 by Robert Gordon, Olaf Jubin and Millie Taylor BRITISH THEATRE AND PERFORMANCE 1900–1950 by Rebecca D’Monté A CRITICAL COMPANION TO THE AMERICAN STAGE MUSICAL by Elizabeth L. Wollman DISABILITY THEATRE AND MODERN DRAMA: RECASTING MODERNISM by Kirsty Johnston MODERN ASIAN THEATRE AND PERFORMANCE 1900–2000 by Kevin J. Wetmore, Siyuan Liu and Erin B. Mee THE PLAYS OF SAMUEL BECKETT by Katherine Weiss THE THEATRE OF ANTHONY NEILSON by Trish Reid THE THEATRE OF EUGENE O’NEILL: AMERICAN MODERNISM ON THE WORLD STAGE by Kurt Eisen THE THEATRE OF TOM MURPHY: PLAYWRIGHT ADVENTURER by Nicholas Grene THE THEATRE OF TENNESSEE WILLIAMS by Brenda Murphy VERSE DRAMA IN ENGLAND, 1900–2015: ART, MODERNITY AND THE NATIONAL STAGE by Irene Morra For a full listing, please visit www.bloomsbury.com/series/critical-companions/

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CRITICAL COMPANION TO NATIVE AMERICAN AND FIRST NATIONS THEATRE AND PERFORMANCE INDIGENOUS SPACES

Jaye T. Darby, Courtney Elkin Mohler, and Christy Stanlake

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METHUEN DRAMA Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, METHUEN DRAMA and the Methuen Drama logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2020 Copyright © Jaye T. Darby, Courtney Elkin Mohler, and Christy Stanlake, 2020 Jaye T. Darby, Courtney Elkin Mohler, and Christy Stanlake have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the authors of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgments on pp. xi–xiii constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover image © Bert VanderVeen All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB: PB: ePDF: eBook:

978-1-3500-3505-8 978-1-3500-3541-6 978-1-3500-3507-2 978-1-3500-3506-5

Series: Critical Companions Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

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To the Vision of Paula Gunn Allen The Ancestors who Guide us All & The Voices of Storytellers Yet to Come

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CONTENTS

List of Illustrations Foreword Hanay Geiogamah Acknowledgments Part One

Setting the Stage

1

The Circle of Indigenous Spaces

2

Incursions into Performance Cultures

Part Two 3 4

viii ix xi

3 15

Reclaiming the Stage

Culture Bearers: The Grandmothers of Native Theatre and Performance

41

Homeland Yearnings across Settings

63

Part Three

Revolutionizing the Stage

5

Activating the Stage

89

6

Advancing the Stage

111

7

The Heart of the Matter: Indigenous Performance and Community

131

Part Four

Transforming the Stage

8

Transforming Production Process

155

9

Being and Becoming

179

10 Widening the Circle with Future Generations

207

Notes Bibliography Index

233 239 257

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ILLUSTRATIONS

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

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Ceremony, Song, Legend, and Sacred Stories, 2017. Elements of Contemporary Native Theatre, 2017. Te Ata’s program for professional performances, circa 1930. Molly Spotted Elk, as she appeared in Texas Guinan’s Clubs, 1928. Kuruks Pahitu accompanying Te Ata in her show, circa 1940s. Reverb-ber-ber-rations: Lisa Mayo, Gloria Miguel, and Muriel Miguel. Material Witness: Penny Couchie, Donna Couteau, Gloria Miguel, Cherish Violet Blood, and Ange Loft, 2016. “Ribbons of Corn”: JudyLee Oliva’s Te Ata, 2012. The Dene See-er from Marie Clements’s Burning Vision, 2012. Promotional flyer for Burning Vision and symposium, Santa Clara University, 2012. Andrew Roa and Kyla García in Mary Kathryn Nagle’s Sovereignty, Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater, 2018. Oregon Shakespeare Festival production of Off the Rails by Randy Reinholz, 2017. Miss Chief as Vaudeville Performer: Kent Monkman with photographer Chris Chapman, 2006.

8 10 44 58 79 102 138 165 172 175 184 192 197

FOREWORD

At all times during the forty-five years and counting that I’ve been working in Native American theatre, I’ve been keenly alert to the need to document, record, chronicle, and evaluate by various methods the steadily accumulating body of work, as many aspects of it as could be managed. This awareness arose from my strong belief that a managed and consistent account of all the work that was being attempted and successfully completed would be helpful in any number of ways as the movement progressed: for seeking funding, for numerous possible applications in education, for establishing acceptance and legitimacy for American Indians in the theatre, and for making Indian people aware of the presence of and the creative output and intentions of a small cadre of artists who were striving to bring the performing arts into the lives and cultural agenda of American Indian people. The need for this work—writing histories, analyses of plays and productions, applying critical theories and assessments, and also studying the lives and thoughts and techniques of the artists creating the work— continues to this day. Thankfully, a capable and industrious group of scholars have dedicated themselves and their intellectual skills and research agendas to writing and publishing books, essays, articles, interviews, reviews, and evaluations of the creative output of American Indian theatre artists. This volume is the newest and, in many ways, most impressive achievement in the scholarly field of American Indian theatre critical studies and research. The overall approach the authors have taken—one that emphasizes Native critical and dramaturgical frameworks rather than the Western notions of theatre and performance that have long been imposed on scholarly readings of Native theatre—enlarges and, in my view, enriches the body of scholarship available for use by college students, academics, theatre artists, and tribal educators and community builders. Critical Companion to Native American and First Nations Theatre and Performance: Indigenous Spaces also offers a most welcome opportunity to explore and understand the creative processes of individual and collective tribal artists that are reflective of the core components of traditional ceremonial performance techniques, beliefs, and practices.

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Foreword

The three women who have collaborated on this volume are leading scholars in this specialized field who, with admirable dedication and deep respect, have positioned themselves up close to observe, absorb and, at times, even participate in the work itself. I offer praise for their commitments to the artists, the work, and the various tribal communities featured in this volume. I salute Dr. Jaye Darby, who teaches in the School of Education at the University of California, Los Angeles; I honor Prof. Christy Stanlake, of the US Naval Academy, who continues her impressive writing and commentary on Native theatre; and I say ah-ho, thank you, to Prof. Courtney Elkin Mohler, who was a student of mine at UCLA and is now a professor at Butler University and is championing not only Native theatre but also theatre of Indigenous communities around the USA and the world. I have long believed that the future of the theatre, in America and throughout the world, is unquestionably in communities, among the tribes and groups and people who will embrace it as a nurturing source of strength, identity, hope, and renewal. Jaye and Christy and Courtney are all aware of this and have been for a long time. The scholarship they share in this volume will enlighten, inspire, and encourage the next generation and all future generations of theatre artists as they create and employ storytelling and the performing arts for the good of the people. Keep it going, sisters. This is all good. Ah-ho. Hanay Geiogamah, Professor of Theatre UCLA School of Theatre, Film and Television, USA

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

There are many people, organizations, and institutions the coauthors of this anthology would like to acknowledge. We are grateful to Dr. Kevin J. Wetmore, editor for Methuen Drama’s Critical Companions series, for his encouragement in our pursuing this project and openness to our collaborative coauthoring approach. This book has been made possible by the dedication and patience of our editor Lara Bateman and our publisher Mark Dudgeon; thank you for your support of Indigenous dramaturgy and allowing us the platform to share it broadly. Early versions of ideas in this work benefited from insightful audience comments during panel sessions at the Association for Theatre in Higher Education and Comparative Drama Conferences. All three of us have been touched professionally and personally by the artistry, wisdom, and mentorship of Professor Hanay Geiogamah; we are honored by your generous foreword to this work. Because Indigenous theatre and performance create and transform community, we are grateful beyond measure to the artists whose perspectives are included in our final chapter. Thank you, thank you, ah-ho to: Madeline Sayet (Mohegan), Mary Kathryn Nagle (Cherokee), Valerie St. Pierre Smith (Ojibwe), DeLanna Studi (Cherokee), Kimberly Norris Guerrero (Colville, Salish-Kootenai, Cherokee), Andrew Roa (Shasta), Terry Gomez (Comanche), Randy Reinholz (Choctaw) and Jean Bruce Scott, JudyLee Oliva (Chickasaw), and Muriel Miguel (Kuna/ Rappahannock). We are also honored to have been given permission by all of those who shared photographs with us: Bert VanderVeen and DeLanna Studi for the gorgeous cover image; JudyLee Oliva and Linda Harris (Te Ata’s niece) for sharing Te Ata’s program and finding the image of Te Ata and Kuruks Pahitu; Bunny McBride and Barbara Moore (Molly Spotted Elk’s granddaughter) for providing the picture of Molly Spotted Elk; Spiderwoman Theater and Deborah Ratelle for the two pictures of Spiderwoman Theater performances; Arena Stage for sharing the photo from Sovereignty; Randy Reinholz and Jean Bruce Scott for sharing the photo from Off the Rails; and Kent Monkman and Adrien Hall for the image of Miss Chief. We received invaluable help conducting the historical research required to complete this work and are especially grateful to Lina Ortega from the OU Western History Collection, Anne Totten from BYU’s Tom Perry Special xi

Acknowledgments

Collection, Desirée Butterfield-Nagy from the University of Maine’s Raymond H. Folger Library, Sheridan Stormes at the Butler University Irwin Library, and Ken Wade at the UCLA American Indian Studies Center Library. Deepest gratitude goes to Mr. Peter MacDonald, President of the Navajo Code Talker’s Association, an American Hero who generously and kindly takes the time to share his knowledge with researchers. The coauthors of this book acknowledge our mutual respect for one another and gratitude for the experience of working together on this labor of love; it is a testament to collaborative creation that our friendship has only deepened throughout this multiyear process. We each have our own folks to acknowledge and thank from our different corners of the United States. Jaye would like to thank her colleagues at UCLA for their inspiration and insights: Arif Amlani, Christina Christie, Annamarie Francois, Megan Franke, Mishuana Goeman, Louis Gomez, Pamela Grieman, Michael Hackett, Emma Hipolito, Tyrone Howard, Jo Ann Isken, Ananda Marin, Teresa McCarty, Laura McMullin, Tunette Powell, John Rogers, Pedro Noguero, Marjorie Orellana, Faye Peitzman, Michael Seltzer, Daniel Solorzano, and Carlos Alberto Torres. She is inspired by the leadership of Marcelo Suárez-Orozco, Wasserman Dean, Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, and Shannon Speed, Director, UCLA American Indian Studies Center. Jaye is very grateful to Hanay Geiogamah, Theodore R. Mitchell, Concepción Valadez, and Anna Krajewska Wieczorek for their artful guidance and mentoring along the way. She offers her deep gratitude to her dear friends Tracy Hill, Eloise Lopez Metcalfe, and Rae Jeane Williams for their “You’ve got this!” views; her beloved sister Cynthia Bloom, niece Christina, and nephew Trevor, for their inspiration and love; and Stacy Barrows and Scott L. Rosenzweig for their amazing professional care and dedication to healing. Finally, Jaye wishes to honor the memories and lives of the two inspiring women who profoundly touched her life: her mother, Joanne Snow-Smith, and grandmother, Leila Bolgiano Smith. Courtney is grateful for the artistic opportunities she has been afforded in the Native theatre community, provided by Randy Reinholz, Jean Bruce Scott, and Hanay Geiogamah. She is ever grateful to her colleagues in the Department of Theatre and Dance at Santa Clara University, especially Aldo Billingslea, Jeffery Bracco, Jerry Enos, Dr. Barbara Means Frasier, Kimberly Hill, Barbara Murray, David Popalisky, and Dr. Michael Zampelli, S.J. Despite geographical distance, Courtney continues to be buoyed up by the friendship and intellectual companionship of the participants of the Culture, Power, Difference Reading group at SCU; she especially thanks Dr. Tony Hazard xii

Acknowledgments

and Dr. Christina Zanfagna, who gave thoughtful feedback on this manuscript’s proposal. Courtney is indebted to the Association of Theatre in Higher Education, and particularly to the Latinx, Indigenous and the Americas Focus Group, which has supported her work in various stages for the past decade. She thanks Butler University, the Jordan College of the Arts, and the Department of Theatre for providing funding for essential research trips, as well as her colleagues at Butler University who have encouraged her writing and involvement with the making of Native theatre, especially Diane Timmerman, William Fischer, Wendy Meaden, Dr. Robin Turner, Dr. Kaitlin Creasy, and all of the inspiring faculty involved with developing the Social Justice and Diversity Core Requirement. Courtney thanks her parents, Wayne and Wendy Elkin, and sister, Genna, whose support has been unwavering; and her incomparable in-laws, Jane Mohler DiMarzio, David DiMarzio, and Harriett Carmack, who generously give their love and time to watch her girls while she is writing. She acknowledges the lives of her grandparents and Great-Nana, whose ability to persevere and laugh through adversity provides constant inspiration. And finally, she thanks her little family: George, Violet, and Alice, who simultaneously ground and inspire her to make the most of each day. Christy is grateful to the Naval Academy Research Counsel for providing funding in support of her research. Specifically, she feels blessed by the USNA English Department, a community that inspires and supports one another like family, and her fearless theatre-loving students. She thanks Dr. Clara Sue Kidwell for opening her mind so many years ago in Dr. Kidwell’s transformative Native American Philosophy course, and JudyLee Oliva, her dear mentor and friend, for always being willing to help find an answer, an image, a way . . . Additionally, Christy is humbled by the many organizations and individuals who have supported her journey in this field, especially those in Native Voices, the Native American Women Playwright’s Archive, Spiderwoman Theater, and the National Museum of the American Indian, DC. Christy is overwhelmed with gratitude to Gigi and Papa (Stanlake) for ensuring her family life continues as normal, even when she is in the throes of research. She thanks Judah for his steady support. And finally, she thanks Aubrey and Kattrin, who never cease to bring her joy.

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PART ONE SETTING THE STAGE

1

2

CHAPTER 1 THE CIRCLE OF INDIGENOUS SPACES

Underneath Broadway, that iconic, celebrated heart of American theatre, runs an ancient path, the Wickquasgeck Trail. The path is named for Manhattan’s Indigenous inhabitants who first created, maintained, and traversed this road up the center of the island to trade with their extended Lanape kinsmen and other tribal nations. Despite Broadway’s literal Native foundation, the Wickquasgeck Trail is invisible for most people who visit New York City (National 3–9). Likewise, the Indigenous presence that has long shaped both the American and Canadian theatres has existed persistently, though often imperceptibly, throughout the theatres of the New World. Indigenous theatre artists have continually challenged notions of their peoples’ invisibility. Additionally, contemporary Native theatre artists are reclaiming cultural ground as their plays multiply, theatre companies thrive, and productions extend into both tribal communities and commercial theatre venues.1 For the descendants of physical and cultural genocide, the growing proliferation of Indigenous theatre throughout “Turtle Island” is at once political, aesthetic, and spiritual (Mojica, “Theatrical,” 3). The importance of these overlapping circles of dramaturgy, culture, production practices, and human rights are perhaps best articulated by Article 11 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which states: Indigenous peoples have the right to practice and revitalize their cultural traditions and customs. This includes the right to maintain, protect and develop the past, present and future manifestations of their cultures, such as archaeological and historical sites, artifacts, designs, ceremonies, technologies and visual and performing arts and literature. United Nations, 11, emphasis added Article  11 locates Indigenous performance within the process of both engaging in cultural practices, many of which were outlawed for several decades, and revitalizing culture. Significantly, the process of revitalizing culture is not the reenactment of a lost, but-now-found again, stagnant 3

Critical Companion to Native American and First Nations Theatre

identity. Healthy cultures do not replicate the past; they root themselves in intellectual and spiritual traditions that allow Native communities to grow and thrive across the generations. Article  11 expresses the power of Indigenous representation. Its emphasis on the right to “maintain, protect and develop the past, present and future manifestations of their cultures” pushes back against the familiar commodification of Native cultures—often seen in Hollywood, advertising, and sports mascots—and places representation squarely in the hands of those who identify as Indigenous. This book shares the philosophy put forth by the Declaration: that Native performing arts, and Native theatre in particular, has the power to heal damages incurred through colonizers’ practices, to traverse paths that access cultural knowledge, and to enact a sovereign presence for Indigenous peoples. Accordingly, two fundamental principles echo throughout this book’s development. The first is that Native performance has always been an integral part of the American and Canadian theatres. Indeed, there would be no American or Canadian theatre were it not for Native peoples, cultures, stories, and the lands from which they arose. As Philip Deloria’s (Dakota) Playing Indian elucidates, American and Canadian national identities are constructed upon notions of indigeneity. Perceiving and acknowledging the presence of Native performers and performances throughout both historic and contemporary theatre of North America is one of our book’s prime objectives. Second, this book views Indigenous theatre and performance as embodied manifestations of human rights. Consequently, Native critical and dramaturgical frameworks drive our theoretical approach to the subject matter. Our chapters eschew Western notions of linear time and categories of theatrical performance in favor of a narrative that explores specifically Indigenous ways of art making, connecting the communal nature of performance practices with Native worldviews to create transformative theatre that supports communities, sovereignty, ecology, and human rights. The scope of this book covers Native American and First Nations theatre and performance from the mainland United States and Canada from the mid-nineteenth century through the first two decades of the twenty-first century. While we acknowledge that these geopolitical boundaries and timeline are arbitrary and foreign to Native realities, limiting our scope in this way helps us address the wide range of works and artists representing the vast differences across Native North America, while we also address the federal policies constructed by the US and Canada. Throughout the study, we posit that Native theatre both reflects and produces intersecting forces of 4

The Circle of Indigenous Spaces

spiritual and intellectual traditions, aesthetic values, and political actions. We intend for the book to be read in conversation with published anthologies and current productions of Native and First Nations plays, which we approach with dramaturgical perspectives that consider live, embodied performances in time and space, rather than mere literary analysis. While we frequently provide descriptions of the various plays discussed in our chapters, our objective is to inspire our readership to not only read, but to seek out and see the many Native American and First Nations plays referenced within and beyond this study. The book’s vast temporal and geopolitical scope makes it impossible for us to include all of the visionary Indigenous theatre artists who have contributed to the field. Yet, it is our hope that the many works, artists, and concepts introduced in this book will motivate readers to continue following this multifaceted, dynamic field of Native theatre and performance. With Native presence and communities at the heart of our study, we argue that there is no better way to grasp the interrelated concepts presented in this work than to experience the cultures, aesthetics, philosophies, and political actions through their physical manifestations in live theatrical performance. In creating The Critical Companion to Native American and First Nations Theatre and Performance: Indigenous Spaces, we aimed to write the kind of book we wish had existed when we began our studies in Native theatre and performance. The field can be challenging to approach for many reasons. First, the diversity across Native America is immense. Well over a thousand federally recognized Native American and First Nations exist across the US and Canada. Each of these has a unique culture with differing languages, homelands, religious beliefs, histories, and relationships with settler-colonial governments. Added to those federally recognized Indigenous nations are nations that are recognized only by state governments; still other Native nations have received no outside “recognition,” though the descendants of those nations know and carry the unique stories and cultural attributes of their ancestors. The complexity of these cultural differences is compounded further by the different, shifting federal laws that the US and Canadian governments have imposed upon Native peoples throughout the histories of both countries. Growing from these fraught histories is a general ignorance across the majority of US and Canadian populations about the rich cultural diversity, histories, and continuing presence of Indigenous peoples. Finally, popular culture’s images of “Indians” in advertising, movies, and mascots have worked and continue to render actual Native presence invisible to many non-Native people. Accordingly, to adequately study Native American and 5

Critical Companion to Native American and First Nations Theatre

First Nations theatre and performance, one must attend to multiple cultures, histories, tribal–federal relationships, and the national narratives expressed through popular culture, in addition to the critically important cultural, aesthetic, and spiritual worldviews expressed through Native theatre. To address the complexities of this dynamic field, this book uses a multidimensional, layered approach to offer critical grounding in the historical development of Native theatre across North America, while it also analyzes key Native plays and performance traditions. By exploring the cultural, aesthetic, and spiritual concerns, as well as the political and revitalization efforts of Native peoples, the book frames the prevailing themes of the genre and identifies how such themes are present in the dramaturgy, rehearsal practices, and performance histories of Native plays. Thus, in addition to the expected approaches of Native theatre history and theoretical criticism that one might expect in a foundational study such as this, Critical Companion will layer these historic and critical lenses with additional perspectives from various angles: dramaturgy, production practices, artists’ statements, law, and human rights. In this approach, we honor Muriel Miguel (Kuna/Rappahannock), the venerated Native theatre artist and founder of Spiderwoman Theater, whose work has inspired countless theatre artists and scholars. Miguel once described both storytelling and Spiderwoman Theater’s method of creation as “circles upon circles upon circles” (qtd. in Haugo, “Circles,” 228). That metaphor shapes our theoretical approach to Native theatre throughout this book.

Native Dramaturgy At the center of our methodology is Native dramaturgy, which develops from Indigenous worldviews. Critical Companion evaluates all theatrical moments and movements, as well as specific examples of Indigenous drama and performance, according to the aesthetics and values of Native worldviews and cosmologies. Native dramaturgy privileges the historical and contemporary experiences of First Nations and Native Americans with settler colonization, and it emphasizes Indigenous efforts to decolonize Native peoples through transformative artistic practices. Consequently, many of the plays and performances analyzed in this study include reimaginings of ancient cosmological truths, storytelling that transverses multiple eras, the careful unraveling of master narratives, and the utilization of the metaphorical and literal power of the circle to create ceremony. 6

The Circle of Indigenous Spaces

Storytelling and the power of language enrich Native theatre’s potent expressions of Native worldviews. Native concepts of language are based on orality: through the act of speech, our thoughts physically enter the world as they ride along our breath. These spoken words then circulate upon the winds connecting us to one another, the natural world, and the spiritual world. Because spoken words circle the earth upon the air’s currents, they are viewed as permanent: once spoken, words exist forever, uniting living beings across time and place. This power of language exists in storytelling, theatre, poetry, prayer, song, performance, and film. Indeed, the term “story” can refer to fiction, nonfiction, history, news, performance, conversation, literature, and literary arts. While the power of speech weaves interconnections across all forms of Native art that rely upon language, Native theatre, with its reliance upon the embodied presentation of spoken words in a communal setting, allows Native worldviews to become manifest in a material form that possess great potential for generative, transformative action. The three of us—Jaye Darby, Courtney Elkin Mohler (Santa Barbara Chumash), and Christy Stanlake—are humbled by the opportunity to explore some of the most creative and transformational Indigenous artists of the past century. From this place of gratitude and wonder, we draw from the teachings of our elders both in Native theatre practice and in Indigenous Studies, such as Paula Gunn Allen (Pueblo/Métis), Vine Deloria, Jr. (Standing Rock Sioux), Yvette Nolan (Algonquin), William S. YellowRobe (Assiniboine), and Hanay Geiogamah (Kiowa/Delaware), to assess and describe the significance of the works covered in this book. Throughout the book, we engaged in a collaborative circle of writing. Thus, our names appear in alphabetical order, not a hierarchical one. We imagine them as printed in a circle, since we are co-equal authors. We also recognize the contradictions present as we contribute this book in a world that reifies the written word over orality. Indigenous peoples have passed down wisdom orally through expressive and performative arts since time immemorial, which is why even the theatre of today is not “new,” but rather an extension of ways of knowing and living in the world that predate the writing of scripts. Theatre is an exemplary medium to honor Native traditions because, like oral narratives, it both requires and creates community. While readers cannot expect to fully understand these complexities simply by reading this or any book, they will get the most out of this Critical Companion by keeping Indigenous ways of knowing and seeing the world, as well as the ways in which each example of Native performance advances sovereignty and cultural determination, in the forefront of their imagination. 7

Critical Companion to Native American and First Nations Theatre

In “Connecting Indigenous Ways of Knowing in the Native Studies Undergraduate Classroom,” Mohler offers conceptual visuals she regularly uses when she teaches courses on Native theatre and history in university settings that are predominantly non-Native. These figures pay homage to the wisdom of Paula Gunn Allen’s influential book The Sacred Hoop, which transformed the field of Native American literature by calling critics to examine Native cultural arts according to Native worldviews. Figure  1 visualizes Gunn Allen’s assertion that Native worldviews are dynamic, unifying, and holistic. These concepts inform the structures, aesthetics, and goals of Native cultural arts. Much of the Native theatre and performance discussed in this book exemplifies Gunn Allen’s theories, by focusing on the restoration of the isolated self into harmony and balance with the wider community. The artistic goal of bringing both artists and audience members into a holistic community through a shared experience of creation that ultimately restores cosmic balance is one that drastically differs from most Western art forms, which evaluate the virtuosity of an artist by the ability to represent a

Figure 1 Ceremony, Song, Legend, and Sacred Stories, 2017. Courtesy of Courtney Elkin Mohler. 8

The Circle of Indigenous Spaces

specific time and place and/or to elicit emotional or intellectual reactions from individual audience members. Accordingly, this book recognizes the validity and beauty of Native creation stories, histories, traditions, aesthetics, perspectives, and specific tribal relationships to ancestral lands that inform all creative work. In her introduction to Spider Woman’s Granddaughters, Gunn Allen explains: “Tribal art of all kinds embodies the principle of kinship, rendering the beautiful in terms of connectedness of elements in harmonious, balanced, respectful proportion of each and any to all-in All” (9). Moreover, Gunn Allen emphasizes the Native concepts of kinship that define community: “Nor does the tribal community of relatives end with human kin: the supernaturals, spirit people, animal people of all varieties, the thunders, snows, rains, rivers, lakes, hills, mountains, fire, water, rock, and plants are perceived to be members of one’s community” (9). The cultural and spiritual goals of Native theatre and performance, as well as the dramatic elements of character, theme, plot, and tone, also diverge significantly from Western theatre’s norms. The scripts, which are blueprints for performance, and the performances themselves frequently draw from spiritual traditions and ancestral stories, explore contemporaneous community issues, address stereotyping and racism, and in many cases emerge out of communal creative processes. Based on his years of playwriting, directing, and theorizing about the field of Native theatre, Hanay Geiogamah (Kiowa/Delaware), Professor of Theatre at the University of California, Los Angeles, introduces several themes often found in contemporary Native theatre to his undergraduate classes.2 Figure 2 shares Geiogamah’s insights and forecasts many of the themes readers will encounter within the plays introduced in Critical Companion. As both Geiogamah and Gunn Allen remind us, Native theatre dynamically draws from tradition and makes medicine to those who witness and participate in it. Although Native theatre is not exclusively dedicated to shedding light on socioeconomic and political issues for Indigenous communities, many of the works we will explore in this book do just that. Recent productions have examined poverty and addiction in reservation communities, sexual violence endured by Native women, and the current threat that climate change brings to sacred lands. These nuanced stories explode the vanishing Indian narrative on which settler colonization depends in order to continue the subordination of Indigenous peoples and to rob resources from Indigenous lands. These contemporary examples of Indigenous theatre and performance build off the work, passion, and 9

Critical Companion to Native American and First Nations Theatre

Figure 2 Elements of Contemporary Native Theatre, 2017. Courtesy of Courtney Elkin Mohler.

struggle of their ancestors: the leaders in Native American and First Nations performing arts who fought misrepresentation, stereotyping, cultural imperialism, and racial violence; the culture bearers who shared their families’ stories to shape the artists’ lives; and all the relations (the living creatures—humans, flora, fauna, and cosmological elements) who have contributed thousands of years of Native wisdom and artistic practice through their teachings about living in balance within our interconnected world. Our central metaphor of envisioning Native theatre and performance as circles upon circles demonstrates how Native plays dip into ancestral wisdom and ripple outward to the specific contemporaneous concerns of the audience, circles that dynamically reverberate inwards and outwards as the situation requires. For this reason, though Critical Companion roughly traces chronological time by beginning in the mid-nineteenth century and looking toward the future in later chapters, readers will notice that sections of the study often circle backward to earlier chapters or forward to later chapters whenever the themes, aesthetics, or theories connect across time periods. 10

The Circle of Indigenous Spaces

Sovereignty and Performative Sovereignty Throughout Critical Companion, readers will encounter frequently the terms “sovereignty” and “performative sovereignty.” The significance of sovereignty stems from the centrality of Native intellectual traditions, discussed earlier, which exist in tension with the historic and frequently persistent efforts of settler colonizers to erase Native cultures in order to possess Indigenous lands and resources. The centuries of European colonial oppression in the United States and Canada have rendered issues of sovereignty highly complex and contested.3 In Critical Companion’s early chapters, readers will study how both Canadian and US officials of the 1800s sought to suppress Indigenous ceremonies, dances, and performances with the express objective of destroying Indigenous communal practices in North America (Shea Murphy, 29–59). Yet, as Shea Murphy aptly establishes in her book of the same name, “the people have never stopped dancing.” Over the years, a number of Indigenous scholars have articulated multiple dimensions of sovereignty.4 Joanne Barker (Lanape) notes that sovereignty is situational and limited by colonial histories (26). Throughout the last two centuries, reasserting and reclaiming sovereignty have become important political goals of Native communities; thus, the term “sovereignty” often references political and legal issues. In “Self-determination and the Concept of Sovereignty,” Vine Deloria, Jr. recognizes the importance of political rights while stressing that Native culture is sovereignty’s foundation. Deloria attests: “Sovereignty, in the final instance, can be said to consist more of continued cultural integrity than of political powers and to the degree that a nation loses its sense of cultural identity, to that degree it suffers a loss of sovereignty” (27). Foreshadowing the language of Article 11, Deloria stresses the vital nature of living cultural practices across communities, continuing: “Sovereignty then revolves about the manner in which traditions are developed, sustained, and transformed to confront new conditions” (27). Inherent in this view is activism. Thus, for the study of Indigenous performances in this book, Inés Hernández-Ávila (Nez Perce/Tejana) provides a helpful overview: “Sovereignty encompasses the cultural, spiritual, economic, and political aspects of the life of the communities and of the individuals who comprise them. Issues of sovereignty are intimately interwoven with issues pertaining to the land(base) of each people” (492). Gunn Allen proves helpful in articulating concepts of “performative sovereignty.” In Off the Reservation, she stresses the inherent value of creativity in contesting centuries of injustice and providing transformation: 11

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“the way to liberation from oppression and injustice is to focus on our own interest, creativity, concerns, and community” (175). This broad view of sovereignty permeates Native creative processes, while it also accommodates conceptions of significance and aesthetic values that are culturally specific to different Native nations, since writing throughout these diverse communities is deeply embedded in unique spiritual, communal, political, and historical contexts.5 Based on communal relations, grounded in oral traditions, and tied to sacred relationships with the land, Native poetics sharply contrast with the European Aristotelian tradition. Thus, Gunn Allen explains, use of Western criticism to understand Native art is a form of “aesthetic colonization” that also undermines the sovereignty inherent within Native creations (Introduction, 3). Western literary categories, such as fantasy and magical realism, do not address these deeper conceptions of spirituality. Likewise, the tendency for some non-Native scholars to anoint works as “authentic” or “hybrid” is significantly problematic. Cherokee scholar Jace Weaver explains the danger of such terms and approaches: “To the ears of many of us, such discussions sound not only paternalistic, but the strategies behind them seem to be part and parcel of continued attempts to define indigenes out of existence” (“Splitting,” 68). Lloyd Kiva New (Cherokee) elucidates the concept of performative sovereignty in his essay “Defining Ourselves.” According to New, “Dance, music and creation myths came together in dramatization of the spirituality of Native Americans and their relationships with their universe: Earth, Sun, Sky and a panoply of supernatural go-betweens. Storyline, Music, Costumes, Lighting (firelight), Performers and Audience all came together in ways that would equate to Theater in today’s terms” (9–10). For New, the arts are essential for building a strong future. Thus, his work emphasizes the vital imperative for “visionary artists, authors and poets to remind us of both the tragedies and glories of the past, as well as to help us maintain perspectives for negotiating the road ahead” (10). Joy Harjo, Muscogee Creek poet, activist, and performance artist, reminds readers in the introduction to Reinventing the Enemy’s Language: “We are still dealing with a holocaust of outrageous proportion in these lands” (21). She stresses that “to speak, at whatever the cost, is to become empowered rather than victimized by destruction” (21). Like Gunn Allen, Harjo turns to creativity to illuminate the road to empowerment: “In our tribal cultures the power of language to heal, to regenerate, and to create is understood” (21–2). In the case of Native theatre and performance, sovereignty exists not just in the creation of the performance texts. Sovereignty is literally embodied and performed publicly 12

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within a live community gathered for the production. Carla Taunton elaborates this transformative role of performance in her chapter, “Embodying Sovereignty.” Performative sovereignty, drawing on these broad conceptions of sovereignty and Article 11, engages in multiple dimensions of Indigenous culture and performance to overcome trauma and empower communities.

Overview of Chapters We title Part One of Critical Companion “Setting the Stage,” because this and the first chapter introduce key concepts and historical perspectives that provide necessary grounding for those approaching Native American and First Nations theatre. Chapter  2, “Incursions into Performance Cultures,” discusses the ways in which European contact and US and Canadian expansionist policies devastated North American Indigenous peoples and thwarted Native performance practices. Chapter 2 also explores the ways in which colonist culture has produced dangerous ideas about Indians through red face performance and Wild West shows, whereby Native peoples were sometimes coerced to perform the Indian disappearance narrative and yet discovered ways to subvert cultural oppression. Part Two, “Reclaiming the Stage,” takes a detailed look into Native American and First Nations theatre artists working as professionals from the turn of the twentieth century through the 1950s. Chapter 3, “Culture Bearers: The Grandmothers of Native Theatre and Performance,” explores how Te Ata, Pauline “Tekahionwake” Johnson, Zitkala-Ša, Lucy “Princess Watahwaso” Nicolar, and Molly Spotted Elk embodied and drew upon romanticized images of Indian Princesses, while simultaneously creating performances that radically proclaimed Native presence by both emphasizing the diversity across Native America and highlighting the cultural perspectives of these contemporary, articulate, and professional Native women. Chapter  4, “Homeland Yearnings Across Settings,” follows continuing efforts by Native artists to further performances in the face of cultural suppression. These include the legacy of Cherokee playwright Lynn Riggs, who during the 1930s and 1940s developed professional plays and theoretical writings that contributed to establishing a Native American theatre ethic and dramaturgy. Part Three, “Revolutionizing the Stage,” covers the periods most commonly associated with the beginnings of Native American and First Nations theatre and performance. Chapter 5, “Activating the Stage,” explores 13

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the significant Native American activism occurring across the United States in the 1960s and the ways in which the political movement empowered the creation of Native American educational institutions and theatre companies. Chapter  6, “Advancing the Stage,” explores Emily General’s (Mohawk/ Cayuga) work to develop the long-standing tradition of cultural pageants on the Six Nations Reserve. It then traces the political engagement of Indigenous activists in Canada and the ways in which Canada’s Constitution Act 1982, section 35 legally recognized Aboriginal rights, helping to fuel the powerful contributions of First Nations playwrights and theatre companies. Chapter 7, “The Heart of the Matter: Indigenous Performance and Community,” builds upon Indigenous concepts of community and kinship to examine the contributions of Native theatre artists, programs, and companies (such as Project HOOP, Native Voices, Spiderwoman Theater, Yvette Nolan, Marcie Rendon, and Margo Kane), whose work has enriched, inspired, mentored, and engendered the careers of countless other Native theatre artists. Part Four, “Transforming the Stage,” shifts Critical Companion’s focus toward Indigenous theatrical endeavors, both occurring in the new millennium and in process of becoming. Chapter  8, “Transforming Production Process,” moves the theoretical discussions of Native dramaturgy and performative sovereignty into the realm of Native theatrical praxis. Analyses of professional productions of JudyLee Oliva’s Te Ata and an academic production of Marie Clements’s Burning Vision demonstrate the importance of incorporating practices of Native sovereignty into both the production elements and production processes of Native plays. Chapter 9, “Being and Becoming,” examines the ways in which Indigenous theatre artists, companies, and partnerships are increasing the visibility of Indigenous theatre across the US and Canada in order to change the shape of national narratives and discourses so that they affirm sovereignty. Finally, Chapter 10, “Widening the Circle with Future Generations,” reminds readers that the end of this study marks neither a culmination nor end point; rather, the circles upon circles of Native theatre and performance continue to ripple outward, generating new works of art and new communities. Accordingly, the final chapter gathers voices of Native playwrights, actors, designers, directors, and producers who share their visions for Native theatre’s future.

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CHAPTER 2 INCURSIONS INTO PERFORMANCE CULTURES

No written work could appropriately honor the inestimable cultural diversity of Native North America stemming from each group, tribe, or clan’s genesis of creation. Western and Indigenous research indicate the presence of hundreds of discrete cultural and linguistic peoples living in North America at the time of European incursion; all had intimate relationships with embodiment, entertainment, aesthetics, and storytelling practices. As dynamic and creative oral cultures, the shifting of community needs and the exchange between cultural groups catalyzed transformations of these practices; unbound by written doctrine, Indigenous performing arts freely moved, rooted, or merged peoples to better live in beauty in their homelands. Attempts to analyze the rich, complex, and varied performance practices of each tribal community in advance of the mid-nineteenth-century force reductive analyses, at best, and reinscribe colonialist narratives, at worst. Performance practices were not separate from sacred ritual and ceremony, and the authors of this book contend that they cannot and should not be excavated for scholarship. European contact and US and Canadian expansionist policies had a devastating impact on the region’s Indigenous peoples. The colonial project employed martial and biological warfare, bribery, religious and political coercion, erroneous and misleading treaties, rape, and assault in order to ensure European and then American and Canadian political, cultural, and economic control over the land and its original inhabitants (Franks, 221– 44). This chapter discusses how these anti-Indian regulations, policies, and laws influenced and impacted Native performance practices. Such colonial restrictions forced many traditions underground or to be reconstructed (hidden in plain sight) in order to survive strict anti-Indian sentiment and policy. Thus this chapter also examines the complicated performance careers of Hunkpapa Lakota leader and holy man Sitting Bull, and Lakota Sioux author and activist Luther Standing Bear, which reveal how Native people navigated performance culture in order to keep their dances, songs, and storytelling practices alive. The final portion of this chapter explores the

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work of Mohawk poet and performer Emily Pauline Johnson, also known as Tekahionwake, whose biography illustrates the ways in which First Nations and Native American performers negotiated their art and activism in the face of widespread cultural misrepresentation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In order to understand the social, political, and cultural climate in which Indigenous performers were forced to navigate, this chapter will also examine how the dominant American culture produced dangerous ideas about Indians through red face performance. In some cases, Native peoples themselves have been coerced to perform in their own disappearance narrative, such as in the ubiquitous performance genre of Wild West shows, or as racially marked bodies on display at exhibitions and performance halls. Unfortunately, the majority of images of Native peoples continue to reinforce the vanishing Indian narrative set up in Jacksonian-era racialized melodramas and later in Wild West shows. Thus, the white-created source material must be addressed in its legal, political, and cultural context.

Jacksonian Policy toward Removal The presidency of Andrew Jackson from 1829 to 1837 is widely regarded by the Native American communities and Indigenous historians alike as the most brutal and devastating of any administration upon the lives and wellness of Native American communities. Jackson’s ascent to power, his tone, and focus in governing had a profound, far-reaching impact on how the burgeoning country imagined its relationship with Native peoples. Colonel Jackson became famous among white farmers of the South for his military leadership in numerous Indian Wars, including the Creek War of 1813–14 and the First Seminole War (c. 1814–19), which both resulted in the surrender of vast tracts of tribal lands. By the time Jackson was elected as the President of the United States, his reputation as a “rough and tumble,” new kind of politician was well established (Edmunds, 221). His cultural and political influence culminated in the founding of the Democratic Party, which was pro-slavery, supportive of white European immigration, and focused on bolstering an agrarian economy of white rural yeoman and artisans by aggressively settling territories populated by Native tribes. The scorched-earth tactics used by Jackson’s Indian fighters effectively decimated ancient tribal towns and trading networks, while instilling the notion that Native American people were subhuman, incapable, and unworthy of living 16

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among the white settlers who would soon become Jackson’s electorate. As a military commander, Jackson showed his disregard for Indigenous humanity by double-crossing tribes who fought alongside his regiments against other resisting tribal nations and factions. Despite the fact that many assimilated Muskogee plantation owners had fought beside white militias in the Muskogee War against the resisting Muskogee “Red Sticks,” Jackson showed his genocidal tendencies by punishing both factions equally in a treaty that spelled out total surrender of the Muskogee lands, upon pain of death. As Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz writes in her salient book An Indigenous People’s History of the United States, “The Muskogee War thus inscribed a US policy of ethnic cleansing onto an entire Indigenous population” (100). While often glossed over in most US history books, the Muskogee War, which ended in the Treaty of Fort Jackson in 1814 and drove the Transappalachian East’s Native nations from their homelands, was more instrumental in the winning of the West than defeating the British Army in 1815 (Grenier, 204). Jackson’s political rule and cultural influence resulted in popular support for the Indian Removal Act, passed by Congress in 1830. Dunbar-Ortiz explains: “Land-poor white rural people saw Jackson as the man who would save them, making land available to them by ridding it of Indians, thereby setting the pattern of the dance between poor and rich US Americans ever since under the guise of equality of opportunity” (109). Once passed, white militias and the US Army forced some 70,000 Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Seminole, and Muskogee nations to walk 3,000 miles to the arid land west of the Mississippi reserved as “Indian Territory.” This inhumane, unjust treatment clashed with the young nation’s founding ideals of liberty, equality, and justice. The continued theft of Indigenous land required—and produced—a national myth in the United States of origins that envisioned the western settler as “heroic” as he fights the “savage” Indigenous peoples to safeguard the country. Simultaneously in Canada, while the policies were different, human rights violations against Native communities persisted as “Canada [oppressed] theirs by starvation and disease” (Franks, 227). According to Daniel Francis, “They were pretty much a forgotten people [for many] White Canadians” (30).

The Creation of the Noble Savage in Culture and Performance The imperial projects underway across North America were bolstered by works of cultural representation that spoke to white American and Canadian 17

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fascination with the so-called “Indian Problem.” Contemporaneous with the rise of Jacksonian democracy were Euro-American and Euro-Canadian representations of Native peoples in visual art, literature, and theatricals that depicted the Indigenous as ruthless or noble, variously, but always immutably doomed for extinction because of their inherent difference to the civilized world.1 Even as the colonial militaries engaged in counterinsurgency warfare and enacted the Indian Removal Policies, New World Romantic landscape painters such as Thomas Cole and Asher Brown Durand, among others, reified Indians as idyllic, exotic, and inseparable from the gorgeous “wild” landscapes in which they figured. Perhaps the most influential nineteenth-century American painter was George Catlin, a lawyer-turnedartist whose appreciation for western Indians inspired him to attempt to “document” the lives of Native people by recording their traditions while staging and painting their portraits, however romantically. Catlin reflected on his romantic view of Indians, before Western civilization had corrupted them: Nature has nowhere presented more beautiful and lovely scenes, those of the vast prairies of the West and of man and beast no nobler specimens than those who inhabit them—the Indian and the buffalo— joint and original tenants of the soil, and fugitives together from the approach of civilized man; they have led to the great plains of the West, and there under an equal doom, they have taken up their last abode, where their race will expire and their bones will bleach together. qtd. in Berkhofer, 892 Catlin here seems to explain his personal fascination with Native Americans and the western frontier as propelled by the commonly held assertion that both were doomed to be “bleached out” by the inevitability of civilization.3 European concepts of “wild” and “natural” predated colonial expansion, predetermining white perceptions of Native peoples not in relation to their own complex cultures, but in terms of Rousseau’s theory of Natural Human. As Philip J. Deloria argues in Playing Indian, early Americans often defined themselves by what or who they were not, which led to a complicated ambivalent relationship with Indigenous people: Whereas Euro-Americans had imprisoned themselves in the logical mind and the social order, Indians represented instinct and freedom. They spoke for the “spirit of the continent.” Whites desperately desired 18

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that spirit, yet they invariably failed to become aboriginal . . . Savage Indians served Americans as oppositional figures against whom one might imagine a civilized national Self. Coded as freedom, however, wild Indianness proved equally attractive, setting up a “have-the-cakeand-eat-it-too” dialectic of simultaneous desire and repulsion. 3 Artistic representation from the nineteenth to early twentieth centuries illustrated the range of seemingly paradoxical feelings that colonizers held toward Indigenous peoples. These emotions oscillated between white guilt over historical conflicts meted out by their European forbearers and confidence in white racial superiority and the inevitability of (white) civilization. White Americans, both mourning the loss of Indigenous peoples and fearing a “race” so “uncivilized,” elicited and produced a popular culture ripe with white-Indian narratives that offered justification for the continuing removal and containment of Native people in this era. The Indian Princess; or, La Belle Sauvage and the Roots of the Indian Princess Stereotype First of many plays adapting the historical figure known as Pocahontas into American mythology was The Indian Princess; or, La Belle Sauvage, written in 1808 by James Nelson Barker with music by John Bray. Audiences and critics praised the melodrama, which Barker loosely based on explorer John Smith’s The Generall Historie of Virginia (1624) during its multiple runs throughout the East Coast in the early 1800s (Puglionesi). This play popularized the theatrical representation of Native American women that continues to this day. Despite counternarrative evidence to the contrary, such as the oral history of the Mattaponi tribe, Pocahontas has been continuously represented as sympathetic to European colonists, and receptive to European culture, supposedly risking her own life for the stranger Captain John Smith, and willingly converting to Christianity to marry a colonist.4 As Alicia Puglionesi points out in “How Early American Plays Turned Pocahontas into Fake News,” the moment the Indian Princess in Barker’s play “forsook her people to save the blustering Englishman, Captain John Smith,” she embodied the inevitability of colonial conquest, “granting symbolic permission for massive land theft and displacement of native peoples.” The blitz of emulative melodramas about the beautiful, love-struck 19

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Princess Pocahontas helped to cement the preferred image of the Americas’ first “model minority” into the cultural imaginary, forever linking puritanical Western notions of gender with the colonial project. Plays such as Pocahontas, or the Settlers of Virginia (1830) by George W. P. Custis, Pocahontas (1838) by Robert Dale Owen, The Forest Princess (1844) by Charlotte Mary Sanford Barnes, and the musical burlesque Po-ca-hon-tas: Or, the Gentle Savage (1855) by John Brougham introduced the seductive assimilationist myth required of the colonial project. The two key Indian figures popularized in American nineteenth-century cultural production were the Indian Princess/ maiden who falls in love with a white man, and the Noble Savage who, unlike his assimilationist female counterpoint, must die nobly defending his land and obsolete ways. Dunbar-Ortiz points out that while “white supremacy had been the working rationale for British theft of Indigenous lands and for European enslavement of Africans,” the ideals of “(d)emocracy, equality and equal rights do not fit well with dominance of one race by another, much less with genocide, settler colonialism, and empire” (103). Such antithetical values anticipated the burgeoning national literature aimed at reconciling these contradictions. Perhaps no other author was as central in the creation of this pro-settler myth as novelist James Fennimore Cooper, whose novel The Last of the Mohicans has been in print continuously since its publication in 1826, and which inspired two Hollywood films including the 1992 blockbuster starring Daniel Day Lewis. Set in 1757, the book describes the tragic losses Mohicans suffered during their involvement with the French–Indian War. While Cooper’s romanticized version of this deadly conflict elicited pity from its readership, the significant Native characters also appear too quixotic and uncivilized to ultimately survive. Instead, the novel ends with the “last Mohican,” chief Chingachgook, blessing white frontiersman Nathaniel Bumppo, also known as Hawkeye, to effectively take over the tribe, knowing his people are clearly doomed to vanish. The theatrical equivalent of these romantic, masculinist novels were the innumerable “Indian plays” that featured the Noble and Ruthless Savage types, played by white actors in red face from the late eighteenth to late nineteenth centuries.5 In the paradigm exemplified in The Last of the Mohicans, these American melodramas also featured the archetype of the “Stage Yankee,” who would exhibit many of the qualities associated with the noble, natural, brave Indian warriors with whom he shared the stage. The Stage Yankee and Noble Savage did not share a similar fate, however, as the latter would die nobly by the play’s conclusion, leaving his land, people, and goods in the care of the 20

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former. This all-encompassing image of the Indian that was at once noble and savage, honorable but archaic, established the long-lasting vanishing Indian narrative, the linchpin of Manifest Destiny and its resulting American imperialism. Metamora; or The Last of the Wampanoags (1829) Chief among these popular “Indian plays” was John Augustus Stone’s Metamora; or The Last of the Wampanoags, which was first performed in 1829, the year Andrew Jackson assumed the presidency. Stone’s melodrama won the $500 first prize in a playwriting competition created and funded by leading American actor Edwin Forrest, who sought a five-act drama featuring an American Indian tragic hero that he could perform. The play became Forrest’s star vehicle, as he toured the nation playing the titular role in red face for nearly forty years. Stone’s Metamora significantly advanced the development of American melodrama, which followed a similar trajectory as that of New World Romanticism, as “native born” white American playwrights modeled their plays’ structural form from their European originators, while using distinctly American subject matter and settings. Metamora follows this Americanized formula, featuring a chaste damsel in distress; a British villain, who presents a rape threat toward the damsel; a noble, brave Indian chief; and a tragic, but necessary, compensatory ending that restores the social order, within both the world of the play and for its audience. The predominantly working-to-middle-class white American audiences were able to experience the thrill of watching an actor whom they knew was non-Native play a tragic hero with a foregone conclusion. At the end of the play, Metamora stabs his wife rather than allowing her to be captured by the British troupes; he then stands in defiance “last of his race,” provoking the soldiers to shoot him dead (Stone, 226). This ending compensates the audience with a sense of their own morality and compassion as they pity the “red man,” who, like them, sought freedom from tyranny from the British foe. Metamora cries: “They come! Death! Death, or my nation’s freedom!” (Stone, 225). The blame here can be shifted from the contemporaneous removal policies and military massacres of Native people to the heartless British enemy that does not understand American notions of freedom. Alas, Metamora cannot live, because his different model of humanity would upset the social order, working against the accepted narrative that “savages,” noble or not, are doomed to die (Wilmer, 45–6). 21

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The Euro-American fascination with remembering (and—in the case of red face performance—re-membering) Indigenous peoples in historical representations exemplifies what performance scholar Joseph Roach calls “surrogation,” defined as the “three-sided relationship of memory, performance, and substitution” (2). The proliferation of Indian plays surrounding Stone’s Metamora and Forrest’s corresponding stardom focused on well-known historical Indian chiefs or princesses, such as Pocahontas and her father Powhatan. These Indian plays of the 1820s–1870s and the Wild West shows that followed in the 1870s–1920s sought to remember certain aspects of Indigenous peoples and tribes that were already conquered, as rugged white characters effectively appropriated their bravery, strength, and land. The Indian as the American original is represented as a distant memory in order for the New World audiences to forget actual Native Americans, who were literally fighting for survival. In his historiographic analysis of circum-Atlantic performance practices, Roach comments on how performance, art, and literature might work to establish identity within colonial Western culture:“The key . . . is to understand how circum-Atlantic societies, confronted with revolutionary circumstances . . . have invented themselves by performing their pasts in the presence of others. They could not perform themselves, however, unless they also performed what and who they thought they were not” (5). In order to establish an independent American identity, new American patriots were drawn to forms of entertainment that seemed to “forget” their European origin, instead incorporating idealized versions of Indigenous cultures as part of the national narrative. Indian-themed melodrama, like New World Romantic painting, lamented the European tradition from which it hailed, while forgetting its roots through its purely American content. The mythology promoted by popular culture’s Indian Princesses and Noble Savages facilitated national support for federal policies that shifted from removal and containment of Native peoples to their assimilation through land allotments.

Representing Indians During the Allotment and Assimilation Era The mythology of westward progress was used to justify the so-called triumphal rise of “civilization” and legitimize both the settler-colonial violence against Indigenous communities and the theft of millions of acres of Native lands.6 A dominant view reflected through late-nineteenth and earlytwentieth-century American cultural representation was Frederick Jackson 22

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Turner’s “Frontier Thesis,” first presented at the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago, and still popular in the 1940s. This work hypothesized ways in which frontier expansion shaped the history of the United States and character of its Euro-American citizens. Turner famously wrote: “Up to our own day American history has been in a large degree the history of the colonization of the Great West. The existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the advance of American settlement westward, explain American development” (31). Perpetuating the destructive dichotomy between civilized and savage, he argued: “In this advance, the frontier is the outer edge of the wave—the meeting point between savagery and civilization” (32). Turner revered westward progression through Native lands. With this focus on settlement, historians White and Limerick explain: “In Turner’s telling the tools of civilization were the axe and the plow” (9). Turner’s thesis codified the already popular narrative of Euro-American settlers peacefully moving west to settle “free land” which was “available for the taking” (15). In terms of Indigenous rights, “Conquest was not ‘studied,’ it carried no burden of ‘guilt”’ (19). Implicit in this view, as Dan Moos explains, was the ideology of Euro-American entitlement to the land the US government seized: “Thus, the Darwinian supremacy of white settlers naturally moves aside Native American claims to land and resources and, by extension, human rights, religion, self-determination, and even happiness, all ideals fundamental to American society” (Moos, 49). Supremacist perspectives informed the powerful cultural foundation upon which the dominant culture built political programs to assimilate, regulate, and re-educate Native peoples into second-class Americans. The US government and Indian Reform organizations such as the Friends of the Indian, the Indian Rights Association, and the Boston Indian Citizenship Committee enacted a two-pronged approach in order to “civilize” Indigenous peoples. The two concomitant policies included: 1) the system of residential boarding schools designed to teach Native youth Christianity, the English language, and American industrialism; and 2) the dissolution of communally held lands in Indian Territory, divided into allotments allocated to individual men in accordance with colonial notions of racial identity. Residential Schools The practice of re-educating youth in accordance with white, Christian, patriarchal values is politically rooted in the “Civilization Fund,” formed in 1819. This congressionally appropriated fund sanctioned churches to “put 23

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into the hands of their (Indian) Children the primer and the hoe . . . and they will grow up in the habits of morality and industry,” clearly illustrating the founders’ notion of “freedom of religion” to mean the freedom to practice different sects of Christianity (Nabokov, 215–18). Various church groups instructed adult Native men in European agrarian practices such as monocrop farming, taught domestic skills to women, and catechized tribal families with the Christian Bible. Indicative of the new policy of forced assimilation that would characterize Indian education for the next 100 years was the “Choctaw Academy,” established in 1837 in Indian Territory by Colonel Richard M. Johnson. Johnson had fought on the side of the US federal government in the Indian Wars, against the same communities he was now charged with educating. Like all of the Indian Mission schools that would dominate federally funded education for Native children, this “manual” or “industrial” academy taught white American gender norms to young Native boys and modeled a racialized, socioeconomic hierarchy by emphasizing discipline and training for manual labor jobs. Perhaps the most infamous, and certainly the longest operating Indian boarding school, the US Training and Industrial School, was opened in 1879 in Carlisle, Pennsylvania under the supervision of another veteran of the Indian Wars, Colonel Richard Pratt. As the guiding philosophy of this infamous boarding school, Pratt coined the phrase “Kill the Indian in him and save the man” (qtd. in Adams, 52). By the 1890s, school-age Native children were required to attend schools, adhering to federal mandates that “no Indian should be idle for want of an opportunity to labor” (Adams, 52). Along with requiring manual labor and boarding school attendance, the Indian Office intensified the campaign of “civilization” by forbidding Native peoples from leaving their reservations for hunting, social, or spiritual purposes, and prohibiting traditional ceremonies such as the Sun Dance (Edmunds, 336.) Soon brutal residential schools were also established in Canada (MacDonald and Hudson, 431–2; Milloy, 77–107). According to scholar Andrea Smith: Abuses in U.S. and Canadian boarding schools clearly violated a number of human rights legal standards, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1976), the Draft Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (1994), the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1951), and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1990). 42 24

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Allotment Acts The General Allotment Act of 1887, authored by Senator Henry Dawes, argued for the allotment and division of collectively held Indigenous lands.7 Dawes argued: The defect of the [reservation] system was apparent. It is . . . that there is no enterprise to make your home any better than that of your neighbors. There is no selfishness, which is at the bottom of civilization. Till this people will consent to give up their lands, and divide among their citizens so that each can own the land he cultivates they will not make much more progress. qtd. in Dunbar-Ortiz, 158 This view of progress, and resulting efforts to assimilate Indigenous peoples into an economic value system of private property and American industry, also had the added advantage of depleting tribal cultural and spiritual strength, while significantly reducing the acreage of lands in Indian Territory. Nabokov describes the process: The government conducted a census of an Indian tribe that had once signed a treaty and accepted a reservation with its finite land base. Each Indian family was then granted a certain number of acres— usually 160, or the amount commonly considered a “homestead.” The sum of these allotments was subtracted from the total acreage on the reservation. Leftover lands were sold to the highest bidder, even though they might comprise as much as half the original reservation. 232–3 Under the Dawes Act, the President of the United States determined when a tribe’s land could be allotted; once allotted, a Native individual could not sell it for twenty-five years, “a transitional period to gradually ease Native Americans into the economics of assimilation” (Eick, 42). Focused on annexing Oklahoma, the Curtis Act of 1898 weakened tribal governance by abolishing tribal courts and applying federal law to all Native and nonNative people within the territory. Most egregiously, the Curtis Act granted the Dawes Commission ultimate authority over tribal citizenship, establishing enrollment on the Dawes roster as the mitigating factor in one’s tribal status; unfortunately tribal citizenship based on enrollment status is a 25

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colonial practice that continues to divide and weaken Native communities today. Assimilation and the Indigenous Cultural Deep Freeze They told us that Indian ways were bad. They said we must get civilized. I remember that word too. It means “be like the white man.” I am willing to be like the white man, but I did not believe that Indian ways were wrong. But they kept teaching us for seven years . . . And so after a while we also began to say Indians were bad. Sun Elk (Taos Pueblo), qtd. in Nabokov, 222 As in the United States, Canada enacted a series of draconian measures to assimilate Indigenous communities into Euro-Canadian and Christian norms, once the government determined that such endeavors were less expensive than continued military engagement. Shea Murphy argues that late-nineteenth-century Canadian policies following the “two-pronged approach of eradication or assimilation” were more egregious than those enacted in the US, because, instead of further reducing Indigenous land ownership through Allotment Acts, the government enacted policies to disenfranchise Indigenous people as Indians and to enfranchise them instead as Canadians (31, 275). The imperative to “civilize” First Nations peoples into the dominant white culture was crystalized by the Canadian government’s brutal use of residential boarding and mission schools which supported Christianity; text-based knowledge acquisition; and European concepts of gender, marriage, sexuality, and property ownership (Milloy, 23–107). Moreover, the government’s bans on Indigenous cultural expression unambiguously illustrate the colonial power’s ultimate goal: to stifle, replace, and subsume Indigenous identity. The policies of both fledgling nations focused on strengthening their economies and diminishing perceived threats to security, in part by consolidating their cultural power as white. The fragility of white supremacy was shook by Indigenous spiritual and cultural practices that were radically different from those encouraged by the dominant white culture. Thus, Indigenous ceremonies and medicine wisdom were banned as “ ‘savage’ and ‘heathenish’ ” (Shea Murphy, 32). Implicit in these regulations is that such performative, communal practices hold and create power, even for those trapped within the iron fist of Euro-American and Euro-Canadian colonialism. 26

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Shea Murphy further explains how bans on dance, song, and ceremonies in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries exemplify the state’s pursuit to control Indigenous bodies. Interestingly, the majority of Indian agents and other federal officials offered their opinions on the “evil barbarism” of Indian dancing without actually having observed it first-hand.8 To witness these dances in order to adequately report on them would in some way make the agents complicit, or, indeed, receptive to the cultural and religious power Indigenous dance practices create. The agents’ reports were largely based on popular misrepresentations of “savage” non-white peoples the world over, illustrating more about white imagination than observation or understanding. Misrepresentations of Indigenous dance painted Native peoples as so fully different, other, and “separate from whiteness” that the only solution to achieve the federal goal of assimilation was to ban outright all performance practices and ceremonies (Shea Murphy, 34). These prohibitions were established in a variety of implicit and explicit ways across North America. Further entrenching the principles set by the congressional “civilization fund,” US President Ulysses S. Grant instituted an 1869 “peace policy,” whereby the Office of Indian Affairs and Indian Reservations were removed from under federal military jurisdiction and placed, instead, under Christian Mission Boards that controlled reservations and all official Indian matters. This blatant disregard for separation of church and state essentially codified compulsory Christianity (Shea Murphy, 36). It is bitterly ironic that this “peace policy” of forced conversion aligned with multiple bloody wars between southern Plains tribes and the United States Cavalry.9 Within this new frame of Christian rule over Indian affairs, Secretary of the Interior Henry Teller appointed missionary Hiriam Price to the office of Commissioner of Indian Affairs. In 1883 Teller and Price established “Courts of Indian Offenses,” wherein Christianized Indians could report and punish those deeds or behaviors deemed “offensive” by colonizers. The first Indian offense to be charged was, expectantly, dancing: 4. (a.) Any Indian who shall engage in the sun dance, scalp dance, or war dance, or any other similar feast, so called, shall be deemed guilty of an offense, and upon conviction thereof shall be punished for the first offense by the withholding of his rations for not exceeding ten days or by imprisonment for not exceeding ten days, and for any subsequent offense under this clause he shall be punished 27

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by withholding his rations for not less than ten nor more than thirty days, or by imprisonment for not less than ten nor more than thirty days. qtd. in Shea Murphy, 38 The rationale for banning such spiritual-cultural practices had myriad effects on Native peoples whose ancient cosmologies include embodied practices to create spiritual and physical wellness. Without physical participation in healing ceremonies, generationally passed down through songs and dances, the tribes had difficulty collectively balancing their communities, which were already suffering the injustices of colonialism. The bans were both a result of and further broadened misconceptions that Indigenous peoples were satanic, barbaric, and uncivilized (Robertson, 559). Government agents and Indian reformers alike held these damning misunderstandings of Native performance and ceremony. Such fear-based perceptions of Indigenous performative practices became partial justification for removing Indian youth from their tribal communities and mandating their enrollment in Mission-led residential schools, connected to the anticommunal Allotment Acts. The white men in charge of regulating Indigenous bodies often interpreted the laws and bans as they saw fit, levying uneven, unpredictable punishments for any man, woman, or child who defied them. In this environment of cultural regulation, the development of Wild West shows provided a bizarre loophole for Native peoples to sustain spiritual and social traditions made illegal. Despite strong objections from the Indian agents and reformers tasked with Christianizing and assimilating Indigenous peoples by forbidding their cultural traditions, Native people who were granted permission to join Wild West shows were allowed to perform tribal songs and dances, wear traditional regalia, and speak the very languages that were forbidden at Indian residential schools and punished on reservations. The relationship between the American frontier narrative popularized in Wild West shows and Native participation in these shows is complex. Much of the analysis of Wild West shows focuses on the ways in which these spectacles dehumanized and exoticized Indigenous peoples hired to reenact battles and massacres for white entertainment and education.10 However, recorded oral testimony, literature, and prose published by Native peoples who performed “Indian” during the era reveal complex personal and communal motivations behind their participation. 28

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Wild West Shows and the Frontier Narrative From 1883 to 1916, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show capitalized from and helped to shape white expectations of the frontier, the Indian, and the West (Burt, 618). Showman William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody, a former US scout during the Indian Wars and rider of the Pony Express, was not the first to employ Native Americans in outdoor performance contexts, but his Wild West Show put the genre on the map. American, Canadian, and European audiences demonstrated a significant appetite for Wild West shows throughout the end of the nineteenth century and well into the 1920s. By the 1930s, the public’s thirst for “Cowboys and Indians” inspired Cody and others to transition their outdoor extravaganzas to film. Several Native American stars of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show—Luther Standing Bear (Rosebud Sioux), Lillian St. Cyr (Nebraska Ho-Chunk), William Eagleshirt (Pine Ridge Oglala), and Richard David Thunderbird (Cheyenne), among others— indeed made the transition to Hollywood to continue acting in what would later be known as “the Westerns” (Deloria, Indians, 76). It is not without irony that, despite his participation in the burgeoning Western film genre, Cody was not as successful in the movie business as he had been in the heyday of his live shows, and the new medium eclipsed its theatrical antecedent. Yet, Cody’s portrayal of frontier conflicts, Indians, and cowboys has had an indelible effect on how America’s settler colonizers, colonized Indigenous peoples, and the rest of the world view the national identity of the United States. Cody’s theatricalism also influenced Canada’s national identity as the popularity of Wild West shows spread north (Francis, 89–106). In his exploration of American melodrama set on the western frontier of the late nineteenth century, Jeffrey Mason points out that the “deepest foundation of the myth of the West was a classic binary opposition that used the settled East as a point of reference and defined the West as alien, divergent, exotic—different” (130). This is the perceived difference that inspired Turner’s notions of western expansion as romantically tragic, but inevitable; the “primitive savages,” seen as one and the same with the “wilderness” they inhabited, were destined to erasure by the unrelenting and formidable pressures of progress. Assessing Luther Standing Bear’s participation in Cody’s staged battles between the Lakota Sioux and the US military, Ryan E. Burt writes: The show paraded American exceptionalism as Cody . . . rose from humble frontier origins to become “King of the Border Men” in the 29

Critical Companion to Native American and First Nations Theatre

vanguard of American civilization. Moreover, the Plainsmen’s heroism, and the possibility of available western land for an Edenic, “egalitarian” society, relied upon a strangely inverted colonial narrative. Somehow the white colonizers always found themselves surrounded by attacking Indians. By 1902 Standing Bear’s “Sioux yells” were a Wild West signature as the show made “Custer’s Last Stand” a climactic set piece, hence offering the Lakota a most villainous role in US history. 618, emphasis added According to Burt, the popularity of Cody’s shows depended on a representation of “Indian” that was so savage a threat that, by comparison, white Americans were perceived as victims of colonial conquest. Aiding in this motif, Cody billed his reenactment of the Battle of Little Big Horn as the centerpiece of his show, and cast dozens of the impoverished and newly contained Lakota Sioux to perform a “blood-curdling” massacre of the brave white cavalrymen. By vilifying the exotic, dangerous foe (the Lakota Sioux, representing all Indigenous peoples), the fate of white conquest is made all the more heroic, leading to a troubling linkage between the concepts of white supremacy and American nationalism.

Show Indians and Native Agency Sitting Bull (Hunkpapa Lakota) and Standing Bear (Lakota Sioux) Cody’s biography and influence on North American cultural understandings of the US West has remained a focus of historical and cultural critique; less attention has been placed upon the lived experiences, individual agency, and critical reflection offered by Native people who were performing throughout North America and abroad during this era of cultural genocide. Primary sources indicate that many Wild West “Indians” actively sought the opportunity to escape reservation life, which was under total government scrutiny and afforded few, if any, economic opportunities. Performers such as Standing Bear, Black Elk (Oglala), Red Shirt (Oglala), Emily Pauline Johnson (Mohawk), and the great Hunkpapa leader Sitting Bull himself enacted agency in certain aspects of the productions in which they participated, asserted presence in defiance of the vanishing Indian narrative, and, in some cases, controlled their own wealth. For some performers, the opportunity to play traditional warriors or to live and work in exhibition 30

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villages, where they enacted traditional jobs, offered a meaningful alternative to mandated assimilation policies. The assimilation-minded Office of Indian Affairs railed against Buffalo Bill precisely because it viewed these traditional practices as standing in the way of assimilating Native people into Western culture. One striking example of the tension between Wild West show employment and assimilationist policies is observable in Cody’s 1885 hiring of Sitting Bull. Once Sitting Bull had been released from prison in Fort Randall, he was placed in Standing Rock Agency, under the supervision of Major James McLaughlin. When showmen such as Cody appealed to recruit Sitting Bull, McLaughlin “usually explained that the Indians in his charge were just beginning to show progress in adopting the trappings of sedentary life, and that to remove one of their leaders would confuse them about what was truly important” (L. Moses, 23). In order to convince the agent to allow Sitting Bull to join his show, Cody had to secure permission from the Secretary of the Interior of the United States. Once Sitting Bull had been released to Cody’s employment, McLaughlin expressed regret that Sitting Bull did not make “good use of the money he thus earns, but on the contrary spends it extravagantly among the Indians in trying to perpetuate baneful influences which the ignorant and non-progressive element are too ready to listen to and follow” (L. Moses, 31). Despite McLaughlin’s attempts to curtail Sitting Bull’s agency and influence, the Lakota leader used his time in the Wild West Show to enact warrior identity and his income to continue Indigenous practices of sociopolitical and spiritual reciprocity. Another famous Lakota Wild West performer, Luther Standing Bear, drew from his experiences touring with Cody’s show in his activist literature and autobiographies. He wrote in his book My People the Sioux that he was motivated to leave Pine Ridge and join Cody’s show so he might improve his Native community through learning about the new nation, its citizens, and the wider world. In his publications, Standing Bear articulates that his experience with assimilationist re-education in Carlisle Indian School, along with the pain and destruction created by the Dawes Allotment Act, emboldened him to return to Rosebud, and later join Cody. Standing Bear recorded: “There came the battle of my life—the battle with agents to retain my individuality and my life as a Lakota” (qtd. in L. Moses, 625). In Land of the Spotted Eagle, Standing Bear comments on crushing effects of cultural regulations, noting that “slowly rights began to disappear . . . there one day appeared a notice, by order to the agent, that no returned student would thereafter be permitted to attend any tribal dance. This was done to make 31

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young people turn away from things traditional” (237). Regardless of the stereotypical nature of aspects of the Wild West shows, Standing Bear’s narrative reveals they also provided a space for him to live his culture outwardly as a Lakota man. Linda McNenly writes in her book Native Performers in Wild West Shows: Wild West shows were one of the spaces that facilitated Native participants’ cultural survival, for they were spaces where they could express, and hence maintain and create, songs and dances. By performing in Wild West shows and maintaining dance, and to a certain degree ceremonies in the associated encampment, Native performers subverted government policies that prohibited dance and encouraged assimilation. 89 McNenly provides further analysis that Wild West shows afforded opportunities for Native performers to develop direct relationships with non-Natives, rather than replicating the racialized power dynamic of oppressive reservations. She argues that Wild West shows were sites for transculturation, and that the performances may have had different meanings for the white audience members and the Native performers: “the production of the savage warrior, and personal meanings of a warrior identity” (85). Emily Pauline Johnson/Tekahionwake (Mohawk) Although Native people had continued performing as a means of survival immediately after the colonial conquest began, E. Pauline Johnson was a Mohawk woman who initially had the freedom to choose her performance style as a means of artistic expression and agency, perhaps due to her more privileged status as a well-off, well-educated, beautiful woman. She is celebrated as one of Native North America’s first authors, as well as one of Canada’s first authors. Johnson wrote poetry and fiction, which she helped promote through reading tours. These events blossomed into a performance career that earned Johnson fame as she toured across Canada, the United States, and London performing her original works from 1892 to 1909. Additionally, Johnson published nonfiction, and it is through that writing that one most strongly sees opinions she held about Native people, their representation, and relationships with the federal government. To celebrate 32

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the centennial of her birth in 1961, the Native Brotherhood of British Columbia published The Native Voice: Special Pauline Johnson Centenary Edition, which proudly featured the 1961 stamp Canada’s Postmaster General had issued in her honor (16). Johnson was born on the Six Nations of the Grand River Reserve, where her father was a Mohawk member of the Iroquois Confederacy Council and married to an English woman (Fee and Nason, 13). Contextualizing the complexities impacting Johnson’s life and work, Mishauna Goeman (Tonawanda Band of Seneca) writes: The colonial powers of England, France, and the United States sought to empty the spaces inhabited and governed over for centuries by the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy and carve out colonial spaces in the place of Native histories and bodies. The matrix that composed Johnson’s world and identity was complicated, unstable, and filled with possibilities. Mark, 41 Reared in a prosperous home that valued education, Johnson and her siblings studied the classics of European literature while also learning the stories and history of their Iroquois culture. After her father’s early death and her family’s subsequent move to Brantford, Ontario, Johnson began writing as a means to help support her mother. Her publications led to commissioned works, Johnson’s inclusion into the 1889 Canadian anthology Songs of the Great Dominion, and an invitation to recite her work at a poetry reading in Toronto. That public reading of “A Cry from an Indian Wife” was so well received that the event’s organizer arranged for Johnson to give her first reading tour across Ontario (Fee and Nason, 14). Johnson’s performances were idiosyncratic, reflecting both her personal heritage and her audiences’ turn-of-the-century expectations of how a Native woman should look and perform. For the first half of the performance, Johnson appeared in an “Indian Princess” costume to enact original poems and stories that centered upon Native subjects, such as “As Red Men Die,” “A Cry from an Indian Wife,” “The Cattle Thief,” and “His Sister’s Son.” For the second half of the performance, Johnson would return in a contemporary evening gown to recite works such as “Canadian Born” and “The Song My Paddle Sings”—writings that memorialized the landscapes of Ontario and celebrated the Canadian nation. Johnson’s use of an Indian costume, her 33

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performance’s transition from Native imagery to Western imagery, and her patriotism toward Canada have caused some critics to question Johnson’s positionality. However, when her life’s work is viewed through the lenses of Johnson’s lived experiences and publishing record, her activism on behalf of Native people is apparent. Goeman observes: At a time when instituted European government policies were attempting to construct Native women in the image of European contemporaries or exile and expunge them from the nation’s “proper” territory, Johnson advocated for what was commonly understood as women’s rights or women’s autonomy and sovereignty and often invoked sentimental discourses to rationalize the inclusion of Native women as part of the nation. Mark, 44 While Johnson’s “Indian” costume might reinforce stereotypes of Native women as wild and alluring, Johnson purposely looked for a costume that was, in her words, “feminine”—one that would draw the audience’s gaze and mark her as different from other Canadian women (Gray). Since contemporary Iroquois women wore Victorian skirts and gowns—clothing that Johnson’s non-Native audiences would fail to recognize as being “Indian”—Johnson and her sister cobbled together a costume from items purchased from the Hudson’s Bay Company. Their model for the costume was a romanticized drawing of the tragic character Minnehaha from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s 1855 epic romantic poem, The Song of Hiawatha. The costume “included moccasins and a buckskin top and skirt with fringed sleeves and a red lining, plus cuffs, collar and belt decorated with beads, moose hair and porcupine quill work” (Gray). The cut of the costume was both properly Victorian, allowing Johnson to continue to wear a corset, and daring with its “short” tea-length skirt. Johnson embellished the dress with familial items: “she decorated the front of the skirt and bodice with her Mohawk grandmother’s silver trade brooches (antique souvenirs of the fur trade) and tied to the waistband her father’s hunting knife and a Huron scalp that had belonged to her grandfather” (Gray). Ironically, Johnson had to create a costume to wear in order for her audiences to see her presence as that of a “real” First Nations woman. This strategic move grew out of audiences’ expectations of what Native people looked like, based upon what they saw represented in popular culture— 34

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often red-faced, black-wigged portrayals of Indian maidens in melodramas. The costuming also served Johnson’s new medium of theatre, which, like her writing, expressed the era’s preference for sentimentalism and melodrama, in both tone and spectacle. Thus, although Johnson’s choice of costume was a conscious business decision intended to draw audiences to see her and to hear her contemporary, Native literary voice, her costuming risked playing into national narratives about Indigenous peoples’ “predestined disappearance.” For example, when Johnson reappeared in her show’s second half, some audience members might interpret her changed appearance and the thematic shift in her poetry as Johnson’s having lost her vestiges of “Indianness” through assimilationist policies of education and Canadian nationhood. How is it that an audience of contemporaries can view a live, culturally based performance and, simultaneously, believe that the performer’s ethnicity and cultural heritage is dead? One way, Philip Deloria muses, is to categorize the performer as an anomaly. Deloria challenges his readers to “distinguish between the anomalous, which reinforces expectations, and the unexpected, which resists categorization, and thereby, questions expectation itself ” (Indians, 11, emphasis added). Indeed, Johnson’s life and work, both in her era and ours, defies expectations. While honoring Johnson’s multiple literary and theatrical contributions, Beth Brant (Bay of Quinte Mohawk) also emphasizes her activism, writing: “It is also time to recognize Johnson for the revolutionary she was” (6). Some of Johnson’s poems demanded that her audiences take an unvarnished look at Canadian treatment of First Nations people. In “The Cattle Thief,” the Cree daughter of “the famous Eagle Chief,” who has turned to theft in order to feed his community, confronts the white men who have shot him in a “shower of metal rain” (5, 27). The daughter demands that the killers look at her father’s emaciated body, while she chastises: “ ‘You have cursed, and called him Cattle Thief, though you robbed him first of bread—/ Robbed him and my people . . .’ ” (46–7). The young woman reclaims the title “Eagle Chief ” for her father, as she describes the white men as the actual thieves of lands and game. In this adjusted paradigm, the woman demands that the colonists try a different approach with First Nations people, one that begins with reciprocity: When you pay for the land you live in, we’ll pay for the meat we eat. Give back our land and country, give back our herds of game; Give back the furs and the forests that were ours before you came; 35

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Give back the peace and plenty. Then come with your belief [Christianity], And blame, if you dare, the hunger that drove him to be a thief. 58–62 Johnson’s “Cattle Thief ” actively takes white perspectives and effectively turns them upside down. The dialogue that the poem uses reveals that it is the white men’s actions that are savage, even as they claim that it is the Eagle Chief who is wild. We see this irony of “civil” white savagery in the white men’s lines: “ ‘Cut the fiend up into inches, throw his carcass on the plain;/ Let the wolves eat the cursed Indian, he’d have treated us the same’ ” (31–2). At the same time, the Cree woman, who has just seen her father murdered, bravely confronts the armed men with logical language that even holds open the possibility of a cooperative future with the colonists, if only the white people could approach the Cree nation with a sense of equality. That sense of balanced humanity was effectively embodied in Johnson’s performance of the poem. Speaking the poem’s dialogue, Johnson played the narrator, the Eagle Chief, the white killers, and the Cree daughter. Johnson not only advocated cultural and legal equality for Native peoples in her complex performances, but like Luther Standing Bear, her advocacy and politics were made apparent in her published prose; her writings connected human rights to issues of Native representation, especially the representation of Native women in popular culture. In her essay, “A Strong Race Opinion,” which the Toronto Sunday Globe published in 1892, Johnson skewers her contemporary authors for their portrayals of Native women. The essay begins with a bold claim that continues to resonate today: when Native people are viewed through the lens of popular culture, their presence is rendered invisible. Johnson begins her treatise by stating: “Every race in the world enjoys its own peculiar characteristics, but it scarcely follows that every individual of a nation must possess these prescribed singularities, or otherwise forfeit in the eyes of the world their nationality” (“Race Opinion,” 155). Johnson explains that an even greater problem is that her contemporary fiction writers actually compose their characters as if a nationality called “Indian” exists. In a critique that foreshadows the theoretical work of Gerald Vizenor to come a century later, Johnson fumes: “I quote ‘Indian’ as if the term were an actual nationality, rather than a generalized term that covers an entire continent’s worth of hundreds of distinct Native Nations” (156, emphasis added). While the collapsing of individual Native nations irritates Johnson, she is particularly offended by her colleagues’ absurd lack of imagination and logic 36

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in their creation of Native women characters. She laments: “notwithstanding the numerous tribes, with their aggregate numbers reaching more than 122,000 souls in Canada alone, our Canadian authors can cull from this huge revenue of character, but one Indian girl, and stranger still that this lonely little heroine never had a prototype in breathing flesh-and-blood existence!” (“Race Opinion,” 156, emphasis added). The “Indian girl” character that Johnson then critiques mirrors the irrational child of nature that shapes American and Canadian literature from the early, colonial myths of Pocahontas through today’s “sexy Indian girl” outfits filling costume stores every Halloween. Johnson deconstructs this Indian Princess stereotype, which she traces through at least eight different literary works by her contemporary novelists and dramatists. The girl is full of paradoxes: she has no last name, but her father is always a chief; she “is possessed with a suicidal mania,” although, Johnson claims, suicide is rare in Native cultures; she falls in love with a white man who will never marry her, yet she “is treacherous to her own people, tells falsehoods to her father and the other chiefs;” and, most significantly, she is a wild girl who “makes all the love advances to the white gentleman,” while she is also “the most retiring, reticent, noncommittal being in existence!” (“Race Opinion,” 157, 58). It is with good riddance, in Johnson’s opinion, that this constructed Indian girl always dies. The character type has no basis in Native cultures or in rational human life. Johnson seems befuddled by the endless duplications of this “Indian girl,” who is not only an insult to Native women but also to the Canadian literary canon. Throughout Johnson’s articulate, well-supported, satirical critique, she questions why her contemporaries appear unable to construct a complex, believable, culturally specific Native woman. By the end of the essay, she blames this failure of imagination on two familiar factors: a willful ignorance toward Native cultures, and the commodification of Native imagery. Johnson surmises that most fiction writers of Indian-themed literature have never ventured to a Native community, met a “ ‘real live’ Redman,” or even bothered to read nonfiction about Native cultures (“Race Opinion,” 161). Despite the authors’ ignorance, their endlessly replicated tales of brutish white men and sacrificial “Indian girls” successfully sell books, ensuring the continuation of the flat, “idiotic,” “Indian girl” character, whose prolific image renders contemporary Native women invisible (161). Johnson closes her critique by linking the loss of human rights to the loss of representation, as she challenges readers: “Surely the Redman has lost enough, has suffered enough without additional losses and sorrows being heaped upon him in romance” (162). 37

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Johnson’s final question leads us back to viewing the presentation of her Mohawk identity and concern for her nation during the first half of her performances. Though she constructed her costume to attract her viewers through a dress that was both alluring and stereotypically “Indian,” she steered far away from the “Indian girl” character that she criticizes in “A Strong Race Opinion.” Johnson’s Native women are devoted to their various Indigenous nations, which are most often named within her poems. They are strong women, more apt to take up arms or to use courageous words against the colonizing forces than they are to either fall in love with or even surrender to white men. Most of all, in both halves of her performances, Johnson presented herself as an educated Mohawk woman with a gift for language, character, and storytelling. She aimed to be a living, radical presence that challenged the uninformed notions of Indians pervasive at the end of the nineteenth century, when Manifest Destiny and the eradication of Native peoples and cultures was the aim of both Canada and the United States. We can trace the power of Johnson’s presence into contemporary Native theatre and performance, for many First Nations children grew up reciting her poetry and taking pride that a Mohawk woman is remembered as one of the founders of First Nations and Canadian literature. For Brant, “Pauline Johnson is a spiritual grandmother to those of us who are women writers of the First Nations” (7). As playwright Daniel David Moses recalls, Johnson figured in the Six Nations Native Pageant that told of the community’s history; “she was always one of our own” (127).

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PART TWO RECLAIMING THE STAGE

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CHAPTER 3 CULTURE BEARERS: THE GRANDMOTHERS OF NATIVE THEATRE AND PERFORMANCE

During the 1920s, cultural genocide of Native peoples was the law of the land from the United States to Canada. As described in Chapter  2, tribal lands had been greatly reduced by the reservation system, and allotment policies had all but destroyed the sustainable living practices and structures of Native communities. Federal laws banned the expression of most Native American religious ceremonies, including many songs and dances. Boarding schools worked to eradicate Native languages, religions, family structures, and lifeways. The colonial narrative was that Native peoples had been successfully conquered, and thus disappeared, from the North American landscape either by total assimilation into Western culture, or by having died off as a result of a kind of social Darwinism. Out of this devastating period of cultural genocide emerged the strong voices of Native women advocating for Indigenous human rights. They publicly extolled the rich diversity and innumerable gifts, material and cultural, Native cultures had contributed to the world. As educated, articulate, worldly professionals, they defied stereotypes of Native inferiority and absence by inviting the public to witness their contemporary enactments of Native stories and traditions. They performed their careers with a determined vision for the future, one in which the physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual health of Native communities was restored within a larger world context that comprehended the balance necessary for living in our shared, interconnected world. Women are commonly considered the “culture bearers” of many Native American and First Nations communities. It is the women who maintain the stories and cultural knowledge that must be passed along to new generations (Gunn Allen, Sacred, 50). In the case of Native theatre and performance across North America, this concept is strikingly clear. It is the reason that women frequently lead Native theatre and performance organizations and why there is such an abundance of work written by Native women playwrights. The notion of women as culture bearers rings true throughout 41

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the entire history of Native theatre and performance: it is celebrated in the previous chapter’s discussion of Pauline Johnson and in this chapter’s exploration of four theatre artists working on Broadway, and beyond, during the turn of the twentieth century.

Te Ata (Chickasaw) During this oppressive era, Te Ata, a Chickasaw woman who was also a classically trained actor from the Broadway stage, regularly stood before 250 people gathered within a circle of pine trees atop Bear Mountain. Dressed in a ceremonial turquoise-beaded white buckskin dress, and with the Hudson River at sunset as her backdrop, Te Ata would proclaim: You see, I am alive. You see, I stand in good relation to the earth. You see, I stand in good relation to the gods. You see, I stand in good relation to all that is beautiful. You see, I stand in good relation to you. You see, I am alive. I am alive! Te Ata, “Remember,” 163 “I liked the power of the Navajo chant,” recalls Te Ata in her unpublished memoir, “As I Remember It” (163). Indeed, the words Te Ata performed with sweeping, ceremonial gestures were powerful. They represent a fragment from an ancient, much longer song, performed in the Navajo, or Diné, language as part of a sacred ceremony called a Beauty Way. A Beauty Way is a type of Navajo healing ceremony in which a Medicine Man sings over the person seeking healing. Traditionally, the Medicine Man sings the words of the Beauty Way, and his patient repeats the lines; as their song continues across time, the individual over whom the healer sings gains a restored sense of balance (P. MacDonald). Balance, or hózhó, is “an all-encompassing philosophy that supplies the underlying framework for the Diné value system and way of life” (McCulloughBrabson and Help, 37). It means that an individual mindfully practices living in a balanced, harmonious, or beautiful relationship with the natural world, the world of the gods, and all other beings—human and nonhuman. Through Te Ata’s performance of the verse, the Beauty Way’s language continued to perform a kind of restorative balance. As such, Te Ata’s 42

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performance was both entertaining and ceremonial. She did not dress as or assume the role of Medicine Man; rather, her embodied performance of the ancient words, combined with the setting and audience, corrected the great lie woven through national narratives of Native American extinction. “You see . . .” begins each verse. In Te Ata’s performances of the song, “You see” becomes a direct address to her viewers, some of whom were Native and many of whom were not. This repetition, “You see, You see, You see . . .” demands that the viewers literally witness Te Ata, the woman, the Chickasaw Indian, the contemporary actor who stands before them. Native peoples are not extinct: “You see,” Te Ata declares, “I am here. ‘I am alive!’ ” (Te Ata, 163). Moreover, Te Ata’s statement of life was not limited to mere physical survival; her declaration was affirmative, contextualized by Native American expressions, images, and value systems that also resisted narratives of assimilation. Te Ata stood above the Hudson River at sunset. Her contemporary audience joined her in a circle of pines, similar to Native storytelling circles created by woodland tribes. Together, Te Ata and her viewers experienced the majesty of the natural world. The line, “You see, I stand in good relation to the earth” demonstrated Te Ata’s Native perspective that humans should respectfully live in a reciprocal relationship to the natural world and its inhabitants, both animal and human. “You see, I stand in good relation to the gods” is a statement that allowed her audiences to acknowledge the contemporary Native woman before them as spiritual, but not bound by the Christianity that settler colonists had so vigorously attempted to instill. In performance, the line of this verse is activist: “I stand,” despite boarding schools, despite regulations that—even now—outlaw Native religious ceremonies; despite Native languages having been drowned by English expressions, “I stand in good relation to the gods.” These lines welcomed Te Ata’s audience to visualize that in the natural, spiritual world, Native values were indeed alive, continuing, and profound. “You see, I stand in good relation to all that is beautiful” challenged the audience to pause and recognize for a moment that they, too, might appreciate the interplay among language, the natural world, the spiritual world, and humanity: a sense of interconnectedness central to Native worldviews. In this way, Te Ata’s performance of the Navajo chant intermingled art, ceremony, and activism. A look at Te Ata’s long, successful career reveals her dual commitment to the art of theatre and to Native activism. Although she had trained to become a professional Broadway actress, Te Ata ultimately left the Broadway stage in order to perform her one-woman shows from the 1920s through the 1980s. Playing for large and small audiences of Native and non-Native people 43

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Figure 3 Te Ata’s program for professional performances, circa 1930. Courtesy of JudyLee Oliva.

across the United States and Europe, Te Ata strove to entertain her audiences through the rich, cultural expressions of Native literatures and performance practices while simultaneously educating viewers about the complex diversity existing across Native America. Born in 1895 in Indian Territory, Te Ata was raised listening to her father’s Chickasaw stories, but also recognized that there were tensions between her Chickasaw culture and the world around her. Her father, Thomas Thompson, served as the last Treasurer of the Chickasaw Nation prior to Oklahoma statehood. While he was committed to his community and passed down Chickasaw legends to his children, the only Chickasaw language Thompson taught his children was how to count; he believed that English would allow his children to achieve more success in the changing world (Richard Green, 15). Te Ata attended Bloomfield Academy for girls, a boarding school established by the Chickasaw Nation in partnership with Methodist 44

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missionaries, who became increasingly intolerant of Chickasaw practices as Oklahoma approached statehood (Cobb, Listening, 62–5). Te Ata recalled hiding beneath her sheets at night to secretly do beadwork by candlelight (Richard Green, 25). In 1907, Indian Territory transitioned to statehood through the 1898 Curtis Act, which broke up the tribal lands of the Chickasaw, Choctaw, Cherokee, Muscogee (Creek), and Seminole Nations, allowing non-Native settlers to claim Native lands. During Oklahoma’s formation, the federal government terminated the Chickasaw Nation’s tribal government and institutions. Bloomfield Academy fell under the control of the federal government, and Te Ata’s father was no longer Treasurer for his people. The Thompsons moved to Tishomingo, Oklahoma, where Te Ata enrolled in a public school with a predominantly white student population (Richard Green, 26). Te Ata was 11 years old in 1907, and this transition from Indian Territory to Oklahoma statehood loomed large in her vivid imagination. She was aware of the loss and change occurring across Native communities as she watched her father cross out the words “Indian Territory” on his stationery, only to replace them with the official name of the new state, “Oklahoma” (Oliva, Te Ata, 2).1 Despite these changes, Te Ata excelled and eventually moved to Chickasha, Oklahoma to attend the Oklahoma College for Women (OCW), where she became the institution’s first Native American graduate (Oliva, “Te Ata— Chickasaw,” 7). At OCW, Te Ata impressed Miss Frances Davis, the school’s drama teacher, who inspired Te Ata to develop a lifelong passion for acting. Miss Davis encouraged Te Ata to explore the intersections between her classical theatrical performance and the telling of Chickasaw stories that Te Ata sometimes shared with classmates. When it came time for Te Ata’s required senior recital, a one-woman show that would introduce her to society as a professional actor, Miss Davis persuaded Te Ata to create a show around Native American folklore. Te Ata did not know enough Chickasaw stories to fill an entire program, so she wrote to the Smithsonian’s Ethnology’s Division to ask for examples of other Native American stories (Richard Green, 38). She also included popular Indian-themed poems and songs from the era. Miss Davis assisted Te Ata in adapting the stories for theatrical presentation and arranging the program to include dance. Te Ata’s biographer, Richard Green, writes that it was through this experience of researching and preparing Native stories that Te Ata began to understand the interconnections existing among Native nations’ lifeways. Te Ata recalled: “ ‘As I read, I became aware of how the patterns of those basic tales branched out like ragweed, as 45

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my father had put it when we were small, with a different twig for each tribe, adapted to the crops it raised, animals it hunted, the climate in which it lived’ ” (Te Ata, qtd. in Richard Green, 38). Te Ata’s system of study and adaptation led her to acquire a deep understanding of both the vast differences across Native cultures as well as the shared perspective that Native worldviews are rooted in Native American lands. As her artistry developed, these themes of Native American diversity and Native American values became core principals in her research and presentations. When she graduated in 1919, Te Ata envisioned becoming a professional actor. She gained her first credits through paid engagements booked by viewers who wanted to bring versions of Te Ata’s senior recital to their venues. Touring as a Chautauqua performer also opened new worlds to Te Ata, who made a point of visiting the Native communities that intersected the Chautauqua’s midwest and western tour routes. She visited Native American landmarks, learned stories from elders of different Native nations, and began to collect Native arts and crafts—many of which were gifted to her from those she met (Richard Green, 54–5). Through this method of visiting Native communities to listen, learn, and exchange gifts, she directly engaged in Native ways of obtaining knowledge through personal relationships based upon mutual respect and reciprocity. Te Ata attended graduate school in acting at Carnegie Tech in Pittsburgh from 1921–2. The experiences she gained touring and studying gave Te Ata the confidence to move to Manhattan in an attempt to break onto the Broadway stage in 1922. Though she landed Broadway roles in The Red Poppy and The Trojan Women, Te Ata was most often recruited for her beauty and “exotic” look (Oliva, “Te Ata—Chickasaw,” 7, 10). She rejected roles in the Indian vaudeville follies because she refused to play Native people “as stereotypes or in burlesque” and turned down other roles that would exploit her body through revealing costumes (Richard Green, 69, 74). Te Ata began to realize that Broadway was more interested in her as an object than as a trained and gifted actress. Directors and producers saw her as an Indian and, thus, mainly offered her roles the entertainment industry wrote for Indian women: submissive, sexualized children of nature; or inarticulate, subhuman creatures of comedy and scorn. Despite Te Ata’s ambition to become a Broadway star, she refused to allow herself or her culture to be used in ways that diminished Native people. In 1927, she revived her one-woman shows designed to educate audiences about Native peoples while celebrating the diversity of Native stories. A resident of the Three Arts Club, an apartment for young women seeking to 46

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break into show business, Te Ata had already begun to build a network of wealthy socialites interested in fostering the careers of young performers. These “house mothers” would often hire the residents to perform at their homes during parties and teas; Te Ata’s beauty, talents, and unique presentations made her a favorite performer to hire. As Te Ata decided to exit “the great white way,” it was this network of wealthy patrons—Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt among them—who first helped spread the word about Te Ata’s one-woman shows (Oliva, “Te Ata—Chickasaw,” 10). With her impressive base of community support and a professional manager, Te Ata turned to performing her shows across the United States, Americas, and Europe. Te Ata was not the first Native performer to seek out a career on stage. Other Native American performers preceded her, and many contemporaries were working to break into show business, too. What most distinguishes Te Ata is the way in which she blended her Native storytelling talents with her classical theatrical training, applying both toward a unique and successful career—one in which she controlled how she represented herself and the Native legends she presented. Touring her one-woman shows from the 1920s through the 1980s, Te Ata achieved her dream of being a professional actress, while also serving as an international activist for both Native presence and the gifts Native cultures have contributed to American life. Te Ata and other Native performers charted their paths through an illogical world—one that was particularly treacherous for Native women. Their mere presence so challenged national narratives of Native absence that they were not even viewed as Native, unless they clad their bodies in physical signs of Indianness: long, braided hair; headdresses; buckskin clothing; beads and feathers. Simultaneously, once directors and producers actually saw the performers as “Indian,” they frequently typecast Native performers in roles that ironically reaffirmed narratives of Native absence through plots that defined them as characters of the historic past, members of a “doomed race,” “the last of their tribes,” or too connected with the natural world to survive in “civilization.” These narratives were undermined, of course, by the hard reality that federal policies across the United States and Canada were working to destroy Native cultures through outlawing Native religious practices and regalia, moving Native children into Christian boarding schools, and breaking up Native communal lands (Franks, 226–38). Native women, in particular, faced stereotypes that were not only absurd, but also sexually exploitative. Nevertheless, Native women from this era seem to have had more success on the stage than men. 47

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The stories of Emily Pauline Johnson/Tekahionwake (1861–1913),2 Gertrude Simmons Bonnin/Zitkala-Ša (1876–1938), Lucy Nicolar/ Watahwaso (1882–1969), Molly “Spotted Elk” Nelson (1903–77), and Mary “Te Ata” Thompson Fisher (1895–1995) demonstrate the various paths that Native American performers traveled and the many ways these particular women routed their careers upon the bumpy trails toward “stardom.” The women faced similar obstacles, but used different tactics to survive—and often thrive in—the world of performance. Most notably, all of these women expressed Native activism to a world that proclaimed Native absence.

Zitkala-Ša (Dakota) Much like Pauline Johnson, Zitkala-Ša (Gertrude Simmons Bonnin) was an activist and artist whose work invites contemporary criticism while also demonstrating radical Native presence during the turn of the twentieth century. In Old Indian Legends, Zitkala-Ša published traditional Dakota tales and myths from the Dakota, Nakota, and Lakota Nations in the Dakota (Dakhótiyapi) language. She published biographical stories about growing up Native during the period of federally mandated assimilation in American Indian Stories. In 1913, she collaborated with a white, Mormon musician, William Hanson, to write, perform in, and stage The Sun Dance Opera. Around the same time, she wrote and lectured for the Society of American Indians from 1911 to 1919, campaigned for US citizenship and justice for Native peoples, and founded the National Council of American Indians in 1926 with her husband, Raymond Bonnin, a Yankton Sioux attorney. Zitkala-Ša’s life represents a fierce tenacity to retain her Native identity despite having endured a rigorous program of cultural genocide. At the age of eight, Zitkala-Ša was taken from her Yankton Sioux home in South Dakota and placed in the White’s Indiana Manual Labor Institute (Hafen, Introduction, xv). In her writings, Zitkala-Ša describes the process of entering the boarding school, which barred her from her family, culture, and language and filled her days with manual labor. She identifies the moment that authorities cut off her long braids as the moment she lost her spirit: “In my anguish I moaned for my mother, but no one came to comfort me” (Zitkala-Ša, qtd. in Hafen, Introduction, xv). Although she resisted the erasure of her Yankton identity and excelled in academics, the effects of boarding school emotionally distanced Zitkala-Ša from her family. She decided to attend the Quaker-founded Earlham College in Indiana, where 48

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she studied piano and violin, and won second place in the 1896 Indian State oratorical contest for a speech that drew upon Christian principals to condemn the government and church’s treatment of Native peoples (xvi). Next, in a somewhat contradictory move, Zitkala-Ša accepted a teaching job at the Carlisle Industrial Training School, founded by Richard Pratt (discussed in Chapter 2). Some wonder whether Zitkala-Ša joined Carlisle, in part, to provide covert emotional and cultural support for her students. Jane Hafen notes that, during her two-year stint at Carlisle, Zitkala-Ša openly challenged Pratt’s theories and actions in published articles that articulated “divergences between Pratt’s policies of total assimilation and Zitkala-Ša’s Native pride” (vii). In 1900, she left Carlisle to study at the New England Conservatory of Music. Her musical training would support her later work with Hanson on The Sun Dance Opera. Zitkala-Ša met Hanson in 1908 in Utah, where she and her husband were living and working with the Uintah Ouray Ute for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Zitkala-Ša’s friendship with Hanson allowed her to remain connected to her musical interests while also beginning her work for the Society of American Indians. The two friends decided to collaborate on an opera for which Zitkala-Ša would incorporate Native melodies on the violin and integrate performances from the local Ute community. The opera stages Native traditions within its melodramatic plot, while it borrows its sense of spectacle from Wild West shows, “Indian cultural performances at fairs,” and the “Mormon pageants” familiar to Hanson (Hafen, Introduction, xix). The opera’s plot follows Winona,3 the daughter of a Sioux chief, who is in love with Ohiya, a member of her tribe who vows to win her hand in marriage after demonstrating his love for her in the upcoming five-day sun dance. However, a Shoshone stranger and womanizer named Sweet Singer has come to their village in an attempt to escape a Shoshone woman whom he has bewitched with an incurable love potion. Sweet Singer is a guest of Winona’s father, who comes to believe that Sweet Singer’s newly expressed interest in Winona is real and that the gifts Sweet Singer brings the family represent a deep devotion to Winona’s community. Sweet Singer is chosen to sing for the Sun Dance and secretly plans to chant songs so long that they will prolong Ohiya’s suffering, causing his strength to fail and preventing him from fulfilling his vow to Winona. In such disgrace, Ohiya will lose Winona’s father’s permission to marry her. Hebo, a trickster, and women from the Sioux community aid Ohiya, thereby thwarting Sweet Singer by reuniting him with the Shoshone maid. In the end, Ohiya survives the Sun 49

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Dance and earns the right to marry Winona, who helps him heal from the ordeal with herbal medicines (Zitkála-Šá, 123–60). In, “A Cultural Duet: Zitkala Ša and The Sun Dance Opera,” Jane Hafen analyzes not only the printed text of the opera, which appears to be a version of its 1938 performance, but also Hanson’s detailed notes about the initial 1913 performance’s creation, production elements, and presentation. Zitkala-Ša was deeply involved throughout the development and staging of The Sun Dance Opera’s premiere. The choice to write an opera that presented a theatrical version of the sacred Sun Dance was one that Zitkála-Šá and Hanson mutually decided after having attended a Ute Sun Dance in 1910 (Hafen, “Cultural,” 104). Zitkala-Ša contributed traditional Sioux songs on both violin and Native flute, while Hanson attempted to transcribe and orchestrate the songs into Western musical notation. The opera’s premier in Vernal, Utah was deeply intertwined with the local Ute community, whose members performed the chorus roles and incorporated several unscripted interludes of traditional songs and dances at key moments throughout the opera. Non-Native singers played the opera’s leading roles. Conversely, the 1938 New York performance of The Sun Dance Opera was an endeavor shared by Hanson and John Hand, the founder and conductor-director of the New York Light Opera Guild, who had played the role of Ohiya in a previous 1914 production at Brigham Young University, where Hanson taught. In the New York production, non-Native singers and dancers played chorus roles, while Native American performers from various tribes performed the leading roles, including Winona’s father, played by Chief Yowlachie, a popular Yakima baritone. Such changes meant that the New York production lost the improvisatory contributions of the Ute community, while Hanson and Hand relied upon their interpretations of the original melodies that Hanson transcribed from Zitkala-Ša’s songs. Zitkala-Ša seems to have ceased her collaboration with Hanson after the opera’s successful Vernal, Utah premiere. It may be that the opera offered Zitkala-Ša something more important than an artistic outlet for her musical abilities; it presented a powerful way for the Ute community to engage in traditional songs and dances that had been outlawed. In 1904 the “Regulations of the Indian Office” specifically focused on the Sun Dance as an “Indian Offense” punishable by thirty days’ incarceration or by withholding a person’s meal rations for up to thirty days (Shea Murphy, 40). On the Uintah Ouray reservation where Zitkala-Ša’s family worked, all Native dancing was forbidden across the Southern Ute Agency; moreover, the “Sun Dance and Bear Dance at Uintah Ouray” were specifically outlawed by name and 50

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location (Hafen, “Duet,” 105). Nevertheless, Zitkala-Ša collaborated with Hanson in order to create a space that allowed tribal members to theatrically and ceremonially perform their traditional songs and dances. While the Sun Dance’s sacred elements, piercing, and endurance were simulated, the unscripted interludes performed by local Ute community members featured the prohibited dances and songs of the people. Moreover, a centenarian— “Old Sioux,” or “Bad Hand”—who lived with Zitkala-Ša’s family led the improvised interludes (Hafen, Introduction, xix). The ability to publicly reengage with forbidden songs and dances under the leadership of an elder born and raised in an era prior to federal boarding schools’ attempts to erase Native languages, cultural expressions, and identity was, indeed, a rare opportunity for the 1913 Uintah Ouray community. In addition to ZitkalaŠa’s motivation to allow for Native cultural expression during an era of prohibition, Hafen surmises that Zitkala-Ša may have also been interested in placing Native music within the highbrow form of opera to demonstrate the equality of Native and Western forms of art. Or, perhaps, Zitkala-Ša wished— in an era of white exploitation of Native performers in Wild West shows, films, and World Fair exhibitions—to exert some artistic control over the creation of another Indian-themed show (“Duet,” 105). Subsequent productions of The Sun Dance Opera lacked both Zitkala-Ša’s direct involvement as well as the improvisational interludes of traditional songs and dances performed by Native community members. Without Zitkala-Ša’s playing, productions relied upon Hanson’s transcriptions of the Sioux melodies, which were “rendered unrecognizable” through systems of Western musical notation and the limitations of a piano keyboard (Hafen, “Sun,” 127). Hafen explains that this score, replete with “tom-tom rhythms . . . would sound to modern listeners like a soundtrack for a Western B movie” (127). From a contemporary perspective, The Sun Dance Opera uncomfortably represents cultural exploitation. Certainly, the New York production solidifies this perspective by removing the opera from its local community, relying on a score that incorporates trite musical elements, and staging spectacle fashioned from a Native sacred ceremony for the consumption of elite, Manhattan audiences. The idea of The Sun Dance Opera’s being a cooption of Native culture seems appropriate, especially when one notes that Hanson’s 1938 production had erased the opera’s origins. Gone was Zitkala-Ša’s name as coauthor, as Hanson credited himself as the opera’s sole creator (Hafen, “Cultural,” 106). Zitkala-Ša appears as indifferent to The Sun Dance Opera’s 1938 production as Hanson was of her collaboration. Hafen notes that Zitkala-Ša’s 51

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prolific writing and personal journals make no mention of the New York production (Introduction, xxiii). Moreover, between the 1913 premiere of The Sun Dance Opera that Zitkala-Ša helped create and the 1938 New York production that had erased her contributions, Zitkala-Ša took a firm position against the exhibition of Indian dances for non-Native entrainment. Writing in 1923 from Washington, DC, where Zitkala-Ša and her family had moved to continue their political work, Zitkala-Ša urged the federal government to use the same level of vigilance restricting the popular exhibitions of Indian dances as it used to restrict Native dances within Native communities. In her book The People Have Never Stopped Dancing, Shea Murphy explores the government’s hypocrisy toward Native dancing, noting that ceremonial dances that “establish relation to ancestors, land, and water” threatened the United States; conversely, the same dances, removed from their communities and staged as entertainment for white audiences, rendered Native culture as something that had been “militarily and spiritually contained, and removed from relation to the land” (102). Additionally, the framework of exhibition dances forced Native ceremonial practices inside the US economic system, twisting Native communal traditions into capitalist exploitation of the sacred. Zitkala-Ša’s letter against an advertised rodeo that would feature scalp dances to entertain federal officials in Washington, DC argued that the dance’s spectacle would reinforce stereotypes of Native people as savages, and potentially “rouse hatred in the hearts of the people who may witness the same and yet it is with these very same people that the Indian of today must live” (qtd. in Shea Murphy, 101). To those promoters claiming that their traveling shows economically aided Native peoples, Zitkala-Ša countered that the financial gain went solely to the white producers—once again, robbing Native people of their human rights. Zitkala-Ša railed: “the few pennies paid to the Indians who may take part in these proposed shows cannot begin to compensate the thousands of other Indians who may be damaged thereby” (101). Zitkala-Ša’s demand for Native people’s social justice is what shaped her activism. Through her leadership within nationally recognized intertribal organizations, such as the Society of American Indians and the National Council of American Indians, Zitkala-Ša is remembered as a prominent voice within what Robert Allen Warrior describes as “the first coming together of Native intellectuals in a specific political project” (10). From within these organizations, Zitkala-Ša lobbied the federal government to grant US citizenship to Native Americans (which occurred in 1924); organized blocs of Native American voters; demanded political visibility for 52

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Native issues; and litigated for Native land, water, and monetary claims. Like her collaboration with Hanson on The Sun Dance Opera, some of ZitkalaŠa’s political stances drew critiques, even from among other Native American activists; however, the trajectory of her life’s work aimed to achieve Native people’s visibility, equality, and autonomy within the United States.

Lucy (Princess Watahwaso) Nicolar (Penobscot) In contrast to Zitkala-Ša’s concerns, Lucy (Princess Watahwaso) Nicolar, a Penobscot from a small reservation outside of Old Town, Maine, discovered a level of political and financial power through staging Indian pageants.4 Nicolar was born in 1882 to two politically engaged parents: Joseph Nicolar, a Penobscot representative to Maine’s state legislature; and Elizabeth Josephs Nicolar, a founder of the Wabanaki Club of Indian Island, a women’s organization devoted to recording stories of Indigenous people from across Maine while collectively garnering funds for the club’s activism through the sale of members’ work (B. McBride, Watahwaso, 8–9). By the late 1800s, Penobscot lands had been greatly reduced to a small reservation headquartered on Indian Island; a significant portion of the people’s economy came from tourists who purchased Indian baskets made by Penobscot women. During tourist seasons, Lucy and other Penobscot children would travel with their families to seaside towns, where the children would don buckskins to dance and sing in attempts to draw customers to their families’ baskets. Performance weaved through Nicolar’s life in many ways. Not only did she perform dances and songs at sales stands, she also took part in exhibitions of Indian encampments that helped draw tourism to the state of Maine. She participated in the annual Penobscot grand ball, which invited non-Native neighbors from across the Penobscot River to enjoy Penobscot performers playing “classical waltzes, Irish jigs, and traditional Penobscot dances,” and she witnessed the parade of shows—from vaudeville tours to Indian medicine shows—that toured through Old Town, Maine each year (B. McBride, Watahwaso, 9). Nicolar’s professional career combined her mother’s appreciation of Indigenous stories with her own hunger for Western education and the training to perform, and later produce, Indian-themed shows that brought economic opportunity and political visibility to Native peoples. Between 1898 and 1905, Nicolar moved to Boston to work for Montague Chamberlain, 53

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a Harvard administrator who supported Nicolar’s education and musical training, while introducing her to New York socialites (B. McBride, Watahwaso, 13). By 1913, Nicolar had married Tom Gorman, a lawyer who became her manager, and she joined the Redpath Chautauqua Circuit under the pseudonym Princess Watahwaso, performing songs, dances, and Native legends alongside Thurlow Lieurance, a popular composer and organizer of the circuit. Nicolar’s biographer, Bunny McBride, records that Nicolar was a favored performer, earning more than Lieurance, “in part, because she played into popular notions of romantic exoticism” while also educating her audiences by “distinguishing the aspects of the songs, legends, and dances for the various tribes represented in her program” (17, 18). After two years on the Redpath Chautauqua circuit, Nicolar and her husband moved to New York, where she began performing in vaudeville variety shows, returning home periodically for Penobscot engagements. Nicolar then merged her business and performance talents into theatre management; she gathered her own troupe of young Native singers, dancers, and musicians to form an all-Indian vaudeville show that toured throughout the country at the end of the 1920s. Two of the troupe’s star performers were a Kiowa singer named Bruce Poolaw and another Penobscot dancer named Molly Spotted Elk, both in their twenties (B. McBride, Watahwaso, 20–1). The Great Depression brought an end to vaudeville and to Nicolar’s marriage; still, Nicolar’s entrepreneurial spirit remained strong. She returned to Indian Island, which was suffering under the nation’s economic collapse. Nicolar joined forces with her sister and sister-in-law to resurrect her mother’s Indian Woman’s Club “with the purpose of promoting ‘Indian welfare, education, and social progress’ ” (B. McBride, Watahwaso, 24). Specifically, they won the right for Penobscot children to attend the public schools in Old Town, Maine, which offered superior education to the reservation’s Catholic-run Indian school. Additionally, Nicolar began lobbying for a bridge that would connect Indian Island to the mainland, allowing the Penobscot people easier access to the economic, educational, and social opportunities outside the reservation’s boundaries. Nicolar generated attention and money for these issues through performance management. In 1931, she brought together the Indian Woman’s Club, the Penobscot and Passamaquoddy communities, and the Maine Development Commission in order to stage an exhibition that would financially benefit both Maine and the state’s tribal nations through entertaining and educational performances of Native “customs and crafts” (B. McBride, Watahwaso, 25). The inaugural exhibition in Bangor, Maine was 54

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structured around a well-worn, melodramatic plot fusing Pocahontas and Hiawatha storylines. The event generated such attention and profit that Old Town’s Chamber of Commerce and the Penobscots of Indian Island sponsored the pageant’s second year. Nicolar, with Poolaw’s help, designed the exhibition’s “Indian Village” where craftspeople sold their work, ran demanding rehearsals for 112 Native performers, and created the “script” for the elaborate three-day event, which took place over land and the Penobscot River. This time, Nicolar decided to stage a story that challenged the nonNative conceptions of Indian-themed entertainment. On the first day, Penobscots arrived by canoe from Indian Island to set up their village and engage in “traditional life,” making baskets, bows, arrows, and canoes. Passamaquoddies then arrived to arrange a marriage between a Penobscot maiden and Passamaquoddy brave. McBride writes: “That evening a great crowd of people filled the bleachers and hundreds more stood for a program of dances, songs, and legends” conducted by Princess Watahwaso (27). On the second day, the wedding was interrupted by the arrival of white men, who “seeing the richness of the land . . . ‘cheat the trusting Indians, give them fire-water, etc., and finally come in such numbers that the Indians are robbed and killed and driven from their lands’ to the reservation” (27). Despite staging Native experiences of white brutality, the pageant moved toward images of fraternity and equality. The third morning began with a parade of floats decorated by local Old Town merchants; then athletic competitions between Indian Island and Old Town occurred on the Penobscot River. Nicolar’s pageant received accolades and generated profit for both Native and non-Native communities. By the following year, Nicolar pushed her audiences even further by staging “an historic reenactment of ‘The Norridgewock Massacre’ . . . a graphic portrayal of the devastating English attack that gave Nicolar’s forefather his name, ‘Half-Arm’ Nicola’ ” (B. McBride, Watahwaso, 28). The more Nicolar’s talents were in demand, the freer she was to use the theatrical medium to expose settler-colonial abuses of Native human rights. Nicolar’s career was not without controversy. When she and Poolaw married and opened a gift shop, people questioned whether Nicolar’s promotion of the bridge linking Indian Island to Old Town was motivated by communal or personal gain. The bridge was constructed in 1950, when Nicolar was 68 years old; nevertheless, she continued lobbying for the Indigenous people of Maine. Although Native Americans had gained citizenship in 1924, the state of Maine denied Native people voting rights because citizens of Indian reservations did not pay taxes. In response, 55

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Nicolar and her sister lobbied on behalf of an Indian suffrage bill from 1924 until its passage in 1953. In celebration, Nicolar was the first member of her reservation community to cast her vote.

Molly Spotted Elk (Penobscot) One of the Penobscot children whose life was broadened by an education in Old Town was Mary Alice “Molly Dellis” Nelson (1907–77), who adopted the name Molly Spotted Elk for her performance career. Spotted Elk, whose mother was an industrious Maliseet with knowledge of herbal medicines and whose college-educated Penobscot father served as both the Penobscot representative to Maine and governor of the Penobscot Nation, achieved international recognition as a dancer and actor. In 1930, she played the female love interest in Silent Enemy, a melodramatic silent film cast with Native actors and featuring pre-colonial Ojibway lifeways. Despite the fame she achieved, Spotted Elk’s performance career was complex and contradictory, full of pain and struggles. Bunny McBride’s keen biography of Spotted Elk, illustrates the range of performance venues featuring Native American performers of the early twentieth century and the harrowing paths that faced young artists seeking employment to provide for their families while developing professional artistic careers. Encapsulating Molly Spotted Elk’s extraordinary life, McBride writes that Spotted Elk performed in vaudeville as a teenager, studied journalism and anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, danced topless in New York, starred in a classic docu-drama chronicling traditional Ojibway Indian life, danced for royalty in Europe, hobnobbed with well-known American literati in Paris, lectured at the Sorbonne, married a French journalist, and barely escaped the Nazi occupation of France by hiking over the Pyrenees with her young daughter. Molly, xiv Two artistic objectives appear to have motivated Spotted Elk’s work: to use her Native and Western dance skills to “ ‘do something with my Indian dancing . . . in a serious way,’ ” and to publish engaging versions of the Algonquin legends she had gathered from elders during her years in Maine (Spotted Elk, qtd. in B. McBride, Molly, 164). Although promoting visibility for contemporary Native people and their contributions to American culture 56

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motivated Spotted Elk, the economic necessity to provide money for her family pressured her to earn a living in an entertainment industry hungry for Indian stereotypes. A prolific writer, Spotted Elk kept regular diaries that provide a candid glimpse into how she negotiated her personal and artistic integrity within an exploitative economic system. Like many of her Penobscot peers, Spotted Elk began dancing as a child to draw tourists shopping for baskets. The eldest of eight children, Spotted Elk grew up quickly as a caregiver to her younger siblings and an additional wage earner for the family. In between her schooling and household duties, Spotted Elk’s family hired her out to perform chores for neighbors; yet, whenever she found a free moment, she would seek the community’s elders to hear their stories. Often, she traded additional chores for their legends (B. McBride, Introduction, ix). Though she attended junior and senior high school across the river in Old Town, Spotted Elk’s attendance was dependent upon her family’s financial needs. When she was 13, Spotted Elk began missing semesters and then whole years of school. At first, her family sent her to work as a domestic servant in Massachusetts. Away from home, Spotted Elk joined an Indian vaudeville troupe at 14, touring New England as a dancer and singer (B. McBride, Introduction, ix). Intermittently, she returned home, where she could attend school. Her intellectual tenacity led Spotted Elk to the University of Pennsylvania, where she worked as an office assistant and gave lecturedemonstrations on Native dance, while expanding her knowledge and repertoire by auditing classes and performing independent research into dance traditions across Native America (x). Eventually, the family’s financial needs increased, forcing Spotted Elk to leave the university in order to earn money by dancing in commercial, often exploitative, venues. From Oklahoma to Broadway, Spotted Elk danced and performed in Wild West shows, as a chorus girl and soloist in nightclubs and movie theatres, and as a member of Lucy Nicolar’s vaudeville troupe. Acting in Silent Enemy allowed Spotted Elk to purchase a home for her family on Indian Island; it also gave her a boost toward other professional opportunities. She performed as a featured dancer in the respected Provincetown Players’ Fiesta and as a chorus girl in J. J. Shubert’s touring musical review, Broadway Nights. Although she continued to support herself and her family by working two and three performance engagements at a time, Spotted Elk gained some artistic control over her work. Chester Hale, a ballet choreographer, sought Spotted Elk’s expertise in developing his Indian-themed dance. The famous Denishawn company courted her; however, her family’s financial need, 57

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along with demands of her other jobs, prevented Spotted Elk from joining (B. McBride, Molly, 129, 35). Cabaret dancing continued to offer Spotted Elk a higher, steadier income. As a featured dancer in many venues, Spotted Elk worked to incorporate the beauty of Native dance styles in choreography and clothing, yet her diaries record her private reactions to painful, racist comments from audience members. Entries also capture Spotted Elk’s response to the revealing costumes designated for her solos: “I am an injun in the flesh parade. Feel terrible about being bare and walking around, but I must work” (qtd. in B. McBride, Molly, 136). Indeed, a famous 1928 picture of Molly Spotted Elk in a fringed bikini and floor-length headdress has become an iconic image of the entertainment industry’s exoticization of Native women. Kent Monkman, a contemporary Cree performance artist (discussed in Chapter  9), now deconstructs this image in his satirical drag piece, Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, Vaudeville Star Emergence of a Legend.

Figure 4 Molly Spotted Elk, as she appeared in Texas Guinan’s Clubs, 1928. Courtesy of Barbara Moore. 58

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Spotted Elk enjoyed some freedom from dehumanizing stereotypes when she accepted an opportunity to join the United States Indian Band, an allmale jazz band selected to perform at the 1931 International Colonial Exhibition in Paris. Spotted Elk provided an additional level of entertainment during concerts by presenting dances that drew from her repertoire of both jazz and Native traditional dancing. While the framework of the World’s Fair was devoted to notions of Western progress that suggested colonialism had assimilated “savages” into “civilized” people, the United States Indian Band’s ensemble of gifted, educated performers found eager audiences in performance venues outside the fairgrounds. Spotted Elk used her position within the ensemble to network other performance opportunities, dancing with the fair’s International Ballet Corps and presenting solo performances throughout Paris (B. McBride, Molly, 159–60). McBride writes that Spotted Elk discovered in France the same freedom that attracted Josephine Baker: “What prejudice there was did not result in social exclusion. In manifested itself as intrigue rather than insult and seemed to work in an artist’s favor” (164). When the United States Indian Band returned home, Spotted Elk remained in Paris building upon the networks she created to perform lecture-recitals, tours, and concerts, as well as cabarets. The work was plentiful enough for her to turn down jobs she found too exploitative; additionally, Spotted Elk found French audiences receptive to her infusing her dancing and lectures with the styles and philosophies of Native dance traditions—a welcome contrast to the general American audiences’ hunger for crude stereotypes. Spotted Elk also partnered with journalist Jean Archambaud, with whom she coauthored articles about Native cultures and naturalist adventures. The two married and had a daughter. While Spotted Elk’s success in France was complicated by serious health issues stemming from years of malnutrition and respiratory trouble, it was the Nazi invasion of France that ultimately ended her European career. Archambaud, unable to leave the country, died in France. Home on Indian Island with their daughter, Spotted Elk returned to the familiar hustle for work. She fluctuated between home and New York City, where her age and illnesses decreased her engagements. Struggling with unemployment, heartbreak, self-blame, and exhaustion, Spotted Elk suffered a series of mental breakdowns and institutionalizations. Eventually, she returned home to care for her aging mother; the two lived in the home Spotted Elk had purchased for her family after Silent Enemy (B. McBride, Molly, 284–6). Spotted Elk’s extraordinary life, full of daring and ideals, accomplishments and tragedy, resonates through Native theatre today. After having read 59

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McBride’s biography of Spotted Elk, Michelle Olson (Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in), the artistic director of Raven Spirit Dance Theatre, collaborated with Muriel Miguel (Kuna/Rappahannock) of the feminist Indigenous theatre company Spiderwoman Theater5 to create Evening in Paris. The 2007 solo dance performance, performed by Olson and directed by Miguel, uses Spiderwoman’s techniques to weave spoken word, excerpts from Spotted Elk’s writings, and projections into choreography that juxtaposes wrenching expressions of Spotted Elk’s psyche against the popular dance movements the exoticized starlet performed night after night. Olson and Miguel (who as a child met Spotted Elk during her mental illness) use Spotted Elk’s story to investigate the spiritual and psychological violence the fetishization of Indian stereotypes has committed against Native women, from their grandmothers’ generation through today (J. Smith, “Struggles”). Thus, Spotted Elk’s life’s work and collected writings about being a Native performer at the turn of the twentieth century have reached into the present to inform the ways society understands the high stakes of representation.6

The Circulating Influence of Culture Bearers Spotted Elk, Nicolar, Zitkala-Ša, Johnson, and Te Ata are grandmothers of both Native theatre and the North American stage. Their stories are inspiring new generations of Native theatre artists and scholars to see the unbroken historic presence of Indigenous performance across the continent. For example, Te Ata, whose seven-decade career encapsulated “two world tours and [performances] for heads of state,” including President and Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt and the King and Queen of England, advocated for all people to take note of the many ways that Native cultures have contributed to America (Oliva, “Te Ata—Chickasaw,” 21). She demonstrated the rich performative heritage of Native peoples through her shows, which eventually dismissed all non-Native writings in favor of Native legends, featuring over fifty unpublished Native stories that she respectfully collected, annotated, and edited for performance (15). Te Ata’s public lectures clearly challenged the world to take note of Native people’s presence. In “Your Heritage from the American Indian,” Te Ata begins: Many people today believe that Indian culture is a dead one and to be found only in the museums of this country—when as a matter of fact, there are living Indians who are today creating works of art that are in 60

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every way comparable to the art of their ancestors—arts that you treasure in your museums. In a 1935 lecture for Chicago Woman’s Aid, Te Ata strongly asserts that it is not just Native people’s presence that must be recognized, but that North America must also appreciate how Native contributions—in both material and cultural forms—have shaped the identity and lives of all people living on Native lands. Te Ata asserts: “perhaps one of [the Indian’s] greatest contributions has been thru his culture, his folk tales, his legends, songs, dances, [and] drama” (“Contributions”). She then challenges her audience to view the world through a Native perspective that upends colonial views: Instead of looking abroad for your cultural inspiration, here under your nose at home is something much more original and far more indigenous. Ours was the first great American culture . . . this country is not yet truly yours for you have not learned the love for it that is inherited by us . . . everything we know or have created has come from an understanding [of] oneness with this land. “Contributions” Te Ata finishes with a demand—one that continues to challenge all inhabitants of North America today and which also informs the way that this book positions Native and First Nations theatre and performance in relation to US and Canadian theatres: “You must build upon our culture, which is America; that means you must learn something about this culture” (“Contributions”).

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CHAPTER 4 HOMELAND YEARNINGS ACROSS SETTINGS

On March 31, 1943, as Oklahoma! premiered at the St. James Theatre on Broadway, the buzz was already in the air about a new kind of musical— something innovative and uplifting from Richard Rodgers and his new writing partner Oscar Hammerstein II. As patrons sat holding their playbills, displayed predominantly were the names of the major collaborators. In the very small print were also the words “Based on Green Grow the Lilacs by Lynn Riggs” (23). On stage with lilting melodies and imaginative choreography, the musical celebrated Euro-American settlers and their triumph over adversity as they ushered in a new state—a welcome respite for many in the war-weary New York audience (Wilk, 214–23). In the commercial theatre, the Broadway premiere, and later 1947 West End premiere, catapulted Oklahoma! to phenomenon status—a musical that has prevailed through numerous professional and amateur revivals as an iconic Euro-American view of the West and, for many, an idealized view of white America for more than a half a century. Over seventy years old, the musical still holds a dominant place in the annals of US and English musical theatre, secured by Trevor Nunn’s masterful revival on the West End and Broadway and countless school and college productions (Wilk, 272–9). Before developing Oklahoma! as a musical, both Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II were familiar with Green Grow the Lilacs. Richard Somerset-Ward recounts how the Westport Country Playhouse’s July 1940 revival of Lilacs, with choreography assisted by Gene Kelly and music by Bethell Long, prompted Theresa Helburn to suggest the possibility of a musical and invite Richard Rodgers to attend a performance, which he did (An American, 73). In response to a letter from Eva Paul in the New York Times, “From the Drama Mailbag,” Oscar Hammerstein II openly acknowledged that the musical drew heavily on Green Grow the Lilacs for its characters, story, and dialogue: Mr. Riggs’ play is the wellspring of almost all that is good in “Oklahoma!” I kept many of the lines of the original play without

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making any changes in them at all for the simple reason that they could not be improved on—at any rate, not by me. But more important than this, “Green Grow the Lilacs” had a strange combination of qualities—lusty melodrama, authentic folk characters and a sensitive lyric quality pervading the whole story. XI Hammerstein II concludes by emphasizing: “Lynn Riggs and ‘Green Grow the Lilacs’ are the very soul of ‘Oklahoma!’ ” Yet, while he praises Riggs’s innovations, his book, informed by Euro-American aesthetics and history, changes the time and narrative of the earlier play to showcase white settlers and celebrate statehood in Oklahoma!, thereby preventing the musical from touching “the very soul” of Riggs’s work. Rather, Oklahoma! distorts Green Grow the Lilacs’ pluralistic and ethical view of Indian Territory. As has been noted elsewhere, the success of this mainstream celebration of the westward movement is one of US theatre’s major ironies (Weaver, That, 99). Thus, for Jace Weaver, in “Ethnic Cleansing, Homestyle,” a critique of early Broadway plays, “the show represents the height of the frontier myth” (32). Weaver writes: “The landscape has been thoroughly ethnically cleansed until it becomes the vacant wilderness of the American historical imagination. Once it is emptied out, Euro-Americans are free to occupy it without molestation” (32). Later, introducing a new published anthology on Riggs, Weaver re-emphasizes this privileging of whiteness: “While turn-of-the-century Indian Territory was racially mixed, with Natives, whites, and African Americans all interacting, Oklahoma! contains no African Americans and no Natives” (Foreword, xiii). In The American Musical and the Formation of National Identity, Raymond Knapp also underscores this ideological function of Oklahoma! “in providing America with a strongly embodied sense of a central national myth”—one that persists (123). Reifying Frederick Turner’s myth of hardy individualism, property, entitlement, and a nation without the land’s original peoples (see Chapter 2), Oklahoma! enacts this mainstream ideology of the American West and sanctions a triumphal narrative of settlers that has for over a century suppressed the histories and rights of over five hundred Native nations in the United States. According to Mishuana Goeman, “Settler colonialism is a useful term in relation to performance as it connotes the ongoing condition of settler occupation of Native land, an occupation so often pictured, monumentalized, and enforced by the containment of Native bodies and glorification of a colonial past” (“Introduction,” 4). 64

Homeland Yearnings across Settings

In 1940, Angie Debo’s breakthrough book And Still the Waters Run—its title ironically reflecting earlier federal treaty language that had guaranteed lands in Indian Territory in perpetuity—exposed the US government’s betrayal of the “Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek or Muscogee, and Seminole nations” throughout the late 1800s and early 1900s (1). Meticulously throughout this book, Debo details unscrupulous legal maneuvers, exploitation, and federal and state legislation that stripped the Cherokee Nation and neighboring nations of their rights and lands guaranteed after the Indian Removal Act of 1830 and subsequent Trail of Tears. Thus, since the first production of Oklahoma! in 1943, the narrative, music, and dance obscured and continues to mask the human costs of the Trail of Tears in 1832, the General Allotment Act of 1887, the Curtis Act of 1898, and their devastating effects: the breakdown of communal ties, federal denial of sovereignty rights promised in perpetuity for Indigenous nations in Indian Territory, loss of millions of acres of tribal lands leading to Oklahoma, and brutality of both white settlers and the US government. By celebrating Oklahoma’s statehood, productions of this musical also sanction multiple legal, historical, geographic, and ethical betrayals that reinscribe settler colonialism. The rescripted story of US national identity in Oklahoma! contrasts deeply with Lynn Riggs’s original play, Green Grow the Lilacs, which premiered at the Guild Theatre on Broadway on January 26, 1931. Through the ascendancy of Oklahoma! in some ways Riggs is both one of the bestknown and the least-known Native playwrights. For many years, he worked with theatre innovators and activists including Jasper Deeter, Paul Green, Theresa Helburn, Mary Hunter, Andrius Jilinsky, Robert Edmond Jones, Lawrence Langner, Kenneth Macgowan, Armina Marshall, Ramon Naya, and Ida Rauh, in professional, university, and in Little Theatre productions and projects. Additionally, Riggs worked with the Federal Theatre Project. Between 1925 and 1951, Riggs had numerous plays produced, including six on Broadway (Braunlich, Haunted, 202–6). Yet throughout most of the second half of the twentieth century, his legacy became almost reduced to a program note for Oklahoma! His play Green Grow the Lilacs, according to Braunlich, only “continued to be performed regularly by amateur theatre groups” (73). This shortage of professional revivals is not surprising considering that “after the opening of Oklahoma! restrictions were placed on further productions” (T. Carter, 16–17). Rather than a footnote in American theatre history, Lynn Riggs provided a moral vision, theatrical innovations, and activism for an inclusive US 65

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theatre that staged Indigenous presence and challenged colonial narratives. He was a playwright at a time when Broadway’s popular name as the “Great White Way” for the iconic bright white lights was also an apt description of the deeply embedded discrimination that celebrated Euro-Americans, their stories, and settler colonial ideologies to the exclusion of the rich diversity of people of multiple ethnicities, including Native Americans, living throughout the country. Both narratively and performatively, Riggs’s work boldly sought to cross what W. E. B. Du Bois had identified in 1903 as “the problem of the color line”: deep-seated racial discrimination and segregation in the US (5).1 Yet, despite Riggs’s endeavors to open the stage, theatre critics and historians mostly dismissed his work, until fairly recently. New York critics in the 1930s and 1940s, especially New York Times lead critic Brooks Atkinson, were often perplexed or exasperated by Riggs’s innovative departures from traditional Western theatre genres. Because he wrote about people in rural areas, his work was often classified as “folk,” a description Riggs rejected (“When,” 29). Described by Charles Morrow as “Broadway’s Forgotten Man,” Riggs’s contributions seemed to have been almost lost from US theatre history, with a few exceptions (Morrow, 8).2 Since the late 1990s, due to a major revitalization led by Jace Weaver, Riggs’s work has steadily gained recognition in Native theatre and performance studies.3 Writing over fifty years ago, Lynn Riggs contested the commercial theatre’s immense power to legitimize myths of dominance, conquest, and privilege throughout his plays, most of which were set in Indian Territory or Oklahoma. Daniel Heath Justice (Cherokee) emphasizes Riggs’s activism, along with the endeavors of John Milton Oskison, Will Rogers, and Emmet Starr, “citizens of the Cherokee Nation,” whom he describes as “artists and social critics” (94). He records: “Their success was varied, but all worked toward articulating Cherokee peoplehood in a historical period of great chaos and uncertainty” (94). Specifically, Justice notes: “The allotment dispossession of the Cherokees of Indian Territory clearly shaped the course of Lynn Riggs’s life, just as it continues to impact many Cherokees today and our relationships to our communities, tribal connections, and cultural responsibilities” (108). Recognizing the importance of his homeland in his work, in a letter to Paul Green, dated July 27, 1929, Riggs wrote: “Like you, I carry my own state with me” (qtd. in Braunlich, Haunted, 87). Implicit in this statement is the interplay of community, setting, history, and land for Riggs as a playwright and director. Throughout Riggs’s plays, the dramaturgy also suggests cultural, social, ethical, and spiritual dimensions based on Cherokee values of community. 66

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Charlotte Heth (Cherokee) highlights what Cherokee scholar Robert K. Thomas calls the “ethic of harmony,” values which included “avoidance of conflict and withdrawal from situations causing anxiety” (187). In further clarifying these values, historian William G. McLoughlin provides a helpful analysis of “Cherokee strength and endurance,” which, he suggests, “came essentially from what they called ‘the Keetoowah spirit’ (variously spelled ‘Ketoowha,’‘Kituwha,’ etc.) of loyalty to each other, concern for the spiritual power in their way of life, and their insistence upon the fundamental importance of tribal unity and harmony” (xv). These values inform Riggs’s work. While a number of concerns influence Riggs’s work, the fulfillment or often breakdown of these ethics dominates his dramas in a variety of ways. In a March 13, 1929, letter to his colleague Walter S. Campbell, Riggs described the people he “knew mostly” growing up that touched him as playwright as “the dark ones, the underprivileged ones, the ones with the most desolate fields, the most dismal skies,” explaining that “it isn’t surprising that my plays concern themselves with poor farmers, forlorn wives, tortured youth, plow hands, peddlers, criminals, slaves—with all the range of folk victimized by brutality, ignorance, superstition, and dread” (qtd. in Braunlich, Haunted, 82). Offering an ethical vision for his work, Riggs concluded: “And will it sound like an affectation (it most surely is not) if I say that I wanted to give voice to and a dignified existence to people who found themselves, most pitiably, without a voice, when there was so much to be cried out against?” (82). As part of this “voice,” his compassion and activism prevail throughout his plays as he also exposed US nation-building values of individualism, rapacity, ruthlessness, and brutality as perpetuating a culture of violence with major geopolitical and ethical consequences, especially as they harmed the Cherokee Nation and other Indigenous peoples through allotment policies and Oklahoma statehood. In 1931, Riggs articulated a transformative vision of theatre, maintaining a play “ought to be telling something about the human heart” (“When,” 29). In his 1941 “A Credo for the Tributary Theatre,” Riggs again offers a brief glimpse of his ethical and inclusive vision to create a professional theatre that is “life-giving” (167). Thus, for Riggs, achieving the full potential of drama meant endeavoring to touch “the soul of ” humanity (qtd. in Aughtry, 37). Accordingly, four of Riggs’s plays intended for Broadway, Green Grow the Lilacs, The Cherokee Night, Out of Dust, and Russet Mantle, provide a helpful introduction to his vision for a transformative theatre that strove for outcomes far beyond mere entertainment and commercial success. Although 67

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very different in form and setting, each play supports Indigenous rights and shares Cherokee values. They also interrogate deep-rooted, systemic EuroAmerican narratives of power that mask and normalize oppression. The first two, which are often considered his best-known Cherokee plays, focus on Western Cherokee lands and narratives before and after statehood. The next one, Out of Dust, directly challenges settler colonialism and notions of civilization. The final play, Russet Mantle, upends the traditional European theatrical form of comedy to expose mainstream hypocrisies. Only Green Grow the Lilacs and Russet Mantle had Broadway runs; The Cherokee Night was considered too controversial and Out of Dust too tragic. In these plays, Riggs offered daring theatre for Broadway that challenged the era’s standard narrative of American national identity that contributed to the erasure of Indigenous peoples and their human rights. These plays, then and now, open transformative spaces of broad inclusion, multiple narratives, deep interrogation, and contested geographies.

Green Grow the Lilacs In France, Riggs wrote Green Grow the Lilacs in 1929 during his Guggenheim Foundation fellowship; he also worked on The Cherokee Night during this time. Green Grow the Lilacs was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and came in second to Susan Glaspell’s Trifles (Braunlich, Haunted, 104). Riggs was already a rising star in New York with the 1927 Laboratory Theatre production of Big Lake, a poignant tragedy of two teens caught in a trap by corrupt settlers, set in Indian Territory (Aughtry, 23). Similarly, Green Grow the Lilacs stages a very different geography and narrative than Oklahoma! Riggs’s program note explicitly states: “Green Grow the Lilacs is laid in Indian Territory in 1900. Oklahoma, which was admitted to the Union as a state in 1907, was formed by combining Indian and Oklahoma Territories” (Green, ix). The year 1900 is very significant to Riggs as a Cherokee, who was born on August 29, 1899, in Claremore, Indian Territory. His mother Rose Ella (Buster) Riggs, member of the Wolf Clan of the Cherokee Nation, took her family to the Claremore Dawes Commission office in 1900 to enroll herself and her three young children on the official Cherokee roll, which was scheduled to close on September 1, 1902 (Braunlich, Haunted, 20–22). In a November 22, 1947 correspondence to Marion Starr Mumford, Riggs wrote: “Aunt Eller is based on my wonderful Aunt Mary (Mrs. John Brice) and some of the things I vaguely knew about my mother— 68

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who died when I was two. (Her name, too was, Ella, ‘Eller’ as people called her)” (qtd. in Braunlich, Haunted, 27). Jace Weaver argues that Green Grown the Lilac’s 1900 setting “in the heart of the Cherokee Nation” introduces important Cherokee dramaturgy, emphasizing to Native people that the play is “in some sense a play about them” (“Ethnic,” 32). Notably, he suggests that “It is entirely possible that Curly McClain” was Native (“Ethnic,” 32). In addition, making geographic connections between the play and the Cherokee nation prior to statehood, James H. Cox notes: “Riggs maps Green Grow the Lilacs across this contested territory, which includes references to Dog Crick (Dog Creek) and the Verdigree River (Verdigris River) as well as to Catoosie (Catoosa), Sweetwater, Justus, Claremore, Vinita, Bushyhead, Pryor, and Sequoyah” (Red, 78). Indicative of the violence of settlers’ incursions into Indian Territory, the audience learns Aunt Eller’s husband was murdered after he challenged a sale of sick hogs from Len Slocum (145–6). A widow, she also takes care of her niece Laurey, who has lost both parents, one of whom was Eller’s brother. In spite of the hardships Aunt Eller and Laurey face, strong kinship ties sustain the family and community. Riggs’s stage directions open the play on Cherokee land: It is a radiant summer morning several years ago, the kind of morning which, enveloping the shapes of earth—men, cattle in a meadow, blades of the young corn, streams—makes them seem to exist now for the first time, their images giving off a visible golden emanation that is partly true and partly a trick of imagination focusing to keep alive a loveliness that may pass away. 3 The phrase “to keep alive a loveliness that may pass away” suggests the precarious balance of Cherokee life in the face of allotment and impending Oklahoma statehood. Tensions quickly arise between Curly and Jeeter, a dangerous farm hand, over Laurey. More than a love triangle, this dispute mirrors the encroaching violence and materialism of white settlers pushing into Indian Territory. As Mohler explains: The play’s major conflict centers on Jeeter’s treatment of and desire for Laurey. He frightens her when he first feels rejected by her, and then, following her wedding, sets fire to a haystack on which the newlyweds sit. His attitude toward Laurey is more possessive than 69

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affectionate, marked by his turn toward violence as she declares her love for another man. “Native,” 66 Curly, on the other hand, loves Laurey and seeks to become part of her family and build a life with her. In spite of these cultural connections, the records suggest Green Grow the Lilacs never had a production staged with Cherokee dramaturgy until November 2010, when Christy Stanlake directed the US Naval Academy Masqueraders at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC. In an interview with Molly Stephey on November 4, 2010, Stanlake articulates her vision for this production: For almost eighty years, this play has been produced as if it harbors no Native presence, but if you really look at the script, you see characters asserting Native American intellectual traditions, people surviving despite overwhelming political changes, and ceremonial actions relating people to one another and the land around them. This is the beauty of Riggs’ writing. He introduced a Native theatrical language onto the Broadway stage when most portrayals of Native people were pure stereotype. He gave the American Theatre an element of Native dramaturgy, which we are just now beginning to see and celebrate. As far as I know, this is one of if not the only, staging of Riggs’ Green Grow the Lilacs to use Native American theatrical staging practices, but I am certain that this sort of interpretation of his plays is going to grow to be the norm. Emphasizing the Cherokee elements, she further articulates the importance of Native “ceremony” in the play, explaining: “Scene 5 will showcase the communal values of this Cherokee community”; those will be emphasized even more by Curly, “when he honors the four directions with Laurey after their marriage.” Noting a dramaturgical reversal in the staging, Stanlake continues: “The shivoree in Scene 6, then, works as an opposite type of ceremony. Rather than the clockwise circles we see characters dance to in the party scene at Old Man Peck’s, the shivoree dance undoes the community: the men dance counter clockwise and engage in profane gestures that damage the community.” Stanlake’s direction of the scene drew heavily upon Riggs’s dramaturgical pairing of Laurey and the Cherokee homelands. The production emphasized the men’s strange conflation of lust for Laurey and 70

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desire to possess her allotment, as they gathered beneath the newlyweds’ bedroom window: 3rd Man

[Curley] shore got him sump’n there!

1st Man Couple of sections! 2nd Man

Grazin’ and timber and plowed land!

4th Man

Money!

............................................. 5th Man And God! She’s a purty un, too! Riggs, Green, 122 Unlike Oklahoma!’s romantic focus, Riggs’s portrayal of the wedding night is disturbingly dark. Stanlake’s production highlighted Riggs’s suggestion that Laurey might be gang-raped by the mob that invades her house, pulls her from Curley, and forces her to walk through their crowd, “alone, pale and shaken . . . in a nightgown, her hair down about her shoulders,” as the men jeer about her chastity: “Ain’t no right to be in no nightgown!” and the Trail of Tears: “Yay, Curly, and it’s one more river to cross!” (125, 128, 129). Riggs’s dramaturgy boldly stages the interconnections between violence against Indigenous women and settler colonizers’ views of land exploitation for personal gain. In this way, Riggs’s playwriting foreshadows the activist, feminist stance of Indigenous playwrights to come. The ending of Green Grow the Lilacs, unlike the upbeat ending of Oklahoma! which dodges the moral consequences of Jud’s death with an impromptu trial clearing Curly, focuses on communal responsibility. Reminding the audience of their place in Indian Territory, Aunt Eller declares: “Why, we’re territory folks—we ort to hang together. I don’t mean hang—I mean stick. What’s the United States? It’s just a furrin country to me” (161). Here Aunt Eller’s activism perhaps echoes aspects of the Four Mothers Society, founded by “the Creek, Cherokee, Choctaw, and Chickasaw irreconcilables” and their ongoing opposition to allotment (Debo, 54). With the consensus of the crowd, Aunt Eller convinces Old Man Peck to grant Curly and Laurey their wedding night, agreeing that Curly must return to the federal marshal the next day to plead self-defense and face the consequences of killing Jeeter. Mohler emphasizes the importance of community throughout the play: 71

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Riggs’ intimate understanding of Native epistemology heavily influenced the vision of community he proposes in this play. Here, community gathers its strength by holding onto aspects of tradition while bracing for political and cultural changes. This concept of community is based on an all-encompassing though dynamic relationship with the landscape and the ancestors who lived and worked on the land in previous generations. “Native,” 67 Thus, while Green Grow the Lilacs commemorates a transitional time for the Cherokee Nation prior to Oklahoma statehood, its focus remains on Indian Territory.

The Cherokee Night In sharp contrast, The Cherokee Night, Riggs’s most explicit play about the Western Cherokee, written at the same as Green Grow the Lilacs, exposes the devastating effects of allotment and statehood. These assaults included forced assimilation on the Cherokee people, destructive ideology of intense individualism, intentional disruption of communal kinship ties, federal break-up of the Cherokee nation, and US government seizure of millions of acres of communal tribal lands to open them up to Euro-American settlers (Deloria, Jr., Behind, 5–12). The Cherokee Night premiered in June 1932 at the Hedgerow Theatre, Rose Valley, Pennsylvania as an out-of-town run for a planned Broadway production, which never occurred due to controversies over its content and form (Witham, 85). Riggs’s concern with his Cherokee craft and moral vision is suggested by the care with which he developed The Cherokee Night. His final research included visits to Claremore, Norman, and Tahlequah in Oklahoma in spring of 1931 (Aughtry, 38). In production notes for the play, entitled “What characteristics of the Cherokee are portrayed,” he also enumerated contrasting traditional values as “bravery, sense of ritual, independence, pride, cunning, fierceness, aesthetic sense, in sum their authentic glory” as well as the “present perversion of these qualities” (qtd. in Braunlich, “Cherokee,” 47). According to Weaver, “Riggs clearly intended The Cherokee Night to be a communitist statement” (That, 101). Combining “ ‘community’ and ‘activism or activist,’ ” Weaver describes this concept of “communitism” as articulating “a proactive commitment to Native community” (43). While 72

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recognizing the diversity among communities, Weaver also stresses that community “seeks to embrace the entire created order, including plants, animals, Mother Earth herself ” (Other, 304). At the Hedgerow Theatre, Riggs worked together with director Jasper Deeter on a sequence of seven achronological scenes that depict Western Cherokee youth’s struggle (Witham, 84). These occur “during summer 1915, spring 1927, winter 1931, summer 1906, summer 1913, fall 1919, and winter 1895” (Darby, “Broadway,” 11). So important was this order for the audience to understand that Riggs with Deeter’s support provided an author’s program note for the premiere production at the Hedgerow Theatre on June 12, 1932: The time sense, or rather the lack of chronological sequences, is not to be thought of as a stunt. The intent of the play, stated in scene one in somewhat supernatural terms, is meant to carry the play forward in space exactly the same way as the mind—dealing with a subject— draws out of past or future or present, impartially, the verbal or visual images which will serve best to illustrate and illuminate a meaning. qtd. in Witham, 84 These time sequences reflect what Paula Gunn Allen describes as “the ritual nature of time” (Sacred, 94). Similarly, in her dramaturgical analysis of the play, Stanlake argues that The Cherokee Night functions as “a linguistic, platial ceremony,” as the seven scenes thematically represent the seven clans of the Cherokee nation and their order follows the clans’ ceremonial arrangement “around the sacred fire of . . . ceremonial grounds” (Native, 93). Riggs draws on Native performance elements of land and music to tie scenes together. In his book on the Hedgerow Theatre and Jasper Deeter, Barry Witham recounts that Riggs had planned a set in which Claremore Mound, the location of the 1817 battle, would be in every scene. “The mound,” according to Witham, “is a contested place in Cherokee lore serving as a background for the violence they perpetuated against the Osage as well as a sacred burial ground for the fallen victims and the warriors” (82). To achieve this effect, Riggs collaborated closely with Deeter with “the prominent cyclorama to project and establish the presence of the Claremore Mound hovering over each of the individual scenes” (84). Seeking to unify seemingly disjointed scenes for the audience, Riggs and Deeter also “worked together to establish a sound score—principally drumbeats—that captured emotional moments and provided transitions between the scenes” as integral to the performance (84). The stage directions in the 1936 published play provide 73

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elaborate details for the placement of the Mound and the use of the drum score. In two New York Times reviews, entitled “The Play: Riggs Worships the Great Spirit” and “Country Drama: Mr. Riggs’ ‘The Cherokee Night’ as Acted at the Hedgerow Theatre Near Philadelphia—Poetic Tragedy in Tortured Form,” leading critic Brooks Atkinson disparages the opening production for its unconventional structure and focus on “rural” issues. Aughtry maintains, however, that Riggs chose to maintain the integrity of the structure when asked to revise the play and make it more commercial for a Broadway run and mainstream audience (156). Program notes indicate Riggs’s production at the University of Iowa in December 1932 followed the same order of scenes, including scene 4. The first New York production, which had the same order, was several years later at the Provincetown Playhouse presented by the Studio Theatre as part of the Federal Theatre Project on July 20, 1936 (Cassal, 29). Consistent with the ravages of Oklahoma statehood, The Cherokee Night exposes intense social and cultural degeneration, personal and communal, after allotment. Addressing some criticism of the predominance of “doom” in The Cherokee Night, James H. Cox notes that “[for] Riggs . . . this doom, however, is an explicit product of a devastating colonial and settler-colonial history that included removal, the land run, and Oklahoma statehood” (Red, 66). The Cherokee Night opens in 1915 at twilight. Scene 1 shows how disruptive effects of allotment policies have already taken their toll on respectful kinship relations between Cherokee youth and their elders. Young people—Viney Jones, Hutch Moree, Audeal Coombs, Art Osburn, Bee Newcomb, and Gar Breedan—picnic by Claremore Mound, unaware they are near a Cherokee burial site. Jim Talbert, their elder, startles them and scornfully shouts at them. Then almost in a trance, Talbot dramatically evokes a vision he had of a Cherokee warrior recounting the Battle of Claremore between the Cherokee and Osage.4 Exposing the breakdown of spiritual responsibilities, the warrior in Talbert’s vision angrily mourns the current moral breakdown. He then reveals the central question of the play: “Are you sunk already to the white man’s way?” (Riggs, Cherokee, 150). The speech ends with a final indictment for abandoning their spiritual responsibilities and traditions: “Night—night—has come to our people!” (150). Rather than heeding this vision, the youth, especially Art, scorn Talbert, scaring him away. As the performance unfolds, scene after scene probes the dangers of “the white man’s way.” The next two scenes in Oklahoma expose major ruptures 74

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in kinship values after statehood. In scene 2 (1927), Bee, now a prostitute, accepts a bribe of $25 from the sheriff to betray Art, who is in jail. Clearly understanding Art will hang, she still tricks him into confessing that he murdered his Cherokee wife (167–8). Scene 3 takes place in the winter of 1931 and exposes the collapse of family care as Viney, a financially secure Cherokee woman, cruelly disregards her widowed sister Sarah’s pain. Suffering from acute “rheumatism,” Sarah is nearly destitute, emblematic of the poverty facing many Cherokee people having lost or been cheated out of allotment lands decades after statehood (179–82). Viney, married to the white mayor of Quapaw and living in a mansion, could easily provide for her sister’s medical care and help her sister and niece live comfortably. However, lacking compassion, she shuns her kinship duties and is only willing to provide fifty cents for her impoverished sister. Scene 4 occurs in 1906 during the summer before Oklahoma statehood. This scene exposes and condemns racism, serving as a powerful indictment of some Cherokees who owned and enslaved people in the South (McLoughlin, 121–52). Now young boys, Gar, Hutch, and Art show a vicious disdain for a black man who was murdered. Kirby Brown, in his critical race analysis of this scene, powerfully argues: Though the boys flee the scene in terror from what they think is the blood of the murdered black man on their hands, the real blood is arguably on the hands of those Cherokees who advocated the adoption of black slavery and elders like Talbert for failing to prevent young boys from becoming men like them. 159 Emphasizing Riggs’s indictment of this immorality, Brown concludes: “One is not born with racism, the scene suggests. One learns it, and it is learned early” (159). As a counterpoint to the boys’ appalling racism, the stage directions at the end of the scene describe larger than life-sized figures of an African American man followed by an “Indian” man, perhaps symbolizing brotherhood (201–2). Stanlake reads their representation in terms of kinship, an “equivalence, reflecting a shared condition, a shared history of oppression” that physicalizes Riggs’s stage directions describing a “ ‘fevered and aching disquiet at the pit of the world’ [and] reveals a land haunted by the way human beings have turned on upon one another” (Native, 75). Witham’s research suggests that this controversial scene was cut in the original production at the Hedgerow Theatre, revealing a “puzzle in the production 75

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history of The Cherokee Night” (86). Notably, Riggs explicitly condemns racism again in Hang on to Love (originally The Domino Parlor), when Jasper, an African American, is violently attacked and beaten. After intermission, The Cherokee Night’s indictment of immoral colonial intrusion intensifies. The next scene, set in 1913, reveals Gar, mourning that there is “No Tribe to go to, no Council to help me”; in desperate need of elders’ advice, he risks attending an outlaw fundamentalist Christian church (223). Evoking damaging evidence of white incursions into Cherokee lands and communities after statehood, the stage directions indicate a small church upon “Eagle Bluff” above “Tahlequah, seat of the Cherokee Nation” as “a bell begins to toll” (205). Attacked by Jonas, the leader of the sect, Gar is almost killed for not converting. Through powerful staging that simultaneously refutes Jonas’s mainstream perception of the Cherokee nation as dying and condemns his brutal religious persecution, Gar refuses to capitulate, with shouts of “You can’t kill me! I’m going to live. Live!” (230). Scene 6, set in the fall of 1919, finds Hutch with a wealthy Osage girlfriend, turning his back on his Cherokee community. A drumbeat and a fire on the mound open the final scene of the performance set in 1895 in the Cherokee Nation and Indian Territory. The scene opens as Gray-Wolf, a Cherokee elder, sings while his grandson listens. Gunshots of settler violence intrude and prompt Gray-Wolf to recall another terrible night of violence when the boy’s father, seeking food for his famished wife and child, was murdered for “a side of beef ” (251). A brutal act serves as an assault on traditional Cherokee values of harmony and community. Gar’s father, Edgar “Spench” Breedan, an escaped criminal, tries to force his way inside. Realizing that Spench is gravely injured, Gray-Wolf compassionately seeks to help him. Reflecting on his criminal past, Spench condemns his heritage: “Bad blood. Too much Indian, they tell me.” Honoring Cherokee peaceful traditions and responsibilities, Gray-Wolf counters: “Not enough Indian” (258). Affirming his spiritual connection to his ancestors, he maintains: “I live peaceful. I ain’t troubled. I remember the way my people lived in quiet times. Think of my ancestors. It keeps me safe” (258). Peace seems elusive as violence quickly escalates. Rather than arresting Spench, the posse leader Tinsley coldly shoots him through a window to get the bounty “money” (260). Appropriating religion to justify this act of brutality, Tinsley warns Gray-Wolf: “Let this be a lesson and a warnin’. Teach your grandson. Tell ever’body what it means to oppose the law. You Indians must think you own things out here. This is God’s country out here—and 76

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God’s a white man. Don’t forget that” (260). As Darby wrote in “Broadway (Un)Bound”: In this defining scene in modern Native American theatre, the staging of Gray-Wolf ’s compassion and spirituality in opposition to Tinsley’s brutality and hubris performs a powerful reversal of the distorted mainstream American dichotomy of civilized/savage. On stage Indian equals civilized and white equals savage, thereby affirming Cherokee spiritual sovereignty and repudiating the ideological betrayal and deadly violence of the Dawes and Curtis Acts and subsequent allotment. 18 This scene also reverses the iconic mainstream media image of the white hero winning the West. Here the so-called hero is exposed as a ruthless murderer with no scruples. Had the play followed the conventional Broadway linear chronology, as Riggs was urged to do, this scene would have opened the play, and all subsequent scenes would have reified a sense of loss and death to the Cherokee nation. By having Gray-Wolf at the end, the final scene reclaims Indian Territory and Cherokee nationhood and sovereignty. It also instantiates Cherokee values assaulted by loss and assimilation throughout the previous scenes, which all occur historically later. As the “drum has begun to beat, low and throbbing and final,” part of the drum score Riggs designed, the stage is filled with ceremonial power—the path back to wholeness and balance. Riggs’s final stage directions highlight the land: “The fire flickers. Claremore Mound glitters in the night. A few stars are in the sky” (262). This lighting cue establishes presence, not absence. As Quo-Li Driskill maintains, “The end of the play—which we must remember is the chronological beginning—is a call to intervene in the colonial forces that threaten Cherokee well-being” (“Ha’nts,” 190).

Out of Dust Riggs returns to these issues again in Out of Dust in 1949, a tragedy influenced by King Lear, about the Grants, a Euro-American ranching family, whom Riggs’s opening scene locates specifically on a cattle drive: “the Shawnee Cattle Trail through Indian Territory, in the early ’eighties” (215). This play 77

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directly contests the morality of “civilization” arguments used politically to establish Oklahoma statehood (Bannan, 787–95). After Out of Dust’s August 8–13, 1949 tryout at the Westport Country Playhouse in Westport, Connecticut, it never went on to Broadway as planned. However, according to Darby, “Out of Dust remains a pivotal play in Native and US Theatre, probing the moral tensions of nation-building discourses used to legitimate breaking up Indian Territory, seizing Native lands, and dispossessing their communities at the end of the nineteenth century” (“Civilization,” 64). For the production, Riggs chose leading set designer Robert Edmond Jones, known for his powerful staging (Pendleton, 2). Against the family’s tragedy on stage were Jones’s sets evoking the open lands of Indian Territory and their resonance with Cherokee life before allotment and Oklahoma statehood. Variety’s reviewer, offered high praise: “Robert Edmond Jones, in a series of prairie views that are quite breathtaking, provides the evening with its best flavor” (Doul, 58). In analyzing this play, Weaver emphasizes: “For Riggs the land itself works upon its inhabitants. For Natives it is a source of strength and memory—of survivance. Upon outlanders, however, it works a deleterious mojo. It debilitates and literally demoralizes” (“A Lantern,” 320). Through Riggs’s brilliant dramaturgy, the land in Out of Dust prevails.

Russet Mantle Russet Mantle, Riggs’s longest-running Broadway play, premiered on January 16, 1936, at the Masque Theatre (Riggs, Russet, 1). In the play’s opening production, Riggs cast Kuruks Pahitu (Pawnee) as Salvador, the San Ildefonso (Playbill, 13). 5 This contemporary comedy, Riggs’s first, is set in Santa Fe, New Mexico, an important place in Riggs’s life: as a very ill University of Oklahoma senior, he had moved there for his health. A site of healing, Santa Fe offered Riggs an array of life-enhancing opportunities including improved health, writing support, and a safe haven as “a closeted gay man” (Witham, 76). In Santa Fe, Riggs met Ida Rauh Eastman, an early member of the Provincetown Players, who became his life-long mentor and directed Riggs’s Knives from Syria (76–7). Nevertheless, Riggs was also acutely aware of the contradictions posed by Santa Fe’s wealthy and middle-class Euro-American residents. Shortly before Russet Mantle, he and John Hughes produced the film A Day in Santa Fe revealing these incongruities (Cox, “The Cross”). Although Russet Mantle’s title remains an enigma, the quotation it draws from held a prominent place on the playbill: 78

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Figure 5 Kuruks Pahitu accompanying Te Ata in her show, circa 1940s. Courtesy of JudyLee Oliva. “But, look, the morn, in russet mantle clad, Walks o’er the dew of yon high eastward hill.” —from Hamlet (9) In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Horatio makes this observation as the dawn’s light drives the ghost away. Riggs’s intentionality suggests a range of interpretations. First, the references to “russet,” “morn,” and “high eastward hill” clearly locate the play on Indigenous lands and orient it to the east cardinal direction. The choice to quote from Hamlet, a play associated with corruption and betrayals, possibly also signals deeper moral issues. Aughtry suggests: “Thus Hamlet’s ‘morn, in russet mantle clad’ may be a new day for all the principals” except Effie, after some of the ghosts of materialism vanish (54). Riggs as an innovative playwright, who admired William Shakespeare and his originality, might also be subtly challenging current critics who faulted his work, as T. S. Eliot once criticized Hamlet as being “most certainly an artistic failure” (90). In his 1919 analysis,“Hamlet and His Problems,” Eliot included this particular “russet mantle” quotation (90). 79

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Aughtry provides early important background on Russet Mantle, noting “the lead role had been written with his friend Joel Beal in mind” (51). While recognizing the deeper importance of the piece as a play about the Depression and conflicting values, Aughtry points out that most East Coast critics did not seem to quite understand the whole work, as they tended to be “lavish in their praise of the comic portions of the play and generally cool toward the more ‘serious’ parts of it” (52). One of the few critics who praised the play for its deeper social critique was Stanley Burnshaw in New Masses. His review, “Serious Laughter,” stated: “Its subject is the problem of contemporary youth trying to free itself from the stifling, tawdry meshes of the great American dream” (Burnshaw, 28). Describing Russet Mantle as “a searching picture woven with the fire and grace of an incisive lyric,” Burnshaw proclaimed it “a work of deep seriousness” (28). While admitting concerns about the level of social consciousness of the youthful hero and heroine, John Galt and Kay Rowley Kincaid, Burnshaw continued: “And by arguing we would neglect the splendid fact that this tragi-comedy is a rich addition to the social drama,” and “one of the most convincing of social plays” (29). Though set in the Depression, this remarkable play addresses contemporary issues resonating today, inviting audiences to explore some of the more dubious social values propping up the so-called American Dream, including selfishness, materialism, and racism in juxtaposition to crushing poverty—issues of deep concern to Riggs. While at first glance a comedy, Russet Mantle may seem far away from the struggles with poverty and violence addressed in Riggs’s earlier plays, yet the conflict of values remain: between individual success built on greed and selfishness and communal harmony based on kinship and sharing. Act 1 takes place in “The portal of the Kincaid Ranch, in Santa Fe,” near the house, owned by a semi-retired couple, Susanna and Horace Kincaid from Philadelphia, who, while still wealthy, decry their losses in the Depression (Riggs, Russet, 2). Edith J. R. Isaacs, editor of Theatre Arts Monthly, captured the smug entitlement of the Kincaids in the premiere: “There, avoiding the heat of the day, are Mr. and Mrs. Kincaid (Jay Fassett and Evelyn Varden) who have packed up a fortune made in business in the East and have undertaken the far more trying task of raising apples and chickens as a pastime for middle-aged leisure” (177). Frivolous and racist Effie Rowley, Susanna’s sister, and her free-spirited daughter Kay are visiting from Louisville, Kentucky. Colonialism underpins the Kincaids’s wealth and status. Cox notes: “Riggs aligns both characters culturally with the region’s first European colonial presence”—the Spanish (“The Cross,” 394). He observes: “While 80

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they appreciate Santa Fe as European or Old World, they have a shallow, ostensibly benign, and condescending relationship with the Pueblo Indians, including their friend Salvador from San Ildefonso Pueblo” (394). This alignment with colonial forces furthers both Native oppression and erasure. Goeman explains: “In relation to settler colonialism imposing colonial geographies must be understood as yet another method to eliminate or eradicate or absorb that which is Native. If applied to geographies, we can come to understand the simultaneous unmarking of the area as Native land with a mapping of it as private corporate property as part of the geographic knowledge regimes” (Mark, 30). Kincaid’s close ties to the stock market embody such corporate greed. Against the smug comfort of the Kincaids and the seeming purposelessness of the Rowleys, the harsh realities of the Depression intrude as John Galt, a poet and sometime handyman, makes his entrance by asking for a job. He admits he stole an apple because he was hungry. On stage the injustice between a homeless man and the wealthy Kincaids is palpable. Yet, seeing that John is penniless and reduced to stealing food, Horace, self-righteous in his success, selfishly has no job for John. Susanna, feeling sorry for him, offers him one working and living in her chicken house. Buffered by privilege, Effie and Horace prod him about his despair about the world, suggesting he is at fault. Praising “a land, vast and beautiful and fertile” and the balance of nature after devastating weather conditions, John offers them a powerful indictment of the Depression’s inhumanity: But what happens? The cold stops. Rains fall. The sun shines. The rigors and terrors of Nature come to an end. But the rigor and terror of man against man never cease. I’ve seen it. I know! In textile mills, railroad yards, on docks, in the streets. Machine guns mowing down men in Wisconsin. Men and women hounded and flogged and tortured in San Francisco. Riot squads, strike breakers, nausea gas— bayonets! And starvation! And voices crying out! For what? A little bread, a little sun, a little peace and delight! I’ve heard them, I tell you. I’ve seen. And I know! This is reality, this is the stuff our senses are gorged with! Riggs, Russet, 50 This huge disparity contrasts with Cherokee communal values of care for all. Incapable of compassion, Horace reacts scornfully to John’s impassioned speech about suffering and poverty, dismissing his ideas as a result of 81

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“reading these wild-eyed papers” (Riggs, Russet 51). Touting his faith in capitalism, he encourages John to “get a job” and focus on a life of acquisition, accumulating wealth and property, which John challenges (51). Horace’s view reiterates the materialistic views of “civilization” Senator Henry Dawes used in his address promoting allotment when he advocated selfishness as a virtue. Donald L. Fixico (Shawnee, Sac & Fox, Muscogee Creek, and Seminole) further explains the dangers inherent in this perspective: “This exploitation in the form of American capitalism disregards the future for immediate financial gain. Far worse is desecrating the earth and destroying the spiritual and physical harmony and balance of all things” (“Struggle,” 41). Rather than refuting her husband, Susanna, somewhat self-satisfied in her seeming generosity, prepares John for his new job in the chicken house. The scene ends as sparks fly when Kay approaches John, wishing him “joy” and observing how he is “all alone” (Riggs, Russet, 56, 57). Russet Mantle’s setting, designed by notable designer Donald Oenslager, artfully framed these social issues through materially contrasting the affluence of the Kincaid ranch’s entranceway in Act  1 to the starkness of their chicken house in Act 2. This contrast visually invokes the realities of the Depression’s great disparity of wealth. In this bare space, feelings are also stripped down as John and Kay begin to fall in love, defying social conventions. Framed by moonlight, Kay enters met first by John’s brusqueness. Kay, in a deft gender reversal, responds with Romeo’s line, “O, speak again, bright angel!” (Riggs, Russet, 66). As they flirt with lines from Romeo and Juliet, John smugly comments, “I see you read,” to which Kay replies in a nod to Shakespeare, “Only the best things, only the best” (66). Testing her, John switches plays, and asks, “How are you in ‘Much Ado About Nothing’?” She easily responds, “Busy” (66). As Kay matches John with her intellectual prowess and wit, much to his surprise, he is drawn to her. In this austere setting, John admits his poverty and challenges Kay to have the courage to embrace her strength and true identity. While appreciating his lyricism, Kay challenges his motives. Tensions arise when each of the Kincaids arrives separately to visit John, warning him of Kay’s morality while she hides. Susanna cautions that Kay “is a bit wild” (Riggs, Russet, 76). She then confesses the great sadness of her life: marrying Horace for money and security rather than the man she loved, who was poor. Intensifying the attack on Kay, Horace visits next to alert John that “Kay’s a dangerous girl” (82). Horace then encourages John to make the right financial and marital choices for his career while lamenting the failure of his marriage to Susanna. When Horace departs, Kay emerges from hiding, 82

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stung by their judgment. Ashamed, she tries to push John away, who assures her of his understanding. Feelings deepen as she worries that she has “been cheap and stupid,” confiding in John that she visited him out of “loneliness” more than the “sordid” intention “of seduction”; after their sharing time, she now feels “Joy!” (90, 91). They kiss, and frightened by her feelings, Kay flees. In a serious twist, Act 3, set a few months later in the portal, opens with turmoil over Kay’s unexpected pregnancy. When Kay refuses to name the father, her mother’s racism evident earlier in Act  1 runs rampant as she insists: “It must have been one of these natives” (109). She then verbally assaults the Kincaids’s friend Salvador, who is visiting: “Oh! What if it was one of those savage Indians—maybe one from Ildefonso?” ordering: “Go away! We don’t want you!” (109). Emphasizing the aggression of her vitriol, the stage directions indicate: “SALVADOR backs up, runs across, flabbergasted by what is evidently an insane woman” (109). Pursuing him, Effie intensifies her attack: “I don’t care if you are red and blood-thirsty or anything! I don’t trust you. Go on away! Now you shoo—you hear me!” (109). In his analysis of this scene, Cox explains: Effie expresses multiple dominant, reductive views of indigenous people: they live on the plains; they are all alike; they are a sexual threat to white women. Riggs satirizes rather than perpetuates these views. By ascribing these views to such an unpalatable character, Riggs encourages his audience to reject them. “Cross,” 394 During the first production, the dignified presence of Pawnee actor Kuruks Pahitu, playing Salvador, also undermined Effie’s blatant act of racism. Entrenched in restrictive social norms of the 1930s, rather than offering support, Horace and Effie, Kay’s own mother, harshly condemn her for unladylike behavior. Standing up for herself, Kay declares: “I am a lady” (108). Challenging the gender norms of the day, the rest of the act supports Kay’s larger definition of being a lady: a strong woman who controls her own life. Riggs seemingly aligns her with some of the issues explored by the Provincetown Players who “asserted sexual equality by resisting, delaying, or attempting to restructure marriage and by engaging in free-love unions” (Black, 30). A lyrical love poem asking for a deeper commitment is found in Kay’s room, revealing the father as John Galt. In an act of love, she first tries to protect him, begging them not to tell him in order not to trap him. When John admits to writing the poem, Horace attacks John’s social standing, first 83

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calling him a “damned upstart,” then “A cheap scheming hypocrite! A low class crook” (Riggs, Russet, 114). In response to John welcoming the baby as “swell” and “marvelous,” Horace the patriarch finds John unsuitable and orders him to leave (114). Kay’s mother and Susanna, stung by what they perceive as the shame of an unwanted pregnancy, try to convince her to go abroad to have and leave the baby. Standing up to all of them in solidarity with Kay, John responds: “Oh please! You don’t seem to understand. Kay and I love each other. It’s important. It’s real. We’re not going to be separated” (115). Rather than accepting John’s love and commitment and offering to help the couple and their baby, the family continues to attack him for his poverty and social standing, exposing their elitism. Susanna worries “how” Kay is “going to live,” and Effie reminds her of the need for “clothes” (116). Horace insists, “a girl that’s used to decency and comfort has got to have decency and comfort!” (116). Caught up in their arguments, Kay is initially reluctant, constrained by her old social world and worried too about how they are going to get by. Impassioned, John scolds her for being “a coward” and asks why her fear rather than “our love” sways her (117). Boldly on stage, John condemns the Kincaids and their lifestyle as “this petty world” and “escape” (118). He then tells Kay he is leaving. When she asks about her “fit,” he explains that he “found” her and found love, and from her, he recognized love’s central role in life (118). In a powerful moment of moral reckoning for their lack of humanity, John confronts Horace and Susanna: “If you dared, you could say ‘God bless you’ to us both. If you dared” (120). He recognizes, though, “their whole world would collapse if they said it” (120). As Russet Mantle closes, Kay, originally played by Martha Sleeper, shows the furthest growth in the play. She moves from “a terrible girl,” according to her mother in Act 1 (17), to a serious young woman who welcomes her unborn child, embraces John’s love, and claims her future. Choosing joy, love, and family, she bravely agrees, “We have to go away!” (120). The play ends with a new beginning for the couple as they boldly walk into “a world that’s our time,” one they will “help make,” based on courage, love, and community, not money, status, and selfishness, inspiring John to conclude, “It will make us!” (120). This ending echoes the final scene of Riggs’s earlier play, Knives from Syria, first produced in Santa Fe in 1925. In this play, a young farmwoman chooses to marry a Syrian peddler, who though much maligned by her mother, offers her love and possibilities beyond the narrow societal limitations and financial struggles of her life on a farm. With this parallel Riggs gives a subtle nod of appreciation to Ida Rauh Eastman (Black, 107). Perhaps not as feminist as some might have liked, 84

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Russet Mantle may affirm the Provincetown women’s aim “to revolutionize all human relationships—to create a new world” (Black, 31). Against a commercial stage that reified Euro-American dominance and colonial ideologies, Lynn Riggs envisioned professional stages, including Broadway, transformed into sites of courageous performances, inclusive spaces enriched by multiple narratives of the Americas, especially Native peoples. This vision remains highly relevant for the entertainment industry today. As Simon Ortiz (Acoma Pueblo) notes in his landmark essay,“Towards a National Indian Literature: Cultural Authenticity in Nationalism,” “voice” in Native stories “is not a mere dramatic expression of a sociohistorical experience, but it is a persistent call by a people determined to be free; it is an authentic voice for liberation” (12). Riggs sought to be that voice.

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PART THREE REVOLUTIONIZING THE STAGE

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Many of the promises the United States government had made in the Indian Relocation Act of 1956 (also known as Public Law 959 and the Adult Vocation Program) to Native peoples in exchange for terminating tribal federal recognition and surrendering reservation lands were not met adequately. Although promised quality job training, job placement, and subsidized housing, many relocated individuals found themselves living in skid row conditions with few training or work opportunities. Designed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) to reduce federal funding required by the terms of existing treaties, the termination policies of the 1950s left communities and families divided geographically, culturally, and economically (Deloria, Jr., Custer, 54–77). An unforeseen consequence of the termination and relocation policies of the 1950s was the beginning of pan-tribal urban communities in many of the major cities across the US. The impact of these termination policies was catastrophic: people who moved found themselves isolated and at a socioeconomic disadvantage in a racially segregated, inhospitable world. However, such turmoil led people from disparate Native communities to band together celebrating their shared traditions, fighting police brutality, and beginning to organize for the shared political goals of civil rights, sovereignty, and self-determination. The seeds for what would become the American Indian Movement were sown in the modest pan-tribal cultural centers of San Francisco, Minneapolis, St. Louis, San Jose, Dallas, Oklahoma City, Seattle, Tulsa, Cleveland, Los Angeles, Denver, and Salt Lake City (Cornell, 189–90). In Red Power Rising, Bradley G. Shreve details how in rural areas, beginning in 1961 in Gallup, New Mexico, Native students formed and participated in early stages of the National Indian Youth Council (NIYC) and “launched the Red Power movement” (3). Joane Nagel describes NIYC as “the first of the Indian activist organizations formed during the civil rights era” (129). One of its founders, activist Clyde Warrior (Ponca) “always had a great deal of respect for tradition. He learned the Ponca language from his grandparents, memorized traditional ceremonies and songs, and became a highly respected fancy dancer” (Shreve, 16). By 1964, “activism” became “a part of the greater intertribal fight to preserve Native culture, uphold treaty 89

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rights, push for self-determination, and promote tribal sovereignty” (119). This commitment fueled fish-ins in the Pacific Northwest, which aimed to keep treaty fishing rights (120–38). Thus, the social unrest that characterizes the 1960s and 1970s, an era which saw the development of the Civil Rights Movement and witnessed its limitations, was felt deeply by communities of color throughout the United States. The hope promised by legislation aimed at ensuring equal protection and opportunity for all US citizens began to fade as lived experience illustrated that such legal triumphs were only small steps along the continuing journey to reverse systemic discrimination and rampant racism. The urban Indian community, whose reservations were dismantled during the Relocation Acts of the 1950s and who had spent over a decade working and living in cities whose socioeconomic and political power did not belong to them, found solace in pan-tribal cultural events (Fixico, Indian, 108–18). This need to develop and sustain Native community and traditions helped spur other significant pan-tribal activist groups throughout major urban centers, such as the American Indian Movement (AIM) first organized in Minneapolis in 1968 and the Native American Rights Fund (NARF) headquartered in Boulder, Colorado, among others.1 In an immediate and visceral way, Native American rights and coalition building were tied to the cultural arts. Despite linguistic and cultural differences among tribal people, the need to create wellness and balance through storytelling, song, dance, and ceremony bound them together. The history of the organized fight for civil and tribal rights is inseparable from the right of tribal and supra-tribal cultural expression. Political and economic goals could not be achieved without cultural revitalization and creative endeavor. The holistic resistance efforts of the 1960s and 1970s are perhaps best illustrated by the collaborative public activism staged by pantribal organizations and the performances generated by Institute of American Indian Arts students and others, such as the Native American Theatre Ensemble company and Spiderwoman Theater, discussed later in this chapter.

Activism and Protest as Performance After several smaller-scale staged protests organized and performed by various national Native organizations, a large group of college students and youth, led by Mohawk activist Richard Oakes—including those from the 90

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newly founded University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) American Indian Studies Center, and San Francisco State University’s (SFSU) Native American Studies Program (now American Indian Studies Department)— decided to replicate two previous shorter occupations of Alcatraz Island in the San Francisco Bay; however, this time, “Indians of All Tribes” extended the scale of the protest considerably (Oakes, 37–40). Joining Oakes, roughly a hundred Native people sailed to the rocky, windswept island on November 20, 1969, to mount the “longest prolonged occupation of a federal facility by Indian people to this very day” (T. Johnson, “Occupation,” 68). While the activists grew in numbers, the occupation did not result in the demands originally laid out by occupiers, who called for the deed to Alcatraz Island and enough funding to build a cultural center and school for Indians of All Tribes. However, like other large-scale occupations to follow, the demonstration was successful in uniting a pan-tribal community dedicated to Native rights and cultural revitalization, while awakening non-Indian allies from across the US and world to the socioeconomic inequity contemporary Native American peoples faced.2 According to Vine Deloria, Jr., “Alcatraz was the master stroke of Indian activism” (qtd. in J. Nagel, 132). We cannot analyze Native performance in the 1970s without a serious evaluation of the performative aspects of Native American (often called American Indian in this era) protest and activism. The three most dramatic and effective actions were: the aforementioned nineteen-month occupation of Alcatraz Island between November 1969 and June 1971; the 1972 crosscountry walk called “The Trail of Broken Treaties,” which culminated in approximately 500 Indians overtaking the BIA in Washington, DC; and the 1973 occupation of Wounded Knee, South Dakota led by members of AIM and community members from the surrounding Dakota, Nakota, and Lakota reservations. This high-profile activism demanded attention from the world, which had ignored the economic and political challenges Native Americans had faced for centuries. The power of these demonstrations asserted the presence of a pan-tribal network of American Indian activists and staged solidarity and strength in the face of oppression that proved to be a springboard for future Native activism and Native activist art. Indeed, Kiowa/Delaware director-playwright Hanay Geiogamah revisits all three of these momentous concurrent spectacles of community empowerment in his play Foghorn, discussed later in this chapter. While these protests successfully connected community, enacted ceremonial healing, and articulated the needs and concerns of Native people, the US federal government neither immediately nor completely fulfilled the 91

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activists’ demands. Nevertheless, the process of planning and performing these events created material change for those who witnessed or participated. Native people who had been systemically silenced through centuries of biological warfare, genocidal conquest, and settler-forced assimilation policies publicly drew on their traditional values, rituals, and ceremonies, becoming active agents in a country that preferred their absence and passivity. These actions, like many of the Native plays written in the 1970s, actualize politics and ancient wisdom through their shared communal experience and performativity. The third and longest occupation on Alcatraz Island sparked a great deal of media attention (Johnson, “Occupation,” 69). Although it was not the original intent of the Native activists, many non-Native people, including celebrities, joined them on the island or through financial support. Some historians assess that the occupation was undermined by non-Native people who brought drugs and alcohol to the island, tainting the otherwise sympathetic media coverage (Johnson, “Occupation,” 154). But many acknowledge that celebrity support brought much-needed support to the cause, and public attention to the concerns of Native Americans, the smallest and most often ignored American minority group. The drama of these pantribal public occupations and protests was brought into international focus during the Academy Awards of 1973. Marlon Brando refused to accept the Oscar for Best Actor for his performance in The Godfather. Instead, he invited activist/model/actress Sacheen Littlefeather (White Mountain Apache and Yaqui) to make his political statement about the “treatment of American Indians today by the film industry . . . and on television in movie reruns and also with recent happenings at Wounded Knee” (Smith and Warrior, 235–6). This powerful moment highlighted the potency of the timely protests at conveying political issues of inequity to even those who benefit from oppressive systems, such as the majority white, Hollywood elite audience. Purposefully dressed in traditional Apache regalia, Littlefeather stood as a contemporary Indigenous woman in direct conflict with the vanishing Indian narrative that would render her and her people invisible. This performative act of presence in the dramatically colonial space of the Academy Awards shed light on the misrepresentations of Native Americans in film, which all too often homogenize all Native peoples into stereotypes. Littlefeather wore her specific tribal regalia, showing the traditional as a source of personal and political power in this formal, glitzy context.

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Artistic Mentorship as Activism The ways in which urban and rural Native peoples harnessed the wisdom of elders to ground their energy and aspirations was essential to the formation of productive Native American identity politics in the 1970s. This strategy differed largely from that of many other radical and identity-based groups at a time when political action was largely defined by youth resistance to authority. Traditionally, Indigenous cultures transmit their reality—ways of seeing and being in balance in the world, wisdom, medicine, and stories— through the generations. Such life-centered orality relies on elders to hold, adapt as needed, and share metaphysical truths within their communities (Deloria, Jr., “If,” xlii–xliv). This type of wisdom-based leadership can be seen in the mentorship/apprenticeship practices for Indigenous art making. Traditional Navajo sand painting, for example, must be completed by a medicine man (Hatałii) with the help of apprentices. Only an elder who has trained for years with a mentor Hatałii to learn the designs’ sacred meanings, when to create them, and which healing songs should be sung will be entrusted with ceremonial sand painting. California tribes, known for their intricate and useful baskets, similarly rely on a close mentorship/ apprenticeship relationship, wherein elder women teach their daughters, granddaughters or nieces to weave, determining when their apprentices are ready to learn increasingly complex designs. As no aspect of traditional Native life is completely separate from tribal cosmology, the act of teaching and learning itself can be seen as sacred, the holy passing of wisdom to the next generation. This generational approach to knowledge and creative transmission was acutely under attack for nearly a century, as the US federal government at various points between 1830 and 1930 suppressed Native religion, ceremony, language, visual and performing arts, as discussed in Chapters  2 and 3. Nevertheless, against all odds, important ceremonial and practical wisdom was kept and shared in secrecy. Gerald Vizenor, Anishinaabe and member of the White Earth nation, sees this as integral to “survivance” (Native, 85–6). One example is the Navajo Chantways, a spiritual practice that involves restoring health and well-being through singing specific songs with the accompaniment of a rattle. These ancient ceremonies survived Spanish colonization, multiple relocations, US settler colonization, and “Indian” policies (Huntsman, 89–91). Such examples of cultural survival in the face of repression, poverty, sickness, and genocidal warfare illustrate the interminable strength of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. The 93

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tradition of elders teaching the next generation how to adhere to the ways of the ancestors exemplifies resistance against the policies forced upon Native people by the nation-states that oppressed them. Thus, during the 1970s, Native activists, tribal leaders, elders, and community members pressured Congress to pass the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975 (Public Law 93–638), a major bill recognizing nations’ educational rights—a sharp rebuttal to boarding schools. Continued activism also resulted in the American Indian Religious Freedom Act (Public Law 95-341), major legislation supporting Native religious and cultural rights (Fixico, “U.S.,” 486–92).

Activating Arts Education: Institute of American Indian Arts The various transitions in US Government funded/controlled education for Native Americans follows the shifting attitudes and correlated policies of the government and dominant American culture over the past 150 years. The residential and mission schools that traumatized thousands of Native American and First Nations youth in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries were designed to eradicate Indigenous identity and culture. This legacy of forced assimilation and cultural erasure was finally challenged with the 1962 founding of the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA). In Celebrating Difference, his retrospective history of IAIA, Ryan S. Flahive describes the institute as “an experiment in Indian arts education from a Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) high school to a junior college to an accredited non-profit baccalaureate institution in less than fifty years” (13). The formation and remarkable legacy of IAIA exemplifies a monumental shift in educational policy, from one that had forced the assimilation of Native children into (white) American culture to one that privileged Native selfdetermination and cultural revitalization. Established in Santa Fe, New Mexico, IAIA became an incubator for some of the most important Native artists of the twentieth century—a legacy that continues today. This was in no small part due to the spiritual leadership of Lloyd Kiva New (Cherokee), who served as the founding Art Director and then as President of the Institute from 1968 to 1978. In 1968, New published his essay “Using Cultural Difference as a Basis for Creative Expression,” which articulated his belief that the damage done to Native communities and individuals could be healed by using tribal cultural heritage as a source for extraordinary creative output. New writes: “Given 94

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the opportunity to draw on his own tradition, the Indian artist evolves art forms which are new to the cultural scene, thereby contributing uniquely to the society general” (“Using,” 142). New’s concept honored the unique aesthetics of Native cultures and saw the social and artistic value in innovation and creativity. IAIA’s program recognized that the bridge between social-emotional well-being and economic self-sufficiency must be built on the foundation of Native heritage and traditions. Significantly, New’s vision goes beyond educating and supporting Native youth or Native cultural arts. He takes seriously the predicament of Native American people as a minority culture traumatized by years of violence, loss, and pressure to assimilate; yet he acknowledges the tenacity of Native people, and that theirs is a cultural tradition “rich in architecture, the fine arts, music, pageantry, and the humanities . . . of the highest order” (“Using,” 142). Departing from the zero-sum nature of identity politics and community building efforts that dominated the 1960s and 1970s, New argued that the US, as a diverse nation, offered immense potential for Native creativity and productivity. The unique pedagogy and artistic practice of IAIA illustrates the dynamic and complex ways Native arts transform and are transformed by Native perspectives and cultural traditions. Dr. Louis Ballard (Cherokee/Quapaw), a distinguished musician, was IAIA’s Director of Music. Rolland Meinholtz, appointed IAIA’s theatre director, worked to embody New’s philosophical approach into his work with the Native student actors. Daystar/Rosalie Jones (Pembina Chippewa) recounts that Meinholtz approached her as a choreographer to work on a major production which was to showcase the range of IAIA performing artists in Washington, DC (“Inventing,” 21–2). After the successful performance, she went on to teach at IAIA. Inspired by the students, Jones recounts: “These young people were drawing from both tribe and tradition and from the experience of their own lives. Their generation was making a solid beginning in the process of creating their own theater” (23). A celebrated dancer and choreographer throughout her ongoing career, Jones later created and performed her powerful “dance-drama,” No Home But the Heart (78–106). Della Warrior (Otoe/Missouria), a later President of IAIA, thanked New for his inspiration and reaffirmed his vision for Native arts, stating: the arts are integral expressions of living Native American cultures. The arts have enabled Native cultures to survive the onslaught that sought to destroy them. Without the music, the stories, the dances, the 95

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beauty expressed in the material culture, the culture of Native people would have been destroyed. So it is the arts that carried forth the culture. 300 IAIA was and continues to be an important educational place for selfdetermination through the arts. The model indirectly influenced the first Native American theatrical companies, which were founded contemporaneously to IAIA.

Native American Theatre Ensemble The social political radicalism of the early 1970s set the stage for the emergence of the first creatively autonomous Native American theatre company. As a member of NIYC and inspired by the public protests previously discussed and the powerful activist plays of the Black Arts Movement, El Teatro Campesino, and the off-Broadway avant-garde theatre scene, a young Hanay Geiogamah (Kiowa/Delaware) brought together a pan-tribal group of performers to form the American Indian Theatre Ensemble (AITE) in 1971. The ensemble found its artistic incubator at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, off-off-Broadway (Haugo, “American,” 190–1). The troupe’s early company members studied theatrical discipline and techniques at La MaMa over nine months. Their goals were expressly aimed at enriching, entertaining, and educating Native American people from all tribal backgrounds. But as Lloyd Kiva New’s essay had foretold in 1968, AITE’s goals, artistry, and practice connected aesthetics from its ensemble members’ tribal cultures with practical techniques from contemporaneous political and alternative theatre scenes. The ensemble opened on October 25, 1972 with the contemporary play Body Indian by Geiogamah and the ceremonial piece Na Haaz Zaan, arranged by Robert Shorty (Kent R. Brown, 128–30). Key artists who trained with the company at La MaMa were actors Jane Lind, Geraldine Keems, Muriel Miguel, and Charlie Hill, among others who went on to be significant players in the contemporary Native American theatre scene. In 1973, the troupe changed its name to the Native American Theatre Ensemble (NATE) and premiered Geiogamah’s political satire Foghorn, which staged a series of short vignettes depicting hyperbolic representations of the colonial experience. NATE developed and toured many works in this 96

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period, including the critically acclaimed works Geiogamah later published in his 1980 anthology New Native American Drama: Three Plays: Body Indian, Foghorn, and 49. These plays vary considerably in tone, style, and thematic content, offering a picture of the breadth and depth of NATE’s significant influence on the development of Native American theatre. Body Indian revolves around Bobby Lee, a Native man who is an alcoholic and lost his leg in a train accident. Bobby seeks comfort and reassurance from his friends and family, who repeatedly steal from him to buy booze. Foghorn employs Brechtian techniques to demonstrate and deconstruct harmful stereotypes about “Indians” in popular culture. Using satire and referencing both ceremony and the occupations mentioned earlier, the play agitates for pan-tribal political action toward sovereignty. 49 is more serious in tone, following a highly spiritual structure through the ceremonial journey of a shaman, Nightwalker, who heals a group of boisterous and drunken youth at a post-powwow 49 party, leading them into the future as activists. Body Indian Geiogamah’s Body Indian explores the spiritual imbalance felt by many twentieth-century Native communities carrying the cumulative effects of genocidal practices and US cultural and economic imperialism. The play’s central character, Bobby Lee, returns home in order to collect his allotment check, “lease,” and visit with his friends and family before admitting himself into an expensive alcohol rehabilitation program in the city. While Bobby Lee occupies the center of the play’s drama, much of the action happens to him, as his companions encourage him to party with them one last night, before taking turns stealing from their prodigal, broken friend. In the course of the five-scene play, Bobby Lee’s friends celebrate his return, shower him with genuine affection, drink boisterously with him until he falls into a drunken stupor, fleece him for cash in order to buy more alcohol, and repeat this process until all of his lease money is gone. The audience witnesses the extent of the group’s depravity, as Bobby Lee’s uncle Howard jostles his prosthetic leg off him and instructs Bobby Lee’s nephew James: “Sonny, I want you to take us to white man bootleggers on Washington Street. He’ll give us what we need for this” (Geiogamah, Body, 43). This dismemberment is made all the more repugnant because it recalls how Bobby lost his leg in the first place, “passed out on those (train) tracks” (14). Despite their ugly actions, these characters are neither venomous nor unrealistically portrayed. The extent of their own addiction and poverty has them trapped in a cyclical imbalance 97

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whereby the personal connections required for maintaining healthy community are reduced to co-dependent intoxication. Rather than ascribing personal blame, Julie Pearson-Little Thunder (Creek) writes: “The play is ghosted by a historical consciousness of the political causes of alcoholism, made visible alongside its socioeconomic causes and effects” (119). The community in Body Indian also illustrates the spiritual importance of sharing in a culture of reciprocity. Traditional Indigenous communities lived their vision of balance with all forms of spirit, in part by practicing ceremonial giving within and between tribes. If one band or tribe harvested beyond their needs, the community would invite their neighbors for a feast or give-away. This culture of reciprocity is not about quid pro quo, but rather rooted in the Native worldview of seeing and seeking unity between all life forces. Alcoholism and capitalist practices of accumulation were anathema to pre-colonial Indigenous communities, but now render many Native people stuck in a place of imbalance and illness. Bobby Lee’s addiction has literally cost him a limb, and would likely cost him his life. In short, Geiogamah shows how Bobby’s access to this poison is in excess and must be shared with his community in order to release him from its clutches. This act of giving, even in its darkest form—friends and family “rolling” him in a drunken stupor—is the healing ritual Bobby needed to see more clearly, to move beyond his past addiction to a different understanding about cycles of dependency and his path out of this destructive pattern. Foghorn Reflecting US ethnic agit-prop theatre of the late 1960s and 1970s,3 Foghorn critiques a history of racism, misrepresentation, and systemic cultural erasure. The play satirizes representations of Pocahontas, the Lone Ranger, and Wild West shows, while deconstructing the hypocrisies of doublespeaking politicians, cruel boarding school teachers, and crusading missionaries bringing religion to the “Poor, miserable, ignorant, uncivilized, NAKED!” children (Geiogamah, 57). As a series of thematically linked, non-linear vignettes, the play advances a Native worldview of cyclical time that disrupts Western march-of-progress narratives used to justify the conquest of Native peoples. Geiogamah links the occupation of Alcatraz to the activist march known as the “Trail of Broken Treaties” with a theatricalized forced “journey through time and space” (51). The “Trail of Broken Treaties” had only just ended at the time of the play’s premiere, and the AIM occupation of Wounded Knee, with its subsequent controversial arrests, acts 98

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as a spiritual frame for the satirical scenes composing the bulk of Geiogamah’s dark one-act dark dramedy. Hyperbolic satire reveals and critiques presentday effects of historical injustices on contemporary Native people. In scene 9, the ensemble of all Native American actors sings Hugh Martin’s 1941 ditty “Pass That Peace Pipe” from downstage, while an Indian maiden reads names of actual treaties off a roll of toilet paper that another actor, wearing a bull’s head, takes to wipe his behind, revealing each of the treaties as “bull shit” (75–7). This brand of dark comedy reflects Geiogamah’s appreciation of Brechtian and agit-prop theatre popular in the era. Like the protests themselves, these shows were more than mere performances: they functioned as ceremonial healing, restoring balance through collective creation and experience; the plays unified communities while affirming Native survival both on the stage and within the world. Foghorn operates in two distinct dramaturgical modes: Geiogamah frames the eight darkly comic scenes with three ceremonially grounded scenes (two that start the play, and the final scene). These scenes reference contemporaneous resistance efforts and activist protests: the Siege at Wounded Knee, the AIM occupation of the BIA, and the occupation of Alcatraz Island. The ceremonial tone of these scenes slows the frenetic parade of sickening Indian and white caricatures running through Scenes 3–10. Mohler assesses the powerful end of the play, writing: When the actors playing the eleven separate but related scenes that make up Foghorn address the audience and claim their tribal affiliation, they assert a concept of indigenous identity that is layered and multidimensional; at once they are individuals, they link their own lived experiences and personal identities to their different tribal histories and cultures, and they stand in solidarity, together in a contemporary pantribal alliance. This connects the contemporary indigenous people to their ancestors and calls for a united collective force to secure a future of sovereignty. “We,” 270 Adding a reverence to the otherwise sharply political comedy, Geiogamah illustrates the powerful impact of the contemporary Native American aesthetic that beats with a rhythm drummed by Lloyd Kiva New. Foghorn materializes New’s prediction of the future: Native American artistry connecting traditions, tastes, and values from time immemorial with other forms made available in contemporary society. 99

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Although Geiogamah never studied at IAIA, he acknowledges New’s influence upon his work by beginning the anthology American Indian Theater in Performance: A Reader (co-edited with Jaye T. Darby) with a 1969 statement by New. This declaration reflects New’s belief that aspiring Native dramatists and performers must first carefully observe traditional Native performance modes such as powwow and ceremony, and then “must be trained in the fullest degree regarding all aspects of theatre: the history of universal forms, the technical aspects, acting, speech and movement” (New, “Credo,” 3). New proclaims: “New ethnic cultural forms must result from the forces and ideas within the ethnic group itself ” (3). Grounding agit-prop scenes within a ceremonial representation of time and action, Foghorn illustrates how an innovative Native American dramaturgy encompassing both cultural and contemporary forms and themes creates a vibrant theatre that is culturally relevant within and outside of Native America. This materializes New’s 1968 vision for using “cultural difference” for creative expression (“Using,” 142). 49 Mel Gussow described the 1982 La MaMa production of 49 as a “contemporary tribal musical” that offers “both a celebration of old ways and a call for renewal” in his review for the New York Times (11). The play incorporates drumming and traditional songs as its plot weaves through linked moments of colonial violence and cultural endurance upon the same space across time. The drum’s heartbeat evokes these parallels while creating a transformative ritual space for audience and performers alike. In his author’s note, Geiogamah explains: “A 49 celebration usually begins about midnight or just after, when the more formal activities of the powwow or Indian fair or tribal celebration are over” (49, 87). Nurtured by the visions of the tribal spiritual leader, Nightwalker, this extended one-act play moves between the spiritual-social events of a mid-1970s’ 49 and a ceremonial youth gathering in the 1880s. Nightwalker’s vision and actions throughout the play are for the youth of his tribe, but they also serve as a call for cultural revitalization for the play’s Native audience members, even in the face of police brutality. In his book Ceremony, Spirituality, and Ritual in Native American Performance, Geiogamah offers a deep dramaturgical analysis into the development process, script, and performance of 49. He describes that NATE’s approach to 49 involved broadly applying traditional and modern/ contemporary understandings of Native life and cultural arts, while fostering 100

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individual and group respect throughout their process (Geiogamah, Ceremony, 3). The performers had to find confidence in their own “sense of rhythmic structure, rhythmic beat,” the “feeling of the energy that drives all Indian dance and performance” (1). Geiogamah centralizes much of the story through the use of drumming, which forms a palpable theatrical background while creating the ceremonial experience for performers and audience members. 49 helps to establish a key attribute and goal of Indigenous theatre that distinguishes it from other genres: the unification of community through ceremony. In the case of this play and the others created by AITE/NATE in this early 1970s era, ceremony began with the group’s communal process of creation and their rhythmic sense of structure. 49 draws on ceremonial tradition, which, according to Gunn Allen, conveys “that each creature is part of a living whole and that all parts of that whole are related to one another by virtue of their participation in the whole of being” (Sacred, 60). Emphasizing this spiritual power, Gunn Allen continues: “The natural state of existence is whole. Thus healing chants and ceremonies emphasize restoration of wholeness, for disease is a condition of division and separation from the harmony of the whole. Beauty is wholeness. Health is wholeness. Goodness is wholeness” (60–1). Accordingly, 49 ends with an affirmation of wholeness, a communal performance of sovereignty, as the youth form the shape of a beautiful bird and Nightwalker sends them off into the world, reminding them: “We are a tribe!/ Of people with strong hearts” (Geiogamah, 49, 132). Geiogamah describes the healing power of this ending: the young people “will now return to their homes, to their communities, to their tribes, and there they will have the opportunity to create their future, to build, to renew, to maintain, and to create. This is the ultimate, most desirable and appropriate of all possible destinations, the most positive of outcomes of a ceremonial drama” (Ceremony, 108). As ceremony, the healing power of 49 emanates into the community of people gathered to watch.

Spiderwoman Theater Several avant-garde theatre collectives emerged in the politically charged era of the 1970s, seeking to share the lived experience of their artists and speak to the injustice felt in their communities. One such group, Spiderwoman Theater, endures today as the longest continually running feminist theatre company in North America. With decades of process and productions, 101

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Figure 6 Reverb-ber-ber-rations, Lisa Mayo, Gloria Miguel, and Muriel Miguel. Press photo for International Women’s Playwrights Festival, Adelaide, Australia, 1994, by the Advertiser/Sunday Mail, Adelaide. Courtesy of Spiderwoman Theater.

Spiderwoman Theater profoundly influences feminist theatre, Indigenous theatre, and the productive synergy between the two. The company first developed when a group of women from a variety of ethnic identities galvanized around feminism and the political potential of theatrical storytelling. Drawing on its members’ stories, memories, and musings, early Spiderwoman found rich theatrical possibilities in the points where the company members’ stories overlapped or diverged. In 1974 Muriel Miguel (Kuna/Rappahannock) was working with the Open Theater Company (formally The Living Theater) under the direction of Joe Chaikin, when she began to bring women together to discuss the possibility of creating a theatre company for women and about women that would grow out of consciousness raising (CR), talking circles, and art making. By 1981, the company centralized its creative energy around Native American women’s issues, creating its plays from a core group of three Kuna/Rappahannock sisters: Muriel Miguel, Gloria Miguel, and Lisa Mayo (Haugo, “American,” 192–3). Muriel Miguel had grown up immersed in the arts and was trained in dancing, choreography, storytelling, and acting by the time she was invited to work at the Open Theater Company in 1962. Frustrated with the lack of 102

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nuanced Native American female roles, Miguel told her agent that she was not interested in playing the Indian Princess stereotype and subsequently “stopped getting offers for parts” (Fliotsos and Vierow, 288). After working with Geiogamah to develop AITE in its first year at La MaMa, Miguel felt called to work with other feminist theatre professionals. Spiderwoman Theater went through several different phases in the early days, but always included sisters Muriel and Gloria Miguel and Lisa Mayo until Mayo’s passing in 2013. Gloria and Muriel Miguel have continued their work, creating, performing, teaching, and lecturing. Spiderwoman premiered its first play Women in Violence in 1976 with the three sisters and two workingclass white performers, Pam Verve and Brandy Penn. This group of five expanded to include twelve women from a variety of cultural backgrounds who all contributed to the 1977 production of The Lysistrata Numbah, which wove a raucous tapestry of personal narrative, song, and dance into an uncouth retelling of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata. Spiderwoman’s Native Feminist Storyweaving The group’s creative method and praxis—now inseparable from its body of work—is inspired by “the Hopi deity Spiderwoman” (Haugo, “American,” 192). In the Hopi creation myth, Spider Woman weaves the world into being through her conscious act of creation. She is revered throughout traditional Southwestern cultures as a powerful teacher, creator, and nurturer. In Navajo cosmology, for example, Spider Woman (Na’ashjé’íí Azdzáá) and her husband Spider Man teach the Navajo women how to cultivate, harvest, loom, and weave cotton, yucca fiber, and Indian hemp into fabric. Besides the important practical purpose of providing clothing and blankets, Spider Woman’s gift was one of collective creation and beauty between the spirit world and each woman who “carries the pattern of the blanket in her head from beginning to ending” (Hausman, 34). Elder Navajo women add their personal visions to Spider Woman’s instructions before they pass them on to the next generation, weaving the past into the present, and providing spiritual foundation and creative inspiration for future artistic endeavors. In The Sacred Hoop, Paula Gunn Allen beautifully describes the special, co-creative relationship between Old Woman Spider (Woman, the Mother, the Grandmother) and her people who she says owe their lives to her for bestowing them with “the ability to endure, regardless of the concerted assaults on our, on Her, being, for the past five hundred years of colonization” (11). Gunn Allen continues: 103

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She is the Old Woman who tends to the fires of life. She is the Old Woman Spider who weaves us together in the fabric of interconnection. She is the Eldest God, the one who Remembers and Re-members; and though the history of the past five hundred years has taught us bitterness and helpless rage, we endure into the present, alive, certain of our significance, certain of her centrality, her identity as the Sacred Hoop of Be-ing. 11 Inspired by Grandmother Spider Woman, Spiderwoman Theater does this work of “re-membering” by developing plays that come from memories, dreams, Native American, and Western myths, re-telling these threads of stories with their bodies in ways that defy usual Western characterization. In a Spiderwoman interview with Ann Haugo, Muriel Miguel explains that she created the technique of storyweaving from her interest in the power of storytelling and her desire to find a way to bring personal stories together (“Persistent,” 61). Recalling the moment she first recognized storyweaving’s ability to create exciting theatre, Muriel Miguel states: When I was looking for a way to develop these stories, I had many different groups of women that I would collect and work on stories with. Once, I asked my best friend Josephine Mofsie, who did finger weaving, and another young woman to work on a creation story . . . [Josie] told the story of Spiderwoman as she did this finger weaving. I had just come from a sun dance, and I told the story of what happened at a certain section of a sun dance I was at, and the other woman—a white Baptist woman from Virginia [Lois Weaver]—told a story of making love to Jesus . . . I started to put this together where Josie would tell some of the story, and I would tell some of my story, and she would tell some of her story. Sometimes it was just one to two words, and then we would come back together again. Sometimes we’d talk together. So it was like the running of this river, this brook, but at the same time there were creation stories all happening at the same time. qtd. in Haugo, “Persistent,” 61–2 Soon after this experience, Miguel co-founded Spiderwoman Theater, directly making the connection between these various women’s creation stories and Spider Woman’s gift of creative practice (62). 104

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From the beginning, Spiderwoman Theater empowered women as the bearers of communal culture and creativity. This collectivized creation praxis can be seen in all of their plays, but is exemplified in Sun, Moon, Feather (1981), REVERB-BER-BER-RATIONS (1990), Persistence of Memory (2007) and their ongoing project on violence against Indigenous women, Material Witness (covered in Chapter  7). The name of Spiderwoman’s signature work, Sun, Moon, Feather, comes from elements of each of the sister’s Indigenous names, as the play winds together memories from their lives. Spiderwoman’s Legacy At a conference entitled “Honoring Spiderwoman Theater/Celebrating Native American Theater” held at Miami University in 2007, playwright/ director/actor Murielle Borst-Tarrant (Muriel Miguel’s daughter) spoke of Spiderwoman’s legacy in terms of their storytelling: I grew up not only with storytelling from my grandmother but also watching the technique of sharing stories with Spiderwoman in rehearsal. Telling the story and then taking the story and having another tell it her way. This technique was used with several topics, such as violence and women, the sexual power men have over women, and romance. These techniques . . . can be used in developing any theater piece to get to the core or the root of emotion. Borst, 75–6. The affirmation posited in Spiderwoman Theater’s oeuvre, impressive in its own right, is profoundly realized in the myriad artists the company has inspired and continues to inspire throughout four decades of performing. This legacy includes the non-Native performers Lois Weaver and Peggy Shaw, who left an early version of Spiderwoman to form the influential feminist performance company Split Britches; White Earth Anishinaabe playwright, poet, and novelist Marcie Rendon; Julie Pearson-Little Thunder, founder of Thunder Road Theater; Gloria Miguel’s daughter and playwright, Monique Mojica; and Muriel Miguel’s daughter, Murielle Borst-Tarrant; among countless others. The legacy these women have woven illustrates the productive relationship between women’s activism and performance practice, showing the avant-garde theatre world how the personal and spiritual are political, and how collective creation is all of the above. 105

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Bruce King IAIA alumnus Bruce King exemplifies the reciprocal flow of Indigenous apprenticeship traditions that shapes Native theatre and its development. King, a member of the Turtle Clan of Haudenosaunee/Oneida nation, is a playwright, screenwriter, actor, and musician, as well as a visual artist whose paintings are featured in art galleries throughout the world. He describes his own journey into this boundless creative space as “discovery,” crediting the influences of European impressionist masters and New York postimpressionist artists, along with his IAIA experiences learning from Native American artists such as Kevin Red Star, Blackbear Bison, and Earl Biss (King, “About”). Unfettered by disciplinary boundaries, King nurtured his ability to tell stories in as many forms as possible, moving from IAIA to the Native American Educational Services (NAES) College in Chicago, Northwestern University, and to workshops at Café La MaMa in New York City, where he studied “the fine art of improvisation,” before staging some of his bestknown plays (King, “About”). King returned to Santa Fe, New Mexico in the 1990s to teach creative writing and serve as the artistic director for the IAIA Players, transmitting his experience in blending artistic practices and influences to share his perspective with the next generation of Native writers. While King discusses the spiritual force behind his own creative work, he also models the kind of dynamic artist Lloyd Kiva New envisioned: one who calls upon his own cultural heritage—including the artistic influences of a colonized experience—in order to create powerful work that speaks specifically to tribal concerns while adding to the tapestry of American art (“About”). Although King wrote his first play, To Catch a Never Dream, in 1969 at 17 years old, his first anthology of plays Evening at the Warbonnet and Other Plays was not published until 2006. This collection of five plays, which King wrote between 1979 and 2003, contains his poignant Evening at the Warbonnet, which references and transcends O’Neill’s melancholy masterpiece The Iceman Cometh with cultural specificity and biting NDN (Indian) humor. In the world King creates, the tricksters Loon and Coyote have been stuck on an Indian bar’s clean-up crew for the past 300 years in the shapes of Ducky, a straight-shooting woman who asks hard questions and responds to the answers she gets with acrid honesty, and Ki, the flamboyant, cocky barkeeper who energetically grills and teases his clientele. As new characters enter the dimly lit urban saloon in search of drinks to 106

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ease their wounded spirits, the two deities prod each customer to face the imbalances they have experienced and created in their lives. Ki and Ducky are not revealed to be tricksters until the second act, when their objectives become clear to the bar’s patrons and the audience alike: the two have been punished by the Creator to help newly deceased Native souls release their burdens, face the harder truths of their earthly lives, and then transition to the next world. The dramatization of this ritual cleansing invites the audience into the ceremony by showing nuanced Indian characters that have suffered indignities and have made mistakes, compromises, and sacrifices as colonized people, but who ultimately use self-knowledge and ancient wisdom to see their trauma clearly and save their souls. O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh speaks to the despair and depravity of the white working class, whose identities allow “pipedreams” that prohibit the workers’ ability to transform their situations because of the lies they tell themselves, daily. Evening at the Warbonnet acknowledges the multiplicity of identities and oppressions that crisscross contemporary Native people, sometimes causing drug and alcohol dependency, isolation from one’s tribal community, depression, or infighting between Indigenous peoples. But unlike O’Neill’s play, Warbonnet shows the redemptive power of ancient ritual and tribal religions, the necessity of orality for self-knowledge, and the importance of community spaces for city-Indians who may be living far from their families and ancestral homelands. The sacred aspects of King’s play enable the imbalanced, unhappy barflies’ spiritual transformations, as they air their shameful feelings, face difficult truths, and cleanse themselves so that their souls can move past this world into the next.

William Yellow Robe, Jr. Another key player whose work and mentorship has shaped IAIA throughout the years is Assiniboine/Sioux playwright and author William Yellow Robe, Jr. Descended from the tribal chief Redstone, one of the leaders that refused to sign the 1887 treaty that created the Fort Peck Indian Reservation in northeastern Montana, Yellow Robe received the kind of assimilationist public school education his ancestors had feared and resisted. While struggling with substance abuse problems as a high school and college student, Yellow Robe met and studied under Rolland Meinholtz, who had recently left IAIA to teach theatre studies at the University of Montana, where Yellow Robe attended (Lukens and Yellow Robe, 111). In his Author’s 107

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Statement to The Independence of Eddie Rose, Yellow Robe articulates his impetus for performance: “My goal was very simple. I wanted the name of my family, my relatives and my people to be heard. ‘Assiniboine.’ That was it. It was my way of telling this country: ‘See, we are still alive’ ” (41). Yellow Robe went on to write several plays that reflect Native American life, political and community concerns; moreover, his teaching and writing have been instrumental to the development and transmission of an Indigenous-based “code of conduct” for critiquing Native literature and drama, discussed later. The Independence of Eddie Rose and Grandchildren of the Buffalo Soldiers, the most recognized among Yellow Robe’s full-length plays, have inspired critically acclaimed productions. Much of his dramatic oeuvre can be found in Where the Pavement Ends, which features five of his one-act plays, and a collection of his full-length plays, Grandchildren of the Buffalo Soldiers and Other Untold Stories. The plays in the latter collection are linked thematically around the complexity of contemporary Native American racialized identity. In her introduction to the anthology, Margo Lukens writes: “The plays Yellow Robe has selected for this volume show how legislated and internalized racism has ravaged human relationships and created divisive struggles within Native American families and communities” (xiii). One of the plays included in this collection, A Stray Dog, was produced as a staged reading by the Public Theater New York City in 2007. Yellow Robe portrayed the role of First Hand in this reading. Asked whether he identifies as either an actor or a playwright in the theatre, Yellow Robe responded: “to get it out in the open, I’m a Native. So that comes first” (Interview). Yellow Robe goes on to describe his trickster-like relationship with creating theatre: he writes, he produces, he acts, and directs. This, he remarks, is partially due to the lack of resources and critical recognition afforded Indigenous artists in the United States. Reflecting upon his artistic journey, including the artists who have influenced him, the topics that inspire him, and the multiple jobs he performs to produce his work, Yellow Robe makes clear that he is committed to serving the story as it comes through him in whichever theatre-making role is required. Yellow Robe’s output can be appreciated in relationship to his artistic and spiritual intentions, which position the needs of the community centrally. Yellow Robe asserts: “From a political and basically from a communal aspect, I got into theatre because one, it is the most peaceful means of resistance to imperialism. It’s the most peaceful means . . . for decolonization of native and indigenous thought in this country it’s very important because you do it 108

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without bloodshed” (Interview). He writes that Native theatre is a new kind of ritual, involving not only those theatre artists that help convey the story through production, but also the ancestors whose life experiences created the opportunity for the community of artists to work. Describing this extension of self in the creative process, Yellow Robe lovingly draws on white American playwright Tennessee Williams: “I have been ‘graced by the kindness of elders’ ” (qtd. in Lukens and Yellow Robe, 120). Beyond the ancestors and the theatre artists, Yellow Robe acknowledges the equally significant role of the “audience—a newly formed community—that will participate in the new ritual” (120). Yellow Robe also defines community as the impetus for his directing “with the overall goal of betterment of all my relations” (120, emphasis added). This invitation to all peoples in the audience to co-create with the theatre artists is central to the “Code of Conduct” Yellow Robe and Lukens propose after decades of making and writing about Indigenous theatre. They humbly offer this code to help Native and non-Native artists and critics approach experiencing, creating, and evaluating Indigenous theatre in their coauthored piece, “Two Worlds on One Stage: Working in Collaboration to Prevent Encroachment, Appropriation, and Other Maddening Forms of Imperialism.” We include the entirety of this code because it offers a concise and substantive explanation of the interrelationship between the creation of theatrical elements in Indigenous theatre such as script-writing, casting, and production concept, and the purpose and power behind such artistic endeavors: RESPECT is the basis for communication. This element exists as a foundation for many tribal communities and cultures. It applies to the individual, community, or production. It provides the means for successful cohesion of a theater group. SINCERITY is the ability to be truthful to the process of creating a play and honest within the reality of the play’s world. Sincerity requires a tremendous commitment in order for individuals to sacrifice their breath to bring pitiful words to life. AWARENESS is the foundation of education and knowledge. In working with people and thoughts from many different tribes, each company member has to become aware that he or she may be completely ignorant of the themes of a play or the world of another person or community.

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GENERATIONAL CONNECTION is the process of acknowledging all the individual and group sacrifices and commitments made to secure the present theatrical process and to ensure future theatrical experiences for future generations. LANGUAGE is considered sacred by many Native peoples and should be treated with great reverence. Giving breath to words in Native languages/tongues is a very humbling act. Many people speak English, but the words and thoughts have different meanings for everybody. Not only are pronunciation and enunciation of the word crucial, but also awareness of the thought of the word is equally important. BREATH is the basic element of Native theater. Words from the mind and heart are written on paper, and these words are given life when spoken by the actor and shaped by the director. Clarity provides the direction of the breath, and misdirection of breath can result in misunderstanding of your production, which would be a failure. SACRIFICE is what is given or offered by yourself and those around you; the theater group must avoid making judgments of those sacrifices. What is being given and what is being asked for must be clarified for the group. An individual’s knowledge of his or her limits and commitment to self-care are very important in the theatrical process. Lukens and Yellow Robe, 125–6. While this code was published in 2010, its principles are reflected in the earliest examples of Indigenous drama and performance practices widely defined. Critics best serve the field and its artists when we keep these principles in mind as we explore the verdant decades of the 1960s to 1980s for politically and culturally engaged Native theatrical production. The focus on communitycentered, community-facing, and community-healing performance practices predated the best-known companies of this era, and continues to catalyze new works today. Such community-centered art was, and continues to be, political in practice because settler colonialism denies Indigenous communities the generational connections, linguistic autonomy, respect for tradition, and contemporary sovereignty that Native theatre manifests “as an abiding presence for the people” (Lukens and Yellow Robe, 126).

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As earlier chapters have suggested, Indigenous activism occurred throughout Turtle Island, on both sides of the border since that geopolitical line was drawn. The Indian Act had particularly punished Indigenous communities in Canada as it continued to constrain their rights and enforce the tragic policy of forcing Native children into residential schools (Reynolds, 36–7). This policy, established by Deputy Superintendent General Duncan Scott Campbell (1879–1932), continued well into the twentieth century (Franks, 236). Campbell, one of the chief architects of these notorious schools, ruthlessly sought to eradicate Native children’s cultures (237). With this assimilationist policy came horrific consequences of residential schools, sponsored mainly by religious groups. As early as 1907, Dr. Peter Bryce in The Story of a National Crime reported how he sought to expose appalling living conditions in residential schools and the alarming fatality rate due to tuberculosis, warnings that largely went unheeded (Bryce, 3–14). In addition to cultural and emotional abuse, Indigenous youth compelled to attend residential schools endured unspeakable physical abuse, sexual assault, gross neglect, disease, starvation, and even death. As late as the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, residential schools in Canada continued to be brutal and rife with neglect and abuse. As children suffered major criminal human rights violations, their families and communities continued to suffer the anguish of their loss.1

Emily C. General (Mohawk/Cayuga) In the late 1940s, Emily C. General, a Six Nations of the Grand River activist and educator in Ontario, drove several chiefs to Ticonderoga, New York to see a play about Red Jacket, presented as part of the “Forest Theatre” (Krieg, 5–7). General was an active member of the Indian Defense League of America (IDLA), founded by Tuscarora Chief Clinton Rickard (Rickard, 132). This organization supported the sovereign rights of Indigenous peoples, including moving freely across the United States–Canada geopolitical border unhindered—rights recognized in the Jay Treaty in 1794 111

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(Rickard, 76–7, 80). In 1948, the government ended General’s teaching career when she refused to swear allegiance to the crown (University Women’s Club of Brantford, 112–13). Alison Norman describes her as “a woman whose Haudenosaunee culture, language, and principles guided the decisions she made in her life” (26). The play General and the chiefs attended was part of the Harvest Festival at Ticonderoga in New York. This “Feast of Green Corn” pageant, founded by Tom Cook, ran from 1931 to 1942 and concluded with the play about Red Jacket (Lape, 170–2). It resumed after the war in 1946, receiving “help” from “Mr. Ray Fadden (Aren Akweks),” St. Regis Reservation (Carr, 156). Fadden, like General, had strong commitments to serving the youth in his community. According to Joseph Bruchac, Abenaki writer, “Few people in modern times had more effect on a Native American nation than did Ray Tehanetorens Fadden (1910–2008) on his Mohawk people” (34). He continues: “A visionary teacher in the St. Regis Mohawk School, Ray Fadden refused to allow his students to forget Haudenosaunee history” (34). General shared Fadden’s dedication to serving her people through keeping their histories and traditions. General envisioned that their journey to the pageant might support the Indian Defense League and achieve a long-cherished dream for children and youth, to provide the history of the Six Nations people through historically and culturally accurate pageants (Krieg, 5–6). Chief Clinton Rickard recalls the importance of these pageants: “One of the great things our Indian Defense League of America was able to do around this time to preserve our heritage, despite continued attempts to assimilate us, was to initiate the annual Six Nations Pageant at Grand River” (132). Indeed, after General and her party attended the event, they established the “Six Nations Reserve Forest Pageant Theatre” within her community (Norman, 31). This pageant, which has been in existence since its 1949 founding, is generally called the Six Nations Native Pageant (Dearing, 12). Krieg’s dissertation describes the development of the program, focusing on both local history and the “Haudenosaunee” or “Iroquois Confederacy” (3–7). Throughout the pageants’ development and productions, General served as a director or codirector, “production manager,” “President of the Pageant Committee until 1960,” and “its historical advisor from 1967 to 1975” (Krieg, 6–7). Nearly fifty years after General was fired as a teacher, her educational legacy was recognized in 1991, when the Emily C. General Elementary School was named in her honor. In 2013, the theatre company she championed celebrated General’s legacy with the pageant, “Paper Doll: The 112

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Life of Emily C. General” (Dearing, 12). General’s influence reverberates through contemporary theatre: Daniel David Moses (Delaware/Tuscarora), a leading Indigenous poet and playwright, recalls his experiences as a student attending “our annual Six Nations Pageant” (127).

Activism and the Arts As in the United States, the 1960s and 1970s witnessed greater unity and activism across Indigenous communities in the face of Canada’s oppressive actions. For example, the Indian Pavilion at Expo 67 showcased the traditional lifestyles and arts (“Pavilion,” 1, 4–5). Simultaneously, participants also exposed the injustices in Canada under colonial rule and the Indian Act (Griffith, 171–84). As Indigenous peoples throughout Canada continued to agitate, the federal government pushed back with the “Statement of the Government of Canada on Indian Policy,” generally referred to as the White Paper of 1969 (Reynolds, 38). This paper “called for repeal of the Indian Act, abolition of the Indian Affairs Department, and provision to Indians of the same services as were available to any Canadian” in order to completely assimilate them (Lindau and Cook, 13). The White Paper—part of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau’s Just Society ironically calling for the eradication of Indigenous rights, cultures, and communities—was met with forceful activism, especially through the courts (Reynolds, 39–41). A number of groups responded, including the National Indian Brotherhood and Indian Chiefs of Alberta. Harold Cardinal (Cree) countered with The Unjust Society, a scathing indictment of the Canadian government’s oppression of Indigenous people.2 In response to these political and legal actions, the Constitution Act 1982 in Section  35(1) asserted: “The existing aboriginal and treaty rights of the Aboriginal peoples of Canada are hereby recognized and affirmed” (qtd. in Reynolds, 42). A leading scholar and professor of Indigenous law, John Borrows (Anishinaabe) stresses the importance of these rights, legal changes that also opened up new spaces for Native arts (“Challenging,” 119–20). Monique Mojica (Kuna/Rappahannock) recorded the developments occurring in Indigenous theatre in her important introduction, “Theatrical Diversity on Turtle Island: A Tool Towards the Healing” for Canadian Theatre Review’s special issue dedicated to “Native theatre in the Americas” honoring “Native theatre artists from throughout Turtle Island,” whom Mojica describes as “healers as artists” (3). A major event was the 1982 113

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founding of Native Earth Performing Arts in Toronto by Denis Lacroix and Bunny Sicard, who served as artistic directors from 1982 to 1983. In the early years, Mojica took over as artistic director from 1983 to 1985, and was then followed by Tomson Highway (Preston, 137–9). In a later article, Mojica notes increased creative expansion when “some Spiderwoman imports,” notably “Muriel and Gloria Miguel became involved in Native Earth’s productions” (“ETHNOSTRESS,” 16). Recently, Canadian Theatre Review also showcased some of the theatre’s highlights in Puddephatt and Harvey’s visually stunning “Black Theatre Canada and Native Earth Performing Arts: A Slideshow” (s8–s20). Additionally, Shirley Cheechoo, James Bay Cree, founded De-ba-jeh-ma-jig Theatre (currently spelled Debajehmajig) on Manitoulin Island in 1984 (Hengen, 1–12). A playwright and actor, Cheechoo wrote and toured Path With No Moccasins, her powerful one-woman play about journeying from the traumatic experiences and sexual violence of residential schools toward healing through Cree traditional knowledge. Both theatre companies and a number of playwrights associated with them have played, and continue to play, major roles in the development of Indigenous theatre. Across the country in Vancouver, Margo Kane, a Cree/ Saulteaux artist and activist, also commenced her work in the 1990s through opening new creative spaces for Indigenous performance.

Tomson Highway (Cree) The notable life and work of Tomson Highway, a playwright, artistic director, musician, and novelist, serves as a touchstone for the field of Indigenous theatre. His best-known plays, The Rez Sisters (1986) and Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing (1989), have garnered the world’s attention through their national awards, high-profile stagings (both played at Native Earth Performing Arts, while Dry Lips also played at Toronto’s Theatre Passe Muraille and Royal Alexandra Theatre), and anthologized presence in many collections of dramatic literature. Highway achieved international recognition as both a playwright and artistic director of Native Earth Performing Arts from 1986 to 1992. He also played an important role as a mentor, overseeing the development of Weesageechak Begins to Dance workshops and festivals, founded in 1989 to support new Native playwrights and their scripts. Among the notable works that emerged during Weesageechak’s first years were Mojica’s Princess Pocahontas and the Blue Spots and Drew Hayden Taylor’s The Bootlegger Blues. These were followed 114

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by two more powerful plays, Margo Kane’s Moonlodge and Daniel David Moses’ Almighty Voice and His Wife (Preston, 156). Highway’s life and work demonstrates the resilience of Native people and cultural values against colonization’s invasive tactics of containing and assimilating Indigenous communities. Native values animate Highway’s plays and his recent critical publications, in which he posits that Indigenous writing is an act of healing for both Indigenous communities and the world in general. Notably, Highway is an artist whose early accomplishments helped establish Indigenous theatre, and whose later writings construct new, ever-expanding networks of Indigenous writers—both contemporary and yet to come. His brother René Highway joined these missions, playing a major role in the development of Native Earth Performing Arts (Preston, 145–6). Highway describes himself as “the last of a breed, the pre-contact breed” because he was blessed to have lived a traditional Cree lifestyle, following the caribou on dogsleds with his family in the winters and fishing in the summers until he was six years old (Highway, Oral, xvi). Highway was born on his father’s trapline “and raised [in] a part of the country so remote that no one but our people—the Cree, the Dene, and the Inuit—have seen it to this day—northern Manitoba where it meets Saskatchewan, the Northwest Territories, and what, since 1999, has been known as Nunavut (‘Our Land’ in Inuktitut)” (xiii). His plays reflect Highway’s cultural roots, as his characters often speak in Cree and his settings capture the sense of the mythical emanating from the balance among humans and the natural world of Highway’s homelands. At the age of six, Highway boarded a plane that would take him to the Catholic-run Guy Hill Indian Residential School, 700 kilometres south of his home. The distance between home and school was so great that Highway could only return to his family two summer months a year (xxv). He credits his survival of this difficult period upon the cultural knowledge he had received from his family, community, and the land, stating that by six years old “the circle of Cree wisdom had been planted already so deep inside me that it could not be broken. It has been strained, yes, strained to the limit, but broken? No” (xvii). Highway persevered under physically, emotionally, and culturally abusive conditions. He attended high school in Winnipeg, “where he lived in a series of white foster homes,” and later college at the University of Manitoba and the University of Western Ontario, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Music Honors and, the following year, a Bachelor of Arts in English (Highway, 115

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Introduction, vii). During college, Highway spent one year abroad in London studying to be a concert pianist. His musical training informs Highway’s dramaturgy and sense of spectacle. His interest in playwriting started in college, at the University of Western Ontario, where he took “one of the first courses in Canadian literature” ever taught in the country (Highway, Oral, xxviii). The course exemplified how a national literature could emerge from contemporary writers’ experiences, communities, and homelands; consequently, it inspired Highway to imagine how he might do the same with his culture and unique experiences. He recalls: “So I started writing, secretly, timidly, clumsily, but I started. As had other young Indigenous people in other parts of Canada who, like me, had survived impossible geographies and suicidal self-images” (xxviii). Highway describes Indigenous writing as a form of healing that works in a multidimensional manner. Writing returns Native voices to the world. Even when those voices speak English or French, the ancient wisdom they carry creates a sense of presence that pushes against narratives of Native absence pervading North America’s history, government, law, economy, and education. This network of Indigenous perspectives not only bears testament to Native presence, it grounds and validates Indigenous philosophies in a rich, endless cycle of knowledge that allows people to look “through the warp and weave of languages and linguistic architecture” in order to see that Indigenous “ancestral memory went back way beyond the year 1492, to the very dawn of time itself—some might say—for Cree [. . .] is older than English, Blackfoot older than French” (Highway, Oral, xxviii). As Native presence, stories, and wisdom create material, economic, and educational change in the world, Highway notes that young Indigenous students now have reasons to care about what they read in school. They see the world and communities they know reflected in the books they read. Fully developed Indigenous characters and stories “validate their existence,” inspiring them to read further and to imagine how they might contribute to the world (xxxi). For Highway, this means that Indigenous writing reveals a whole, numinous world where two-spirit people are honored, women are venerated, and the Earth is renewed, physically and spiritually. This vision does not invert Native power over other cultures; rather, reclamation or “ ‘Taking back our spirits’—all of our spirits, not just Indigenous people’s—is what this literature is about” (368). Within Native stories we witness a struggle for human and planetary survival. At the same time that Highway uses violent imagery both to express the physical and spiritual injustices brought upon Indigenous peoples and land and to warn the world of catastrophes to come, 116

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his overarching message is positive, inclusive, and redemptive for all. This style of joy, even laughter and pleasure, in the face of atrocity is a hallmark of Highway’s dramaturgical style. Highway’s first plays were performed on reservations and within urban Indigenous community centers, and Highway did much of the work—from playwriting, to directing, acting, and producing—himself (Highway, Oral, viii). He carried this action into the development of Native Earth Performing Arts, where he also worked closely with other “established companies” (Preston, 139). For example, Double Take/A Second Look produced by Native Earth in 1983 “marked the entrance of Gloria and Muriel Miguel from Spiderwoman Theater.” The play, which “took a second look at myths regarding Native people,” was directed by Muriel Miguel, while Highway directed the play’s musical elements; it featured actors “Gloria Miguel, Billy Merasty, Monique Mojica (Gloria’s daughter), and Maaru Olsen from Tukak Teatret of Denmark” (Preston, 139). The Rez Sisters Highway’s sixth play, The Rez Sisters, was workshopped at De-ba-jeh-mu-jig Theatre Group, where he worked from 1984 to 1985, and premiered at Native Earth Performing Arts in 1986 (Taylor, “Storytelling,” 145). The play would garner mainstream appeal, winning the Dora Mavor Moore Award for best new play in Toronto, Canada’s theatre capital. In an act of healing the attempted eradication of Native cultures, the play brought Indigenous mythology onto the professional stage to “sold-out audiences during a crossCanada tour” in 1988 (Highway, Introduction, ix). In the play, Highway tells the story of six sisters, related by blood and marriage, and one adopted daughter, who leave the fictional Wasaychigan Hill Indian Reserve, referred to as “Wasy,” on Ontario’s Manitoulin Island to attend the world’s biggest bingo in Toronto. Describing Highway’s inspiration for the play, Drew Hayden Taylor recounts that Highway had visited “Wikwemikong or Wicky to the local people” during his directorship of Deba-jeh-ma-jig Theatre on Manitoulin Island and was taken with the Native women’s passion for bingo playing (Taylor, “Alive,” 259). Highway’s preface explains that “ ‘Wasaychigan’ means ‘window’ in Ojibway,” which aligns with the vision that he had developed for an Indigenous literature that would allow readers to view the lives of everyday people in Native communities. Highway wrote the play on Manitoulin Island, workshopped it at De-ba-jehma-jig, and then returned home to Toronto, where he raised the money to 117

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produce The Rez Sisters after several Toronto theatre companies had rejected the play on the grounds that “ ‘Nobody cares about a group of seven women wanting to play bingo’ ” and there being “ ‘no drama in the story’ ” (“Alive,” 259, 261). The play was finally co-produced by Highway and directed by Larry Lewis (149). The women’s journey from Wasy to the Toronto bingo parlor and back structures The Rez Sisters’s plot. Taylor notes that this structure reflects traditional Indigenous stories more than it adheres to Western notions of dramatic structure (259–60). The play’s action is driven by a community’s shared experience, in which each woman possesses an equally important part of the narrative. This structure is very different from Western drama’s focus on a protagonist moving upwards with tension through a conflictdriven plot. Through comparing the two structures, one can easily see the circular Indigenous worldview of inclusivity and equality versus the monotheistic, linear structure of mounting tension and dominance. Circular and inclusive, however, does not equate to flat action with no rhythms: The Rez Sisters’s action continually shifts from bawdy comedy, to serious questioning, to dance-like whirling chaos; from quiet contemplative sections to moments of mass hysteria; from romantic tranquility to a heartrending funeral song. Across these moments of daily action and captivating ceremony, each character encounters transformation. The Rez Sisters’s largest transformation is a shift from competition and discord among the women to a sense of community through acceptance of both one another and oneself. At the beginning of the story, the oldest sister, Pelajia (age 53), questions whether or not she should leave Wasy and move to Toronto. Marie-Adele Starblanket (39), who is terminally ill with cancer, struggles against fears that her husband may not love her and that another woman will take her place and break apart their family of fourteen children. Veronique (45) judgmentally gossips to cover her insecurities for having birthed no children. Zhaboonigan (24), Veronique’s mentally disabled adopted daughter, struggles with losing the nurturing Marie-Adele. Emily Dictionary (32) rages against having to come home to Wasy; she has thrown herself into competition against the unseen Gazelle Nataways for the sexual attention of the philandering Big Joey, also unseen. Nanabush, the trickster in the form of a white seagull and later a dark nighthawk, is played by the only man on stage. René Highway, a choreographer and dancer, originated the part (Preston, 142). Mostly, only Zhaboonigan and Marie-Adele are aware of Nanabush, as he lingers nearby to take Marie-Adele to the spirit world. 118

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In order for the women to travel to Toronto to attend “THE BIGGEST BINGO IN THE WORLD,” they must organize to raise $200 each in order to drive and stay the night in Toronto. Each woman has a particular dream for what she would do with the winnings: Pelajia wants to pave the road in front of her house, or move near her sons in Toronto, the “Only place educated Indian boys can find decent jobs these days” (Highway, Rez, 7). Philomena (49) wants to purchase her dream toilet, and later confesses to Pelajia that she’d like to hire an attorney to find the child she had put up for adoption twenty-eight years before (Highway, Rez, 81). Annie (36) wants to visit her daughter in Sudbury “and go shopping in the record stores and go to the hotel and drink beer quietly—not noisy and crazy like here” (Highway, Rez, 13). Veronique imagines cooking for all the reserve’s children on a brand-new stove that replaces her broken one. Marie-Adele dreams of winning enough money to buy an island where she can bring her husband home from his job in Espanola and live in comfort with their fourteen children. Emily, sporting a black eye from a recent brawl with Gazelle Nataways and Big Joey, says she would “come back to the Rez, beat the shit out of Gazelle Nataways and take [Zhaboonigan] down to Frisco with me” (Highway, Rez, 55). Emily, who escaped an abusive marriage before joining a women’s motorcycle gang in San Francisco, always has a sense of Zhaboonigan’s pain. A couple of beats before Emily’s offer, the audience learns that Zhaboonigan’s name comes from the Ojibway word for “needle,” a name she acquired after having been violently raped with a screwdriver wielded by two white boys (Highway, Rez, 47–8). Zhaboonigan recounts the rape in a painful monologue she shares with Nanabush, after he swoops Zhaboonigan away from a vicious fight the sisters have about their longstanding rifts. Despite their differences, the women work together in a series of seven choreographed beats, as music that grows “wilder and wilder” (Highway, Rez, 70). Their frantic culmination is followed by their road trip in a single van. Highway uses the stillness of the van ride to isolate the women’s intimate conversations in pools of light. In this scene, the women share their fears and longings. Emily tells the story of her former gang, the Rez Sisters, and explains to Marie-Adele that having watched an eighteen-wheeler strike and kill her lover, Rose, is what caused her to come home. The Toronto bingo palace abruptly overtakes this intimate traveling scene as full stage and house lights flash on revealing Nanabush dressed as the “Bingo Master—the most beautiful man in the world [. . .] running up center aisle, cordless mike in hand, dressed to kill: tails, rhinestones, and all” (Highway, 119

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Rez, 100). Highway invites the audience to become part of the women’s world, as viewers play a real game of bingo along with the play’s characters. The following beats shift rapidly to allow Highway’s signature layering of scenes, images, music, and emotion. The house lights dim to reveal the Wasy women at a long table upstage of the Bingo Master. Highway calls for the lighting to emanate from the bingo machine with its frenetic, popping balls. As the women voraciously play, they grow angry at the machine, which never produces a B-14. They attack the machine, rushing it down and out the theatre’s center aisle, shouting obscenities as cards and chips fly and music underscores the scene’s pandemonium. Highway’s stage directions state that “out of this chaos emerges the calm, silent image of Marie-Adele waltzing romantically in the arms of the Bingo Master. The Bingo Master says ‘Bingo’ into her ear. [He] changes, with sudden bird-like movements, into the nighthawk, Nanabush in dark feathers” (103). When she realizes Nanabush is her waltz partner, Marie-Adele is no longer afraid. She speaks to him in Ojibway, calls him “the master of the game,” and coaxes him to take her in his soft wings (104). Marie-Adele’s crossing into the spirit world is layered by a slow lighting transition occurring as the women re-enter the stage around her grave. The tranquility of Marie-Adele’s passage is disrupted by Zhaboonigan’s cries as she “makes a last desperate attempt to go with them. But Emily rushes after and catches her at the very last split second. And the six remaining women begin to sing the Ojibway funeral song” (104). A healthy community has emerged once the women resume their daily lives. Some tension remains, but a prevailing sense of fulfillment and purpose underscores the women and their actions. Emily seems at peace with herself; she has continued to nurture Zhaboonigan, to whom she confides that she is pregnant and plans to have Big Joey’s baby. Veronique has begun to care for Marie-Adele’s children, for whom she loves cooking on Marie-Adele’s big stove. Annie has decided to pursue a relationship with a Jewish country singer named Fritz. Philomena considers that perhaps Fritz might be the right man to slow Annie down a bit. With her bingo earnings, Philomena has remodeled her bathroom to include the luxurious toilet of her dreams. Pelajia continues to complain about the dusty streets, but she is strengthened by the women’s empowering adventure. The final moment of the play ends with the same image that opens the play, Pelajia nailing shingles on her roof; however, “Split seconds before complete black-out, Nanabush, back once more in his guise as the seagull, ‘lands’ on the roof behind the unaware and unseeing Pelajia Patchnose. He dances to the beat of the hammer, merrily, and triumphantly” (118). The trickster’s final appearance underscores the health 120

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returning to Wasy’s sisters, as his presence affirms the vision that Pelajia has for the community’s future. Despite Highway’s having to produce The Rez Sisters independently when no other theatres in Toronto would consider the play, Taylor writes that the theatre critics loved it: “They had never seen anything like it before! It was like a breath of fresh air, something new, something interesting, something invigorating” (“Alive,” 261). The play that gave free tickets to fill its seats became a standing-room-only event with “offers from cities all across Canada to produce it” (261). Like the Wasy sisters, The Rez Sisters went on the road touring “from BC to Ontario, stopping in all the major capitals along the way,” and this journey transformed Indigenous theatre in Canada (261). Native Earth Performing Arts, under Highway’s artistic direction, grew into an established Toronto theatre company. The country itself took notice of the power of Indigenous ways of making theatre. Taylor asserts: “Within the Native community, for the majority of us, The Rez Sisters marked the beginning of contemporary Native theatre” (261). Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing Dry Lips presents the flip side of The Rez Sisters. The play features six men from the Wasaychigan Reserve, and one deeply disturbed 17-year-old boy, named Dickie Bird Halked, suffering from fetal alcohol syndrome. Nanabush is now played by a woman, who takes guises in the forms of Gazelle Nataways (with enormous prosthetic breasts), Patsy Pegahmagahbow (with a gigantic prosthetic bum), and Black Lady Halked (with an extremely pregnant prosthetic belly). The characters’ exaggerated female anatomies simultaneously reference the misogynistic views the men have about women, the life-giving and sustaining properties of female deities, and the trickster’s voracious sexual appetite. At the very end of the play, a mortal woman, Hera Keechigeesik, the wife of Zachary Jeremiah Keechigeesik (Highway, Dry, 41), makes an appearance with the couple’s newborn daughter. Highway’s notes state that “ ‘Keechigeesik’ means ‘heaven’ or ‘great sky’ in Cree,” and much of the play is a battle to reunite the divided spiritual realms of sky and earth (14). The play occurs four years after The Rez Sisters’s action, and is set in the winter, rather than the summer. While comedy frequently weaves its way throughout Dry Lips, the play is much darker and far more violent than The Rez Sisters. Indeed, Dry Lips functions as a ceremonial action following the instruction of Lyle Longclaws, an elder, whom Highway quotes in the play’s epigraph: “before the healing 121

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can take place, the poison must first be exposed” (6). Accordingly, Highway uses the play to expose poisons that fracture Indigenous communities: misogyny, sexual and physical assault, alcoholism, self-hatred, homophobia, and deicide.3 Reflecting theories Highway writes about in Comparing Mythologies and other critical writings, Dry Lips faults Christian patriarchal worldviews for the genesis of these poisons and theatrically illustrates how patriarchy’s straight line punctured the circle of matriarchy (47). The play’s most disturbing scene stages a violent rape when Nanabush, in the guise of Patsy Pegahmagahbow, Simon Starblanket’s fiancée who plans to bring back Indigenous religious practices to Wasy, is raped with a crucifix wielded by Dickie Bird Halked, while his estranged father, Big Joey, watches paralyzed with horror (100). Dickie Bird is the son of Black Lady Halked and Big Joey, who has disowned his son, born on the floor of a bar on the night that Wasy’s men were too captivated watching Gazelle Nataway’s strip show to notice that Black Lady Halked had gone into labor. Dickie Bird Halked has been raised by his maternal uncle, Spooky Lacroix, a Catholic zealot who, like Black Lady Halked, rejected his own father, Nicotine Lacroix, the community’s last medicine man, for having “talked to the devil” (65). Torn between Simon Starblanket’s respect for Nicotine Lacroix and Spooky’s dogma, the brain-damaged Dickie Bird reacts by raping Patsy in a horrific scene when she finds him mourning alone in the snow with the crucifix, which she offers to bury for him. Nanabush/Patsy’s attack stages the violence perpetrated against both Indigenous religious systems and Indigenous women. It also shows the effects of that violence on future generations through the blood-covered image of a damaged son with no parents. That is the image that allows Big Joey to return to the past in order to re-enact a moment of healing with his son, when he approaches the shocked Dickie Bird Halked, offers to help him, and confesses that he is Dickie’s father. A later moment reveals Spooky’s renewal of Indigenous values, when he counters Big Joey’s claims of women taking power from men by flatly stating: “They always had it” (120). By the play’s end, the men have come to support the women: they cheer on the Wasy Wailerettes, take care of children as the ladies play hockey, and broadcast the games over Big Joey’s radio station. Highway embeds Dry Lips’s disturbing actions within a layered plot that allows him to finish the play with joy. In the final scene, Zachary wakes from a dream and receives his infant daughter from the arms of his wife, Hera. As Zachary celebrates his baby girl, holding her above him in the air, Highway 122

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emphasizes the value of women in Indigenous cultures and foreshadows the health that awaits future generations of Indigenous youth who are raised in communities that have restored their sense of wholeness. Dry Lips leaves its audiences with this tableau of domestic and communal balance, which literally and figuratively resonates when, after the final blackout, the baby girl’s laughter fills the theatre.

Drew Hayden Taylor (Ojibway) Drew Hayden Taylor, an Ojibway from Curve Lake nations, is one of Canada’s leading playwrights. A versatile writer, Taylor recalls beginning his theatrical career when Tomson Highway invited him to be a playwright-inresidence at Native Earth Performing Arts in 1988/9, following Taylor’s work in television. Taylor humbly recounted to John Moffatt and Sandy Tait that Highway “was desperate” (Moffatt and Tait, 74). Da-ba-jeh-mu-jig also played an important role in Taylor’s growth when he worked there under Larry Lewis’s artistic direction from 1989 to 1991 (Taylor, Girl, 154). While recognizing other playwrights’ motivation to expose painful elements of Indigenous experience, Taylor chose to focus on community traditions of “storytelling” and “humour” for healing (qtd. in “Alive,” 263). Taylor recalls: I grew up in an environment of sitting around and telling stories out in front of my grandparents’ house. There was a big old willow tree and a couple of chairs and a firepit and we’d sit there, I’m not talking oral tradition in terms of Nanabush legends or “Legends-of-my-people” or that type of thing, but more stories about funny things that had happened in the community, just talking late into the night—I think that’s where I got my concept of oral narrative and also the structure of humour, and the structure of how to write because, you know, a good story has a simple structure. qtd. in Moffatt and Tait, 81–2 Storytelling and “the narrative tradition” are integral to communal life, according to Paula Gunn Allen, because “people realize that individual experience is not isolate but is part of a coherent and timeless whole, providing them with a means of personal empowerment and giving shape and direction to their lives” (Sacred, 100). Taylor’s work throughout his 123

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career also celebrates these redemptive and regenerative powers of Native storytelling in the community. Connections to Young Audiences Taylor’s plays demonstrate his deep commitment to Indigenous communities, their stories, and their ability not only to survive, but also move and thrive. Particularly powerful are two plays he wrote for youth, Toronto at Dreamer’s Rock and Girl Who Loved Her Horses, which interweave traditional storytelling techniques with current coming-of-age issues, enhanced through contemporary dialogue and innovative staging. Da-ba-jeh-mu-jig Theatre Group opened Toronto at Dreamer’s Rock “on the Sheshegwaning Reserve, Manitoulin Island, Ontario, on 3 October 1989” under Lewis’s direction (Taylor, Toronto, 10). The play had a successful first tour for youth in Ontario, followed by subsequent productions throughout Canada. Toronto at Dreamer’s Rock also won the Chalmer’s Playwriting Award for Best Play for Young Audiences and remains one of Taylor’s most popular plays. The play is a ceremonial piece set at Dreamer’s Rock, which Taylor describes in his production notes as “a real place with real power” that is “located beside a highway on the Birch Island Reserve,” where “many people still go for guidance” (10). Honoring the power of the place, he also reminds future directors, set designers, and performers: “Care should be taken in the depiction of such a sacred place” (10). The play centers on 16-year-old Rusty, a contemporary disaffected Ojibway, on a vision quest. Gunn Allen explains that in this practice “the vision is actively pursued and brought back to the people as a gift of power and guidance” (Sacred, 107). On stage, Rusty is joined at Dreamer’s Rock by Keesic, from the past, and Michael, from the future. Structurally, the play artfully addresses a contemporary situation of a Native adolescent struggling to find direction through an older spiritual tradition grounded in the understanding “that the universe is alive and that it is supernaturally ordered” (Sacred, 80). Through the young men’s lively conversations and Keesic’s sharing of traditional ceremonial ways, Rusty moves out of his alienation and into the realization of his Ojibway heritage’s beauty, power, and sacredness. Upon the completion of his vision quest, Rusty is ready to return home to serve his community. The poignant Girl Who Loved Her Horses focuses on Danielle, a young girl living in an abusive home, who draws a horse that animates upon the stage and befriends her. The play opens with Ralph, a young adult startled to find a faded outline of a large horse on a wall. Ralph then visits his sister, 124

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Shelley, and her husband, William, to talk about their mutual childhood friend, Danielle, and her love of the “Everything Wall,” a wall the siblings’ mother provided to encourage neighborhood drawing (Taylor, Girl, 161). The play then flashes back to their first childhood encounter with the shy and frightened Danielle, who lives with her mother and mother’s violent boyfriend. Drawing a horse on the Everything Wall first seems to offer solace for Danielle. Then as she continues to draw, the scene explodes theatrically as “the HORSE” in the drawing becomes animated, played by an actor (167). He slowly approaches her and interacts in a powerful dramatic moment of care and support. Danielle responds with “a huge sound of joy and release” (167). Recognizing the power of this staging in the first production, Taylor writes: “I owe a special debt of thanks to some very special people who helped me create my own little horse on a wall: Larry Lewis, my mentor; Theatre Direct; and the fantastic direction of Richard Greenblatt” (154). Although Ralph’s family tries to help Danielle, they are not able to protect her and she disappears. At the end of the play, the horse on the wall reappears in her absence. While the characters on stage are unable to see the horse’s strength, the audience can. They can interpret the power and anger contained within the drawn horse as both a memorial for Danielle and a communal call to action to protect and nurture Native youth. Someday Trilogy Taylor pursues other serious social issues in his Someday Trilogy. The titular play of the trilogy was premiered in 1991 and addresses “the ‘scoop up’ when Native children were taken away for adoption by the Children’s Aid Society” (“Alive,” 260). The later two plays in the trilogy are Only Drunks and Children Tell the Truth and 400 Kilometres. Taylor recounts: “The original concept for Someday came from traveling and meeting adopted Indians who were trying to find out who they were and where they came from” (qtd. in Glaap, 14). From the 1950s through the 1980s, the colonial assimilationist policy of the Canadian government, also referred to as the “scoop-up,” aggressively and without permission removed children from their Indigenous families and placed them in middle-class, white foster homes and adoptive families. Many First Nations people view these actions as “genocide” that sought to obliterate communal ties and cultures (Johnston, 61–2). In No Quiet Place, Associate Chief Justice Edwin C. Kimelman reports a chilling description of the alienation and suffering adopted children experienced when they were 125

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placed in homes with no family, communal, cultural, and spiritual connections to their original families and communities (157–9). To develop Someday, Taylor “went to the Banff School of Fine Arts, to their playwrights’ colony,” where he adapted the work from an earlier short story he wrote (qtd. in Moffatt and Tait, 79). The play compassionately examines psychological wounds and the subsequent trauma facing children, parents, and the larger Native and non-Native communities. Someday follows the journey of Janice Wirth who, as a baby named Grace Wabung, was seized. She now lives in London, Ontario, the home of her British adoptive parents and works as a lawyer. Janice and her birth mother, Anne Wabung from Otter Lake, struggle with the devastating effects of her adoption. Like many adopted victims of the scoop-up, Janice cannot come to terms with her adoption, identity, and place in the world, but she finds the prospect of returning to Otter Lake Reserve too painful. Although Janice believes Anne gave her up for adoption, Anne tells her how the authorities forcibly took her baby daughter, Grace, because they thought she was a single mother and unfit. The trilogy’s next play, Only Drunks and Children Tell the Truth, probes the continued tensions between Janice and her sister Barb after their mother’s death, for which Barb still blames Janice. At same time, the play offers glimmers of reconciliation among the sisters and the Otter Lake community. Janice, struggling with guilt over the loss of her mother and the newness of her true background, gradually learns more about Anne from Tonto, a young man from Otter Lake. He tells Janice how Anne fought for her and later started a reserve policy of fostering Native children, including him. At the end of the play, Janice apologizes to her mother at her grave and leaves a flower with the message: “Co-waabmen, Mom, from your daughter, Grace” (Taylor, Only, 112). In the introduction to the play, Taylor writes that Janice’s story pulled him again, leading him to write 400 Kilometres.Well aware of the multigenerational impact of trauma, Taylor accentuates the importance of healing: “Part of the Seventh Generation prophecy is that every decision will have repercussions seven generations down the road [. . .] So what about the generation after Janice . . . what would the effect of the ‘scoop-up’ be on them?” That lingering question inspired Taylor’s 400 Kilometres, named for “the distance between both of Janice’s homes in Otter Lake and in London, Ontario” (6). In the tradition of ceremonial storytelling, the play circles back and forth as Anne comes to Janice in dreams; meanwhile, Janice reflects upon her own unborn baby and Tonto, the father. The dream sequences create a major 126

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structural shift from the two previous plays and also open spiritual spaces in which Janice begins to embrace her Ojibway background. Once Janice dreams of her mother, Anne remains physically on stage throughout the rest of the play, guiding Janice along a healing path. Janice finally comes to know and accept Anne’s deep love and fully embraces her Ojibway heritage. Although Janice feels deep remorse for her hurtful behavior toward Anne, Tonto tells Janice that the dreams themselves reveal her mother’s “forgiveness” (123). While each play of the Someday Trilogy can stand on its own, a production of the whole trilogy offers audiences a powerful theatrical event and healing ceremony. Blues Quartet Taylor has also developed a signature comedic style that draws upon Native humor to promote healing, contest oppression, and honor reserve life. In a published conversation with Margo Kane, Daniel David Moses, and Yvette Nolan conducted by Albert-Reiner Glaap, Taylor explains that, rather than focusing on painful experiences, “I, on the other hand, like to celebrate the characteristic that made it possible to survive—our humor. I want to honor the Native sense of humor” (Glaap, 13). In the foreword to The Buz’Gem Blues, Taylor cites an elder’s advice: “Humour is the WD-40 of healing” (Foreword, 8). Here Vine Deloria, Jr.’s emphasis on the power of Native humor proves helpful as “the cement” for activism and a means by which “people can survive” (Custer, 167). Taylor echoes this idea in his foreword to The Buz’Gem Blues: “In this series of plays, I try to take the audience, both Native and non-Native, on a fun-loving and enjoyable trip into the hearts of our communities” (8). Thus, in all four plays of the Blues Quartet, Taylor provides an innovative form of Native comedy, grounded in Indigenous conceptions of storytelling, humor, and community. In The Bootlegger Blues Taylor introduces the characters of Martha Kakina, an Ojibway elder, and her daughter Marianne. To raise money for a church organ, Martha, who is quite religious, is faced with the dilemma of having to sell bootlegged beer, which creates a number of humorous complications. Describing the reception of this play, Taylor recalls: “The greatest compliment I ever received was from an older Native man, who had just seen The Bootlegger Blues” and “told me the play made him feel homesick” (qtd. in Glaap, 19). The Baby Blues, which followed in 1995, is perhaps Taylor’s most playful comedy. The play is set at a powwow, where flirtations abound and one127

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liners fly. Amos, a Mohawk elder, sells Native-themed food; his much younger girlfriend, Summer, a Euro-Canadian wannabe claiming to be “onesixty-fourth” Indian, is desperate to know all things Native (Taylor, Baby, 14). On a more serious note, seventeen-year-old Pashik finally learns from her mother, Jenny, that Noble, a fancy dancer, is her father. Noble then learns Amos is most likely his father. The Buz’Gem Blues opened in 2001. Challenging misperceptions and essentialist views, the play is set at an elders’ conference at a university. Taylor reintroduces characters from his previous plays: Martha Kakina and Marianne from The Bootlegger Blues, and Amos and Summer from The Baby Blues. In this piece, both Euro-Canadians and Native peoples are under scrutiny and worthy of Taylor’s comedic lens. “Buz’gem,” which is “Ojibway for boyfriend or girlfriend,” introduces a romantic twist (Taylor, Buz’Gem, 40). In a parody of Western anthropological views of First Nations, The Buz’Gem Blues opens with a lecture and slides by Professor Thomas Savage, who announces his current project on First Nations love and courtship patterns. His name, a deliberate reversal of earlier anthropological accounts of Natives as “savages,” destabilizes the professor’s authority and satirizes at his arrogance in believing he can study and define First Nations. This dramaturgical move is further developed by his off-putting interviews throughout the play—interviews that theatrically portray Vine Deloria, Jr.’s famous censure of anthropologists (Custer, 78–85). The opening of Scene 2 dispels stereotypes when Martha and Marianne Kakina arrive for the elders’ conference. As in the earlier play, Martha readily establishes the complexity of her identity: “But I’ve never been into all this sweetgrass-waving, tobacco-burning, walking-around-things-clockwise silliness. I’m a good Christian woman” (Taylor, Buz’Gem, 13). Her daughter assures her that she is there because she speaks Ojibway, and that she “just” needs to “be natural” and “be Ojibway” (14). Marianne, recently divorced, also admits she brought her mother to the conference to help get over her broken marriage. As Act  1 continues, through a series of characters that are initially almost caricatures of types, Taylor further pushes issues of identity with lightning-fast repartee. Warrior Who Never Sleeps, wearing the red Mountie jacket of the oppressor and sunglasses, welcomes Marianne and Martha, with a yell. Martha and Marianne, as foils, both find him a bit hard to take, and continually get his name wrong. Scene 3 opens with a reappearance of Summer, now living with Amos. Sparks fly when Martha 128

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enters and discovers Amos is not only with Summer, someone young enough to be his daughter, but he is also Mohawk, a traditional Ojibway enemy. Act  1, Scene 3 ends with Martha saving Amos’s cooking job and the conference banquet from Summer’s failed recipes. Charmingly, Martha and Amos find common ground over a can of Spam, previously banned by Summer, but hidden in Amos’s apron. Ojibway and Mohawk tensions ease as Martha and Amos reminisce over shared struggles and living on provisions. Reminding the audience of past privations, Amos observes sardonically: “It may not be the most nutritious food, but it has a few more vitamins than starvation” (Taylor, Buz’Gem 95). Thus, the two elders who share generational bonds over eating the shared can of Spam also remind the audience of past governmental cruelties against Indigenous people. Martha initiates a frank discussion about Amos’s relationship with Summer, a much younger woman, and Amos admits his exhaustion, finally coming to terms with his aging and loneliness following his wife’s death. The play ends with the staging of the Alligator Dance, a social dance. Dramaturgically, the dance circle opens a performative and social space to redefine relations, on First Nations terms. Although the Euro-Canadians are invited into the circle, they need to learn the dance. In pairs, Summer (French Canadian) and Warrior (Cree), Marianne (Ojibway) and Professor Savage, and Amos (Mohawk) and Martha (Ojibway) all take the stage. In his review of the play, Gary Smith describes Drew Hayden Taylor as “buoyed by a sense of possibility” (F03). Berlin Blues, the concluding play in the Blues Quartet, had its world premiere at Native Voices at the Autry in March 2007. Randy Reinholz (Choctaw) deftly directed a strong cast that included prominent Native actors: Gil Birmingham (Comanche), DeLanna Studi (Cherokee), Robert Vestal (Cherokee), and Adeye Sahran (Delaware). Taylor’s humor again puts Ojibway rights values center stage, as a German conglomerate seeks to build “OjibwayWorld” (Berlin, 35). Turning the critical gaze on Euro-North Americans and Germans, the dramaturgy disrupts persistent Indigenous stereotypes while it also contests both colonial power relations and cultural appropriation. Through rapid-fire humor, Taylor interrogates important legal and human rights issues. The dramaturgy of Native humor functions on multiple levels throughout Taylor’s Blues Quartet as it simultaneously disrupts, mediates, centers, and protects. Thereby, in these and other works, Taylor provides new power dynamics and healing places, while celebrating Ojibway communities. 129

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Margo Kane (Cree/Saulteaux) Margo Kane burst onto the international stage in 1990 with her one-woman show, Moonlodge, which she toured for a decade across Canada, the United States, Europe, and Australia. The play features Agnes, a young Indigenous survivor of the “sixties scoop.” In conversation with Glaap and other playwrights, Kane emphasizes the importance of “the Moonlodge, a metaphorical gathering of Native women” (Glaap, 11). Stressing its power to connect people, Kane explains “It is in the Moonlodge where [Agnes] shares her story and where she finds acceptance” (11). Thus, referencing the power of women to build communities, even against the background of atrocities, Kane states: “Moonlodge is about all the women in my life,” both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, who shaped and supported it (qtd. in La Flamme, 112). Kane’s presentations of the show displayed her virtuosic blend of storytelling, acting, dance, and ritual performance practices. Emphasizing her integrated performative and healing approach in Moonlodge, Kane writes: “Using clown and song and dance and storytelling, it draws on the living tradition of sharing profound human experience to inspire. It is a statement of health, humour, and empowerment. Its major thrust is victorious celebration, affirmation” (Kane, “From,” 26). As Michelle La Flamme notes in “BC Aboriginal Theatre,” the customary practice for Indigenous artists to “transcend the boundaries of the Western theatre genre and creative arts disciplines” can be overlooked in theatre scholarship that tends to privilege “playwright-driven work . . . that translates well to the printed page, and plays that fit into generic and stylistic conventions familiar to non-Indigenous readers” (96, 97). Kane exemplifies La Flamme’s point; her mediums include theatre (acting, directing, playwriting, and producing), storytelling, dance, singing, videography, installation art, animation, writing, and teaching. Many now refer to Margo Kane as the “Mother” of Indigenous theatre in Canada. Over her forty-year performance career, Kane has served as artistic director for two Indigenous theatre companies, including Full Circle: First Nations Performance, which she founded and has run since 1992. As part of Full Circle, she created and has continued to run the Talking Stick Festival, an annual festival of Indigenous performance art, which has grown into a two-week event since its 2001 inception. That experience prepared Kane to run the 2017 The Drum is Calling Festival, which brought over 40,000 audience members to Vancouver as part of Canada 150+, a year-long celebration of Indigenous culture and arts, covered in Chapter 7.4 130

CHAPTER 7 THE HEART OF THE MATTER: INDIGENOUS PERFORMANCE AND COMMUNITY

Indigenous writing works to knit up the ravaged wounds. In addition to the healing provided through increased visibility and accumulating stories of Indigenous people, the worldviews expressed through Indigenous writing help restore the dignity of all people and our natural world. At the center of this work is community.

Yvette Nolan While her work as an Algonquin playwright, dramaturge, director, and activist is extensive, an overview of Yvette Nolan’s career reveals the ways in which her work has shaped both Indigenous theatre as well as Canada’s larger national theatre, influencing communities and national Indigenous policies. In addition to having served as Native Earth Performing Arts’s artistic director from 2003 to 2011, Nolan has served as “president of the Playwrights Union of Canada, of Playwrights Canada Press, and of the Indigenous Performing Arts Alliance” (Nolan, 173). The unique critical perspectives that she has achieved through her years as an Indigenous artist, administrative leader across theatre communities, and human rights activist informs her groundbreaking book, Medicine Shows: Indigenous Performance Culture, which offers an in-depth exploration of Indigenous theatre in Canada from 1982 through 2015. Presenting the subject through storytelling, Medicine Shows offers important perspectives about Indigenous performance throughout Turtle Island communities, and has emerged as a seminal book on Canadian Indigenous theatre.1 Rather than marching year by year through a linear history, Nolan speaks bravely and intimately from a first-person perspective, sharing her understanding that Indigenous theatre acts as medicine for its artists and viewers. She explains: “Many of the First Nations attach teachings to the Medicine Wheel: a circle that embraces the directions, the seasons, the 131

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ages of a human being, the grandfather teachings. The Medicine of the Wheel is that it endeavours to teach us to apprehend the interconnectedness of all things” (Nolan, 1). In this light, Indigenous theatre—both its presentation and the act of a work’s creation—is a form of medicine, in that it functions to forge interconnections. Nolan states that these bonds occur through: ceremony, through the act of remembering, through building community, and by negotiating solidarities across communities. The act of staging these things reconnects who we are as Indigenous people with where we have come from, with our stories, with our ancestors. The things we know and the values we hold that are manifest in the contemporary work that we put upon the stage make the Indigenous artist a conduit between the past and the future. Ceremony. Remembrance. Making Community. Survivance. 3 Nolan then demonstrates the formation of such interconnections by examining the dramaturgy and histories of numerous Indigenous plays from across the past three decades. She addresses the plays thematically, which allows her to provide a sense of history, while emphasizing the ties across plays and Indigenous theatre artists. Sometimes she recounts her own theatrical work as a playwright or director; more often, Nolan provides her readers with theatrical examples that present the vast range of Indigenous work occurring across Canada. The book’s first three chapters, “Poison Exposed,” “Survivance,” and “Remembrance,” investigate how Indigenous plays give voice to the damages colonization has wrought across Native communities and within individuals. The plays in these chapters also stage Indigenous people as radically present, despite centuries of attempted eradication, and expose the stories that society ignores, silences, or has forgotten. Two particular topics that recur across these chapters are violence against Indigenous women and the devastating effects of the residential school system. By examining plays such as Marie Clements’s The Unnatural and Accidental Women, Ian Ross’s fareWel, and Keith Barker’s The Hours That Remain, Nolan discusses how Indigenous plays work to heal rifts between men and women created through misogynist perspectives. Nolan asserts: “One of the lasting damages of colonization has been the oppression of Indigenous women, and that our people have learned to hate and fear women” (9). Equally damaging to Indigenous communities and individuals were 132

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residential schools, which existed in Canada from 1884 to 1996. Nolan demonstrates how Indigenous theatre addresses the multiple, lasting effects of residential schools in plays such as Shirley Cheechoo’s Path With No Moccasins, Kevin Loring’s Where the Blood Mixes, and Clifford Cardinal’s Huff. Describing the dramaturgy of these plays as “narrative resistance,” Nolan shows her readers how presence is political in Indigenous theatre. Through defiance and celebration, such plays prove that “For people who have refused to disappear in spite of hundreds of years of occupation, refused to be assimilated in spite of an active policy to take away their languages, traditional lands, and cultural practices, the telling of these stories and speaking of these languages in public is a political act, an act of resistance” (31). Medicine Shows’s next chapters, “Ceremony,” “The Drum,” “Making Community,” and “Trickster, Rougarou, Mahigan,” investigate Indigenous performance practices that give material form to Indigenous philosophies and create healing by interweaving both dramaturgy and theatre making with the sacred. Across these chapters, Nolan examines the performances and processes of making plays such as Margo Kane’s Moonlodge, Turtle Gals Performance Ensemble’s The Scrubbing Project, Waawaate Fobister’s Agokwe, Falen Johnson’s Salt Baby, and Nolan’s most recent play, The Unplugging. Nolan begins by showing how theatre is a natural extension of ceremony, which itself forges and strengthens connections. Accordingly, Nolan states that Indigenous theatre’s “Ceremony is about reconnecting: reconnecting the artist to her ancestors, the viewer to lost histories, the actor to the audience” (55). Ceremony can occur overtly when characters on stage engage in a ritual action, such as when the characters of The Scrubbing Project pass scrolls naming remembered women who have passed away into their audience (63–4); or ceremony can be obscure, such as when Nolan works a stylized motion from a sacred dance into a character’s blocking (60–1). Indigenous theatre’s rehearsals and pre-performance gatherings of the artists often begin with ceremony: smudging and prayer for those involved in the play and those who are about to witness it. In “Creating Community,” Nolan’s history of Native Earth records how the creation of the theatre company enacted ceremony by creating a new Indigenous community of urban Indigenous theatre artists. Later, when Native Earth devised Death of a Chief, the company’s performance process was informed by Indigenous cultural practices, making the entire project an act of ceremony that reconnected the artists to both cultural and personal sovereignty—a powerful illustration of how Indigenous plays serve as both models for and actions of the transformative reclamation of sovereignty. 133

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In her last chapters, “Bad Medicine,” “The Eighth Fire,” and “This Is How We Go Forward,” Nolan addresses relationships between Indigenous theatre makers and non-Indigenous theatre critics, artists, and scholars. Nolan uses these chapters to build upon the premise that the medicine created by Indigenous theatre functions not just within Indigenous circles but also across extended communities. In “Bad Medicine,” a term that Nolan has used to describe actions that sever connections, Nolan reviews the troubling history of how mainstream theatre reviewers and critics have frequently written about Indigenous plays. Because reviewers wield a great deal of power that can make or break a production or theatre company, nonIndigenous theatre reviewers have an important and challenging responsibility to put aside national narratives and preconceptions of what they believe theatre “should be” in order to approach Indigenous productions that present “other forms of storytelling” and other images of Indigeneity (Nolan, 114). Nolan also examines how Indigenous artists frequently take the additional responsibility of mediating a production’s material for nonIndigenous reviewers and audience members by providing dramaturgical notes, educational context, and definitions: “So much energy expended in an effort to be heard and seen and perhaps understood” (111). In “The Eighth Fire,” Nolan explores theatre initiatives and productions that have developed extended communities of Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists, such as Canada’s National Arts Centre’s commitment to “disseminate the work [of Indigenous theatre artists] to the larger Canadian theatregoing and theatremaking community” as well as collaborations between smaller multicultural theatre companies and Indigenous theatre artists (122). Nolan addresses the concerns that often discourage non-Indigenous theatre companies from engaging in Indigenous productions: fears of casting, alienating audiences, and offending Indigenous people. She allays those fears with the medicine of reciprocity, stating that if theatres, as well as Canada, are going to enter into a healthier future, then: we have to go together. That means the non-Indigenous people are going to have to keep reaching out to the Indigenous people; they must risk asking questions that may expose an uncomfortable ignorance; and we are going to have to practise patience, generosity, and humility, and keep answering questions. And if we do not know the answers, we will have to commit to finding answers together. 129

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Nolan concludes her study with a call for more “critical discourse” around Indigenous theatre so that Indigenous productions are more thoroughly discussed, and thus, included within the national theatre scene and halls of education. Much like Tomson Highway, Nolan asserts that the stories told through Indigenous performance have the power to change the nation itself. She claims: “ ‘It’s about becoming . . . what this place is going to become when our stories become visible’ ” (135).

Truth and Reconciliation Commission As part of their activism, many Indigenous artists, including Yvette Nolan, have been advocates for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s work. This commission was founded in 2008 following the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement (IRSSA) (Castellano et  al., 65). To further educate the public and expose residential school abuses, the Commission published a devastating history, They Came for the Children, in 2012. Three years later, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada provided an even stronger condemnation in the opening summary of their final report: Physical genocide is the mass killing of the members of a targeted group, and biological genocide is the destruction of the group’s reproductive capacity. Cultural genocide is the destruction of those structures and practices that allow the group to continue as a group. States that engage in cultural genocide set out to destroy the political and social institutions of the targeted group. Land is seized, and populations are forcibly transferred and their movement is restricted. Languages are banned. Spiritual leaders are persecuted, spiritual practices are forbidden, and objects of spiritual value are confiscated and destroyed. And, most significantly to the issue at hand, families are disrupted to prevent the transmission of cultural values and identity from one generation to the next. In its dealing with Aboriginal people, Canada did all these things. Truth, Final, 1 In the case of residential schools, this report forcefully condemns the human rights violations of the government taking thousands and thousands of “children from their parents, sending them to residential schools . . . not to

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educate them, but primarily to break their link to their culture and identity” (2). The Commission continues: “The Canadian government pursued this policy of cultural genocide because it wished to divest itself of its legal and financial obligations to Aboriginal people and gain control over their land and resources” (3). As part of Truth and Reconciliation, a number of national events, community meetings, and gatherings providing opportunities for testimonials, accounts, and healing were held throughout Canada (Final, 23–35). Sandra Laronde, of the Teme-Augama-Anishinaabe (People of the Deep Water), the artistic director and founder of the highly innovative Red Sky Performance, was a “Thought Leader” at the Truth and Reconciliation Summit at the Banff Centre for the Arts and Creativity, October 29, 2016 (Final, 54). A moving collection of Indigenous plays produced over the past decade was also published in the 2018 anthology Indian Act: Residential School Plays, edited by Donna-Michelle St. Bernard. Daniel David Moses’s powerful foreword, “Minnie After the Mush Hole: A Dialogue,” frames the book while also honoring his grandmother, interrogating governmental and religious authorities of residential schools, and introducing the plays as sites of witness and healing. Indian Act then moves through seven poignant plays, each one offering a personal perspective: Michael Greyeyes’s Nôhkom, Larry Guno’s Bunk #7, Tara Beagan’s They Know Not What They Do, Drew Hayden Taylor’s God and the Indian, Melanie J. Murray’s A Very Polite Genocide or The Girl Who Fell to Earth, Curtis Peeteetuce’s kihēw, and Yvette Nolan’s Dear Mr. Buchwald (St. Bernard, iii–iv). During the annual Weesageechak Begins to Dance Festival on November 14, 2018, Native Earth Performing Arts held a special event to launch the book with readings (Native Earth). While unable to expiate fully for unspeakable suffering endured by children and youth in residential schools, anguish of their parents, families and communities, and continued intergenerational trauma, Canada’s settlement and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission are important policies and actions toward healing and reconciliation. The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, founded in 2011, continues to call upon the United States for similar legal changes (Lajimodiere and Carmen, 264–7).

Material Witness by Spiderwoman Theater and Aanmitaagzi (2017) As Chapter  5 communicates, Spiderwoman Theater proudly holds the honor of being the longest-running Indigenous women’s theatre company in 136

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North America, having been founded by Kuna/Rappahannock sisters Muriel Miguel, Gloria Miguel, and Lisa Mayo in 1976, and continuing to create, teach, and perform today. Emblematic of their political commitment to tackling the concerns and embodying the lives of Indigenous women, the company’s newest project offers a healing meditation on the impact of sexual and domestic violence against Indigenous women. Troubled by the horrific statistic that Indigenous women are more than twice as likely than any other group to experience violence, Muriel Miguel gathered Indigenous women from New York and Toronto to participate in a “fabric workshop” called “Pulling Threads,” wherein they shared stories while sewing to create a giant, vibrant quilt. She recounts some of the story-sharing process in an interview with Emma Commanda for Muskrat Magazine: We talked to women as they were making these quilts. We would ask them questions like what piece of material reminds you of yourself? What is your darkest secret? What is your legacy? What do you want to leave behind? We were also talking about being a witness to some of the violence. These women did remarkable pieces. They told their stories in a circle. We took stories and put them on stage with us in this quilt. And that’s why it’s called Material Witness. The stories that are the fabric (material) of the production are woven with other storytelling devices, a pastiche typical to Spiderwoman’s aesthetic. The soundtrack of Material Witness includes a wide range of traditional and pop songs including Lady Gaga’s “Until it Happens to You,” AC/DC’s 1976 “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap,” and repetitions of protest chants like “in a revolution, a woman is equal.” While the show touches on some of the hardest, “darkest secrets” inspired by the many stories from Indigenous women the group collected during this development process, it still incorporates raucous physical and slapstick comedy. The show was created, produced, and performed in collaboration with Spiderwoman Theater, Loose Change Productions, and Aanmitaag, an arts collective based in Nipissing First Nation. After engaging with many groups of Indigenous women on reservations and in community groups who participated in the fabric-story-sharing technique of building community and fostering healing, Muriel and Gloria asked participants if they could keep the pieces of material and bring the women’s stories with them. With this giant quilt as the backdrop, and permission from many women across Turtle Island, Spiderwoman, Loose Change, and Aanmitaag began to draft 137

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Figure 7 Material Witness: Penny Couchie, Donna Couteau, Gloria Miguel, Cherish Violet Blood, and Ange Loft, 2016. Photo by Liz Lott. Courtesy of Spiderwoman Theater.

stories for six Indigenous actors to tell through dialogue, song, dance, and clowning. Gloria Miguel served as the production’s anchor, the spoke in the middle of the wheel, there to listen as an elder and as a material witness. Material Witness is a performance that circles back to Spiderwoman’s origin; their inaugural production, Women in Violence played over seventy times in New York and Boston, effectively putting Spiderwoman Theater on the map in the East Coast. Throughout their decades-long career of storyweaving, teaching, and healing through performance, Spiderwoman has never lost focus of the problems facing Indigenous communities, particularly Native women. In an interview with Josephine Reed at the National Endowment of the Arts in 2017, Muriel Miguel commented on the heartbreaking motivation for the company to continue spotlighting violence against Indigenous women: I did another piece called Throwaway Kids . . . at Banff . . . And I took a section of it, which was about being beaten, and what happens . . . And afterwards, I was really shocked at how women came up to me. You know, women were crying. Women talked to me about how they were beaten. And how their children were beaten. And I was saying to myself, “I’m just an actor, you know? I’m just a director. I’m not a counselor.” And how do you get past that and not feel cheap, that you’re 138

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taking something from someone. And I started to think about it and think about what happened in the United States and in Canada. If a man beats a woman, you know, there’s no tolerance anymore. He goes to jail. He’s taken away. But that has not happened to most native women. It has happened all around us, but it’s the same where we are. So I was thinking about that thing. At that time, it was 35 years, 35 years I’d been working, and nothing has changed in our communities. So how do we—how do we shine the light on it? How do we talk about it? How do we heal? How do we make people feel that they can be healed? This drive to serve the community comes from an understanding that traditional ways of respecting all life forms, and particularly women within Indigenous communities, has been warped by colonialism, poverty, racism, and addiction. Miguel explains that even though she is not a credentialed therapist, her gifts as a director, artist, and community builder could begin a process of healing. Through the spiritual power of storying, through communal acts of creation, and through the restorative power of laughter, Spiderwoman works to heal the community. These are feminist, matri-focal performance pieces, designed by women elders to be shared with “everybody! . . . And men, too” in the creative footsteps of the Hopi creator Goddess Spider Woman herself (M. Miguel, qtd. in Reed). In her prescient “The Physics of the Mola: w/riting Indigenous Resurgence on the Contemporary Stage,” Jill Carter (Anishinaabe/Ashkenazi) describes how Spiderwoman’s process and work is steeped in Indigenous aesthetics and values. She writes: “In this world, past, present, and future are one, existing in eternal simultaneity. The recitation of ‘past’ events serves not to recollect the completion of an action (e.g., creation) but to carry that action into the present moment and to continue it: season after season, in every ceremonial act, with each new telling, creation begins anew” (Carter, 1). Through Spiderwoman Theater’s profound influence upon the development of Indigenous theatre, and the company’s continued work, we witness the power of Native stories, of the ancestor spirit, Spider Woman, continually weaving the world anew.

Margo Kane and Full Circle As a performance artist, Margo Kane’s focus is providing the community with experiences of healing, empowerment, and sovereignty through Indigenous performance practices. She states: 139

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I want us to find our own voice, our own way, our own forms . . . I’m interested in, as Indigenous people, what is inspiration for the work and what does that form look like. It’s not a proscenium stage where we all sit in the dark and the actors are on the stage. It’s much more where we’re involved, we’re immersed in what’s going on and creating staging whereby the audience feels that they’re part of the scenario. They’re not in that Euro-centered, colonial gazing at [the actors]. qtd. in La Flamme, 106 To that end, Kane established Full Circle to offer Indigenous artists wishing to pursue a career in performance a unique curriculum devoted to exploring and creating Indigenous performance. Full Circle places a clear emphasis on Indigenous worldviews that value the interrelations among communities and the interconnections across all mediums of art. The organization takes its inspiration from the concept that “Traditionally, in the Indigenous world, art is not separated from the community. It is integral to a happy and healthy way of life. Full Circle believes in rooting art back into the community, where it was traditionally and where it is intended to be” (Full Circle). To that end, the organization lists four key missions, shaped by Kane’s intent to “make a profound contribution to the development of Indigenous performance in Canada” (Full Circle). These missions are: 1) “To create a range of performance opportunities for Aboriginal artists to express their life experiences”; 2) “To engage audiences of all ages and backgrounds in performances by Aboriginal artists”; 3) “To educate the Canadian public on the arts, culture and histories of Aboriginal peoples”; and 4) “To train artists in all aspects of the arts based on and respectful of Aboriginal traditions, culture, and history” (Full Circle). Training of artists enrolled in Full Circle’s Aboriginal Ensemble Program follows apprenticeship models that emphasize multidisciplinary, collaborative art-making processes in which the ensemble members from various disciplines create together. An example of this kind of work is Kane’s The River-Home, in which she and an ensemble created a piece based on the land and expressed through the perspectives of various cast members. Kane notes that each performance “was different each time because they had a different cast, different voices, and I was always honouring the voices that were in the room so I was pulling from them but it was still based on where we are, the river, the river of life, all of those metaphors” (qtd. in La Flamme, 105).2 While Kane and the ensemble structured The River-Home through “Aboriginal performance techniques of oration and ritual,” the show’s staging 140

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drew upon cutting-edge theatrical technologies (La Flamme, 99). Performances occurred within a space that was more installation art than stereotypical set. Using corridor staging, the performers played in the center where lighting and video projectors created images of the river running, while the divided audience served as the river banks and witnessed the production. In addition to devising work that explores cultural traditions from various nations while experimenting with different performance media, Aboriginal Ensemble Program members also gain invaluable business experience through “behind the scenes work” and “apprenticeship in arts administration, marketing, and project management”; thus, graduates have gone on to found their own companies, such as “Savage Society, Raven Theatre, and Raven Spirit Dance” (Full Circle). Full Circle’s annual Talking Stick Festival offers Aboriginal Ensemble members opportunities to explore both the artistic and the business side of arts production through assisting to organize the festival. Founded in 2000, the Talking Stick Festival has become “the premier, multi-disciplinary Indigenous arts festival in North America,” drawing about 18,000 viewers to Vancouver each February in order to experience two weeks’ worth of performances expressing “the diversity of Visual Arts, Dance, Theatre, Music, Pow Wow and Film in both traditional and contemporary formats” (Full Circle). The festival highlights Full Circle’s commitment to celebrating the holistic synergy of Indigenous cultural life and all forms of artistic expression. This artistic range of styles is echoed by the various stages-ofprogress in which artists wish to explore their work; thus, festival-goers see not just “finished” works, but the process of artistic development, while artists gain opportunities to receive feedback on their work as they shape it. Kane explains that the festival serves as an open place for exploration, “where I don’t care how developed or how perfect your work is, I want you to feel like you can come back year after year if you can afford it, [if] we can afford it” (qtd. in La Flamme, 112). Kane’s focus on the needs of artists provides invaluable support for the future of Indigenous performance by nurturing a community of artistic exploration and mentorship that values not just artistic products, but the visions and experiences that fuel the creative process. Kane explains: “I want to find a way to give voice to any voices at any level of development. Yes we want . . . some highly professional work, but we need to give our people a chance to try things, we need to give them a stage at different states of their own development” (qtd. in La Flamme, 112). This vision is part of what has made Kane such a force behind the development of Indigenous performance practices. 141

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She is keenly aware that, in a field that is actively generating a sense of presence and artistic practices, producing only professionally polished works risks losing potential artistic voices and styles that have yet to emerge from a field where resources and access to professional training remain rare. The expansive nature of Indigenous culture, community, and arts was powerfully present in 2017 at The Drum Is Calling Festival, the signature event of Canada’s 150+ program that used the country’s anniversary to generate a year’s worth of celebrations honoring Canada’s Indigenous cultures, arts, and histories. Kane served as the festival’s artistic director, coordinating a team of curators who organized the massive nine-day event in Vancouver’s city center. Three Indigenous nations, Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh, hosted the 2017 festival, which ran from July 22 to 30. Vancouver reports that nearly 40,000 people attended the festival, which featured an array of Indigenous performing arts, visual arts, fashion, cooking demonstrations, workshops, and sporting events (“Drum is Calling”). In keeping with Kane’s practice of supporting both established and emerging artists, the festival included over 600 artists. First Nations Drum touted the festival’s headliners: iconic artists such as singer-songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie, PowWowStep creator DJ Shub, singer-songwriter Chantal Kreviazuk, country sensation Crystal Shawanda, northern Ontario rockers Midnight Shine, Juno Award winner William Prince, rising R&B star George Leach, genre-defying artist Kinnie Starr, literary giant Tomson Highway, and powerful spoken word poet Shane Koyczan and The Short Story Long. At the same time, new artists from across all generations participated during themed days of the festival designated to honor all members of Indigenous communities. At times, this inclusivity was a challenge, as Kane notes, because “it takes a while to gain any artistic practice in any of the generations” (qtd. in Janet Smith). Nevertheless, The Drum Is Calling Festival was an incredibly rich presentation of the diversity and energy of Indigenous culture and arts across forms, generations, and nations. After four decades of such inspirational work, Kane remains driven to do more. She states: I want our people to . . . be inspired by the art, I want the artists to take their place in that circle of tribal leadership which includes the healers 142

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and the teachers and the storytellers and the dancers and the singers and the theatre-makers and the spoken word artists. I want those artists to be recognized, and they’re still not. qtd. in LaFlamme, 113 As Yvette Nolan, Spiderwoman Theater, and Margo Kane all demonstrate, creating Indigenous theatre is synonymous with a life-long commitment to healing, generating, and nurturing community.

Project HOOP (Honoring Our Origins and People through Native Theater, Education, and Community Development) As discussed in Chapter 5, Native communities in the US fought for legal rights to develop their own educational programs for their children and youth (Strommer and Osborne, 3–5). Thus, the American Indian Higher Education Consortium’s (AIHEC) establishment of tribal colleges and universities (TCUs) is a remarkable attainment, providing each community the power to establish culturally based programs on their lands (Stein, 259–63). Committed to furthering these efforts in TCUs, in 1995, the W. K. Kellogg Foundation launched the visionary “Capturing the Dream” Native American Higher Education Initiative. This initiative provided support, held networking gatherings, and allocated over $22 million to support the development of TCUs and sustain community development (W. K. Kellogg, 1). Unlike most grants that are restricted by funders’ priorities, the W. K. Kellogg Foundation took a transformative approach and collaborated with Native educational and community leaders, guided by elders, to design a grant program reflecting the needs, priorities, and perspectives of TCUs and their respective communities (2–3). Key to this initiative was “a shared vision” that “honors the people, the land, the air, the water, and the animals that are essential for our nation’s health and humanity’s survival” (3). The program also provided new structural, networking, and funding opportunities to help realize this vision (3). Integral to W. K. Kellogg’s commitment to Native communities is the human rights position “that all people have the right to define their worldviews” (Benham and Mann, 170). Consequently, the whole initiative was based on “a native epistemological model” that recognizes the diversity 143

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across communities and articulates the interconnections of spiritual, cultural, political, and academic dimensions (173). Maenette Benham and Henrietta Mann explain: Keeping our indigenous knowledge alive in a contemporary world ensures that what is instructive and what promotes life is respectful of native people’s living history and ceremonies, the health and wellbeing of both people and communities; the cognitive, affective, and cultural education of children and youth; and the economic stability and self-governance that identify a sovereign people. 172 Recognizing that Native performing arts are integral to this centering, the initiative provided a transformative vision supported by numerous opportunities to network across Indian Country and nurture participants. As addressed in Chapter 5, Hanay Geiogamah’s activism in the National Indian Youth Council inspired his vision to develop Native performing arts programs within all interested Native communities. In the mid-1990s, Geiogamah, now the founder and director of the American Indian Dance Theatre (AIDT) and a professor at UCLA, joined his friend Lionel Bourdeaux, a Lakota activist and president of Sinte Gleska University (SGU) in Mission, South Dakota, who shared a similar dream of staging a Lakota theatrical production in Paha Sapa (Black Hills). Both men believed the Kellogg initiative might further these goals. Thus, in 1997, respecting tribal protocols, the American Indian Studies Center at UCLA reached an agreement with the Rosebud Sioux tribal council to form a partnership with Sinte Gleska University for Project HOOP. Geiogamah was director and principal investigator, and Jaye Darby was co-director. Project HOOP was designed with flexibility to advance Native theatre and performing arts, based on Native perspectives, traditions, views of spirituality, histories, cultures, languages, communities, lands, sovereignty, and nation—a radical approach after centuries of assimilationist education. Its broader vision was serving Native communities through the performing arts as articulated in the original grant proposal: The vision is expressed in the full name of Project HOOP—Honoring Our Origins and People through Native Theater, Education, and Community Development—and in the symbolism of the sacred hoop. The vision sees the development of a powerful cultural, spiritual, and 144

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economic pipeline throughout the Lakota community and later throughout all interested tribal communities served by AIHEC through Native theater, education, and community development. This vision for honoring the Native past, present, and future is captured by Night Walker in a Native theater piece by Hanay Geiogamah: “I see a path not walked on. I hear a song not yet sung. A fire is burning. I smell the cedar. There’s a circle, round and perfect.” UCLA “Honoring” The concept of “honoring” is central. The program’s “mission” emphasizes this commitment by offering “opportunities for introspection, examination, and celebration of the tribal community in a cultural and theatrical context that integrates music, dance, ceremony, costuming, speech, and storytelling” (UCLA, Project HOOP, 2). The project further endeavors to create a “forum for nurturing intergenerational continuity, community development, and the sharing of unique tribal cultures” (2). Working closely with UCLA and the Lakota community, Jeff Kellogg, MFA, successfully developed and piloted a two-year course of study. Developing Tribal college and university theatre and performing arts programs was an essential component of Project HOOP; this pilot at Sinte Gleska University served as a model, which the Kellogg Foundation funded as part of their larger initiative. To provide Native communities with access to play scripts, support such courses, and advance scholarship in Native performing arts, Project HOOP collaborated with UCLA’s American Indian Studies Center Publications. An integrated approach informed by a number of Indigenous artists and writers inspired their books. The first two Project HOOP books, the anthology Stories of Our Way and reader American Indian Theater in Performance, were developed and edited by Geiogamah and Darby, initially for tribal theatre programs like the one at Sinte Gleska. As the site coordinator, instructor, and director of theatre at Sinte Gleska, Jeff Kellogg collaborated with Native artists-in-residence, engaged in community outreach with elders and mentors, and supported youth theatre at Rosebud and Pine Ridge. The Lakota elders at Rosebud, guiding Project HOOP, included Muriel Antoine, Donald Moccasin, Claudette Sabor, and Albert White Hat, Sr. The first production at Sinte Gleska was Woniya (Breath of the World), a puppet theatre, Native dance, and music spectacle for children, based on a poem by Muriel Antoine for her grandchildren. Later, Kellogg developed Wakinyan agle na ohakab wiconi (After the Storm— Breath of Life) with elders and children on the Pine Ridge Reservation for 145

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healing after a devastating tornado. The piece was performed at Oglala Lakota College for the community.3 Another meaningful community production was Grandma, Hanay Geiogamah’s one-woman play, at a gathering at Sinte Gleska University on May 12, 2000. Grandma had premiered in 1984 in Los Angeles with Grandpa. Perhaps, Grandma’s best-known production occurred at The Circle at the American Indian Clubhouse in New York in 1992. Spiderwoman’s Gloria Miguel reprised her 1984 role, and Muriel Miguel directed (Heath, 225). Lakota elder Claudette Sabor adapted and performed the piece for Project HOOP (Deets, “SGU,” 12); Jane Lind (Aluet), a Project HOOP artist-in-residence, directed. A graduate of IAIA and an original member of the Native American Theater Ensemble, Lind is a highly recognized professional actor, choreographer, director, and educator (Deets, “Professional”). Grandma was a particularly timely piece for a community gathering because it honors the ceremonies of daily life and the role of elders in maintaining community and kinship ties. Like Geiogamah’s 49, the piece draws on Plains ceremonial traditions that promote community, most notably in this case a “name-giving,” a sacred welcoming ceremony for a new baby, which Sabor adapted for the Rosebud community. As an elder, the character Ella is an important member of the community, rich in memory, wisdom, and experience, concerned with keeping the traditions of her people alive, and dedicated to preparing her family for the future. She models Vine Deloria, Jr.’s description of “elders” as “the best living examples of what the end product of education and life experiences should be” (“Knowing,” 140–1). Through all hardships, Ella maintains strength, compassion, and hope, revealed by her dream for her grandchildren and tribe. Ella’s dream, spoken by Sabor, extended to the Rosebud youth: “You know, I want my grandkids to think that they can be builders, that they can put up buildings, and start up new businesses, and get high degrees—and be smart like everybody else thinks they are” (Geiogamah, Grandma, 323). By the end of the SGU performance, Ella, as performed by Sabor, had enacted a living legacy of family, community, and tribal values for the audience (Deets, “SGU,” 12; Kent, 17B). These connections are particularly powerful, for an elder’s life well lived. According to Deloria, Jr., they offer “a proper way to live in the universe” and confirm the purposefulness of life (“If,” 46). He continues: “There is a direction to the universe, empirically exemplified in the physical growth cycles of childhood, youth, and old age, with the corresponding responsibility of every entity to enjoy life, fulfill 146

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itself, and increase in wisdom and the spiritual development of personality” (246). Grandma celebrates the blessings of elders and the power of women’s ceremonies, which, according to Gunn Allen, “are traditionally centered on continuance,” thereby affirming life and intergenerational continuity (Sacred, 98). Choctaw author, playwright, and Project HOOP artist-in-residence, LeAnne Howe also participated in a 2000 summer institute at SGU. This collaboration between Project HOOP and the Sicangu Writing Project was part of the National Writing Project. A festival at SGU showcased these student projects in August, and Howe returned in the fall to mentor students from theatre, creative, and Native literature courses. Under Howe’s guidance, the students developed “Lakota Lullaby,” a critical examination of Columbus Day lessons and celebrations. On October 12, 2000, Indian Day, they presented a staged reading for students and community members (Deets, “Lakota”). Later, Project HOOP received additional funding from the US Department of Education’s Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) and the Ford Foundation to continue its development. The project was able to publish more books and host other gatherings, including a national teleconference of artists (Geiogamah, “American Indian,” 330–46). Vital to this later work were also greater opportunities for professional artists to hold Project HOOP artist-in-residence workshops in TCUs and communities. These residencies included a range of opportunities to support youth writing, acting, and directing, to advance community performance programs and productions, depending on requests and visions. Marcie Rendon, an enrolled member of the White Earth Nation and a wellknown community activist and writer, and Bruce King, whose work is highlighted in Chapter 5, were two active artists serving in HOOP’s artistin-residence program at other sites. Deeply committed to supporting community wellness, Rendon addresses issues of spiritual healing in her play SongCatcher: A Native Interpretation of the Story of Frances Densmore. In addition to her own writing, Rendon continues to empower Indigenous community members through mentoring the creation and performance of their own works. Describing her work in “Theater in the House/Raving Native Productions,” Rendon recalls how a performance by Margo Kane and “site-specific theatre” workshop by Ellen Maddow inspired her “to adapt, refine, and expand on the process to create Native theater projects as a way to involve Native people in creating scripts from idea to production” (“Theater,” 139). Rendon also credits Spiderwoman 147

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as motivation: “To spend a weekend with this incredible group of Native women, who dared to be bold, loud, and outrageous and who were so confident this was exactly the right thing to do, was further confirmation that theater was something to remain engaged in” (138). Rendon’s technique, called “Theatre in the House,” is a collaborative approach embracing participants’ concerns and aspirations for their communities, families, and themselves. Focusing on these relationships, Rendon writes: “I encourage participants to incorporate their tribal stories— past and present; to utilize their songs, whether traditional or modern; and be consistent with the spiritual teachings of their people out of respect for their community” (“Theater,” 140). Accordingly, she has developed an inclusive approach to playwriting to empower all members of the group, regardless of their writing experience. Rendon initially explains to participants that they “are going to use a fast and furious process to create a script” for a community performance (239). Based on the group’s chosen “theme,” each member develops a character and dialogue. Furthering character development, each writer is next asked to choose “a sound or music theme specific to that character,” “one prop,” and “one costume item that defines them” (140). After group members share their ideas, the process continues with the facilitator supporting their collaborative endeavor “to create the story,” revise, and refine it, produce a typed script, hold rehearsals with those performing, find an appropriate place for staging, and encourage audience attendance (141–2). Focusing on prevention, health, and wellness is an important aspect of Rendon’s method. At Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwa Community College, she facilitated students and community members to develop a play they “performed at a community Diabetes Prevention conference” (139). She writes: “This process is to build the heart, soul, and enthusiasm for a community to want to continue this process” and “leave the community with replicable tools and the fire inside to want to do it again” (142). Bruce King also held several Project HOOP residencies at Haskell Indian Nations with Thunderbird Theatre, under the direction of Pat Melody, in Lawrence, Kansas. King brought his rich experiences as a playwright, director, and mentor to Haskell students. Even though such artists are crucial for community cultural development and wellness, Project HOOP found their residencies were the hardest to fund. To ensure Project HOOP’s mission of honoring Native communities through the theatre’s restorative medicine continues, the organization’s networking to fund Native artists-in-residence persists. 148

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Native Voices at the Autry Over the course of its operation since founding in 1994, Native Voices has been instrumental not only in advancing the development of new plays by Native playwrights, but also in advocating for, training, and supporting a network of professional Native theatre artists, including actors, designers, directors, stage managers, and playwrights. As the only Equity theatre company in the United States dedicated exclusively to producing works by Native American, Native Hawaiian, Alaska Native, and First Nations playwrights, Native Voices has helped to make visible the professionalism of Native American artists by employing many. The company’s production history disallows the popular misconception held by many non-Native theatre professionals that “there are no Native actors.” As an assistant professor in the theatre department at Illinois State University (ISU), Randy Reinholz (Choctaw), with his wife Jean Bruce Scott—a professional actor, dramaturge, and producer—sought to find a new script by a Native American playwright to produce as part of the department’s 1993/4 season. The difficulty of finding published scripts by Indigenous playwrights motivated them to put out a sweeping call for new plays written from a Native perspective. After compiling the numerous scripts by artists from across North America, ISU committed to support and fund five First Nations and Native American playwrights to workshop their scripts with students, faculty, and community actors, culminating in staged readings. This was the first incarnation of the Native Voices Festival of Native Plays and included works by Joseph A. Dandurand (Kwantlen), William S. Yellow Robe (Assiniboine), Bruce King (Haudenosaunee/Oneida), Drew Hayden Taylor (Ojibway), and Marie Clements (Métis). While Yellow Robe, Taylor, and to a lesser extent Clements and King had experienced a degree of critical success as playwrights at this time, none of these talented artists had published scripts. Nearly twenty-five years later, they are among the bestknown, published and produced Indigenous playwrights in the field. This is in no small part due to the kind of community building and extended exposure Native Voices provides Indigenous artists and their work. Through their initial effort to identify material, Reinholz and Scott discovered that the challenge was not a lack of scripts from talented Indigenous playwrights. Indeed, by the fall of 1994, months after their initial call for scripts, the two had received more than fifty plays by Native American and First Nations writers (Reinholz and Scott, 268). They received numerous scripts from accomplished writers such as Bruce King, Diane Glancy, and 149

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Marie Clements, but also appreciated stories from less experienced playwrights who might benefit from professional play development processes infrequently available to Native artists. After several exciting and productive years hosting the Festival of Native Plays in the midwest, Reinholz and Scott recognized that the initial need they had identified—to connect Native playwrights with a community of theatre artists focused on developing and embodying their stories—required a model that would allow for sustained growth of the field. With energy swirling around the quality of these new Native scripts, Native Voices found an artistic home independent from the university setting, at the Autry Museum of the American West in Los Angeles, California in 1999. The mutually beneficial relationship between Native Voices as a nonprofit theatre company and the non-profit Autry Museum afforded space for tablework and rehearsals, the 206-seat Wells Fargo Theater for full productions, as well as a built-in audience of museum patrons interested in “the West.” In return, the Autry benefited from Native Voices, as the museum continually strives to showcase a nuanced understanding of the American West, which includes Native American and settler-colonial historical and contemporary experiences. That an institution steeped in memorializing and reflecting on the historical realities and romantic mythologies that constitute “the West” is now home to the only Equity theatre company dedicated to cultivating Indigenous plays illustrates the transformative potential of reimagining community through the creative arts. Native Voices Process: Play Development and Ensemble Making In all endeavors, Native Voices maintains certain structural priorities that foster the growth and visibility of the community of Indigenous theatre artists. Whether the plays are given readings in the context of the Festival of New Plays or fully produced in Los Angeles at the Autry, the notable venues of the La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego or the Public Theater in New York, Native Voices priveledges the value of collaboration endemic to both theatrical praxis and Indigenous worldviews. Importantly, this process foregrounds the Indigenous playwright’s story and perspective and draws on the artistic efforts of both Native and non-Native artists to actualize the script “to the point of production for what we will identify as a culturally-mixed audience” (Reinholz and Scott, 271). This cross-cultural collaboration and audience development fosters a wider community, inclusive of all who are open to witnessing and learning from Native storytellers and culture bearers. 150

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Each year Native Voices publicizes a call for new scripts on their website, through academic and artistic online networks, and through a curated email list of First Nations and Native American theatre artists. This call invites submissions of “full length plays . . . addressing all themes and topics.” Next, the artistic staff invites professional readers to provide feedback on the submissions and their readiness for development. The group selects three to five plays, and Native Voices brings the playwrights to the annual Playwrights Retreat and Festival of New Plays, wherein the scripts undergo a “rigorous directorial and dramaturgical commitment for 8–10 days.” During the retreat each playwright is paired with a professional director and dramaturge experienced in working with Native artists and familiar with Native culture, as well as a stage manager and cast of professional actors to read and stage the drafts as they develop throughout the retreat. Adding to the efficacy of the experience, Native Voices employs designers to present costume, scenic, and lighting concepts for each script so that the playwright, director, and Native Voices artistic staff can realistically envision both the script’s aesthetic potential and possible budgetary and practical challenges for its full production. Importantly, all of these artists are paid for their time in accordance with Equity rules. The retreat culminates in the Festival of New Plays, which presents staged readings of each script for audiences in both the Wells Fargo Theater at the Autry and also at the La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego, California. These professional readings provide the Native Voices Theatre staff, which includes available members of the Advisory Council and Native Voices Artists Ensemble, as well as regional theatre and film professionals to hear the developed works, witness numerous talented Native actors, and cultivate strong intra-cultural and inter-cultural professional relationships. Following this intense artistic process, the Native Voices artistic staff usually chooses one script from the Festival of Plays to fully produce at the Autry in the months following the festival. Community Building, Living Seven Generations into the Future Native Voices also serves as a pivotal meeting place for Indigenous artists from across North America, both literally, at its annual programming and performances, and electronically, through the communications and networking efforts of the Native Voices staff. Due to the critical success of its full-scale productions, and the impressive roster of talent with which the company has worked and made visible via its web and social media presence, 151

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casting agents in professional theatre companies and film and television know to contact Native Voices’s co-creators Randy Reinholz (artistic director) and Jean Bruce Scott (producing executive director) for contacts within the Native acting community. In this capacity—as connectors, advocates, and counselors—Native Voices lives the Indigenous value of reciprocity by enriching all of our relations with access to Indigenous stories and artists that mainstream audiences might not otherwise know. Advancing its company, and by extension the visibility of Native theatre artists and viability of Native plays, Native Voices at the Autry is a Constituent Theatre of the Theatre Communications Group (TGC) and a member of the Actor’s Equity Association, the LA Stage Alliance, and the Dramatists Guild (Native Voices website). This level of professionalism has led many Native artists, actors, and stage managers to earn their Equity cards, while providing opportunities for Native playwrights and directors to receive critical acclaim in the theatre review sections of the LA Times, Backstage West, and numerous scholarly theatre journals. “Success can be measured in many different ways,” Reinholz and Scott write; “Native Voices’ philosophy is grounded in the belief that our success is measured by the opportunity to develop and produce Native theater and that the collaboration of theater artists is imperative to the success of this goal” (277). While professionalization of the field, critical acclaim, and resource sharing (providing fair wages to Native artists) are central to the company’s success and durability, the strength of the community built and sustained by Native Voices can perhaps best be felt in the ceremonial aspects of their gatherings and work. Each playwrights’ retreat opens with a California elder who has been invited to bless and pray over the participants, recognizing the original stewards of the land upon which the company is gathered. Whenever possible, and usually at least once a day, the artists, crew, and staff eat a meal together, sitting at communal tables and connecting about current and future projects and community concerns. Reinholz opens each staged reading or performance with a land recognition, a public reminder of gratitude for the ancestors who came before us and those who still live in their ancestral homelands, which we borrow with honor. The theatre staff contact Native community centers, gifting complimentary tickets to elders. When elders are in the audience, they are formally recognized either before or following the show’s presentation, because these ceremonial gestures of respect take precedence over Western theatrical norms. Professional Native theatre centers community building as a principle, not an afterthought.

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Throughout Indigenous Spaces, the words of playwrights, artists, and theorists repeatedly present the idea that community is at the core of Native theatre and performance practices. This community-centered approach contributes to Native theatre’s unique dramaturgy, which is intended to transcend entertainment in order to generate material effects: ceremony, healing, community making. Likewise, the process of making Native plays relies upon the concept that the true worth of a production lies not just in the final product, reviews, or ticket sales; rather, the worth of a Native production derives from the relationships it creates, interconnections that branch out among artists, into the worlds of the ancestors and audience alike. As discussed in Chapter  5, it was in support of this core value of community that William Yellow Robe Jr. and Margo Lukens developed a “Code of Conduct” for creating, experiencing, and evaluating Native plays. Their list of suggestions mirrors attributes that are central to Native cultures and selfgovernance: Respect, Sincerity, Awareness, Generational Connection, Language, Breath, and Sacrifice. Thus, by connecting the act of making Native theatre to the enactment of Native presence, worldviews, and self-governance, Native artists make a bold, significant statement: Native theatre is performative sovereignty. The stakes of producing Native plays are high, because staging Native theatre, whether commercially or academically, simultaneously produces actions that can either uphold Indigenous sovereignty—wherein practitioners are mindful of their choices, or undermine Indigenous sovereignty—when practitioners make choices that disregard Native communities, governance structures, and worldviews. This responsibility for staging Native plays contributes to the reluctance of general commercial, regional, and academic theatres to produce Native work. However, as theatres reimagine ways to become meaningfully engaged in both contemporary issues and diversified audiences, collaborations are emerging between Native artists and theatres not typically rooted in Native communities.

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This chapter moves theoretical discussions into a demonstration of Native theatrical praxis, offering some practical approaches that can help theatre companies remain mindful of Indigenous sovereignty. These best practices include spending ample time analyzing a play’s dramaturgy in order to create a production concept that upholds Indigenous philosophies of land, language, time, kinship, and transformations. Stemming from the unique dramaturgy of Native plays, their productions frequently require additional time for both production team meetings and table-work rehearsals, because it is imperative that all members of the cast, crew, and creative team understand the ways in which the play manifests Indigenous philosophies that are often foreign to settler-colonial culture. This transmission of Indigenous knowledge can be respectfully strengthened and nurtured when either the playwright and/or an elder joins the production and rehearsal process. Although Western theatrical culture sometimes frowns upon including a playwright in the rehearsal process, ethical directors of Indigenous plays believe that the practice of rehearsing with the playwright upholds Indigenous notions of collaborative, communal structures, rather than hierarchical structures of power. This communal nature of theatre making is perhaps the most important aspect of producing Indigenous sovereignty through staging Native plays. An egalitarian production ethos allows the community of the playmakers to mirror the structures of Indigenous self-governance, while the structure also reinforces a basic tenant of theatre: theatre’s strength derives from the combination of multiple perspectives from contributors equally devoted to the production. This chapter explores two Native plays: JudyLee Oliva’s Te Ata, which premiered in Chickasha, Oklahoma in 2006, was revised and produced again in 2012 in Oklahoma City and Washington, DC; and Marie Clements’s Burning Vision, produced in 2012 at the Mayer Theatre by Santa Clara University. Christy Stanlake and Courtney Elkin Mohler, two of Critical Companion’s authors, directed the 2012 Te Ata and Burning Vision productions, respectively. Through examining the plays’ texts, production histories, and processes, this chapter illustrates how these particular performances—one professional and one academic—drew upon Indigenous worldviews and performance traditions to engage contemporary, urgent themes for Native peoples. These works in performance exemplify how Native American and First Nations theatre can empower Native sovereignty and Indigenous rights for future generations.

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Te Ata by JudyLee Oliva (Chickasaw), Directed by Christy Stanlake: Community Development within the Professional Theatre JudyLee Oliva’s play Te Ata is a biographical remembrance of Te Ata, the pioneering Chickasaw actor covered in Chapter  3. Oliva, who is both a playwright and scholar, returned Te Ata’s story to contemporary audiences. She first came across Te Ata in 1993, while doing research in the University of Oklahoma’s Western History Collection. Oliva recalls: “Because I’m Chickasaw, I wanted to have a better understanding of how my background— my cultural background—intersected with my theatrical background. And so I . . . decided to go back to Oklahoma, where I’m from, and study Native American performance. I really didn’t even know what that term meant” (Stanlake, “Interview,” 110). Although Oliva was a theatre professor holding an MFA in directing from the University of Oklahoma and a PhD in theatre and drama from Northwestern, she had encountered only the few publications existing in the field of Native theatre in 1993. The history of Native performance in the Americas had been largely forgotten, omitted, and overlooked. Thus, the actor’s accomplishments shocked Oliva when she found ninety-one files on Te Ata in the Western History Collection. Oliva states: “I was immediately enchanted . . . There was just so much information: she was Chickasaw, she was a theatre major, and she attended Oklahoma College for Women. I immediately wanted to know more” (Stanlake, “Interview,” 110). Oliva learned that Te Ata was still alive, residing in a retirement home in Oklahoma. Oliva met with Te Ata and her family, conducted multiple interviews, and received personal letters and theatrical ephemera not archived in libraries. A scholarly article “Te Ata—Chickasaw Indian Performer” satisfied Oliva’s research, but she immediately decided to create a play that would tell Te Ata’s story in the medium Te Ata and Oliva loved best. That journey would take almost twenty more years. A professional playwright, Oliva wrote a large play that draws upon the theatre’s full range of technical capabilities for spectacle, sound, and performance. Oliva explains: [It] was important to me that we use every means we could to tell this powerful story . . . I wanted to say, “Look, this is a powerful story . . . it’s worthy of a New York production. We have a big set and we have lots of costumes.” I just think that Native people, as well as other 157

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cultures, need to see that we can tell our stories in the mainstream theatre. Stanlake, “Interview,” 116 Beyond such technical demands, Te Ata also covers a vast expanse of time: from Te Ata’s childhood in Indian Territory through her crossing into the spirit world at the age of ninety-nine. Oliva fit nearly a century of action into a two-hour play by creating two Te Atas: Elder Te Ata, who steps through the sky to tell the audience her story; and Young Te Ata, whose life moves more chronologically. Oliva also uses three performance modes—realism, expressionism, and ceremonial action—to communicate the nuances of Te Ata’s personal life and career. In realism, Young Te Ata enacts Elder Te Ata’s memories as she matures from child to college student, professional performer, wife, and legend. Conventions of expressionism convey the internal world of Young Te Ata’s fears and conflicts, as she faces racist comments from Chautauqua audiences, feels lost in New York, and reacts to her first kiss from Dr. Clyde Fisher, the man who would become her husband. Ceremonial action is present in scenes that enact Native American philosophies regarding the power of language, the interconnected world, and the purpose of ceremony. These ceremonial scenes involve metatheatrical performances of works Te Ata actually presented during her lifetime, moments in which the characters speak words that Te Ata wrote, scenes in which Elder Te Ata directly addresses the audience, and transformational moments in which the spirit world blends into the empirical world. Oliva often juxtaposes the three performance modes to demonstrate the ways in which language can transform a community, or how sacred places connect people to the spirit world. Te Ata opens in ceremonial action, as a Native drum plays a heart-beat rhythm and Elder Te Ata steps through the sky to present a poem that Te Ata had adapted for her own one-woman shows. In a full, reverent presentation Elder Te Ata speaks: The drum is full of dreams The drum is full of memories The drum sings for me, the song of olden things [. . .] I dance upward with the day; I dance downward with the night . . . Someday I shall dance afar into space like a particle of dust. Oliva, Te Ata, 2031 158

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After a beat, Elder Te Ata drops her formal style to explain to the audience that she was merely practicing. During this first intimate direct audience address, Elder Te Ata confides: “I can remember what happened during Indian Territory, but I can’t remember what happened yesterday” (204). These are the very words Te Ata shared with Oliva when she first asked Te Ata for permission to interview her about her life. Within the first five minutes of the play, Oliva gives her actors and audience Te Ata’s actual language, both the words she performed and the words she used to describe her experience of this world. This opening of the play becomes a ceremony that invokes Te Ata’s spirit through her words, which travel through the actor playing Elder Te Ata into the presence of those gathered in the theatre. Thus, theatrical action turns Native philosophies about the sacred nature of speech into material form. Through repeating Te Ata’s language, Oliva brings her audience “into Te Ata’s reality, theatrical and mythic, to begin the story in the place she held most sacred, Oklahoma” (Stanlake, “Premiere,” 14). 2 Next, Elder Te Ata transitions the opening scene into a memory scene from 1907, Oklahoma’s first year of statehood. She opens a music box, and places a Native shawl around Young Te Ata, who enters dancing to the music, while her cousin, Ataloa (Mary Stone McClendon),3 and brother, Snake, poke fun at her. Elder Te Ata watches the scene from a distance. Through this first realistic scene, Oliva establishes the conventions that Elder Te Ata’s memories shape the action of the play, and that Elder Te Ata, herself, can subtly engage in Young Te Ata’s world to lead the young woman to action. The play’s changing settings introduce key people in Te Ata’s life, as places track her milestones. At Oklahoma College for Women, we meet Te Ata’s beloved teacher, Miss Davis, and her lifelong friend, Margaret Malowney Ball. In Nebraska, on the Redpath Chautauqua Circuit, we meet Kuruks Pahitu (Ralph Allen),4 a Pawnee musician who often served as Te Ata’s accompanist, and learn that Ataloa is studying opera. A later scene at Carnegie Tech in Pittsburgh marks Te Ata’s professional training. A scene in her first New York apartment depicts Te Ata, Ataloa, Kuruks, and Margaret at the start of their careers. It is here that we also meet Dr. Clyde Fisher,5 a scientist seventeen years older than Te Ata. At Bacone College in Muskogee, Oklahoma, we see Te Ata and Fisher marry. During these memory scenes, Elder Te Ata becomes increasingly involved in the actions of the past. When Young Te Ata hesitates during her audition for Carnegie Tech, Elder Te Ata prompts Young Te Ata to fully immerse herself in the audition. During Young Te Ata and Fisher’s wedding, Elder Te Ata enters the receiving line to shake their hands before finding Miss Davis, 159

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who steps out of the realistic action to join Elder Te Ata, watching and remembering the wedding. Their remembrance leads to a ceremonial scene in which Young Te Ata and Dr. Fisher move slowly out of an embrace and drift farther apart from one another, speaking overlapping dialogue crafted from the many letters the two wrote during their marriage. The end of Act 1 leaves Young Te Ata alone with a letter as she kneels on a Navajo rug. Oliva’s stage directions describe that Young Te Ata speaks the words of Te Ata’s letter intimately, as if she is recalling each moment it describes (239). The darkness enveloping her represents not only the ship where Te Ata wrote the letter, it also represents the power of words to reach across time and place, reconnecting individuals to one another and the world. Young Te Ata speaks: 28th Sun of the Hunting Moon. On the High Seas. 1936. Dear Clyde. Three years of togetherness on the trail—and we have known the tang of the desert sagebrush and seen the gnarled strength of piñon and cedar. We have walked together under green hemlock boughs and marveled at the dignity of the northern pine. We have sailed “big waters” and have felt drawn and fascinated by the knowledge of the Ancient one. We have loved the smoke and the beauty of the campfire and have felt the warmth that comes from companionship and real friends. We have felt our aloneness and the sadness of parting—but always knowing we would feel as much the keen joy and the sweetness and the strangeness of coming together again—and—we have caught a photographic cloud or two and had an occasional dance among the stars! The 28th Sun of the Hunting Moon and an Indian on the Atlantic sailing back to you! 240 The last line leaves the audience at intermission, a period to consider the interconnections expressed through the play and, specifically, through Te Ata’s words, which, when spoken aloud within the ceremony of theatre, evoke multiple relationships: between Te Ata and Clyde Fisher, between Te Ata and the communities she formed in life, and between Te Ata and the communities her spirit continues to forge through the power of her transcendent language that emerges from her connection to the natural world. By the second act, Oliva has fully established the many accomplishments that made Te Ata a unique, trail-blazing theatre artist. Oliva has also primed her audiences to understand how the spirit world intersects with the 160

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empirical world, allowing time to function relationally, rather than linearly. Accordingly, ceremonial action increases during Act  2, as Young Te Ata struggles with the ethics of making a living through Native performance while she is married to a white man and lives in Manhattan, far away from Oklahoma and her Chickasaw family. Young Te Ata also contends with losing those closest to her: her father’s death, the passing of Miss Davis, and Fisher’s advancing age. Scene 9 is set during a women’s camping trip on Loon Island, New Hampshire, a beloved place Te Ata regularly visited to regain a sense of balance. After confiding her fears to Miss Davis, Young Te Ata walks alone at the lakeside. In response to the haunting cries of the loons, she recites Longfellow’s lines: “ ‘All the guests praised Hiawatha / Called him Strong-Heart—Soon-ge-taha / Called him Loon-Heart, Mahngo-taysee’ ” (Oliva, Te Ata, 252). Oliva writes that Young Te Ata then cries out “Mahn-go-taysee” with a haunting voice that mimics the howls of the loons (252). Young Te Ata pushes a canoe into the water, listening to the intensifying loon wails responding to her own, before the Loon People appear. The dancers performing the loons engage with Young Te Ata, who first flees from them, but eventually merges with them into a V-formation, as a drum beats in rhythm with their flight (253). At daybreak, the Loon People escort Young Te Ata offstage for a transformation. Drumming continues, as Elder Te Ata enters through the sky and Miss Davis joins her to recite a poem for Young Te Ata. Ritualistically, the loons clothe Young Te Ata in a new buckskin. Appearing changed, older and more tranquil, her transformation physically mirrors her elders’ ceremonial language. Elder Te Ata approaches Young Te Ata to prepare her for what is to come. Their interaction marks the first time that Young Te Ata is fully aware of Elder Te Ata’s presence; she listens and nods in response. The scene at Loon Island is the play’s pivotal moment, marking the transition between Te Ata, the performer, and Te Ata, the culture bearer. In ceremonial action, the scene stages Native concepts of specific lands as sacred places; the power of language connecting people to the spirit world; the reciprocal relationship between humans, animals, and spirits; and the spiraling motion of time. Theatrically, the 2012 production reinforced these concepts with lighting that turned the stage to water and sky, the ensemble of spirit dancers moving throughout the entire theatre, music that paused to play an elongated inhale and exhale shared by Young Te Ata and the Loon People in flight, and the new buckskin that Young Te Ata wears—not as regalia, but as an extension of herself. This and the following scenes highlight spiritual components of Te Ata’s performance career. Time and place collapse, 161

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allowing Young Te Ata and Dr. Fisher to transcend geography and share a final dance among the stars. Later, Elder Te Ata and Young Te Ata meet to join “The Dance of Youth and Age,” during which Young Te Ata disappears, leaving a united Te Ata, represented by Elder Te Ata. The final scene, “Gone Away People,” stages Elder Te Ata’s transition to the spirit world, where she reunites with Fisher, Davis, Margaret, and others who have gone before. Their reunion is juxtaposed with the play’s final tableau depicting Young Te Ata, posed in profile with her arms lifted to the sun before the play’s sky cyclorama. The image is a flesh-and-blood recreation of her publicity photograph from Te Ata’s actual program (shown in Chapter 3, Figure 3). Te Ata’s 2006 premiere enacted performative sovereignty in powerful ways, especially with regard to land and its theatrical expression, setting. Funding for the production came from collaboration between the Chickasaw Nation and the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma (USAO) in Chickasha. USAO was founded in 1908 as Oklahoma College for Women (OCW), where Te Ata attended and met Miss Davis. The stage where Te Ata premiered was literally the stage upon which Te Ata first performed. In honor of the world premiere and their famous graduate, USAO opened the production with a ceremony that christened the theatre “The Te Ata Memorial Auditorium.” Robert Cothran’s set design captured Te Ata’s intricate dramaturgy of place, time, transformation, and ceremony through staging what Cothran termed “the geography of Te Ata’s life.” He took inspiration for his design from the Oklahoma sky, the limitless circle one sees when lying on the ground, looking upward. To create this upstage sky, Cothran stretched a circular cyclorama onto a round frame of birch saplings: the image evoked both sky and a drum, which is often referred to as the earth’s heartbeat. These circles echoed onto three different levels of the stage floor. The first was a perfect circle, which Elder Te Ata and characters entering from the sky first encountered. Serving as the spirit world, this central circle was ringed with beadwork, as if it were an actual ceremonial drum. A slightly irregular middle circle, decorated with earth, stones, water, and natural elements from Oklahoma, wound around the spirit circle. Cothran explained that the central circle represented Te Ata’s world. It was surrounded by a larger, lower distorted circle decorated with asphalt, concrete, and bricks, which Cothran described as “Dr. Fisher’s world.” Along the very bottom edge of this outermost circle ran a silver band of astronomical declination measurements, which aligned perfectly with stars that appeared upon the drum sky, conveying Te Ata and Dr. Fisher’s timeless connection. Additionally, Cothran 162

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designed two silhouettes of buildings that could contract to partially (as Philadelphia) and then totally (as Manhattan) block out the sky. Cothran’s set supported actors conveying how Te Ata’s characters effortlessly transition across places and time, sometimes inhabiting two worlds of existence at once. Moreover, the openness of the sky articulated the limitless nature of Te Ata’s spirit, while its being obscured by city buildings conveyed her loss of balance. DeLanna Studi, who played Young Te Ata, credited Cothran’s set for helping her enact both the ceremonial structure of Oliva’s play and Te Ata’s life. As a young Cherokee woman who also left Oklahoma to pursue an acting career, Studi appreciated the way Oliva “captured the essence of Native storytelling” and how Te Ata theatrically expressed the cultural concept “that it’s the women who carry the traditions . . . who pass the stories along” (qtd. in Stanlake, “Premiere,” 27). Both Studi and Oliva engaged in a literal act of homecoming when they returned to Oklahoma to premiere Te Ata. Theirs were just two journeys within a larger movement; nearly a hundred of Te Ata’s family members came from across the United States to attend the world premiere and to celebrate her life. During their family reunion, everyone who did not already have an Indian name received one, including Oliva, whom Te Ata’s family now views as kin (Stanlake, “Interview,” 117). Encircled by these larger ceremonies of play production and homecoming was USAO’s naming ceremony of the theatre. Lastly, in an historic shift, where land and story have the power to transform society, a final ceremony enveloped the three others: the state of Oklahoma named Te Ata’s world premiere as the inaugural event of the state’s centennial celebrations. The state, whose founding was based upon the unethical land grab of previously guaranteed Native homelands, recentered its identity upon the unconquerable presence of Native cultures. Despite the powerful sense of community generated through Te Ata’s premiere, certain production elements fell short. The original musical score diminished the ritualistic elements of Te Ata’s language, as large dance numbers overwhelmed the play’s words. The director’s concept followed suit by adhering to the conventions of musical theatre, missing the culturally specific elements of Native dramaturgy. With American musical spectacle as the production’s driving force, elemental aspects of Oliva’s dramaturgy and Cothran’s set were cut out of the production and replaced by an aesthetic intended to surprise and dazzle audiences. For example, the motif of transcending time and space (conveyed through the alignment of Te Ata’s stars and Fisher’s band of declination) disappeared when stars shone only once, as spectacle punctuating 163

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the play’s final song. After the premiere, Oliva received a grant through the Ford Foundation and Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) to rewrite the music. Oliva paired with Native flute player, Jan Seiden, to rewrite Te Ata’s score in a way that emphasized the play’s language, supported by a multilayered flute and drum score. Oliva also brought Stanlake into the year-long revision process as a dramaturge; thus, when the score was complete and the Chickasaw government again proposed to produce Te Ata for an invited tour to NMAI, Oliva, Seiden, and Stanlake’s collaborative process moved naturally into the production phase, with Stanlake as director within their communal structure of development. The Chickasaw Nation produced the 2012 production of Te Ata’s revised script along with in-kind contributions from Oklahoma City University (OCU) and NMAI. The production team brought together regular OCU theatre staff and contractors with other team members selected by Oliva and Stanlake. Most significantly, Oliva and Stanlake requested that Cothran design the set, which would tour from Oklahoma to Washington, DC. Stanlake’s directorial concept, “Transcending the great abyss through a ceremony of (re)membering,” grounded the production choices in the play’s major actions: to transcend (time, place, cultures, experiences) and to remember (both to reminisce and to put one’s self and one’s world back together). Articulating Te Ata’s dominant mode of ceremonial action through visual, aural, and tactile senses, Stanlake assigned different color palettes to each mode of performance. Ceremonial scenes possessed the blues, deep greens, and dappled golden sun of the original Chickasaw homelands in Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Alabama. The lighting was soft, impressionistic, obscuring boundaries between stage and audience to emphasize the interconnections between worlds. Ceremonial scenes were distinguished by the blending of time; the ability of characters to transcend boundaries; and the power of language, expressed through performance, storytelling, direct audience address, and Te Ata’s letters. Scenes in the mode of realism used brighter, sharper lighting that supported Stanislavskian acting with the fourth wall separating viewers from the play’s action. Expressionistic scenes also upheld the fourth wall, but the lighting, acting styles, and costuming became darker, stark, and angular. Clear juxtaposition of these modes helped communicate Native concepts through clear shifts between modes. For example, the sharp features of expressionism, as Young Te Ata experiences the racist heckling of Chautauqua audiences, visually and aurally melted into ceremonial mode, as acting, lighting, and motion all softened in response to Young Te Ata’s storytelling. 164

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Stanlake, Oliva, Seiden, Rachel Hendricks (choreographer), Rhenada Finch (musical director), and the actors devoted the first three days of rehearsals to table work exploring together how Native American dramaturgy enacts cultural expressions of time, land, language, and relations. In addition to noting the shifting modes of performance in Te Ata, the group performed exercises that explored how their own movements, voices, dancing, and singing shifted both stylistically and experientially in support of the script. Once rehearsals were in full swing, the group would still pause to discuss the dramatic action of a scene and how it conveyed Native concepts. Actors were free to openly talk with both Stanlake and Oliva in order to feel grounded in the text and their performance. This practice ensured that the Native worldviews articulated through Oliva’s script rooted all choices that the actors, director, and choreographer made; such moments of reflection are an essential practice for fostering performative sovereignty throughout the development of a Native theatrical production. In this vein, Mohler’s direction of Burning Vision employed a similar method of pausing rehearsals. Te Ata’s collaborative style of development broke down with a few of the OCU members, who were used to functioning in a hierarchical structure of theatre making. This difference sometimes led to conflict. For example, the

Figure 8 “Ribbons of Corn”: JudyLee Oliva’s Te Ata, 2012. Photo by Chickasaw nation. Courtesy of Christy Stanlake, director. 165

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costume shop was driven by timelines that did not allow for discussions of Native performance traditions and cultural values; later costuming had to rebuild certain costumes to correct cultural oversights. Later, Stanlake found herself vehemently defending Native communal structures of organization as she argued for Oliva’s right to attend technical rehearsals against the university’s practice of not including playwrights in rehearsals. Such conflicts, however, dissipated once Te Ata moved to NMAI in Washington, DC. There, the facilities and the organizational structures aligned to support Native enactments of sovereignty. When Cothran’s set was erected within NMAI’s Rasmuson Theater, a space architecturally and aesthetically designed to evoke Native traditions of storytelling on winter nights, it felt as if Te Ata arrived home. Oliva’s theatrical manifestation of Te Ata’s story, with the Chickasaw Nation’s generous support, moved from Oklahoma onto the national stage. The words that Congressman Tom Cole, Te Ata’s great-nephew, had once used to celebrate his aunt’s visionary spirit felt prophetic: Te Ata may be the most unconquered and unconquerable Chickasaw of the twentieth century. She started in Tishomingo at a time of great trial and troubles for the Chickasaws, with the Dawes commission and, frankly, a very active effort to repress Native Americans and to begin to strip them of their tribal and cultural identity. To rise from there, and to never be bitter, and project herself onto the world stage—I often tell people, at a time that most Americans thought of Native Americans as a “vanishing race,” and many Indians thought that as well. She never believed that. She always believed that there was not only this glorious past, but there was a meaningful present, and there was a great future ahead for her people. She enjoyed telling stories of her people, of all Native Nations. She was a wonderful pan-Indian ambassador, if you will, to the world. Cole

Burning Vision by Marie Clements (Métis), Directed by Courtney Elkin Mohler: Directing Native Theatre in the Academic Setting The gifts of wisdom, tools of survival, and rare—but prescient—ecological perspective implicit in Indigenous cosmologies were among the reasons 166

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Te Ata understood that her people would never fully vanish. These strands connected her practice, perspective, and theatrical work. Te Ata herself and Te Ata the play reflected the direct line between our ancestors, homeland, selves, and hopes for future generations. While the breadth and variation of Native performance is vast, the critical concept of interconnectedness inspires playwrights to illumine the relationship between the experience of colonization and assimilation forced upon Native communities, and the devastating impact of settler colonialism and capitalism on Mother Earth. Marie Clements’s plays embody the realities of interconnection (as Indigenous worldview) and fragmentation (as settler-colonial, internationalcapitalist) within the structure, characterization, and storytelling she composes. The subject of Marie Clements’s peerless ecological drama, Burning Vision, is how the interconnection of our past, present, and future human actions has devolved according the priorities set forth by Western notions of progress. Clements, a Métis playwright and director living and working in British Columbia, has written prolifically for theatre and film. She also founded and has served as the artistic director for Urban Ink Productions since 2001. Among Clements’s plays are The Unnatural and Accidental Women (1997), which centers on the epidemic of missing Indigenous women between 1965 and 1987 in Vancouver’s downtown eastside; the solo show Urban Tattoo (1999), which she developed at Native Voices and toured as the solo performer throughout North America; Burning Vision (2002), which was nominated for six Jessie Richardson Awards after its commissioning by Rumble Theatre and premiere at Vancouver’s Firehall Arts Centre; and Tombs of the Vanishing Indian (2011), directed by Yvette Nolan at Buddies in Bad Times. Tombs excavates the stories of displaced Indigenous peoples, centering on the interwoven stories of three sisters separated from each other and their family in Oklahoma and relocated to Los Angeles, California (Nothof). Clements’s work is renowned for its lyricism and depth; she connects glacial themes of life, death, pain, sexual violence, war, love, ecological ruin, greed, and colonial violence through unique character choices, images, metaphor, and prose.6 Burning Vision exemplifies both Clements’s unique lyrical storytelling and Indigenous worldview. The script advances the Indigenous values of Respect, Awareness, Generational Connection, Language, and Sacrifice (mentioned in this chapter’s introduction), as it weaves connections between human greed and resource extraction, settler-colonial power, international military efforts, and global 167

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capitalism, linking such examples of exploitation and violence across the globe and decades. As a post-doctoral fellow at Santa Clara University (SCU) in the department of theatre and dance with a courtesy appointment in ethnic studies, Mohler was given the opportunity to direct a full-length play for the 2011/12 season. In keeping with the university’s social justice mission and her own artistic interests, Mohler searched for a piece that would express a marginalized perspective and worldview. She aimed to find a play that would meaningfully address social inequity and generate thoughtful discussion around a relevant topic. In 2012, as today, the crisis of human-created climate change deserved attention, contemplation, and agitation. From a practical standpoint, the script needed to be suitable for a multicultural cast. Clements’s Burning Vision enables a kind of flexibility in casting by recommending double and triple casting of actors to play characters from different cultural and racial backgrounds. Struck by its imagery and effective exploration of ecological destruction, Mohler chose to direct Burning Vision, though she also recognized that play’s complexity would require special audience engagement and education, such as an interdisciplinary symposium on the play’s themes, an extended program and curated lobby display, and talkbacks with Clements herself. Burning Vision explores the endless becoming of a Dene See-er’s vision of global destruction. When white male prospectors, the Brothers Labine, disturb a cave of black rock—respected and feared for millennia by the Dene—to mine radium ore, they profit while also changing the Dene people’s culture, economy, and environment. The play traces the ore to its eventual reincarnation as the atomic bombs the Allied Forces drop on Japan to end the Second World War in a “moral” victory, cementing the United States’ standing as the global superpower. In a series of vignettes spanning several decades and regions of the globe, Burning Vision illustrates the impact that human greed has on our planet and warns that the future depends on our global community reconditioning the way we think about resources and one another. For example, the play links the early 1880s and 1890s mining of ore from its place of origin in Canada to the yellow-haired Radium Painter, a character Clements fashions after the historical Radium Girls, ill-fated female factory workers charged with painting glow-in-the-dark watches in the late 1910s and early 1920s. These women made the glowing watches by licking the bristles of tiny paintbrushes into precise tips, then dipping their brushes in liquid radium to paint watch and clock faces. Unbeknownst to the women, the radium paint was highly toxic, exposing thousands of them to 168

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radiation, resulting in radiation sickness and death. In Burning Vision’s interconnected world, the Radium Painter and the Miner (of radium ore) fall in love, only to have their wedding night shrouded by their imminent deaths from necrosis of the jaw and lung cancer, respectively. The Dene Seeer’s vision also manifests in metaphorical characters such as Little Boy, who personifies radium ore as a small, lost Dene boy, and Fat Man, a dummy living in an atomic test site, drinking beer, and yelling at the television set. These two characters, named for the Allied Forces’ two atomic bombs, stitch together a family with Tokyo Rose, whose character embodies the female English-speaking radio personalities spreading Japanese propaganda to demoralize the Allied Forces. Another thread of the story follows Round Rose, a Dene baker who makes her living by baking bread for the white and Indigenous radium miners. Like the love story between the Miner and the Radium Painter, Rose falls in love with Koji, a fisherman from Japan, in an infinite and diffuse place, in an indiscrete time; the two find and love each other because they are lost and lonely. Their union manifests as they share a sacred song they sing in unison without translation or explanation. The concept of family, tied by love and unbound by neither “realistic” Western notions of nation nor linear periodization, factors heavily within Burning Vision. The audience meets a Dene Widow, who dreams of her life as a young woman when she was deeply in love with and fearful for her husband, the Dene Ore Carrier. She begs him to return to their people’s traditional ways and abandon the white man’s mining of the dangerous “money rock” (Clements, Burning, 80). At the end of the play, the Dene Widow transforms from the Japanese Grandmother (the script calls for the same actor to play both roles) and gently envelops Koji, the Japanese fisherman, who has now become Koji the Grandson, her grandson. As a widow and tribal elder, she keeps a fire burning for her missing husband throughout the play, until the final moments wherein she places a traditional caribou jacket onto her husband’s spirit body, releasing him to the spirit world. The play’s final moments present both destruction and creation, despair and hope, as the atomic bomb detonates in a flash of light, killing many of the play’s characters in an instant. Within moments, however, radio voices emerge in countless languages and the audience sees that the baby of Rose, the Dene bread maker, and Koji, the Japanese fisherman, has survived the nuclear blast that killed his father and the cancer that consumed his mother. “Cherry blossoms fall till they fill the stage,” as the Dene Widow embraces Koji the Grandson (played by the same actor who plays his father, also named Koji), visually reminding the audience of holding hope that new 169

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life will emerge from generational wisdom (Clements, Burning, 121). Clements’s recommended double casting across racial lines compels the audience to recognize the experience of trauma shared by the Japanese and Dene, despite the thousands of miles and cultural differences between them. Such relationships between Indigenous peoples from across the globe illustrate the terror created through the experience of settler greed, and the power of connection to heal it. This is the realization of the Dene See-er’s dream. Toward the end of the play, when the theatre fills with radio voices from across space and time, audiences visualize the interconnections of characters, actors, and themselves within a global community that evokes the spirits of those killed in acts of warfare, genocide, and ecological irresponsibility (Mohler, “Burning,” 23). Mohler’s 2012 production concept highlighted the Indigenous value of interconnection with design choices that reinforced the play’s web-like structure. Clements organizes the script into four movements: Movement I “The Frequency of Discovery”; Movement II “Rare Earth Elements”; Movement III “Waterways”; and Movement IV “Radar Echoes.” The number four is sacred in many Indigenous epistemologies that honor the balance sustained by the four cardinal directions, seasons, and human life cycle. The four movements of Clements’s play stage different aspects of the characters’ stories across locations (Northern Canada, Japan, New Mexico) and time periods (1880s, 1940s, 1930s), eschewing Western chronology. Based on this dramaturgical analysis, Mohler envisioned Burning Vision in the round; thus, to invoke the importance of the sacred circle and visually conjoin the four movements, set designer Jerry Enos built a 28-foot diameter raked disk that extended past the proscenium by eight feet. Enos painted the disk as a medicine wheel, with each equal quadrant radiating out from the center of the circle, where the Dene Widow’s fire pit was located. The most downstage quadrant had a deep gold background contrasting with the bright pink blossoms of Koji’s cherry tree. Upstage of the fire, Round Rose’s writing desk and suitcase sat upon a rich brown floor, painted with origami cranes. The red stage left area, housing Fat Man’s recliner and TV, framed much of the interaction between Round Rose, Little Boy, and Fat Man. Lighting designer Nick Kumomoto established the entrance to the mineshaft with a gobo pattern of crossbeams that distinguished the upstage quadrant from the blues of the stage right section. Enos painted dark caribou tracks over the icy blues and whites of the stage right quarter, evoking the northern tundra. Characters walked the exterior of the medicine wheel at various points in the script: Rose the Dene bread maker dragged a bag of flour around the 170

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perimeter of the staging space; over the course of several scenes, the Radium Painter edged the stage’s circumference, licking her paintbrush and carefully painting the twelve tick marks of a clock’s face, which lit up one by one as she moved. Beyond the disk of the playing space rose a 16-foot-wide projection screen, which displayed backdrops of still projections and film and also facilitated shadow making and live video streaming. The screen provided the production team the ability to draw the focus of the audience above and beyond the material bodies, and it allowed Mohler to use live footage to stage the Dene See-er as all-encompassing, dreamlike, and looming (Mohler, “Burning,” 9–14). In her article “A Burning Vision of Decolonization: Marie Clements, Ecological Drama and Indigenous Theatrical Praxis,” Mohler describes the dramaturgical intention of the sacred circle as visualized in the set: A central aspect of my directing concept was the idea that each of the distinct worlds/quadrants was intimately connected with the others, as part of the whole that made the medicine wheel disk and created the wide-reaching cosmos of the play. We also incorporated the concept that fixed chronological time, symbolized obviously by the clock face, operates as a backdrop upon which certain stories are prioritized over others; the simultaneous stories and action, however, disallowed the hierarchies that usually accompany history-making and the Western Judeo-Christian worldview. Finally, compass marks reached outwards from the center of the disk, where the Widow’s fire pit and the great waterways were located. The round playing area was thus layered with meaning; visual cues bound the dominant colonial constructs of “discovery” and “progress” to the healing presence and transformative power of the medicine wheel. 14 7 Since time immemorial, the Indigenous peoples of North America have used the medicine wheel as a visual representation of wholeness, balance, and well-being (spiritual, physical, intellectual, and emotional). Medicine wheels are often represented by a circle, crossed by two lines intersecting at the circle’s center point. Each of the four quadrants within the circle may be associated with a color, season, and the flora and fauna found within the land of a specific tribal community; these sections correspond with key emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual qualities necessary to live in balance in the world. Paula Gunn Allen describes the medicine which the Lakota call the 171

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Figure 9 The Dene See-er from Marie Clements’s Burning Vision, 2012. Photo by Michael Erkelens. Courtesy of Courtney Elkin Mohler, director. Sacred Hoop: “The concept is one of singular unity that is dynamic and encompassing, including all that is contained in its most essential aspect, that of life” (Sacred Hoop, 56). Besides its rich imagery and challenging stage directions that demand creativity from the design team and ensemble, Burning Vision highlights our ecological crisis emerging from global capitalism, American consumerism, the military industrial complex, and environmental racism. For most American audiences and theatre artists alike, the play is relatively difficult to understand without some context. Mohler contended that she would need to find funding to create supplemental events in order to ethically produce the work within the constraints of her performance context and casting pool. The following outlines tactics she used to find funding for additional programming that could both prepare her student cast and university community audiences, while also publicizing the production. Although these strategies were used in the specific context of producing Marie Clements’s ecological drama Burning Vision at SCU and would need modification elsewhere, they are offered in a spirit of reciprocity and community making, with the intention of articulating how an artist-scholar committed to directing or producing Native theatre can do so in an academic setting without replicating the settler-colonial power dynamics upon which most educational institutions were built. Academics have the relative 172

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privilege to access the resources of a department and university, and therefore must prioritize the values of Respect, Sincerity, and Awareness as they work with Indigenous playwrights to perform sovereignty. To enrich the impact of Burning Vision’s production, Mohler recruited a student dramaturge, Brianna Mitchell, to work with her throughout the production process. Together Mohler and Mitchell researched and presented to the cast and crew several topics critical to realizing the intricacies of the story, including an introduction to Indigenous worldviews; an introduction to Dene cosmology and culture; an introduction to the medicine wheel as a unifying concept; an explanation of the Radium Girls and radiation sickness; an introduction to the geopolitics of the Second World War; a brief history of the atomic bomb; an overview of twentieth-century wartime radio; and an explanation of ecological drama. Additionally, Mitchell developed a substantive lobby installation and an extended program that included maps of the geological areas discussed in the play; a timeline of radium and uranium extraction and refining; and an explanation of key terms, places, and figures that would enhance audience appreciation and engagement with the aforementioned topics. This considerable extra work was made possible because SCU’s College of Arts and Science allocated course production credit to the student dramaturge, and the department of theatre and dance provided additional funds for printing. Mohler’s proposal to the play selection committee requested that the department of theatre help produce a corresponding Burning Vision Symposium, which would feature expert panelists in ecology, Asian American studies, and Japanese history, in conversation with Clements. This endeavor required Mohler to write an internal grant application to the College of Arts and Sciences for additional funding to bring Clements to campus, coordinate and host a panel of experts, and promote the symposium alongside the production. In addition to the tremendous opportunity that speaking with a living playwright brings to the cast of a contemporary play, the proposal made the case that such efforts are of particular importance when staging Indigenous work.When Native playwrights write contemporary stories, they pierce the cover of colonial oppression because, as both Audre Lorde and Joy Harjo (Creek) have written separately, “we were never meant to survive” (qtd. in G. Bird, 29).8 Performing sovereignty cannot be passive or indirect; the active presence of the storytellers must be engaged publicly whenever possible. Academic institutions that do not equitably reflect the Indigenous population of their surrounding community (as is the case for nearly all institutions of higher education in the United States) should be 173

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tasked with bringing Native artists to their campuses to speak directly with students, faculty, and audiences. Whenever possible, university theatre department faculty should leverage their resources within the academy to transform rhetoric around diversity into inclusive practice—one small, but important step toward decolonization. Settler colonialism, as well as the institutions upon which it relies and empowers, obscures the presence of historical and especially contemporary Native lives and issues. Including Indigenous cultural arts and knowledge within the syllabi of each discipline is an excellent starting point; but engaging with “examples” of Indigenous works without inviting Native people to speak with authority on their expertise has the potential for the these works to be viewed as artifacts. Extending an invitation and fairly compensating the artist exemplifies inclusive pedagogy and creates an opportunity for performative sovereignty, wherein the presence, words, and intentions of Indigenous people are listened to, valued, and prioritized. The first and most critical step to change the conversation from diversity to inclusive practice is identifying where the pockets of money exist and convincing those holding the purse strings that all interests are aligned. In the proposal to direct Burning Vision and in all subsequent promotion and planning efforts, Mohler made clear connections with initiatives that were already in place on campus at SCU, such as the “Sustainability Initiative” and the “Justice and the Arts Initiative.” The department of theatre and dance touted its choice to produce a play that addressed sustainability and to fund programming that supported the university’s strategic priorities. This example is specific to SCU, but universities throughout the world increasingly are including sustainability and ecological justice in their initiatives and missions. By highlighting the social justice issues present in this work, and working within the existing structure of the initiatives that already existed on campus to host artists and activists, Mohler obtained funds for international airfare tickets, lodging, and a professional stipend for the playwright. Additionally, Clements visited two undergraduate classes, attended the production, participated in a talkback with the audience, and also participated as an expert panelist for the interdisciplinary symposium. The play, playwright, and First Nations aesthetics, culture, and politics were virtually unknown in the San Francisco community that formed this production’s audience, which posed a challenge for ticket sales. In order to promote the show, Mohler personally contacted instructors in the departments of history, ethnic studies, ecological science, English, and women and gender studies to explain the project and ask them to consider 174

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Figure 10 Promotional flyer for Burning Vision and symposium, Santa Clara University, 2012. Courtesy of Courtney Elkin Mohler.

requiring attendance to the show and symposium on their course syllabi. Mohler leaned into the academic nature and complexity of the play’s themes; by highlighting scholars from the SCU departments of ethnic studies, history, and ecology scheduled to speak in the symposium, Mohler generated a campus-wide buzz in departments that would not normally attend theatre productions. Professor James Lai, chair of the ethnic studies program, presented on Second World War-era anti-Asian discrimination, including the Japanese American internment camps, and explained the controversy over the “Tokyo Rose” women accused of spreading Japanese propaganda; 175

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Professor Barbara Maloney of the department of history discussed the social, cultural, and political impact on Japan of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; and Marie Clements discussed ecological drama as a form of social activism. Additionally, Mohler invited Dr. Jeff Bury, a leading scholar in the global consequences of mineral extraction and industrial capitalism from the department of environmental studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz to present on his work relating to Burning Vision’s central themes of environmental racism and ecological inequity. This symposium was held midway through the play’s run, during a time that was accessible to most university students and faculty. The following night’s performance enjoyed relatively high attendance, partially due to excitement over the talkback with Clements that followed the show. Clements answered questions ranging from her writing process to specific images and stories within the play, including the historical and environmental connections between Japan and First Nations Canada.

Aiming for Performative Sovereignty in Professional and Academic Theatre While critical differences such as production resources and expectations, audience demographics, and script specifics vary greatly, there are certain tenants for process and production that should be employed when directing and producing Indigenous works that make Native worldviews visible to the audience and honor the storyteller (the playwright and his/her/their ancestors). Following the “Code of Conduct” expressed by William Yellow Robe Jr. and Margo Lukens (outlined in Chapter  5 and throughout this chapter), Stanlake and Mohler sought to run their rehearsal processes, dramaturgical analyses, and production considerations with the primary focus of creating space for performative sovereignty to develop. There are several ways in which Burning Vision (2012) and Te Ata (2012) illustrate the values of Respect, Sincerity, Awareness, Generational Connection, Language, Breath, and Sacrifice that are key to both conducting Native theatrical production ethically and to enacting Native sovereignty. When Stanlake insisted that Oliva be present in technical rehearsals and throughout the rehearsal process, against the “norms” of the OCU theatre department, she insisted upon Respect for Indigenous communal art making and Respect for the playwright’s ceremonial story giving; this also illustrated a degree of Sacrifice, as she willingly entered into conflict with the hosting 176

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theatre’s management in order to uphold these ethics. Mohler displayed Awareness of the audience’s limited exposure to Indigenous perspectives on mineral extraction, US militarism, and settler colonialism as she conceived of and organized a multidisciplinary panel of experts to elucidate matters that were important for honoring Burning Vision’s content and purpose. Both works called for the use of Indigenous Languages, which were performed with permission of the traditional speakers. Each piece centered on an Indigenous perspective of time, place, and Generational Connection that often eludes Western audiences; the directors did not shy away from the task of staging the so-called “impossibility” of spirit characters, characters who transmute time to tell their stories, linking eras that defy Western logic but illuminate Indigenous ways of knowing. In dramatized—and literal— Breath, the Japanese Grandmother becomes the Dene Widow because they share a similar spiritual journey: to pass wisdom to the next generation. Similarly, Te Ata’s Loon People and Te Ata create ceremony together in Breath as the young woman joins the birds in flight, allowing for her transformation through their shared experience. Each aspect of these two performances reflects the directors’ Sincerity of purpose to advance performative sovereignty in their productions. The rich theatrical potential of Indigenous theatre can and must be enriched by striving for more than aesthetic or topical “diversity.” The purpose of Native theatrical praxis is community making through honoring traditional ways of knowing and being in the world, which, in turn, advances the sovereignty of Indigenous peoples.

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As the theories of Margo Kane, Tomson Highway, and countless other artists demonstrate, Native worldviews do not always adhere to boundaries between art and life, between empirical experiences and spiritual experiences, between past and future. The circular, rather than linear, epistemologies of Native cultures extend to Native performance. While this book has addressed performative works that Native and non-Native viewers might readily identify as theatrical works, or dramatic texts, it is important to respect the fluidity of Native performance, which often defies Western compulsions to delineate genres. According to Indigenous concepts of language, and the power Indigenous people maintain through orality, spoken words are viewed as permanent: once spoken, words exist forever as they circle the earth and spirit world, uniting living beings across time and place. This power of language exists in storytelling, theatre, poetry, prayer, song, performance, and film. Thus, the power of speech—like the powers of witnessing, of developing community—weaves interconnections across forms of art that rely upon spoken word. This chapter explores these interconnections across Native performance practices based on storytelling in the twenty-first century, with implications for the future.

Indigenous Playwriting for the Twenty-First Century Mary Kathryn Nagle (Cherokee): Attorney, Activist, and Playwright In the United States, perhaps no other artist embodies the concept of performative sovereignty more literally than Mary Kathryn Nagle, a practicing attorney and prolific professional playwright. Nagle is an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma whose artist-activist life demonstrates how culture and art, past and present, daily actions and political actions tightly weave the fabric of lived Native experience. In a playwright’s note she wrote for Arena Stage’s premiere of Sovereignty, Nagle explains: “To be a citizen of a sovereign Tribal Nation today comes with 179

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responsibility. I see that as an attorney and I also see that as a playwright . . . I believe the erasure of Native voices has horrible consequences for all of us” (“Playwright’s Note,” 9). Consequently, Nagle roots her plays in the thorny ground of federal and tribal law, demonstrating the contemporary consequences of historic legal precedence and offering solutions for human rights abuses through critical revisions of existing laws. Nagle’s theatrical subject matter reflects her legal work. She is a partner of Pipestem Law, an Oklahoma-based firm “dedicated to protecting and enhancing the sovereign rights of tribal governments and improving the lives of Native people. [Pipestem] specialize[s] in representation of tribal governments, tribal enterprises, and Native organizations with an emphasis on litigation in tribal, state, and federal courts” (Pipestem). Although the legal world and the artistic world may seem incongruous, Nagle views both professions as natural extensions of Native traditions of storytelling. Cases are won when their attorneys can successfully tell stories that compel their juries and judges to act. In an American Theatre article extoling Nagle’s Sovereignty, Celia Wren addresses Nagle’s objective of “changing the narrative” in law, on stage, and in popular culture’s understanding of Native peoples’ rights. Wren writes: To erase or debase a people’s stories paves the way for the undermining of their rights [Nagle] suggests. Conversely, to tell a people’s story authentically is to take a step toward preserving those rights. As a lawyer, [Nagle] said, “I’m doing work to restore the sovereignty and jurisdiction that the Supreme Court has taken away [from Native people]. You cannot do that work unless you change the narrative that allows the court to take it away.” Nagle’s legal work demonstrates the breadth of her experience and her continual commitment to Native rights. Prior to joining Pipestem’s private practice, Nagle worked in commercial litigation and clerked for the US District Court, District of Nebraska, and the US Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit. In 2013 she delivered an amicus brief about the Indian Child Welfare Act before the Supreme Court in Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl. In her playwriting, Nagle explores Native rights through legal subjects relating to the protections of tribal sovereignty, of Native women from violence, and of the environment from exploitative consumerist actions. Sliver of a Full Moon exemplifies Nagle’s work as an artist-activist-attorney. Presented through staged readings, the play educates audiences about the 180

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2013 reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), which included new provisions to protect Native women against assaults committed by non-Native perpetrators on Native lands. Until 2013, tribal governments had no jurisdiction over non-Native people committing crimes upon their sovereign lands. The 2013 reauthorization of VAWA restored a “sliver” of Native sovereignty by giving tribal governments (with the exception of most tribal communities in Alaska) the ability to prosecute non-Native people who physically or sexually assault Native women within tribal boundaries. Sliver of a Full Moon tells the story behind VAWA’s reauthorization by juxtaposing the actual testimony of Native women survivors, frequently told by the actual victims themselves, with scenes that reenact the debates between Native activists and federal lawmakers throughout the process of revising the law. Thus, the play is at once a work of documentary theatre and a visceral recounting of live testimony that places the responsibility of bearing witness to trauma upon its audience members. This desired effect was in the minds of Wilson (Otoe/Missouria) and Brenda Toineeta Pipestem (Eastern Band Cherokee) when they first discussed the possibility of Nagle’s writing a play that would move “non-Native people [to] understand both the humanity of the issue and the jurisdictional issues in federal Indian law” (Montiel, 33). Performances of Sliver have occurred in many venues connected with lawmaking, such as the US Capitol Visitor Center’s Congressional Auditorium, the United Nations’ World Conference on Indigenous People in 2014, and Yale Law School in 2015. Mohegan director, Madeline Sayet directed the Yale performance, which Professor Ned Blackhawk (Western Shoshone) of History of American Studies and Katie Jones (Cherokee), then a Yale Law School student, helped facilitate. Because, as Jones explained, “Yale Law School graduates make up the highest proportion of Supreme Court clerks and other federal clerks,” Sliver’s production held potential to shape legal decisions yet to come (qtd. in Montiel, 35). The combined interests in law, history, American studies, performance, and Native American cultures helped fuel Yale’s decision to hire Nagle to lead its Indigenous performing arts program (YIPAP), which she has coordinated since the fall of 2015. In 2017, as the Trump administration began rolling back US environmental laws and disregarded standard legal procedures in order to resume construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, Native Voices at the Autry premiered Nagle’s Fairly Traceable, a play about law, Native communities, and climate change. The title comes from the late Justice Antonin Scalia, who used the term to refer to the high level of proof required for a claimant to 181

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receive a favorable court decision in cases concerning environmental damage. Nagle states that since Scalia’s use of “fairly traceable” in 1992, the term “has been used repeatedly by federal courts to prevent climate change victims from holding those who profit from environmental destruction accountable” (qtd. in D. McBride). Fairly Traceable argues for the importance of including Native perspectives in national conversations about climate change because, as Nagle asserts, “our tribal nations here in the United States have been protecting Mother Earth and the land and the water since time immemorial” (qtd. in D. McBride). In a holistic understanding of environmental destruction’s interconnections with violence against humanity, Nagle also coauthored “Sexual Assault on the Pipeline” with Gloria Steinem in 2017. This Boston Globe opinion piece incorporates Nagle’s activist work on VAWA as she and Steinem explore the overwhelming proliferation of sexual assaults upon Native women and girls in Native communities bordering the isolated makeshift work camps where pipeline employees of extractive industries live during the long construction phases of these massive projects. In a stunning example of how rates of violence against women increase upon the arrival of work camps, Nagle and Steinem focus on statistics from the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara nations in North Dakota near the Bakken oil project between 2010 and 2013, years that populations in the camps peaked. Referring to these Native nations as “ground zero for the increase in violent crimes that accompanied the boom,” Nagle and Steinem write that these communities “reported a doubling, and in some instances a tripling, in the number of calls that victim-service providers receive for domestic violence, sexual assault, and sex trafficking.” With four out of five perpetrators being non-Native, issues of tribal jurisdiction hamper Native communities’ abilities to seek justice for victims and to effectively quell such violent incursions from outsiders. Nagle and Steinem close the article with the reminder: “As [Native citizens] have learned throughout American history, an attack on a native woman’s body is a violent attack on her nation’s sovereignty.” Nagle’s 2018 play Sovereignty, commissioned and produced by Arena Stage in Washington, DC, explores the relationship between Native American jurisdictional sovereignty, which the US Supreme Court confirmed in the 1832 case of Worcester v. Georgia, and the alarming intensification of violence against Native women after the Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe ruling of 1978 that upended tribal jurisdiction over non-Native perpetrators through the false claim that Native nations had never held such legal jurisdiction. Weaving relationships between history and the contemporary fight to 182

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protect Native women through VAWA, Nagle’s Sovereignty presents two storylines that allow viewers to understand the intricacies and repercussions of federal tribal law through Native perspectives of synchronic time. The first storyline, set in the 1830s, opens at the burial site of John Ridge after he, his father Major Ridge, and Elias Boudinot have been murdered by fellow Cherokees for having signed the 1835 Treaty of New Echota, which approved the Cherokee Nation’s removal from their ancestral lands in exchange for continued sovereignty upon new lands in Indian Territory and the creation of a Cherokee Nation seat in the US Senate (on which the federal government reneged). Though Cherokee Chief John Ross had not approved the treaty, it still led directly to the Trail of Tears. Sovereignty’s historic scenes explore this controversy by depicting the legal power of the Cherokee Nation, which was in direct negotiations with President Andrew Jackson, who had given Major Ridge his first name after the two men joined forces to fight the British at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, where Cherokee warrior Junaluska saved Jackson’s life. Despite Jackson and Ridge’s close relationship, the newly established president refused to uphold the Supreme Court’s ruling of Cherokee sovereignty upon their ancestral lands in Georgia. Sovereignty’s contemporary scenes follow attorney Sarah Polson, a descendant of the Ridge family, who returns home to Oklahoma to work for the Cherokee Nation in order to implement VAWA. The present begins to tangle with the past as Sarah is hired by Jim Ross, a descendant of John Ross, in an effort to finish her forefather’s work of defending Cherokee Nation sovereignty. Historic scenes ground Sarah’s strong cultural and intellectual ties within Cherokee traditional values, depicted by the national reputation of the Cherokee Nation’s newspaper, The Phoenix; John Ridge’s northern education in constitutional law and Latin; and the legal battle of Worcester v. Georgia. Sarah, herself, becomes a symbol of the Cherokee Nation’s sovereignty when she survives a violent rape from her non-Native husband yet persists in her quest to strengthen tribal jurisdiction over non-Native criminals by arguing before the Supreme Court for the 2018 reauthorization of VAWA. Washington, DC’s Arena Stage, a preeminent professional theatre, commissioned and premiered Nagle’s Sovereignty for the theatre’s Power Plays cycle, which aims to stage twenty-five new works that explore the political figures and crucial moments that have formed the American experiment. In Sovereignty, past and present, law and theatre, life and art, the Cherokee Nation and the federal government blended together for Nagle, who herself is a direct descendant of John and Major Ridge. Nagle’s grandmother’s stories about their 183

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Figure 11 Andrew Roa and Kyla García in  Mary Kathryn Nagle’s Sovereignty, Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater, 2018. Photo by C. Stanley Photography. Courtesy of Arena Stage.

family’s role in Worcester v. Georgia are what inspired her ambition to become an attorney that would build upon her ancestors’ work (Collins-Hughes). On stage, in the US capital, Nagle’s Sovereignty forcefully deployed the power of Native storytelling to change national narratives about both Native American history and contemporary rights. Nagle’s powerful voice reverberated across the country in 2018, when the renowned regional Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland premiered Nagle’s Manahatta. This seven-actor, fourteen-part drama was, remarkably, one of three works by Native playwrights on stage in Oregon during the spring of 2018.

Convergence of the Long-Overdue: Native Women Playwrights Transform Oregon Professional Theatre in 2018 In spring of 2018, a momentous confluence of Indigenous artistry dazzled Oregon as the three largest theatre companies in the state each produced a new 184

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play by three different Native playwrights: the one-woman show And So We Walked, written and performed by DeLanna Studi (Cherokee) ran between March 31 and May 13 at the Portland Center Stage at the Armory; the satirical comedy The Thanksgiving Play by Larissa FastHorse (Sicangu Lakota) was produced by the Artists Repertory Theatre in Portland, and ran from April 1 to 29; and the drama Manahatta by Mary Kathryn Nagle ran from March 28 to October 27 at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. While these plays vary greatly in style, specific content, and production requirements, all three promote Indigenous visibility and the power of sharing Native stories and concerns. Madeline Sayet, a Mohawk stage director who has worked professionally with all three of these playwrights, explains how Nagle, Studi, and FastHorse’s plays open the United States theatre community to Indigenous perspectives in her prescient cover story for the April 2018 edition of American Theatre magazine: As the narrative of each of these plays illustrates, the silencing of Native stories is common. It is also catastrophic for Native culture and community, and for the policies that affect us . . . Traditional Native storytelling molds itself to the shape of the given moment and to what is needed. The narratives we put onstage therefore have direct consequences in shaping our world. Sayet continues: “In many ways these three plays stand as powerful acts of defiance against the silencing of Native voices . . . After all, what good is writing an amazing play if the American theatre won’t produce it?” Despite the novelty of this regional convergence—the season marked the first time on record that three plays by Native women have run simultaneously at three professional houses in the United States—Sayet reminds the public that none of these playwrights are novices to the profession. Each of these women has been creating work for years, and “had been told countless times, in countless ways, that there was no room for Native Stories in the American theatre” (Sayet). The timing of their productions may have been remarkable, but considering the playwrights’ hard-to-come-by but excellent previous theatrical work, it is no surprise that all three shows enjoyed critical success. DeLanna Studi (Cherokee), And So We Walked Studi has acted in professional theatre as well as film and television for decades. In 2007 she starred in What’s an Indian Woman to Do? by Mark 185

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Anthony Rolo (Ojibwe) at the Los Angeles Theatre Center, to rave reviews. She has worked with Native Voices at the Autry repeatedly over the past decade, starring in The Berlin Blues by Drew Hayden Taylor (2007) and Vickie Ramirez (Tuscarora)’s Stand Off at HWY #37 (2014), among others. Studi played Johnna in the first national Broadway tour of Tracy Letts’s August: Osage County, the titular role of JudyLee Oliva’s Te Ata in the 2006 premiere (see Chapter 8), and originated the role of Wilma Mankiller in the 2019 off-Broadway premiere production of Gloria—A Life by Emily Mann at the Daryl Roth Theatre in New York City. Additionally, Studi was among the first Native actors to perform on the stages of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, the Indiana Repertory Theatre, and Walt Disney Concert Hall. Beyond this singular acting career in a field that rarely casts Native performers in paying roles, Studi has been a leader and advocate as the chair of the Screen Actors Guild President’s National Task Force for American Indians. Her film work has garnered multiple awards, including the 2004 Best Actress American Indian Film Award and Best Supporting Actress First Americans in the Arts Award for Showtime’s Edge of America. Advocacy is a driving force behind Studi’s creation of And So We Walked, a project whose development was funded by numerous partners including the Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts and the Cherokee Historical Association.1 And So We Walked is an intimate retelling of the six-week, 900-mile journey Studi took with her father to trace the Trail of Tears from her family’s ancestral homestead in Murphy, North Carolina to Oklahoma, where she was raised. Along the way, father and daughter stood upon the lands where their ancestors walked at gunpoint, suffered, died, and struggled onward, as the US federal government forced roughly 17,000 Cherokee from their homelands into unknown Indian Territory that would one day become the state of Oklahoma. In the 2-hour 15-minute solo performance, Studi deftly inhabits multiple characters to vividly portray the locations she and her father visited and her feelings about being on the trail where thousands of her ancestors died. Aware of the public’s woeful lack of knowledge about the details of Indian removal and Cherokee culture, Studi weaves meaningful but brief explanations of topics ranging from residential boarding schools, blood quantum, and BIA cards to spiritual practices such as smudging and “going to water,” wherein Cherokee people purify themselves by washing in ice-cold water, often streams or lakes. The audience is welcomed to this wisdom as DeLanna, playing herself, converses with an elder woman she meets along her journey (also played by Studi): 186

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Twila . . . Going to water is like smudging yourself with sage or cedar but with water. Some people do hands, feet, heart, head. Four or seven times. Your choice. But four OR seven. Those are sacred. We cleanse ourselves before we step on the grounds. If you want to say a prayer, well, that’s between you and the Creator . . . Delanna Night has fallen as Twila leads us silently down a trail towards the stomp grounds. We women walk single file in the shadow of tall trees with only the sound of the stream following us. Though I can’t see the grounds yet, I smell the smoke. Here I am. At the foot of the mountain that is home to Medicine Lake with the smell of the First Fire greeting me! We reach a grassy clearing and I can see foothills and the valley where the town of Cherokee is below, lit by the full moon. I turn and look towards the stomp grounds and see lightning bugs dancing in the trees. I feel all my ancestors beside me and I wonder how I could ever feel lonely again. And I know without looking that my father is right there beside me. Studi, And So In many ways this play is about healing, but not only for Studi and her father. The play offers its audiences, Native and non-Native alike, the opportunity to experience a kind of historical reckoning through her testimony and the audience’s witnessing the Cherokee concept of GaDuGi. In a Portland radio interview with Dmae Roberts, Studi explains: “We’re communal. We’re tribal. And there’s a Cherokee word called GaDuGi where people come together to lift each other up. And we need that. That’s how we heal.” Studi’s touching, thoughtful storytelling enacts community healing as she processes the power and pain of generational sorrow, survival, and hope. Larissa FastHorse (Sicangu Lakota), The Thanksgiving Play Like Studi, Larissa FastHorse has been well known in the professional Native American theatre scene for over ten years and has been the recipient of numerous prestigious awards and grants, including the PEN USA Literary Award for Drama (2012), the 2010 NEA Distinguished Award for Drama, and the Sundance/Ford Foundation Fellowship. She has developed several plays with Native Voices at the Autry, which produced her comedy Teaching Disco Square Dancing to Our Elders: A Class Presentation in 2008. AlterTheater in San Rafael, California commissioned and produced FastHorse’s Landless 187

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(2015) and Cow Pie Bingo (2018), and Cornerstone Theatre Company commissioned and produced her community-centered site-specific play Urban Rez (2016), which received rave reviews. Her singeing four-hander What Would Crazy Horse Do? premiered at Kansas City Rep in 2017 after making the 2015 Kilroys’ List and was recently published in Contemporary Plays by Women of Color (2018). In addition to her prolific work as a playwright, FastHorse serves as vice chair on the board of directors for Theatre Communications Group, and co-founded the creative consulting firm Indigenous Direction with two-spirited performer Ty Defoe (Giizhig) from the Oneida and Ojibwe nations. Combining their expertise in media and embodied art ranging from theatre and film to dance and music, the firm advises clients interested in engaging “Indigenous cultural protocols and ways of looking at the world to guide theatre and film making/writing” (Defoe). Described as a “theatre activist,” FastHorse believes that her job as a playwright is to make connections between people and cultural groups, especially Native and non-Native communities. FastHorse describes her work as “a kind of hyper-realism designed to get you to buy into a world, but where the entire play is a metaphor”; most often that metaphor advances her activist agenda (Sayet). In her interview with Roberts, FastHorse speaks to this aspect of her identity as an artist: “theatre is my social activism. The play is lovely and fun to me. What I’m here to do is to create these relationships. . . . That’s why I do theatre to create relationships between community and the Western world.” This does not mean that her scripts shy away from controversy, or dilute the ways in which colonial violence and contemporary racism impact Native peoples. FastHorse draws upon her sharp sense of humor to deploy satire in service of making “white people” think differently about their own privilege and their complacency in settler colonialism (Roberts). Partially in response to her years of advocating for theatre companies to produce Indigenous works and hearing artistic directors respond that Native plays are impossible to cast, FastHorse challenged herself to write a play featuring four characters that must be played by actors who present as white. The Thanksgiving Play, which premiered at the Artists Repertory Theatre in Portland, is a satirical comedy in which four “well-meaning” white educators attempt to devise a “culturally sensitive” Thanksgiving play for Native American Heritage Month. In the course of the play, the audience witnesses these amateur theatre artists attempt and fail repeatedly as they grapple with their place in representing Indigenous people, America’s bloody colonial past, and the romanticized nature of the Thanksgiving holiday. FastHorse describes The Thanksgiving Play as a “metaphor for the invisibility of 188

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indigenous people in the narrative,” which becomes most clear in the play’s final scene (Sayet, 20). The characters convince themselves that the most “woke” performance they can create, as an all-white cast, would consist of doing “nothing.” Logan Four white people can’t do a play about Thanksgiving that doesn’t piss off the funders or the parents or the universe. So we don’t. Jaxton By doing nothing, we break the cycle of lies, stereotypes and inequality . . . We need to do less. Be less. That’s the lesson. By doing nothing, we become part of the solution. But it has to start here, with us. FastHorse, Thanksgiving, 74, 76 The trick of The Thanksgiving Play is that even as it does not require theatre companies to cast Native actors, the script demands producers to highlight their own complicity in erasing Native history as well as contemporary Native stories and people. The play’s prickly satire also offers a mirror to the audience to make visible its own attachments to the sanitized Thanksgiving myth, and everything it omits.

Mary Kathryn Nagle, Manahatta Nagle’s innovative drama Manahatta also illustrates the power of theatre to excavate Indigenous stories erased by settler colonialism. Nagle describes her motivation to write a story about the original caretakers of the land that would become known as Manhattan, the Lenape: I started writing it six years ago. And at that time I was living in Manhattan . . . This was post-2008 so there was a lot of fall out about Wall Street . . . But, like, no one I was working with knew that Manahatta was the word the Lenape used to call their home, Manhattan, where we were living—and that it was called Wall Street because the Dutch built a wall in 1654 to keep the Lenape out of their home. Roberts Her script links two time periods, the seventeenth and twenty-first centuries, and two regions where the Lenape have lived: their ancestral homeland on 189

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the island of Manahatta, and the towns of Anadarko and Chickasha, Oklahoma, where many Lenape now live as a direct result of forced removal. Nagle specifies that seven actors must play two roles each, drawing critical connections between the historical Lenape and white (colonizer) traders, and the contemporary Lenape and white (settler) Wall Street bankers. The play’s protagonist Jane Snake, a singularly gifted Lenape financial mathematician, quickly climbs the ranks at Lehman Brothers in the years leading up to and including the financial crash of 2008. Meanwhile, her mother Bobbie loses their family home after a church pastor sells her an adjustable-rate mortgage to “help” pay off her late husband’s medical bills. Between these twenty-first-century scenes, the audience meets seventeenthcentury Lenape and Dutch characters. Initial cultural misunderstanding swiftly escalates past manipulation into outright brutality: the Lenape characters welcome the Dutch to share Manahatta with them as family after the Dutch give them “a gift” of wampum: Se-Ket-Tu-May-Qua These are real wampum. Peter Minuit Wonderful, now tell me, will you agree to trade Manahatta? Mother (to Peter Minuit) To the Lenape, when we give a gift wampum, that makes us family. Now we’re related. We share the same home. Mother extends her hand to Peter Minuit. Peter Minuit quickly grabs her hand and gives it a hearty shake. Peter Minuit (looks to Jakob with shock and amazement, and then laughs) We own Manahatta! Nagle, Manahatta, 59 Once the Dutch “own” the island, they move to tax the Lenape for every trade, then open fire on them if they refuse to pay the taxes. As a show in repertory at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Manahatta engaged thousands of audience members due to its relatively lengthy run of seven months. Despite her concern over triggering or retraumatizing Native members of the audience and the Native actors themselves, Nagle 190

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included a staged scalping in Manahatta because she and her cast resolved that the audience needed to confront the horror of the historical violence meted out upon Native peoples during European settlement. In a panel discussion with Nagle, Studi, and FastHorse titled “Responsibility to Represent,” in Portland, all three playwrights discussed the challenge of presenting undiluted historical material for the purpose of educating Western (majority white) audiences, while maintaining their dedication to telling Native stories as medicine in the face of settler colonization and cultural imperialism.

Randy Reinholz (Choctaw), Off the Rails (2017) The synergy that occurred in Oregon theatre in 2018 transformed the lands that hold these theatres by hosting materially distinct, historically charged, and viscerally contemporary Native American narratives. Significantly, the 2018 season responded to success generated by the previous year’s professional production of a Native play. In producing Manahatta, Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF) proved for a second consecutive year that Indigenous works can be well received by the company’s audiences. The test case for this phenomenon was OSF’s 2017 production of Randy Reinholz’s (Choctaw) Off the Rails, an irreverent adaptation of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure set in and around an Indian residential boarding school. As the artistic director of Native Voices at the Autry, Reinholz was a long-time collaborator of Bill Rauch, OSF’s artistic director. After its 2015 premiere at Native Voices in Los Angeles, Rauch brought Off the Rails to Oregon to direct himself. This adaptation adheres to aspects of the Bard’s original characters and plot, but also seamlessly “captures the complexities of cultural encounters in nineteenth-century Nebraska” by reshaping the play’s main problem (Nees, 724). Reinholz reimagines Claudio as a Pawnee boy named Momaday who falls in love with and impregnates an Irish girl, Caitlin (Julietta in Shakespeare’s original). Angelo, the school superintendent, sentences Momaday to death for his un-Christian amorous actions. The play incorporates several Indigenous practices, including a traditionally choreographed Pawnee “Honor Song,” and characters that speak Pawnee, despite threats of severe punishment. Off the Rails’ OSF production marked the first time many audience members confronted the historical trauma of the boarding school experience that ruined the lives of generations of Native people. This production also opened thousands of school classes and season 191

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Figure 12 Oregon Shakespeare Festival production of  Off the Rails  by Randy Reinholz, 2017. Photo by Jenny Graham. Courtesy of Oregon Shakespeare Festival. ticket subscribers to the richness and complexity of Indigenous aesthetics, stories, and history. Following this production and the impressive 2018 season discussed earlier, Oregon professional theatre companies have revised their goals for inclusivity to specifically include Native stories. OSF’s 2019 season includes “Between Two Knees” by the Indigenous sketch-comedy troupe the 1491s. Mary Kathryn Nagle returned to the state in spring of 2019 for the world premiere of Crossing the Mnisose, commissioned and produced by the Portland Center Stage at the Armory, which produced Studi’s And So We Walked. The movement has begun, and there is no reason why it should be contained within Oregon’s borders.

Two-Spirit Performance Performances of sovereignty in the new millennium continue to reclaim Indigenous cultural traditions that colonization vigorously worked to eradicate with violence, shame, and silencing. As Tomson Highway’s writings illustrate, the Indigenous circular worldview was so violated by European linear, hierarchical perspectives that almost every aspect of Indigenous 192

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cultures was affected. This includes concepts of gender expression and sexuality. The circular worldview naturally embraces a fluidity of sexualities and gender expressions that exist beyond the narrow cisgender binary of female/ woman and male/man. Highway explains that from basic, one-dimensional views of gendered roles (hunter/gatherer men and child-bearing/rearing women), “those people who were physically, emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually equipped for neither role—that is, the people who were both male and female, who were spiritual hermaphrodites—they took care of the emotional and spiritual life of the family, the community” (“Where is God’s Wife?” xvi). According to this communatist model, individuals who possess both male and female biological sex characteristics, or those whose affinities (whether through sexual desire or in gendered interests) range beyond cisgender expectations, are not shunned by their difference; rather, they are celebrated for their wider understanding of human and spiritual nature. Most Indigenous communities felt that these individuals possessed a deeply interconnected understanding of men and women that enriched society; their perspectives were gifts to the community. Highway continues: “These ‘spiritual hermaphrodites’ . . . were the artists, the priests, the visionaries. They had, that is to say, not only a sacred but an essential role in the community” (“God’s Wife?” xvi). In 2013, Jean O’Hara’s edited collection of Two-Spirit Acts: Queer Indigenous Performances anthologized works by three different, highly celebrated two-spirit playwright/performers whose theatrical contributions span three generations across the continent of North America. The works include Muriel Miguel’s Hot’n’Soft, Waawaate Fobister’s Agokwe, and three works by Kent Monkman: Taxonomy of the European Male, Séance, and Justice of the Piece. Playwright Tomson Highway, writing from the home he and his husband of thirty years share in France, contributes the foreword to the anthology, calling the publication of these collected works “one step, and a very important one, in our fight as two-spirits to take back the dignity that was wrested from us by monotheism, by Christianity” (“God’s Wife?” xvii). O’Hara states that the voices within Two-Spirit Acts bring visibility to the history and continued presence of two-spirit people, despite the systematic colonial project to eradicate them and their stories from existence and memory. By presenting these “Indigenous understandings of sexuality, gender, spirituality, and identity,” two-spirit works offer “an opportunity for healing and decolonization” to all audiences, whether they are from Native or non-Native communities (O’Hara, xx). 193

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Muriel Miguel (Kuna/Rappahannock), Hot’n’Soft Premiering in 1991, Muriel Miguel’s Hot’n’Soft blazed paths for other twospirit Indigenous playwrights to follow. Sharon Day, an Ojibway writer, musician, artist, and creator of Ogitchidag Gikinooamagad Theater Program, introduces Hot’n’Soft with a story of how Miguel’s openness about being two-spirit and her nonchalant recognition of Day’s own two-spirit relationship both surprised and unnerved Day when she met Miguel in 1985. Day describes Hot’n’Soft as “the first lesbian theatre that depicted the rawness of desire between two women . . . It was a bold statement when it was first conceived in its erotica and it still has a boldness that few lesbian pieces have to this day” (6). Miguel constructs Hot’n’Soft through Spiderwoman’s signature storyweaving technique and performs it downstage of “a large, layered colourful quilt of multicolored and patterned squares/rectangles of different sizes decorated with lace and brocade” (Hot’n’Soft, 9). Hot’n’Soft weaves together Miguel’s own coming out story with other personal tales about her romantic relationships, which are layered with Coyote trickster tales about two-spirit encounters and playful burlesque performances of lesbian sexuality that teeter between titillating erotica and trickster humor. Miguel plunges her audiences into the erotic content of Hot’n’Soft by opening the play in the middle of a sexual encounter between two women, which Miguel plays fully clothed, in profile. Following a very loud enactment of the women’s climax, Miguel juxtaposes the intensity with direct audience address in her usual speaking voice. She introduces herself, then transitions into the performance of her own coming out story, which humorously portrays both her excitement and awkwardness in trying to attract a woman she has met in Holland. In presenting her “first encounter,” Miguel powerfully plays against national narratives of conquest by taking on the active role of pursuer and ethnographically recounting how excited she was to have sex with a woman covered in hair, a difference that Miguel finds exotic: “Now, how do you reassure a hairy person that you love their hair and you’re standing there hairless?” (14). Miguel uses the subject of hair to segue into Coyote and trickster stories. Along with introducing her audience to the role tricksters play in Native stories, Miguel notes: “The really nice thing about tricksters is they can change gender—they can cross back and forth” (15). The trickster’s gender fluidity demonstrates the naturalness of human gender fluidity and Miguel’s own comfort with being an Indigenous two-spirit person. In her

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telling of Hot’n’Soft’s first trickster tale, Miguel notes that women need to reclaim the power of tricksters. She states: “Most of the stories that have been written about tricksters have been written by MEN, which is why most tricksters are male. What a surprise. This is a story about a female Coyote” (15). As before, Miguel embodies all of the characters in the trickster tale, demonstrating the multiple dimensions of human experience. In this trickster story, which Miguel attributes to Quinte Mohawk writer Beth Brant, Coyote wants to trick the other animals into believing that she is male. She dresses up in a dandy velvet cowboy getup, stuffs her pants with a rolled towel, and saunters into town to greet the other animals; all immediately laugh at her attempts to pass for a male Coyote. Then she meets Fox, who seems to fall for the act. Fox invites Coyote into her home, flirting in response to each masculine act that Coyote presents. Fox’s vulnerability inspires Coyote to become brazen, propositioning: “(deep voice) ‘Well, Fox, how about a little roll in the hay?’ ” (18). To Coyote’s surprise, Fox obliges, forcing Coyote to carry her act further than she imagined. Fox, however, takes over the seduction, which Coyote surprisingly enjoys, as she repeatedly wishes “let this trick go on a little longer” (19). Finally, the moment of truth comes; Coyote panics when Fox unzips her pants to find the rolled towel. The trick, however, is on Coyote: Fox Oh, Coyote! Why don’t you take that ridiculous stuffing out of your pants and let’s get down to business. She grabs Coyote and humps her. Howl. Howl. Howl. 19 The howls in Hot’n’Soft become a theatrical convention that blends the boundaries of biography, playfulness, and trickster stories by emphasizing their shared connection: women’s sexual and emotional pleasures in one another. This bold perspective provides a necessary counter-narrative to the tragic portrayals of lesbianism that popular culture too often produces. As the play ends with Miguel’s/Coyote’s howls, Hot’n’Soft triumphs, leaving the audience—two-spirit and straight, Native and non-Native—feeling like a whole community, one empowered to reject colonialism’s distorted and harmful views of homosexuality and ready to embrace the delight in multidimensional experience. 195

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Waawaate Fobister (Grassy Narrows), Agokwe Waawaate Fobister, a Grassy Narrows First Nation playwright, actor, choreographer, dancer, and producer, is the youngest of the three artists featured in Two-Spirit Acts. His one-man play Agokwe, an Anishinaabe word that translates “within the man there is a woman,” tells the story of two young closeted men living in a hyper-masculine environment where being labeled a “faggot” leads to social rejection (Agokwe, 101). The two men are well known in their communities for excelling in masculine endeavors. Jake is a powwow grass dancer; Mike a star hockey player. The trickster Nanabush, in the form of a raven, mediates the story, which features characters struggling with addiction and attempting to find a sense of personal value. A repeating trope in the play is Nanabush’s contrasting traditional Anishinaabe values, which emphasize inclusion and community, with the play’s present Anishinaabe community, which ostracizes people who do not adhere to social norms. Nanabush states: “The Anishnaabe [historically] knew that in order for there to be a nice big happy family everybody had to have a place. The Anishnaabe didn’t waste people” (102). The place held by the Agokwe was revered: “If they did extraordinary things in their lives that broke with tradition it was assumed they had the spiritual authority to do so . . . They were shamans, healers, mediators, and interpreters of dreams whose lives were devoted to the welfare of the group” (101). In accordance with that worldview, the community had special ceremonies to discern whether children exhibiting two-spirit characteristics were Agokwe. When found to be Agokwe, the children were welcomed and raised within that special status. Nanabush’s stories of traditional ways starkly contrast with Mike’s reality. The once-celebrated athlete commits suicide when his friends, hockey team, and mentors reject him for having kissed Jake. Nanabush closes Agokwe with a challenge to the audience: spread the story, value kinship, and stop wasting people.

Kent Monkman (Cree), Taxonomy of the European Male Kent Monkman, a Cree performance artist who is also a professional painter, sculptor, filmmaker, and installation artist, has three performance pieces included in Two-Spirit Acts. He performs each in his drag persona, Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, a sexy Native diva whose over-the-top performance of erotic stereotype satirizes both historical and pop culture representations of Native people. Richard William Hill notes: 196

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Figure 13 Miss Chief as Vaudeville Performer: Kent Monkman with photographer Chris Chapman, 2006. Chromogenic print on metallic paper. Courtesy of Kent Monkman. Monkman’s artistic project marks a shift in the discourse around Indigenous representation. He is certainly not the first Indigenous performer or artist to address the history of colonial ideology as visualized in the arts, but I think that he is the first to explicitly recognize, respond to, and manipulate the operations of desire in those representations. 38 Hill surmises that Monkman’s own “queer subjectivity, including the traditions of camp and performative identity play associated with drag” helps fuel the subversive project of turning the ridiculous nature of Western fantasies back upon themselves (38). Taxonomy of the European Male provides an example of how Monkman uses desire as a tool to deconstruct reductive, yet widely revered, 197

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representations of Native people. In this piece, Miss Chief Eagle Testickle takes on George Catlin’s famous project of capturing the essence of entire nations through painting the most attractive men she meets while traveling through their lands. Catlin was a white American painter who traveled west through the plains during the 1830s staging pictures of the “vanishing race” of Indians. Details in the paintings and Catlin’s narratives of his travels cause many to criticize his art as romanticized images of Noble Savages. In Taxonomy of the European Male, Miss Chief plays upon Catlin’s language. She directly addresses the audience, telling them that she has traveled to Europe to “devote whatever talents and proficiency I possess to the painting of a series of pictures illustrative of the European Male in his native habitat” (Taxonomy, 49). Miss Chief explains that she comes to the project with the requisite expertise, for she has already met many Europeans during their travels through North America. As Catlin did, she laments the changes occurring in her “fine specimen’s” authenticity due to his contact with “the red man,” and romanticizes her role as his savior: “Thus, it has become my undertaking to record all manner of his customs and practices before they are obliterated completely” (50). From here, Miss Chief builds upon this satirical conflation of sexual desire for “the other” and messianic fantasy. She is titillated by visions of “reaching every tribe of Europe, and of creating faithful portraits of their handsomest personages . . . with full notes on their character, history, and . . . of course, their anatomy” (50). Her fantasy ends with a climax of erotic fetishization: “I have flown to their rescue, that, phoenix-like, they may rise from the stain on a painter’s palette and live forever with me on my canvas” (51). Through Miss Chief ’s embodied delivery of Catlin’s philosophies, spiced with her own exhilarating anticipations for the project, audiences cannot help but understand the reductive ways in which white representations of Native peoples have functioned throughout history and popular culture. The audience also begins to question the duality of desire and power underpinning such images. Monkman uses his particular two-spirit perspective to guide the audience’s gaze from camp into a sophisticated critique of the discourses driving whites’ desires to possess traces of “Indian-ness,” while simultaneously seeking to erase Native peoples and cultures—the genesis of the Noble Savage stereotype. Monkman’s sharp critiques traverse not only European notions of gendered boundaries, but also freely cross the borders of various art forms. In “Dance to Miss Chief,” Monkman splices the diva’s dance video with excerpts from German westerns featuring Karl May’s Winnetou character, so 198

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that we see Miss Chief playing seductress to the blue-eyed Winnetou, playfully exposing the layers of desire underpinning the German pastime of playing Indian. Meanwhile, Monkman’s lush landscapes satirize the homoerotic nature of New World Romantic landscape painters’ portrayals of Native subjects. Monkman’s recent paintings critique human rights abuses. In these, he borrows iconic poses from Western masterpieces, such as Michelangelo’s Pietá, to stage Native mothers holding fallen sons in the midst of raining clouds of tear gas, while battles rage around Water Keepers protesting against white police dressed in full battle gear to “protect” the Dakota Access Pipeline. Monkman’s full use of a range of artistic mediums is an example of how Indigenous artists rarely limit their imaginations to a single style or expressive form.2

Organizational and Institutional Changes in Support of Indigenous Performance National Arts Center, Indigenous Theatre Program The growth of Indigenous theatre in Canada, along with national programs (such as the Idle No More Movement and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission) expressing a national commitment to take responsibility for human rights abuses against Indigenous peoples, inspired Canada’s National Arts Centre (NAC) to create the Indigenous theatre program. As Nolan discusses in Medicine Shows, NAC had included Indigenous theatre productions since 2005, which inspired the 2014 Summit and 2015 Study and Repast: two forums for NAC administrators and Indigenous theatre artists to envision how they might transform the Canadian theatre through Indigenous equity across all levels of theatrical production and administration (Nolan, 117–23). In June of 2017 in Ottawa, the NAC announced that Kevin Loring, an N’lakap’mux playwright, actor, and teacher, would become the first artistic director of a new national Indigenous theatre program. Significantly, this Indigenous theatre program will share equal footing with NAC’s English theatre and French theatre programs. Loring had been NAC’s playwright-in-residence in 2010, the same year the theatre produced his Governor General’s Award-winning play, Where the Blood Mixes. The play follows the reactions of three residential school survivors, Floyd, June, and Mooch, during the days that Floyd’s daughter, 199

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Christine, finds her way back home after having been taken from Floyd by the government and raised by a white foster family. News of Christine’s return coincides with the government’s plan to compensate Indigenous survivors of residential school abuses, if survivors are willing to tell their stories. The seasonal setting is also one of homecoming, when salmon return home to spawn, and their bodies are seen swimming in the eddy where the Fraser and Thompson Rivers join. That sacred location is known to the N’lakap’mux people as “the place inside the heart where the blood mixes” (Loring, Blood Mixes, 93). This place is tied to a creation story about Coyote’s having fought a giant, who tore him to pieces and threw his heart to the bottom of the churning rivers. Loring’s painful and humorous play uses projections of the underwater world to connect the creation story to the story Christine learns from her elders: her mother—suffering from depression and unsupported by her husband and friends because they were all equally damaged from residential school experiences—committed suicide by leaping into the place where the rivers meet (85–6). Loring acknowledges Margo Kane’s Full Circle Talking Stick Cabaret, where an early monologue from the play was first staged, as a significant influence in his creation of Where the Blood Mixes (91). Echoing Full Circle’s mission, Loring’s vision for NAC’s Indigenous theatre program is that it will support and develop artists working in all areas of Indigenous theatre: acting, playwriting, directing, design, stage management, education, and administration. The program will seek to expand the presence of Indigenous theatre across the country by serving as a site for the development of new Indigenous plays that will then tour from NAC to major Canadian cities and Indigenous communities alike. In his inaugural speech as artistic director, Loring envisioned the future of Indigenous theatre as something that is artistic, activist, cultural, and spiritual. Extending NAC’s commitment to promote national reconciliation through art, Loring asserted:“Before reconciliation, there must be reparation,” claiming that NAC’s creation of an Indigenous theatre program is “one step toward reparation” (Address). Loring then expressed his spiritual commitment to the program, proclaiming: “I take this position as a sacred trust to the Indigenous storytellers across this land from coast to coast to coast.” Loring promised to follow his oath with direct action: “I will fight for your place on our stages and support your voice in the chorus of this country. Even when you are screaming at it to stop. Even when you are reminding it of its crimes. Even when you interrogate its very existence and celebrate yours.” As NAC’s Indigenous theatre program commences, Indigenous 200

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theatre artists and scholars across the globe watch expectantly for the transformations this first national Indigenous theatre will generate. ATHE’s Latinx, Indigenous, and the Americas Focus Group Whereas the Canadian federal government has helped to advance Indigenous theatre with funding derived from a national project of reconciliation, the US has never made formal efforts toward acknowledging and atoning for the genocidal actions and policies upon which the country was formed. Nevertheless, the absence of such recognition and federal arts funding has not thwarted the continued growth of Native American theatre. As the field has grown in the US, so too have scholarly endeavors to teach, stage, record, and analyze Native plays. Recent changes in the organizational structure of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE), the largest professional organization for theatre scholars in the United States, can serve as a barometer for the growing recognition and value of Indigenous theatre and performance. ATHE is comprised of independently operating focus groups, which connect scholars interested in specific areas of theatre in higher education. Some of these groups focus on artistic specializations in the profession: acting, directing, or voice and speech; other focus groups concentrate on philosophical impulses: performance studies, theatre and social change, or theatre history. Finally, several groups are tied to identity, such as: Black Theatre Association; the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer; and the Association for Asian Performance focus groups. For decades ATHE had no focus groups dedicated to Indigenous theatre. As a result, many scholars whose work addresses Indigenous performance would network, present papers, and collaborate with other groups in order to participate within ATHE. Following years of scholars participating in panels on Indigenous theatre and performance sponsored by the Latina/o Focus Group (LFG), the LFG members voted in 2016 to formally include scholars of Indigenous theatre of the Americas. After a unanimous vote, LFG officially changed its name to the Latinx, Indigenous, and the Americas Focus Group (LIA). At the 2018 ATHE Annual Conference in Boston, Massachusetts, LIA hosted multiple wellattended panels dedicated to Indigenous theatre and performance, as well as panels that bridged Latinx and Indigenous theatre analysis. The power of this recognition had a transformative effect on the culture of the overall conference and, by extension, on ATHE as an organization. 201

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This was demonstrated meaningfully when Dr. Bethany Hughes (Choctaw), assistant professor at the University of Michigan, introduced a Wampanoag elder from the region to recognize the original caretakers of the land on which the conference convened and to offer a prayer of blessing at the annual membership meeting and awards ceremony. This plenary event performed respect and awareness of Indigenous peoples and, in a small but significant way, acknowledged the debt the Western academy owes them. HowlRound Launched in 2011, HowlRound is an online “knowledge commons” space dedicated to theatre artists, critics, and scholars to freely share “intellectual and artistic resources and expertise,” in direct response to “1) research that suggested artists were increasingly distant from the center of theatremaking within not-for-profit institutional infrastructure, and 2) the new possibilities created by technology to influence theatre practice” (HowlRound). Since its founding, HowlRound has been dedicated to advancing diverse aesthetics, equity, inclusivity, and accessibility through communication and collaboration. In keeping with the commons’ vision statement, HowlRound. com has helped to “democratize the arts by effectively modeling the transformative power of commons based practice.” Indigenous, First Nations, and Native theatre is a key area of focus for the commons, which publishes articles and notes from the field of Indigenous theatre and invited Mary Kathryn Nagle to curate a collection of seven essays on the subject of Indigenous North American theatre making in 2015. Additionally, HowlRound’s website closes its main page with a link to the US Department of Arts and Culture’s guide to Honor Native Land, following this statement: “The staff at HowlRound Theatre Commons at Emerson College wish to respectfully acknowledge that our offices are situated on land stolen from its original holders, the Massachuset and Wampanoag people. We wish to pay our respects to their people, past, present and future” (HowlRound).

Native Performance in Other Forms The Filmmaking of Adam and Zack Khalil In Everything You Know About Indians Is Wrong, Paul Chaat Smith’s (Comanche) collection of critical essays on Native American art, Smith 202

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describes Native artists as potential liberators. He argues that “by refusing to play the assigned role [of romanticized stereotypes] and demanding an honesty in their own work and that of others that truly honors the outrageous story of our continued existence,” Native artists can lead contemporary culture away from the ubiquitous repetition of Noble Savage imagery (“On Romanticism,” 27). The works of Adam and Zack Khalil, two Ojibway brothers from Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, demonstrate Smith’s remarks by fusing the mediums of film and sound technology with Ojibway stories, high theory, and documentary practices that bombard viewers with the contradictory, beautiful, ugly, and frequently bizarre images of the brothers’ lived experiences. Adam and Zack Khalil describe their feature-length film INAATE/SE as an “exercise in self-determination” in which they “shoot back against the historicizing gaze of anthropology” (Khalil, “Inherent”). The title, INAATE/ SE, is the Khalil brothers’ use of Ojibway language to describe the action of how film functions: “It shines a certain way. To a certain place. / It flies. It falls” (INAATE/SE). The Seven Fires Prophecy, the Anishinaabe origin story, which also functions as prophesy, structures INAATE/SE’s action. The story tells of the Anishinaabe peoples’ migrations from the Atlantic coast into the Great Lakes regions, tracing how different Anishinaabe communities would merge and separate as they reached various homelands. The Anishinaabe people explain that the Seven Fires Prophecy was given to them prior to their westward migrations, long before contact with Europeans. Each fire reflects a specific period foretold by a different prophet and marking a significant cultural shift in the lives of Anishinaabe people. The fourth fire, or prophecy, foretold the coming of white people and the potential for either brotherhood or war. The fifth fire predicted genocide and loss of sovereignty, and the sixth fire predicted the period of cultural genocide created through the boarding school system. The seventh fire predicts the rebirth of the Anishinaabe people as they regain their culture, health, and sovereignty within our current, multicultural world. In order to protect the Seven Fires Prophecy, the Anishinaabe recorded the story on birchbark scrolls that they hid from invading whites, missionaries, and lawmakers during the period of genocide. Many of these scrolls later ended up as “artifacts” in the collections of personal investors and museums. The scrolls’ imagery also served as inspiration for the paintings of Norval Morrisseau/Copper Thunderbird (Ojibway), a world-renowned mid-century artist. By using the Seven Fires Prophesy as the narrative spine of INAATE/SE and layering Ojibway imagery from the prophesy over both the film’s moving and still images, the Khalil 203

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brothers actively “attempt to reclaim [the Ojibway story] from the archives and museums that would confine it to the past” (“Inherent”). Accordingly, INAATE/SE offers a radical, critical, artistic sense of Native presence capable of assaulting any stale national narrative of Native absence, stasis, or passive assimilation. INAATE/SE’s style is like a filmic version of Spiderwoman Theater’s storyweaving, juxtaposing scenes of the brothers’ homelands (both natural landscapes and industrial footage); grotesquely funny-yet-haunting footage of a Jesuit missionary, who is eventually burned in effigy; long, shaky invasive footage of ancient Ojibway objects stored in the Smithsonian’s cold storage files; filmed tours of the 1968 Tower of History, a phallic shrine to the Catholic missionaries who helped colonize the region; stories of local Ojibway community members teaching and learning their language; and overlays of graphic art from the birchbark scrolls. One of the important ideas INAATE/SE conveys is the eternal, living sense of story, demonstrated through the Seven Fires’ dual process of remembering and prophesying. The Khalil brothers visually, aurally, and mentally annihilate stereotypes of Native peoples trapped by tradition, as INAATE/SE reveals “tradition is not an immutable set of truths handed down by revelation, but a set of everevolving social practices whose continuity cannot be repaired by preservation—only elaborated through struggle, and finally achieved under conditions of genuine self-determination” (“Inherent”). Indigenous Hip Hop: Performing Urban Identity and Collective Sovereignty As discussed in Chapter  5, the termination policies and corresponding relocation programs of the 1950s critically impacted traditional family and community structures, as thousands of Native Americans relocated from their ancestral communities to urban centers. The goal of the US federal government to assimilate Native peoples into underpaid ranks of the American workforce, while absolving some of the country’s financial commitments to tribes rendered “terminated,” had both intended and unexpected consequences. The government succeeded in geographically separating family and tribal communities, which exacerbated generational and cultural divisions. On the other hand, these relocation experiences resulted in new pan-tribal alliances, as Native peoples from many nations found themselves far from their homelands fending off police brutality, urban poverty, violence, and discrimination. Instead of quietly melting 204

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into America’s underclass, urban Indigenous peoples held onto their cultural arts, stories, and religions by creating American Indian cultural centers. Native people from different cultural backgrounds also created complex and pan-tribal expressions of Indigenous identity, learning traditions from one another while they both adapted to and resisted elements of their new lives. Furthermore, many “urban Indians,” barely eking out livable wages in the jobs promised by the federal government, found solidarity with other urban ethnic groups, such as Black and Latinx Americans. Such social inequity helped generate the Civil Rights Movement, which in turn influenced the Chicano Movement and the American Indian Movement, wherein urban and reservation Native peoples came together to advance tribal sovereignty, treaty rights, and the reinstatement of tribal recognition. Besides sharing activist strategies, the social unrest in urban communities nurtured an environment of cultural and artistic exchange between marginalized communities. In her article “Indigenous Survivance and Urban Musical Practice,” Liz Przybylski points out: “At every stage, individuals have found creative ways to resist the juridical structure imposed by governmental policies. Musical practices have been at the center of these innovative and ultimately resilient actions” (Przybylski, 3). The contemporary phenomenon of Native hip hop music and performance is partially rooted in the urban experience of cultural exchange with African Americans, but it also links with Indigenous ceremonial use of the drum and other rhythmic instruments. Przybylski argues that the music of Lakota hip hop artist Frank Waln and the Cree DJs of A Tribe Called Red (ATCR), known for their unique “Electric Powwow” style of electronic music, are “actually a contemporary iteration of a longstanding tradition of urban Indigenous survivance through musical practice” (1). This assessment applies beyond Waln and ATCR, whose music enjoys relative popularity even in mainstream, non-Native circles. As Lauren Jessica Amsterdam writes:

Young people across Native America and Canada’s First Nations are rhyming, story-telling, and spreading love—taking action to make their voices heard, their bodies visible, and their futures manifest. Refusing to be restricted by geographies of dislocation, Native hip-hop artists are rapping, mapping cartographies of continuity over stolen lands and constricted latitudes of existence, and using beats and breakdancing to navigate new places, sacred places, and dismantled places. 53 205

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These scholars emphasize how late-twentieth- and twenty-first-century Native hip hop artists exemplify dynamic engagement with current musical forms and activist agendas, even as they draw upon the traditional medicine of music and beat making to effect healing, balance, and collective identity. First Nations, Alaskan Native, Native American, and Native Hawaiian peoples have consumed hip hop as a form of expression and entertainment since the 1980s when the form entered the mainstream. Examining how contemporary performances of Kanaka Maoli, or Native Hawaiian identity, merges with hip hop aesthetics, Stephanie Nohelani Teves cites Halifu Osumare’s theory of “collective marginality,” which explains how youth in marginalized communities throughout the world connect with “blackidentified culture, and the desire for self-representation” that hip hop performance culture provides (qtd. in Teves, 74). Indigenous hip hop artists are indeed marginalized by settler colonialism, but they are not simply referencing or replicating “black” or “global” hip hop. Instead, artists such as Frank Waln (Sicangu Lakota), Maniac: The Siouxpernatural (Sioux), Night Shield (Sioux), PLEX (Ojibwa), Litefoot (Cherokee),Wab Kinew (Anishinaabe), Supaman (Cree), D-Script (Tlingit), Lakota Jonez (Cherokee and Mohawk), and Allison Warden (Iñupiaq), among many others, often combine traditional instruments and songs with hip hop beats, drawing from the aesthetic links and differences that make for powerful and innovative performances. The activism and artistry of these Indigenous musicians exemplify the tenants of transformative “cultural difference” described by Lloyd Kiva New decades before their emergence (see Chapter 4). New believed that young artists trained in the aesthetic traditions of the many tribal communities would be uniquely positioned to contribute to the contemporary multicultural society at large in ways that would create positive change for Native peoples and the world. This ethos is palpable in the works of Native hip hop artists as they create pieces that address contemporary concerns of their communities, such as youth suicide, violence against women, police brutality, poverty, addiction, environmental racism, water protection, treaty violations, and climate change policies.3

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“IMAGINING FORWARD” MADELINE SAYET (Mohegan), Director If you could start from scratch, what kind of world would you build? When I direct a play, I get to work with my collaborators to decide the rules of our play world. Everything you put on the stage affects everything else. When the audience enters, they bring with them their perception based on what they already know. Instead of promoting tired divisive colonial paradigms, I think about the ways I can weave my Mohegan culture into my work in new ways. What does our language say about the role of the leader? What do our stories offer that western stories don’t have? When working with an allNative ensemble—how do the protocols in our rehearsal room differ from that of a white institution? Growing up in Connecticut, I was only six when my mom first started taking me to see outdoor Shakespeare. The first few performances I will admit I was there for the food, and the fact that people were running around a field, acting crazy. I understood the language but didn’t notice the poetry at that point when so much language was still new. Shakespeare became my faerie tales. My grandfather bought be the complete works for my seventh birthday and I became a voracious fan. Those stories quickly became a part of how I saw the world. I grew up looking for the bridges between different stories, drawing comparisons between characters. I like how Shakespeare—like traditional Mohegan stories—changes every time it is told. Each telling shows us as much about our world in the present moment, as the world the story began in. It wasn’t until college that I had to contend with the texts as sexist and racist. Some people don’t realize it is a kind of privilege to not have to fight with Shakespeare. I always felt bad for people who would come back from Europe and say it was too bad America didn’t have old traditions or stories. That they wished we were more like Europe for that reason. I’d ask whether they knew the meanings of the street names near them? Or whether they had ever even thought to ask what the state they lived in’s name meant? 207

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You see whereas in Early Modern England the right to transform, to become anything, was reserved for white men and boys, at home my Mohegan Aunties had that power. Raised in a matriarchal culture where I saw the Native women around me transform, and transcend through story, it took me a long time to realize that the outside world thought that wasn’t supposed to happen in Shakespeare. Native women were always powerful leaders in my life, and my work reflects that. In every project, I try to deepen my own understanding of the world we are in in that moment. I believe deeply in story medicine, that the stories we tell have real world impact that can be healing or harmful. We must be very conscious of this as creators of dream spaces. If we are going to welcome people into our dream space, we have to acknowledge our power and responsibility in that act. The most important part of my process is to have concept questions, instead of conceptual statements. A question is an invitation. Beginning with questions means that we all get on the same path together from the very beginning of our process. I direct new plays, classics, and opera and people often ask what the difference is. While there are many differences between forms, there are just as many differences between projects. Who is the authorial voice? What is their culture(s)? If they are Native—what is their nation? How many people working on the project are from that nation? Who is in the room? What do they value? The audience is an important collaborator and considering what they bring to production is important, whether we are telling traditional Mohegan stories or leaning out into the audience and asking “To be or not to be?” Who and what we put on the stage is always in conversation with whatever the audience brings into the room. When I work on the classics I never set them in the past. I always set them in the future. To re-create an indigenous past requires detailed historical specificity, and complex knowledge of a single nation, knowledge of the time period you are setting it in. It is incredibly restrictive, and usually painfully inaccurate. If it is not my nation—the odds are I will not know enough to get it right. If it were about my nation—it would still require resources; many theatres do not have an immense amount of historical research. But to imagine a future, means we get to decide what kind of world our grandchildren will be living in and ask questions about what kind of ancestors we are going to be. We can make a future out of whatever we have right now. A gathering of nations in the rehearsal room and re-inventing from the materials we think 208

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we can gather in order to build the world of a play. We can play with the meanings of things that we and the audience already know, and build from there. In Mohegan, Accomac means the long view from across the water. I imagine forward asking: What will unify us? What will destroy us? How will we all survive? What does an indigenous future look like? What are the roots of the story we are working on and where does it intersect with our world right now? In my work, I always think about the tree of life. Who is and is not in your audience and why? What other questions can you ask? Directly to the audience. Directly to your peers. Who is still missing from the room? As a storyteller I care about how the stories we pass down shape our collective possible futures. Why we choose to continue to pass down certain stories as opposed to others. What keeps a story alive? Why we fight to preserve certain things. When I make theatre now—I ask myself—What kind of story do you wish you had heard growing up? What heroes did you need? Where might we find them in places we don’t expect?

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MARY KATHRYN NAGLE (Cherokee) Playwright and Attorney What a privilege and an honor it is to be a part of the generation of “firsts.” Many of us (Larissa FastHorse, Randy Reinholz, Vera Bedard, DeLanna Studi) are finding ourselves labeled the “first Native playwright” to be produced at mainstream theatres that have, before now, never produced a single Native play. Of course, the destruction of barriers that previously blocked our voices and stories from reaching the American stage should and must be celebrated. But before we get carried away with our newfound success and acceptance in mainstream American theatres, we need to step back and acknowledge all that it took for us to get here. We may be the “first” to be produced at a theatre like Arena Stage or the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, but we aren’t the first to write powerful plays, or tell riveting stories. For thousands of years, American Indians living on Turtle Island have told insightful, creative, and entertaining stories. We’ve told stories to connect to one another, to educate, and to survive. But for the last five hundred years, our stories have been purposefully silenced. The erasure of our authentic voices was coupled with the creation of a dramatic performance known as redface—a performance that reached its peak in popularity during Andrew Jackson’s presidency. In order to justify a legal regime and Federal Government that took our lands, our lives, and the inherent jurisdiction of our Nations, American culture and society had to dehumanize us in the stories they told—and they did. But contemporary performances of redface did not intimidate or silence Spiderwoman Theater. The erasure of Native voices from the stage did not stop Bill Yellow Robe. Or Lynn Riggs. Or Hanay Geiogamah. Leanne Howe. Diane Glancy. For decades, scores of Native playwrights have written and produced plays, sometimes professionally, but most often in community. They advocated for Native writers and demanded that mainstream professional theatres produce Native plays. And although the most powerful and dominant American theatres refused to produce their work, they never stopped writing. To be a Native playwright today is both an honor and a privilege. The recent success several of us now enjoy is no accident. It is the culmination of decades of hard work and advocacy—the fruits of which we will enjoy and come to recognize for generations to come. Following the production of Sovereignty at Arena Stage, I received countless emails and other messages from Native parents—and kids—who 210

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said this was the first time they had witnessed an authentic Native character portrayed on stage. For the non-Natives in the audience, they learned that Natives aren’t extinct, we are more than an image on the back of a Washington, DC football jersey, and our Nations existed before the United States was even imagined. These are powerful lessons, and I am confident there will be many more. And now that we have received the blessing of major American theatres, an unprecedented number of high school teachers and college professors want to include our plays in their curricula. Just as redface was created to dehumanize us, the sharing of our authentic stories serves to rehumanize us. I am excited to see what American culture looks like in ten, twenty years when non-Native Americans see more performances of Native plays than plays that feature redface. I am thankful to all the generations of Native storytellers who gave their blood, sweat, and tears so that we could tell the stories we tell today. And I’m thankful to the theatres and audience members today who now embrace them. When we have finally begun to produce—instead of silence—all underrepresented voices in the American theatre, we will see the American we all long for, and deserve.

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VALERIE ST. PIERRE SMITH (Ojibwe) Costume Designer and Professor In honor of our Ojibwe custom, let our first words together be of thankfulness and gratitude. Thankfulness for the inspiring contributors who share their knowledge, and themselves, throughout this book; I am humbled and honored to appear with you. And gratitude to you, dear reader, who has chosen to open and read these pages and embark upon listening to our stories. Boozhoo. It has taken almost forty years for me to learn this word. Hello. A greeting in my ancestor’s language; in my language. The language of my heart. It has also taken just about that same amount of time for me to understand what it means to inhabit a mixed-race native skin; to acknowledge that, in many ways and many places, I am destined to walk between various worlds. I am an artist, scholar, explorer, adventurer, spirit; a wanderer, lover, observer, appreciative soul. I am the daughter of a mixed-race Native man and a first-generation immigrant mother and all the things that seemingly entails. This life, the one I inhabit at present, has had a bit of a wandering path compared to most—a life that drives home the idea that it’s not always about the destination. As an artist, I express myself in many mediums. My largest body of work and expression by far has been through costume design; for theatre, dance, themed entertainment, fashion photography, and even canine costume design. I’ve always loved the marriage of learning the old ways, the reasons behind why us two-legged people clothe ourselves as we do with the creative generation of an individual’s visual identity. Their inward expressed outward. Plus, I geek out with all of the historical research, learning of old ways, experimentation with new technologies and established aesthetics that inherently take place during the creative process. After many years of school, degrees, curveballs, bumps in the road, and working in this crazy field of costume design, I like to think of this power of visual creation as my superpower. The ability to clothe a spirit, a soul, written within the fabric of a story. To imagine and create, to see, to give form to nouns, verbs, pronouns . . . and to play. Theatre is magic; storytelling is magic. It is our collective superpowers that make it whole. Despite my journey, my advantages and challenges, which depending upon the moment may sound like a vintage country music song, it has still taken me four decades to learn two simple words that a child of any culture typically learns early on in their life. Boozhoo. Hello. Hello is a greeting, an 212

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acknowledgment, a nod between two spirits, be they two-legged or four, plant or stone, or others living on this beautiful and abundant and generous place we call Turtle Island. It is a greeting that also represents a deep longing, held throughout my life, a yearning for ways and customs that I knew existed but were never part of. I did not grow up on my reservation. My father was a railroad man, by nature of the job a bit nomadic. Before him his father was a businessman close, but not close enough, to our ancestral lands and reservation in Minnesota. He, too, was brought up in a time when one didn’t actively acknowledge “that side of the family.” Or, as a Ponca grandmother recently explained to me, I am split feather. Brought up in a world and community and way that didn’t match my Native spirit. This was strangely liberating; being told that I wasn’t alone; that my experience isn’t unusual. That it doesn’t actually determine my “Indian-ness.” To be acknowledged and, even more powerfully, accepted. I’ve always identified as Native, but thanks to blood quantums, family history, and societal definitions of Native, I never felt like I could be. The woman, a fellow academic conference attendee, bemoaning how “p.c. sensitive” Natives were. Further adding, upon invitation to the paper I was presenting as a Native person—“You!? No way. Look at those curls.” The kids on the school playgrounds of many of the schools I attended who didn’t care what my outward appearance was, but immediately felt compelled, upon my proud declarations of Ojibwe heritage, to perform their impression of “Indian.” This usually translated into a hopping around on one foot while patting their hands over their mouths and rhythmically chanting “awah-awah, awah-awah.” To this day I’m not sure where that came from. Being one of only two amongst my siblings without a tribal enrollment card. Walking between these two particular worlds of mixed race, within a conventional American context, I took solace in knowing things not presented in my public schooling; ways of knowing and understanding the world and all of its inhabitants that were never formally taught to me. So finally learning the simple greeting, boozhoo, represents the beginning of a homecoming to a family that I have not yet met, a reclamation of more than 213

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just heritage, but principles and understandings of this world, and sacred ways of being. (Though auto correct is happy to remind me that our words still have no place in the greater lexicon.) So why do I, we, any of us called artists, do this? Why is Native theatre and performance, in all of its capacities and definitions, so important? Ultimately to honor the spirit within. The call that sometimes only we hear. By honoring this spirit, by heeding the call that compels us to tell these stories, to weave our collective imaginations together, we honor those that came before, we present ourselves to the current world, and our contribution shapes our future world; our future selves. Hopefully, our better selves. In the making and in the telling we have the ability to hear and listen to our ancestors; to learn and share their stories. To reclaim our true histories, without anyone else’s lens. To present our current truths and uncover hidden lies. To open pathways: intellectual, cultural and spiritual, for those that come after. We honor the whole of Turtle Island, and our abundant Creator, by sharing generously, guiding compassionately and standing in our truth. As Native people, theatre also gives us voice to negate the long-held mis-impressions of our people; to reclaim our heritages, our symbols, our world views, our relationship with all of creation. To be right. To be visible. To heal. And most importantly, to be. Which is what I am doing now. I am, we are, coming home and to the world all at once. Proclaiming our stories, sharing our truths and contributing our superpowers to our collective futures. So with the great pride of a small child, I must come full circle and say boozhoo. And chi miigwech (thank you)—for listening, doing, reading, being.

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DELANNA STUDI (Cherokee) Actor and Playwright “Where are your women?” In 1757, Cherokee Peace Chief Attakullakulla asked this question when his council met with a British Treaty delegation. His party included women “as famous in war, as powerful in council.” He asked this question when he noticed the British delegation consisted of only men. And yet, this is a question still being asked today. It resonates within my core as an actor in Hollywood. Too often I see our Native women relegated to the background, as a victim or an exotic princess. This does not reflect the Native women I know. This doesn’t reflect the Native woman I am. “Where are your women?” This was my favorite bedtime story. I fondly recall my father finishing the story: “Chief Attakullakulla turned back to the council and said in Cherokee, ‘We cannot trust them. They are only thinking with half their brains.’ DeLanna, never forget your power as a Cherokee woman.” As a Cherokee artist and activist, I have worked over twenty years to give voice to contemporary Native perspectives through film and theatre. The challenge is that most of the narratives continue to be controlled by the dominant culture and as a result, the characters lack authenticity and dimension. The majority of my work has been written by Anglo men and women, who all too often romanticize the plight of the American Indian and/or save us or lead us into the light of this “civilized” world. I had a choice to make: wait for Hollywood to write a story that reflected contemporary Native women or reclaim sovereignty over my own narrative and write the story myself. Four years ago, I had the fortune of working with director Corey Madden. Over dinner, Corey asked me about my dream project. Without hesitation, I blurted out “I want to walk the Trail of Tears with my father and write a play about it.” Little did we know, that dinner turned into a four-year project. Six months after that dinner Corey left Los Angeles to become the Executive Director of the Thomas S. Kenan Institute of the Arts in North Carolina. One of her job requirements was to produce an art piece about North Carolina. Corey remembered our conversation and contacted me. With the generous support from the Kenan Institute of the Arts, And So We Walked: An Artist’s Journey Along the Trail of Tears was born. Over four years, the Kenan Institute supported my vision, aided in my research, helped develop the concept and 215

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script, funded and produced the play, and provided me with an awardwinning design team. I introduced our team to the Cherokee concept of Gadugi, the coming together of a people to celebrate, promote, and support each other. One of my father’s teachings is to always give back to my community and my People. They are the ones who sustain us, build us up, and create a safe harbor for us to grow and learn. As a playwright, I had more power than I had as an actor. As a Cherokee woman, I knew this was an opportunity to model the cultural awareness and sensitivity that I had always wanted. My biggest complaint was that no one took the time to visit our communities and interact with us as people. Although I am an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation, I am not a citizen of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, which is the home to Kituwah, our Mother Town. Before I began writing, I felt I needed to engage in community, presenting my project proposal in front of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians Tribal Council. I consulted with local historians, storytellers, and elders; attended ceremonies, and enlisted an Eastern Band cultural advisor while consulting with my father, an “old-speaker.” I created community workshops and spoke at town hall meetings spanning the seven states the Northern Route of the Trail of Tears crossed. The videos of interviews with elders and storytellers we conducted were donated to the Tribal Museums. Our team of designers followed suit by immersing themselves in Cherokee culture. They traveled to Cherokee, North Carolina visiting with the elders, artisans, and historians. The end product was a Cherokee story that didn’t conform to the widely accepted Western canon. The storytelling was circular in nature, weaving storylines and history together, and introducing our mostly non-Native audience to Indigenous concepts and beliefs. Our set was a thrust stage built to resemble the seven-sided Cherokee Council House, ensuring that the audience were active participants and not just observers. We had displaced local trees, which hung from the ceiling, symbolizing the violent removal of so many Native people, who ultimately made beauty out of this devastation. Fabric was woven between these trees to resemble our Cherokee baskets and provided projection surfaces. When Portland Center Stage (PCS) in Oregon offered to the produce And So We Walked, I understood the importance of being the first Native playwright to be produced there. I immediately began working with their education department, scheduling workshops, post-performance discussions, 216

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community outreach, and creating cultural curriculum. I requested that we have an Indigenous artist displayed in our lobby. PCS did not hesitate to grant this request. In fact, they found two local Cherokee artists, Brenda Mallory and Jon Cantrell, to display in our lobbies. Throughout our four-year journey, my team and I had heard all the reasons our show would be difficult to produce, ranging from “It’s not a box office draw” to “No one is interested in Native stories unless they’re historical.” After our six-week run, And So We Walked was in the top five best-selling shows in the Ellyn Bye Studio at PCS, proving otherwise. As heads of state meet, as we peer around the board room, writers’ room, or producers’ meetings; as we watch plays, films, and episodic series, let’s make sure we never have to ask again about the lack of diversity or gender equity. Representation matters. Our voices matter. People want to hear our stories.

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“RECLAMATION” KIMBERLY NORRIS GUERRERO (Colville, Salish-Kootenai, Cherokee) Actor and Professor Although I am an actor, I’ve always felt weirdly uncomfortable calling myself one. The same holds true for writer, director, producer, tribal youth advocate, photographer, professor and obsessed European football fan. Even though I’ve dedicated vast amounts of my life to these pursuits and am passionate about them all, the nomenclature, especially when multi-hyphenated— actor-writer-etc.-etc.—has just never rung true. But a few years ago, I finally discovered something that did. I’d been asked to write a lengthy artist statement and though I’d been wracking my brain for years in search of the perfect self-descriptive, this time I decided I wouldn’t give up until I found it. That term that connected who I am and what I do with the undeniable inner force that seemed to emanate from within my DNA like a homing beacon. A beacon that had been pinging throughout my being, and had guided me on every step of what has shaken out to be a veritable Forrest Gumpian life journey. As I left my small town in Oklahoma to come to Hollywood, a walking cliché—eighteen years old, all my worldly possessions packed in my little road-weary compact car with dreams of making it in showbiz. As I realized that, while I was ready to suffer for my art, I probably wasn’t ready to be a starving artist because I liked food too much and needed a Plan B, then chose to study Native American History at UCLA instead of Theatre. As I began to land roles playing Native characters in film, television and eventually on Broadway, and discovered the power of being able to educate those who were telling our stories, sometimes even shaping those stories for the better. As I worked with Native youth in tribal communities across the country helping them find their voices and express their truths through acting and digital filmmaking. As I began to write, direct and produce projects that celebrated Native peoples while championing other Indigenous creatives to write, direct, produce and star in their own work, telling their own stories like they have for thousands of years thank you very much. That pinging in my soul was there, guiding me even as I went in search of what to call it. I began circling around the idea of pre-Columbian trade, 218

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having always been fascinated by the idea of someone leaving their tribe to venture out into the unknown for years, only to show up in camp one day sporting exotic objects and grand stories from the world beyond. Even though it was a bit of stretch, I felt with some finessing I could connect the historical practice to my own creative journey. But I needed some deeper insight. So, I called up to the Colville rez to inquire at the font of Indigenous knowledge that is my Uncle Sonny. Uncle listened patiently as I laid out the quandary in my usual longwinded, impassioned way. Then in his usual straight-up, get-to-the-heart-ofthe-matter way, he said: “Traders? Yeah, I don’t know much about that.” Then the phone went silent and my heart sunk a little—I’d hit another dead end. “But you know who was really cool? The storytellers.” Uncle went on to tell me that in the old days, there were people who would set out on these long, arduous journeys going from tribe to tribe to relay news, recount histories, deliver cautionary tales and intuit change. And they had to do all that in a way that would keep their audiences thoroughly entertained—ideally for hours. The longer they could go without boring their listeners, the better storytellers they were; and if they weren’t bringing the goods they got the Native equivalent of the hook at The Apollo. Uncle said that tribes held these storytellers in such high esteem that they would even grant them safe passage during times of war. No, I thought to myself. It couldn’t be that easy. A storyteller? It’s so obvious. And yet, it wasn’t. In my mind the term storyteller referred exclusively to one who was a deft teller of creation stories, histories, and/or traditional wisdom tales. But in that moment, I realized that the term, and the calling that goes along with it, wasn’t limited to focusing on the past, it was also about shining a clear light on what was going on in the present, in hopes of positively impacting the future. Storytellers were individuals willing to sacrifice the comforts of village life—family, material provision and security—to serve the greater good. Suddenly, everything in my rollercoaster of a life made sense. I was a storyteller! As were so many other Indigenous artists I’ve been fortunate to work alongside who are so much more than credit next to their names infers. I had finally found the treasure I was seeking, and it had been hiding in plain sight the whole time.

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Storyteller.

I began trying it on, like this great leather jacket passed down from generation to generation. It was a little stiff at first, but over time it began to mold to my shape. And now, I can’t imagine life without it, guiding me on my own path as I encourage other Storytellers to do every imaginable thing within their power to be bold, brave and badass. Why? Because story matters. Story affects. Story, as Indigenous peoples have known for millennia and the field of neuroscience has proven of late, is everything. It literally shapes the way we perceive the world and our place in it. Every time a Storyteller shares their stories, it is a powerful act of decolonization. Every time a Storyteller shares their stories—whether on stage or at the multi-plex or on a mobile phone—it has the power to provide an antidote to the spirit of dehumanization sweeping our planet. Because those stories are all connected to the Great Story. The Story that reminds us of what it means to be a Human Being.

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ANDREW ROA (Shasta) Actor Life is really funny sometimes. When I was about four years old, I had a magical Saturday with my grandmother and my sister. We were watching television and my grandma said: “let’s order out.” So we called Chicken Delight, this is before the colonel came to northern California, to order some chicken that came in a blue and yellow striped tub. But I saw pizza on the menu and asked what it was. They told me, and I thought: “Hey, I’ll try that.” So, the food came and we sat down to watch a John Wayne western. Well, between the pizza and movie, I thought I was in heaven. And I remember saying to myself: “That’s what I want to do. Be an actor.” Unfortunately, Wayne and all his buddies were slaughtering Indians, but hey, I found my calling. Still not sure if it was the movie or my first pizza, but that magic feeling is still with me to this day. And pepperoni pizza is still one of my weaknesses. Fast forward to present day, working as a Native actor is a blessing and a curse. I love portraying Native characters going though the struggles and victories in history, and also investigating the diversity of the Native culture. I consider it an honor. But with less than one percent of the characters represented in television and movies being Native American, work can be sparse. The numbers are probably a little better in theatre, but not much. That’s why I’ve been really fortunate to be a member of Native Voices at the Autry in Los Angeles. It’s one of the few Native-based theatres in the country. But let me point out that I am a huge champion of the “individual.” As an actor, you want to play as many different parts with as many different attitudes as possible. I think that’s the dream of every actor, no matter your race. But being Native, I think you get pigeonholed just as much—if not more—than any other race. With that said, it kind of limits the kind of parts you can play, at least in the minds of casting directors and producers. And then with political correctness, some folks don’t want to portray Indians in a negative light. I say, “The hell with that.” Let me play a bad guy, a drunk, a murderer, but also let me play a doctor, a scientist, or an astronaut. C’mon guys, wake up. Native people are making contributions all over the world. Let us do it in the entertainment world too. Overall, I’ve had a decent career. I almost made it big around twenty years ago with several screen tests for soaps, television series, and films. But fate has a mind of its own and the industry can be very unforgiving. But I’ve found a new energy recently and all in looking for work, creating my own 221

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work, and helping my actor/writer/producer friends with their projects. This industry is an animal all its own, and it can pull you down sometimes. I’ve tried in the past to give it up, quit, and move on. But the few times I really tried, I knew it was simply for naught. I was born to be an actor and that’s what I am. You simply have to find a way to stay motivated because there really is no other choice. I think most of my motivation is seeing good work, whether it’s writing, acting or directing. There is no denying good work. I find it completely inspirational. Of course a good meditation or good round of golf with friends really helps heal the soul. Finally, I did a play recently at the Arena Stage called Sovereignty, about the situation leading up to the Trail of Tears that the Cherokee Indians had to endure. It was a beautiful play jumping back and forth from the 1830s to the present day. And it showed how little progress we’ve made in respect to the rights of Native Americans on their sovereign lands. It was informative, funny, heartbreaking, and most of all, entertaining. The author is Mary Kathryn Nagle and her career is taking off in a big way. She is also a direct descendant of some of the actual historical characters in the play. Anyway, I must say it was probably the best professional acting experience in my life. Working with Molly Smith (Artistic Director) at Arena Stage, the whole cast and crew; it was magical. A little like that Saturday when I was four. It gave me a whole new outlook on my career but even more, on life in this career. I would not trade it for anything. I love acting, writing, producing, and directing. I love being Native. And I love the opportunities I have had due to all aspects of this business. Life is good.

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TERRY GOMEZ (Comanche) Playwright, Director, Playwriting Instructor I went into Native theatre quite by accident. I had been more interested in the short story form during the beginning of my writing career. I took a playwriting course (1992) and an acting course at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) because all the other writing courses were full. I wrote a monologue for a class assignment. The instructor asked me to write a complete script around this monologue. In the next year, my first play, Intertribal, was produced as a staged reading at the Public Theatre and as a full production in Santa Fe, NM. Inter-Tribal was a story based on the changes that I had seen during a short period of time in my home community of the Comanche Nation in Oklahoma. The changes were not very good, a lot of violence was happening, and it was hard to accept. The next play I wrote was called Reunion. I grew up in a very close-knit community and I was a somewhat naïve young woman who had a sheltered life, in some respects. One year, I attended the funeral of a distant relative, Margaret. She had owned a small store, which sold things like jewelry from the southwest as well as beadwork, blankets, and so forth. When she passed on, some of my grandmothers flew in from Oklahoma to Portland, Oregon where I was living at the time, to attend the funeral. After the funeral, we were invited by her only son to come over for a luncheon. My grandmothers asked the son if they could have a keepsake, such as a scarf or perhaps a photograph. Instantly, Margaret’s (non-Native) husband came out with a gun in hand, telling us that we were greedy vultures who were only there for all of Margaret’s Indian clothing and her other valuable things. It was so shocking to be around such a mess. This was also not the way things were handled at home. We were so stunned and upset that we just left. The play I wrote was based on this horrible moment, in which I proceeded to write as a dramatic comedy. This was also given a full production at the IAIA. In my own way, I realized that I was trying to figure my life out from the perspective of a Comanche woman who saw that things were constantly in flux, especially for our tribal people. As our elders left us, things were irrevocably lost; such as traditional behaviors and knowledge, to the loss of our precious language. I realized that by having my writing performed, I was given a voice to discuss difficult issues and present them to other Indigenous people. I continued writing and working with grass roots theatre groups and became fiercely insistent that if I could have my own voice heard, then more Native people needed to be heard as well. 223

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Long story short, I kept writing plays. I have written ten plays so far and all of them have been produced. Inter-Tribal, Reunion, an adaptation of Antigone titled Wam-puu (The Baby Snake), An Evening at the Nighthawk, Melanin, Carbon Black, Numunu Waiipunu, The Comanche Women, Tobacco Leaves, and Rain Dance. Eventually I began teaching at the IAIA through a program initiative (Project HOOP) under Hanay Geiogamah [and Jaye Darby], from UCLA. First I was coordinator of the program, and later formed a small theatre troupe there at the college, called “The Cool Side of Hell.” I became a director. Although somewhat unconventional, we began producing five to ten-minute plays written by the students at the time. It was exciting, as students were writing, letting their thoughts and voices be heard, and having the nearby pueblo communities (including elders) as well as the college and other locals attend our showcases. During this period, I also attended graduate school at the University of New Mexico, graduating with an MFA in Dramatic Writing. I was also working quite intently with a young woman, Kim Gleason, who was instrumental in starting the Two Worlds Theatres. Finally, I have become a full-time instructor at a tribal college. The vice president of the college attended one of my plays and asked me if I was interested in teaching there. So, I have my theatre background to thank for my position now. I haven’t worked on any productions in a while, because I am so wrapped up in my full-time teaching. However, I have two different plays started. It is a long and arduous process as I exhaust most of my communication and creativity in the classroom. That being said, I am looking forward to a time in a few years, that I can put my art first once again. I was a late bloomer, in regard to becoming a playwright, actor, and director. This came to fruition during a time that I became a single parent and a student, so it was usually put to the sidelines as I handled other responsibilities. When I think about productions, it is still surprising to me that I was given this fantastic gift from the Creator. It has allowed me to meet many amazing artists, travel to many different places on the earth, and to even support my family at times. Writing won out. I come from a wonderful Numunu Nation, full of storytelling. I still have my original purpose of wanting Native voices out into the world. We are a part of the Indigenous global people. No matter what, we are here to stay; and our voices are roaring.

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RANDY REINHOLZ (Choctaw) Producing Artistic Director and JEAN BRUCE SCOTT Producing Executive Director of Native Voices at the Autry Often an artist’s statement is a philosophical or cultural approach to the work, a lens for viewing. We believe work begets work. Our philosophy can be inferred by the body of work and an overview of some of our core processes, which we always evaluate for improvement. The artists’ voices, which are elevated in Native Voices process, are the desired center of attention. The power is in the work and the stories. Native Voices at the Autry is an Equity theatre company in the United States that is dedicated solely to developing and producing new work for the stage by Native American, First Nation, Native Hawaiian, and Alaska Native artists. We believe we need to put Native narratives at the center of the American story in order to facilitate a more inclusive dialogue on what it means to be American.1 By supporting Native theatre productions, Native Voices creates space and resources for Native theatre artists. Through partnerships with a wide range of Native communities, industry professionals, and arts organizations, we make Native theatre available to broader and more diverse audiences. By developing and staging Native productions, we demonstrate the power and talent behind telling these stories. While Native theatre has always existed in isolated pockets throughout the US, it was not an integral interwoven part of the fabric of the American theatre. Historically, the American theatre offered few opportunities for Native theatre artists. Native characters were stereotypical, marginalized, or “bit” characters constructed within the context of a euro-centric point of view. Hollywood loves a vanishing Indian story, and most Native characters were subservient to main characters, seldom a driving force in the narrative. With the evolution of Native scripts and actors; readers, producers, and audiences witnessed fully developed Native characters that determined the action in the story. These scripts situate Native actors in lead roles telling stories that are unique to tribal identity—but they also have a universal resonance. Native Voices at the Autry has become a center of advancement for Native theatre by providing a welcoming environment and community of artists. We provide casting opportunities, workshops, staged readings, Equity 225

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productions, and touring shows. In 2014, we formed the Native Voices Artists Ensemble as a way to plan for succession and to support key artists by provide training, space, and funding to create new work. Ensemble members write and direct plays, are cast in staged readings and productions, and are part of a touring company that presents new work. They teach in local and national residencies. They receive training in playwriting, acting, directing, stage management, and production. We have worked with playwrights from more than 100 distinct American Indian nations from across North America on over twenty-six critically acclaimed equity productions, including twenty-two world premieres; fifteen playwright’s retreats; twenty-five national and international tours; fifteen radio plays; twenty-five new play festivals; eight short play festivals; over 200 titles developed in more than 230 workshops and 275 public staged readings of new plays. Many of the Native playwrights and theatre artists who have graced our stage have become visible nationally, creating new Native theatre companies as well as acting, directing and producing new work. In 2015, we were presented the Lee Melville Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Los Angeles Theatre Community. In 2017 Off The Rails, first produced by Native Voices, premiered at Oregon Shakespeare Festival with a sold-out run and critical success. More than 22,000 people saw the play. In 2019 Native Voices was honored with the Gordon Davidson Award for distinguished contribution to the Los Angeles theatrical community by the LA Drama Critics Circle, a special lifetime achievement award that has only been awarded three times. Scripts and papers documenting Native Voices are archived at the Autry Museum of the American West. Native Voices at the Autry continues to build a body of work and community of artists that demonstrates the depth of Native theatre talent; the veracity of our stories; the diversity among Native peoples; and the links between cultural knowledge and tradition and the role they play in the modern world. We are proud of the plays developed and produced by Native Voices and the Native theatre artists who have graced our stages. They have advanced the field of Native theatre resulting in a growing awareness and national presence of Native stories on the American stage.

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JUDYLEE OLIVA (Chickasaw) Playwright, Director, Professor Looking back on my body of work over the last several decades, it is clear that all my plays are about identity. Whether I choose to embrace Native themes or not, the characters in my plays are searching, longing, dreaming, looking for their place. Joannie, in The Fire and the Rose writes: “We look for a place / Someplace to belong / To land in, a home / A hand, a hug, base— someplace.” In 99 Cent Dreams, Loretta explains that she “wants to buy a new dream,” a new life to replace the one in which both her mother and father died. In Call of the River, a play about the removal of Native Americans on the Trail of Tears, the issue of identity drives the dramatic action—to put a human face on what has been called the Indian Holocaust. These three plays (from my anthology of over twenty) strongly reflect my eclectic style as a writer and reveal a host of dramaturgical strategies that I employ to tell my stories. My writing is highly theatrical, often poetic, and sometimes magical, sometimes ethereal, and almost always moves beyond realism into other worlds. I NEED all those elements to realize my vision so that the audience can see and hear and think about my characters’ inner and outer lives. Every play that I write starts out with an image. In 99 Cent Dreams that image came from a train ride home in the dark. I looked up and there in the sky I saw red neon lights that spelled out “99 Cent Dreams.” My simple thought was: “wouldn’t it be great to be able to buy a dream for 99 cents?” The color red became a crucial motif in the play: red blood, red man, Scarlet Letter red, red dirt of Oklahoma. Imagine my surprise on opening night when I realized the director had chosen blue neon lights, ignoring specific stage directions for “red.” Stage directions, in all my plays, are a part of my dramaturgy because I “see” my plays on stage. For example, in Dreams, I set it in an antique shop in Arcadia, Oklahoma and note that “some antiques are real and others appear to have melted away.” The employment of this stage direction reflects an ongoing theme in the play—the vanishing history of mankind, of race, of one man’s life, of a young girl’s dream. In Dreams, none of the characters have names until the play nears the end. They have labels: Girl with Short Skirt, Black Man, Indian Man, Woman with Purse. All have a different dream, a different story to tell, a different journey to move through. Weaving their stories together to create a larger, more powerful story was the challenge in this play, and I relished the writing journey—taking the audience on a ride in and out of reality to the world of dreaming and back to the harsh 227

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reality of incest and murder. Black Man says: “Hard to sit in history sometimes,” and Indian Man responds with: “Yes, history has a way of not being comfortable.” For The Fire and the Rose, I was inspired by the glass works of Dale Chihuly, and placed the character of Joannie in visions of some of his ethereal pieces, which he often displays in nature. Native themes do exist in this play, but it primarily focuses on best friends, Joannie and Bernie, and the conflict between religion and spirituality. Joannie is Native and her worldview is spiritual; she longs to connect her beliefs with her ethnicity. Bernie was raised as a Christian, but has a crisis of faith primarily due to her failing marriage. Joannie is a poet, and Bernie is an English professor. I use their backgrounds to create the world of the play focusing in on Joannie’s poetry (which are my original poems) and Bernie’s literary choices, ranging from T. S. Eliot to Yeats, Rosetti, and the Bible. While Bernie, struggling to hold her marriage together, seeks answers from classic literature and traditional hymns; Joannie, dying of cancer, evokes the spirit of her Chickasaw Grandmother to guide her. The Grandmother is a spirit and cannot be seen by anyone except Joannie. She serves as a magical, silent narrator for Joannie as she moves from life to death. Most of my plays are divided into scenes, tied together with transitions, which serve to provide an additional dimension to the narrative. In Fire, the transitions are usually music or sound effects providing a kind of ebb and flow to the action, much like the setting which calls for “a vague landscape with a variety of levels, like shifts of sand . . . There is a feeling, always present of one of the elements—earth, wind, fire and water.” Like the juxtaposition of the transitions and the set pieces, there is also the contrast between the poetry of established masters like T. S. Eliot with Joannie’s poetry. It reflects both the kinship between Bernie and Joannie, but also the stark divide of where each woman is on her journey. Joannie quotes Eliot, as she reminds Bernie “Love is most nearly itself / When here and now cease to matter.” Then she quotes her own poem: “My words are hands that reach for what you knew,” referencing her Indian Grandmother. The focus on word choice, how a word sounds, and the relationship of one word placed against the other, provides a poetic soundscape which evokes the connection of two worlds—that of the spiritual realm and the more traditional religious realm. In this way, Bernie and Joannie finally connect. The relationship of words creates an entire scene in Call of the River. I knew that it was risky to try such a scene where groups of actors fill the stage and recite single words. But as I looked at the words and the relationship of 228

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the meanings of each word to the other, it struck me as very profound. For example, one grouping, with each actor saying one word, speaks: Betrayal. Trail. Trial. Treaty. Tears. Another grouping, also speaking one at a time, follows: Reservation. Reserve. Serve. Servitude. Spirit. Spit. Writ. Rid. Ride. Right. Rot. Like Te Ata, Call of the River is an historical play. Portraying history is challenging on stage. Te Ata covers almost 100 years of her life; whereas, Call of the River attempts to cover the almost 200 years between the Indian Removal of 1832 and present day. The image for me came from a quote by Chickasaw writer Linda Hogan: There is a dry river between them and us. Its banks divide up our land. Its bed was the road I walked to return. The call of the river, illusive and haunting, plagues my play’s main character, Carl, until he finds his identity. I had the luxury of working with a director and a group of students to develop this play from earlier drafts. Many of the students were Native and 229

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brought a unique sensitivity for the subject matter. Still, this play is flawed. I did not want to portray a story of one family’s journey, but rather the movement itself. I needed slides, projections, original Native flute music, and specialized movement to realize this story. In production, it was more presentational than I would have liked. The play calls for stylized movement throughout and a strong company of actors to handle long monologues. As in most of my plays, there are shifts in reality, as in the courtroom scene, where one of the White Men portrays a judge via an impersonation of Aretha Franklin. This play requires a combination of theatricality, word play, music, and action to realize the historical travesties as well as the powerful portrayal of families on the journey to an unknown land. “How do you say good bye to the trees” is just such a scene. In the end, I realized that Call of the River still needed to be written, explored, and presented. It is flawed, like our history. But like all my plays, it gave a name and a face to a time and a place. What I love about writing plays is that there is this curious dichotomy: the intimate privacy of writing alone, but crowded with thoughts and peopled with characters and flooded with images and metaphors; and then to have the collaborators, the designers, directors in the flesh as an artistic team— heaven.

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MURIEL MIGUEL (Kuna and Rappahannock) Director, Actor, Playwright, and Co-Founder of Spiderwoman Theater The future is the future. And I feel it coming up very fast. In my Native community, I am an elder. I feel the respect but also the responsibility. I travel a lot, teaching, directing and sometimes acting. The big question for me, for the last forty years or more, is how to communicate to the generations after me and to my own generation. To shine a light on our community, our secrets; to talk and most importantly, to listen. I started Spiderwoman Theater for that reason, to talk about violence against women. I was so busy touring and trying to make a living, it did not occur to me the impact Spiderwoman had on women, especially Native women. They claimed Spiderwoman for themselves. From then on, the challenge was to create theatre about us. Sometimes, there were money and grants, sometimes not. I look at myself as a two-spirit, 81-year-old, Native theatre artist-director. I have been an actor, director, playwright, and choreographer for the last sixty years. I was born in Brooklyn and grew up in the experimental theatre world of 1960s New York City with the Open Theatre. In my home, the culture was strong and I met and learned from Native Americans from all over the country who stayed with my family when they traveled to New York, as performers and entertainers with the Side Shows and Wild West Shows of the 1930s and 1940s. These beginnings have influenced me and continue to shape my work and life as an artist. Through my work with Spiderwoman Theater and also working with other women artists, particularly, Native women, I have seen how storytelling empowers performers and audiences. Women tell me how the trajectory of their life has changed as a result of seeing one of our productions. Performing a personal story gives the performer a stake in the vision of the production. That performer is able to communicate on a very personal level with audience members. Spiderwoman’s (and my) current work espouses the urgency I feel to share my knowledge and my legacy of creative process, taking my place to right the wrongs that have been perpetrated on Native people. This is all still bubbling up in me. Spiderwoman now includes many generations of Native women, aged from their twenties to nineties. They teach me. With Material Witness, the world is made aware that violence against Native women and families is tearing apart our communities and stealing the lives of the next generations and it is important for everyone to bear witness to that. With Misdemeanor Dream, we are unearthing Native spirits and tricksters; original languages 231

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and the stories that have come from the time that the stories were told in those languages. To initiate a Native/Indigenous/First Nations Performance Space in New York City, which is where I live and breathe. As the first people of this land, we should have a place of culture in this city and we should never be overlooked.

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NOTES

Chapter 1 1. Terms such as Native American, American Indian, and First Nations are foreign and problematic designators for the Indigenous peoples of North America. It is more appropriate to use the specific name of a person’s Native nation when addressing one’s cultural identity. In the United States, both “Native American” and the older term “American Indian,” which garners legal standing, are most often used to refer generally to the peoples of Native nations. The term “Indigenous” is generally used in Canada. Similarly, Canada also uses the term “First Nations.” However, “First Nations, Métis, and Inuit” are becoming more frequent. While the term “Indigenous” contains important concepts regarding land and sovereignty, it can, at times, become too broad when trying to clarify whether one is speaking about all Indigenous cultures or people indigenous to a specific geographical region. Throughout this book, we use “Native American” to refer to people indigenous to the lands now designated as the United States, and “First Nations” for those indigenous to the lands designated as Canada, while recognizing that the borders of each country are merely geopolitical, constructed rather than natural. We also use the terms “Native” and “Indigenous” interchangeably when referencing those who are indigenous to North America. Whenever we speak of a specific artist, we frequently adopt the artist’s own terminology for Native/Indigenous populations. At all times, we are aware of the limitations of terms and write with utmost respect. 2. All three of the authors of this book owe a debt of gratitude to Prof. Geiogamah for sharing his knowledge and experience as a path-breaking Native theatre artist and scholar throughout the 1970s to today. 3. See Cobb, “Understanding Tribal Sovereignty,” 115–32. 4. See R. Warrior’s Tribal Secrets for “intellectual sovereignty.” See also Raheja, Reservation Reelism. 5. For more, see Gunn Allen’s introduction to “Spider Woman’s Granddaughters,” 7–9.

Chapter 2 1. For further discussion of constructions of Indianness and stereotypes, see Berkhofer, Jr., The White Man’s Indian; S. Elizabeth Bird, ed., Dressing in Feathers; 233

Notes Deloria, Playing Indian; Francis, The Imaginary Indian; and Rayna Green, “The Pocahontas Perplex.” 2. See original in Caitlin, North American Indians, 293. 3. See Chapter 9 for Kent Monkman’s performative deconstruction of Caitlin’s homoeroticism toward Native peoples in Taxonomy. 4. For insights into the generational oral history of the Powhatan people, see Custalow and Daniel, The True Story of Pocahontas. The woman who became known as Pocahontas had many names throughout her brief twenty-one years of life, but was given the name Matoaka at her birth and died with the English name Rebecca Rolfe in 1617. 5 Red face portrayals of villainous Indians in Western-themed narratives transitioned into the mediums of film and television well into the twentieth century. For details on the ubiquity of Indian “savage” stereotypes produced by Hollywood, see Rollins, Hollywood’s Indian. For a description of the transition between Wild West show representations of Native people to television and film westerns, see L. Moses, especially Chapter 10, “Filming the Wild West,” 168–94. 6. For more, see Deloria and Salisbury, eds., A Companion to American Indian History; Deloria, Jr., Behind the Trail of Broken Treaties; Moos, Outside America; Prats, Invisible Natives; Slotkin, Regeneration Through Violence, The Fatal Environment, and Gunfighter Nation; and White and Limerick, “Frederick Jackson Turner and Buffalo Bill.” 7. For more on the Dawes and Curtis Acts, see Cornell, The Return of the Native, 40–67; Debo, And Still the Waters Run; Deloria, Jr., Behind the Trail of Broken Treaties, 6–11; Denson, Demanding the Cherokee Nation, 201–42; Hagan, Taking Indian Lands; Hoxie, ed., Talking Back to Civilization; and Washburn, The Assault on Indian Tribalism. 8. As seen in Commissioner of Indians (CIA) Reports, ex. 1884. 9. More than thirty battles between the US Cavalry and various Native American nations occurred contemporaneously or within a few years prior to Grant’s “peace policy.” These battles (in many cases, massacres) range from the territory west of the Mississippi through to the Pacific Coast and Southwest and are too numerous to list here. A selection of them includes: the Comanche Campaign (1876–77), the Chiricahua Wars (1860–86), the Black Hawk War (1865–72), the Yavapai Wars (1861–75), and the Hulalapai War (1865–70). 10. For more on Wild West shows, see L. Moses, Wild West Shows and the Images of American Indians, and McNenly, Native Performers in Wild West Shows. For exploration of “Buffalo Bill” Cody’s Wild West Show and the experiences of Lakota warriors Sitting Bull, Standing Bear, and Black Elk, see Burt, “ ‘Sioux Yells’ in the Dawes Era.”

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Chapter 3 1. See Chapter 8 for JudyLee Oliva’s (Chickasaw) scholarly and artistic work about Te Ata. 2. Johnson’s career is analyzed in Chapter 2. 3. In “A Strong Race Opinion,” Pauline Johnson criticizes the name “Winona” as the only name used for all “Indian girl” characters. 4. See bibliography for Bunny McBride’s works over Nicolar, Spotted Elk, and Penobscot performers. 5. See Chapters 5, 7, and 9 for more on Muriel Miguel and Spiderwoman Theater. 6. Another example of Spotted Elk’s influence is her collection of traditional stories, Katahdin.

Chapter 4 1. See Frederick Douglass’s 1881 essay “The Color Line” for his earlier critique against the immorality of entrenched racism affecting African Americans. 2. Three early accounts include dissertations in the 1950s by Eloise Wilson and Charles Edward Aughtry, who both knew Riggs and had access to his papers, and Thomas Erhard’s 1970 Lynn Riggs. Braunlich’s 1987 biography Haunted by Home describes Riggs as “unquestionably one of America’s most distinguished playwrights and poets” (xi). 3. See Weaver, That the People Might Live, 95–103; Womack, Red on Red, 271–303; Weaver, Foreword, ix–xv; Justice, Our Fire Survives the Storm, 92–104; Darby, “Broadway (Un)Bound,” 7–23; Stanlake, Native American Drama, 42–60, 71–7, 87–93; Driskill, “Ha’nts,” 179–96; Mohler, “The Native Plays of Lynn Riggs,” 63–75; Darby, “ ‘Civilization’ and Its Transgressions,” 59–84; Brown, Stoking the Fire, 117–67. 4. For an account of this battle, see Eaton, “The Legend of the Battle of Claremore Mound.” 5. For Westport Country Playhouse’s subsequent production with Dorothy Gish, see Somerset-Ward, 262.

Chapter 5 1. For more, see Johnson et al. (eds.), American Indian Activism; Nagel, American Indian Ethnic Renewal; Smith and Warrior, Like a Hurricane; Wilkinson, Blood Struggle.

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Notes 2. For more, see Troy R. Johnson, Occupation. 3. Agit-prop theatre stands for agitation-propaganda theatre (often associated with the work of Bertolt Brecht), which aims to develop critically minded audiences who then take political action outside the theatre.

Chapter 6 1. For accounts of residential school experiences, see Fournier and Crey, Stolen From Our Embrace; Jaine (ed.), Residential Schools; Miller, Shingwauk’s Vision; Milloy, A National Crime. 2. For more accounts of activism, see Little Bear et al. (eds.), Pathways to SelfDetermination; Boldt et al. (eds.), The Quest for Justice. 3. For a detailed analysis of competing mythologies in Dry Lips, see: Stanlake, “Punctured by Patriarchy.” 4. For another valuable resource about Indigenous theatre in Canada, see Nolan and Knowles (eds.), Performing Indigeneity.

Chapter 7 1. This assessment of Medicine Shows is ours. Nolan is quick to state that her intention is not to write a definitive text (6). 2. Created in 1992, The River-Home inspired performance practices Kane used to structure the Aboriginal Ensemble Program in 2002. 3. For more information, see Project HOOP Archives, UCLA.

Chapter 8 1. Te Ata’s 2006 version is published in Footpaths and Bridges; Oliva’s 2012 revision is in typescript. 2. See Stanlake’s “The Te Ata World Premiere” for detailed analysis of ways the 2006 premiere gave material form to Native American philosophies. 3. Oliva dramatizes the relationship between Ataloa and Te Ata as first cousins; the women did call one another “cousin” but were distant relatives. Ataloa helped found the Native American arts program at Bacone College in Muskogee, Oklahoma. 4. Pahitu studied music at Bacone College in Oklahoma and then the Juilliard School, New York. He also performed on Broadway, including a role in Lynn Riggs’s Russet Mantle (see Chapter 4).

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Notes 5. Fisher studied biology, botany, geology, ornithology, paleontology, zoology, and astronomy before receiving his PhD in botany from Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD. In 1924, Fisher became the first curator of astronomy for the American Museum of Natural History in New York, where he raised funds that built Hayden Planetarium. 6. See Gilbert “Profile” for more on Clements’s writing style and influence on Indigenous drama. See T. May “Kneading,” Hargreaves “Precise,” and Mohler “Burning” for more analysis of Burning Vision. 7. Annie Smith’s “Atomies of Desire” shares notes on the design of her production of Clements’s play at Grand Prairie Regional College, explaining: “A medicine wheel and the four directions [are] integral to the traditional beliefs of many First Nations cultures” (56). 8. Writers from marginalized groups practice writing as liberation. There is personal and collective power in such brave creation, precisely because the hegemony is served by silencing the marginalized. See Tsosie, “Reclaiming Stories.”

Chapter 9 1. For a detailed account of the numerous organizations that supported this work, see Studi’s project website: www.andsowewalked.com. 2. For examples of these and other works, see Monkman’s website: www. kentmonkman.com. 3. For compelling and detailed analysis on Native American hip hop culture, see Mays, Hip Hop Beats.

Chapter 10 1. We realize there are many Americas, but we use the term “American” intentionally. For us, American specifically relates to, or is characteristic of, the United States’s population today, as well as this land’s first inhabitants. In this way, we seek to demonstrate the presence of Indigenous peoples who are native to this land and its “American” narratives.

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INDEX

Aanmitaag 137 Accomac 209 Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl 180 Adult Vocation Program 89 Agokwe (Fobister) 196 Alcatraz Island, San Francisco Bay 91, 92, 99 Allotment acts 25–6, 28 Almighty Voice and His Wife (Moses) 115 American Indian Higher Education Consortium (AIHEC) 143 American Indian Movement (AIM) 89, 90, 205 American Indian Religious Freedom Act (Public Law 95-341) 94 American Indian Stories (Zitkála-Šá) 48 American Indian Theater in Performance: A Reader (Geiogamah and Darby) 100, 145 American Indian Theatre Ensemble (AITE) 96 American Musical and the Formation of National Identity, The (Knapp) 64 American Theatre 180, 185 And So We Walked: An Artist’s Journey Along the Trail of Tears (Studi) 185, 186–7, 215–17 And Still the Waters Run (Debo) 65 Anishinaabe communities 196, 203 Antoine, Muriel 145 Archambaud, Jean 59 Arena Stage 182, 183, 184, 210, 222 arts education 94–6 Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) 201 Atkinson, Brooks 66, 74 A Tribe Called Red (ATCR) 205 Attakullakulla (Cherokee Peace Chief) 215 August: Osage County (Lett) 186 Autry Museum of the American West 150, 226

Baby Blues, The (Taylor) 127–8 Baker, Josephine 59 Ballard, Louis 95 Barker, James Nelson 19 Barker, Joanne 11 Barnes, Charlotte Mary Sanford 20 Berlin Blues, The (Taylor) 129, 186 “Between Two Knees” (1491s) 192 Big Lake (Riggs) 68 Birmingham, Gil 129 Blackhawk, Ned 181 Blood, Cherish Violet 138f Bloomfield Academy 44–5 Blues Quartet (Taylor) 127–9 Body Indian (Geiogamah) 96, 97–8 Bonnin, Gertrude Simmons (Zitkala-Ša) 48–53 Bonnin, Raymond 48 Bootlegger Blues, The (Taylor) 114, 127 Borrows, John 113 Borst-Tarrant, Murielle 105 Boston Globe 182 Bourdeaux, Lionel 144 Brando, Marlon 92 Brant, Beth 35, 195 Bray, John 19 Broadway 3, 42, 46, 64, 65, 66, 67 Broadway Nights 57 Brougham, John 20 Brown, Kirby 75 Bryce, Peter 111 Buffalo Bill (William F. Cody) 29–30, 31 Bumppo, Nathaniel (Hawkeye) 20 Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) 49, 89 Burning Vision (Clements) 14, 156, 165, 166–76, 177 Burnshaw, Stanley 80 Bury, Jeff 176 Buz’Gem Blues, The (Taylor) 127, 128–9 Call of the River (Oliva) 227, 228–30 Campbell, Duncan Scott 111

257

Index Canadian Theatre Review 113, 114 Cantrell, Jon 217 capitalism 82 “Capturing the Dream” Native American Higher Education Initiative 143–4 Cardinal, Harold 113 Carlisle Industrial Training School 24, 49 Catlin, George 18, 198 Celebrating Difference (Flahive) 94 ceremony 133 Ceremony, Spirituality, and Ritual in Native American Performance (Geiogamah) 100–01 Chaikin, Joe 102 Chamberlain, Montague 53 Cheechoo, Shirley 114, 133 Cherokee Nation 65, 67, 179, 216 in The Cherokee Night 72, 73, 76, 77 in Green Grow the Lilacs 68, 69 in Sovereignty 183 Cherokee Night, The (Riggs) 67, 68, 72–7 Cherokees 66, 67, 72, 75, 183 Chicano Movement 205 Chickasaw Nation 44–5, 162, 164, 166 Chihuly, Dale 228 Chingachgook, chief 20 Choctaw Academy 24 Christian Mission Boards 27 Civilization Fund 23–4, 27 Civil Rights Movement 90, 205 Claremore Mound 73 Clements, Marie 14, 149, 150, 156, 166–76 Code of Conduct, for writing about Native drama (Yellow Robe, Jr. and Lukens) 108, 109–10, 155, 176 Cody, William F. “Buffalo Bill” 29–30, 31 Cole, Tom 166 colonialism 15, 28, 59, 80–1, 174, 195 Commanda, Emma 137 Constitution Act 1982, Section 35 14, 113 contemporary Native theatre 10f Contemporary Plays by Women of Color (Perkins and Uno) 188 Cook, Tom 112 Cooper, James Fennimore 20 Cornerstone Theatre Company 188 costume design (St. Pierre Smith) 212 Cothran, Robert 162–3, 164, 166 Couchie, Penny 138f Courts of Indian Offenses 27

258

Couteau, Donna 138f Cow Pie Bingo (FastHorse) 188 Cox, James 74, 78, 80, 81, 83 Cree, James Bay 114 Creek War of 1813–14 16 Crossing the Mnisose (Nagle) 192 cultural genocide 135–6 Curtis Act of 1898 25, 45, 65 Custis, George W. P. 20 “Dance to Miss Chief ” (Monkman) 198 dancing 27, 50, 52, 56–9, 102, 159, 165, 187, 205 Dandurand, Joseph A. 149 Darby, Jane T. 77, 78, 144, 124 Davis, Frances 45, 159, 161, 162 Dawes, Henry 25, 82 Dawes Allotment Act 31, 77, 82, 166, 234, 241 Day, Sharon 194 Day in Santa Fe, A (film, Riggs) 78 Daystar/Jones, Rosalie 95, 241 Death of a Chief (Native Earth) 133 De-ba-jeh-mu-jig Theatre Group 114, 117, 123, 124 Debo, Angie 65 Deeter, Jasper 73 Defoe, Ty 188 Deloria, Philip J. 4, 18, 35 Deloria Jr, Vine 11, 127, 128 Democratic Party 16 Dene See-er 168, 169, 170, 171, 172f Double Take/A Second Look (Native Earth) 117 Drum is Calling Festival, The 130, 142 Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing (Highway) 114, 121–3 Eastman, Ida Rauh 78, 84, 228 ecological justice 174 Edge of America 186 Eliot, T. S. 79 Enos, Jerry 170 “ethic of harmony” values 67 Evening at the Warbonnet and Other Plays (King) 106–7 Evening in Paris (Olson and Miguel) 60 Everything You Know About Indians Is Wrong (Smith) 202–3 Fadden, Ray Tehanetorens 112

Index Fairly Traceable (Nagle) 181–2 FastHorse, Larissa 185, 187–9 Federal Theatre Project 65, 74 Finch, Rhenada 165 Fire and the Rose, (Oliva) The 227, 228 First Nations Drum 142 First Seminole War c. 1814–19 16 Fisher, Clyde 158, 159, 160, 162 Fisher, Mary “Te Ata” Thompson see Te Ata (Mary Fisher Thompson) Fixico, Donald L. 82 Flahive, Ryan S. 94 Fobister, Waawaate 196 Foghorn (Geiogamah) 91, 96, 97, 98–100 Forest Princess, The (Barnes) 20 Forrest, Edwin 21, 22 Fort Jackson, Treaty of 17 Fort Peck Indian Reservation, Montana 107 49 (Geiogamah) 97, 100–1 400 Kilometres (Taylor) 125, 126 Four Mothers Society 71 French–Indian War 20 Frontier Thesis (Turner) 22–3 Full Circle: First Nations Performance 130, 139–43 Aboriginal Ensemble Program 140–1 Talking Stick Cabaret 200 Talking Stick Festival 141 GaDuGi (Cherokee concept) 187, 216 García, Kyla 184f Geiogamah, Hanay 9, 91, 96–7, 144, 145 49 97, 100–1 Body Indian 96, 97–8 Foghorn 91, 96, 97, 98–100 Grandma 146–7 gender expression 193 General, Emily C. 14, 111–13 General Allotment Act of 1887 25, 65 Generall Historie of Virginia, The (Smith) 19 genocide biological 135 cultural 3, 30, 41, 48, 203 physical 135 Girl Who Loved Her Horses (Taylor) 124–5 Glancy, Diane 149 Gleason, Kim 224 Gloria—A Life (Mann) 186 Goeman, Mishauna 33, 44, 64 Gomez, Terry 223–4

Gorman, Tom 54 Grandchildren of the Buffalo Soldiers (Yellow Robe) 108 Grandma (Geiogamah) 146–7 Grant, Ulysses S. 27 Green Grow the Lilacs (Riggs) 63–4, 65, 67, 68–72 Guerrero, Kimberley Norris 218–20 Gunn Allen, Paula 101, 123, 124, 147, 171 Off the Reservation 11–12 The Sacred Hoop 8, 103 Spider Woman’s Granddaughters, 9 Guy Hill Indian Residential School 115 Hale, Chester 57 Hamlet (Shakespeare) 79 Hammerstein II, Oscar 63–4 Hand, John 50 Hang on to Love (originally The Domino Parlor, Riggs) 76 Hanson, William 48, 49, 50, 51 Harjo, Joy 12 Harvest Festival, Ticonderoga, New York 112 Haskell Indian Nations 148 Haudenosaunee/Oneida Nation 106 Haugo, Ann 104 Hedgerow Theatre, Rose Valley, Pennsylvania 72, 73 Helburn, Theresa 63 Hendricks, Rachel 165 Hernández-Ávila, Inés 11 Highway, René 115 Highway, Tomson 114–17, 192, 193 see Dry Lips and Rez Sisters, The hip hop 205–6 Hogan, Linda 229 Hopi creation myth 103 Horseshoe Bend, Battle of 183 Hot’n’Soft (Miguel) 194–5 Howe, LeAnne 147 HowlRound 202 Hughes, Bethany 202 Hughes, John 78 Iceman Cometh, The (O’Neill) 106, 107 INAATE/SE 203–4 Independence of Eddie Rose, The (Yellow Robe) 108 Indian Act 111, 113

259

Index Indian Act: Residential School Plays 136 Indian Child Welfare Act 180 Indian dancing 27–8, 56 Indian Day 147 Indian Defense League of America (IDLA) 111, 112 Indian pageants 53 Indian Pavilion at Expo 67 113 Indian Princess; or, La Belle Sauvage, The (Barker) 19 Indian Princess stereotype 19–21, 37 Indian Problem 18 Indian Relocation Act of 1956 89–90, 204 Indian Removal Act of 1830 17, 65 Indian Removal Policies 18 Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement (IRSSA) 135 Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975 94 Indians of All Tribes 91 Indian Territory 17, 23, 45, 65, 66 in The Cherokee Night 76, 77 “Choctaw Academy” 24 in Green Grow the Lilacs 64, 68, 69, 71, 72 in Out of Dust 78 reduction of lands in 25 Indian Wars 16, 24 Indigenous writing 115, 116, 131, 179–84 Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) 94–6, 223 Inter-tribal (Gomez) 223 Isaacs, Edith J. R. 80 Jackson, Andrew 16–17, 183, 210 Jay Treaty (1794) 111–12 Johnson, E. Pauline (Tekahionwake) 13, 16, 30, 32–8, 42, 48, 60 Johnson, Richard M. 24 Jones, Katie 181 Jones, Robert Edmond 78 Jones, Rosalie 95 Justice, Daniel Heath 66 Kanaka Maoli 206 Kane, Margo 14, 114–15, 127, 130, 133, 139–43, 147, 179, 200 Kellogg, Jeff 145 Kelly, Gene 63

260

Khalil, Adam and Zack 203–4 King, Bruce 106–7, 147–9 Knapp, Raymond 64 Knives from Syria (Riggs) 78, 84 Kumomoto, Nick 170 Lacroix, Denis 114 Lai, James 175 “Lakota Lullaby” 147 Lakota Sioux 29, 30 La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club 96, 100, 103, 106 Landless (FastHorse) 187 Land of the Spotted Eagle (Standing Bear) 31 Laronde, Sandra 136 Last of the Mohicans, The (Cooper) 20 Latina/o Focus Group (LFG) 201 Latinx, Indigenous, and the Americas Focus Group (LIA) 201 Lenape 189–90 Letts, Tracy 186 Lewis, Larry 118, 123, 125 Lieurance, Thurlow 54 Lind, Jane 96, 146 Little Big Horn, Battle of 30 Littlefeather, Sacheen 92 Loft, Ange 138f Long, Bethell 63 Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth 34 Loose Change Productions 137 Loring, Kevin 147, 199–201 Lukens, Margo 108–10, 109, 155, 176 Lysistrata Numbah, The (Spiderwoman) 103 McLaughlin, James 31 Mcbride, Bonny 54, 56, 235 Madden, Corey 215 Mallory, Brenda 217 Maloney, Barbara 176 Manahatta (Nagle) 184, 185, 189–91 Mann, Emily 186 Masque Theatre 78 Material Witness (Spiderwoman) 105, 136–9, 231 Mattaponi tribe, oral history 19 Mayo, Lisa 102, 102f, 103, 137 Medicine Man 42 Medicine Shows: Indigenous Performance Culture (Nolan) 131, 133, 199 medicine wheels 171

Index Meinholtz, Rolland 95, 107 Melody, Pat 148 Metamora; or The Last of the Wampanoags (Stone) 21–2 Miguel, Gloria 114, 117, 137, 146 and Material Witness 138 and Spiderwoman Theater 102, 103 Miguel, Muriel 6, 60, 114, 117, 146, 231–2 Hot’n’Soft 194–5 and Spiderwoman Theater 102–3, 137 storyweaving technique 103–5, 138–9 on violence against Indigenous women 138–9 Minnehaha 34 Misdemeanor Dream (Spiderwoman) 231 Mitchell, Brianna 173 Mohicans 20 Mohler, Courtney Elkin 156, 166–76, 177 Mojica, Monique 105, 113–14, 117 Monkman, Kent 58, 196–9 Moonlodge (Kane) 115, 130 Morrisseau, Norval 203 Moses, Daniel David 38, 113, 115, 136 Muskogee War 17 Muskrat Magazine 137 My People the Sioux (Standing Bear) 31 Nagle, Mary Kathryn 179–84, 202, 210–11, 222 Fairly Traceable 181 Crossing the Mnisose 192 Manahatta 185, 189–91 Sliver of a Full Moon 180–1 Sovereignty 179, 182–3, 210, 222 Na Haaz Zaan (Shorty) 96 National Arts Centre (NAC) 134, 199 National Council of American Indians 48, 52 National Indian Youth Council (NIYC) 89, 144 National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition 136 National Writing Project 147 Native American Rights Fund (NARF) 90 Native American Theatre Ensemble (NATE) 90, 96–101 Native Brotherhood of British Columbia 33 Native dramaturgy 6–13, 70, 100, 163 Native Earth Performing Arts 114, 117, 121, 131, 136

Native Hawaiian identity 206 Native hip hop 205, 206 Native performance 4, 7, 15, 100, 161, 167 analysis of 91 expansionist policies and 13 fluidity of 179 history of 157 land and music elements 73 misunderstandings of 28 Native stories 45, 46, 60, 116, 185, 192 enactments of 41 tricksters in 194 voice in 85 Native Voices at the Autry 129, 149–52, 181, 186, 187, 221, 225–6 Artists Ensemble 226 Festival of Native Plays 149 Playwrights Retreat 151–2, 226 Native Voices Artists Ensemble 226 Native Voices Festival of Native Plays 149 Festival of Native Plays 149, 150 Native Voice: Special Pauline Johnson Centenary Edition, The (Native Brotherhood of Brilish Columbia) 33 Native women 37, 38, 58, 181, 208, 215 advocating for Indigenous human rights 41 representation in popular culture 36 in Spiderwoman Theater 231 stereotypes of 34, 47 violence against 182 Navajo 43 balance (or hózhó) 42 Beauty Way ceremony 42 Chantways 93 cosmology 103 healing ceremony 42 sand painting 93 Nelson, Mary Alice “Molly Dellis”/“Spotted Elk” 13, 48, 54, 56–60 New, Lloyd Kiva 12, 94–5, 99, 100, 106, 206 New Masses (Burnshaw) 80 New Native American Drama: Three Plays: Body Indian, Foghorn, and 49 (Geiogamah) 97 New York Times 63, 66, 74, 100 Nicolar, Elizabeth Josephs 53 Nicolar, Joseph 53

261

Index Nicolar, Lucy (Princess Watahwaso) 13, 48, 53–6 99 Cent Dreams (Oliva) 227 N’lakap’mux people 200 Noble Savage 17–19, 20, 22, 198, 203 No Home But the Heart (Jones) 95 Nolan, Yvette 131–5, 167 No Quiet Place 125–6 Norridgewock Massacre 55 North Carolina 215 Nunn, Trevor 63 Oakes, Richard 90–1 Oenslager, Donald 82 Office of Indian Affairs 27, 31 Off the Rails (Reinholz) 191–2, 226 Off the Reservation (Gunn Allen) 11 Ogitchidag Gikinooamagad Theater Program 194 O’Hara, Jean 193 Oklahoma! 63–4, 65, 68, 71 Old Indian Legends (Zitkala-Ša) 48 Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe 182 Oliva, JudyLee (See Te Ata) 14, 156, 157–66, 186, 227–30 Only Drunks and Children Tell the Truth (Taylor) 125, 126 Open Theater Company (formally The Living Theater) 102 Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF) 184–6, 190–2, 210, 226 Out of Dust (Riggs) 67, 68, 77–8 Owen, Robert Dale 20 Pahitu, Kuruks 78, 79f, 83, 159 Passamaquoddies 55 Path With No Moccasins (Cheechoo) 114, 133 peace policy (1869) 27 Pearson-Little Thunder, Julie 97, 105 Penn, Brandy 103 Penobscot 53–7 People Have Never Stopped Dancing, The (Shea Murphy) 11, 52 performative sovereignty 11–13, 176–7 Persistence of Memory (Spiderwoman) 105 Phoenix, The 183 Pipestem Law 180–1 Playing Indian (P. Deloria) 4, 18

262

Pocahontas 19–20, 22, 37, 55, 98 Pocahontas (Owen) 20 Pocahontas, or the Settlers of Virginia (Cutis) 20 Po-ca-hon-tas: Or, the Gentle Savage (Brougham) 20 Poolaw, Bruce 54–5 Portland Center Stage (PCS) 185, 192, 216 Pratt, Richard 24, 49 Price, Hiriam 27 Princess Pocahontas and the Blue Spots (Mojica) 114 Project HOOP (Honoring Our Origins and People through Native Theater, Education, and Community Development) 14, 143–8, 224 Provincetown Players 57, 78, 83 Public Law 959 (Relocation Act of 1956) 89 “Pulling Threads” fabric workshop 137 radium 168–9, 173 Ramirez, Vickie 186 Rauch, Bill 191 Raven Spirit Dance Theatre 60, 141, 196 Red face 13, 16, 20, 21, 22, 35, 210–11 Redpath Chautauqua Circuit 54, 59 Red Poppy, The (Ata) 46 Red Power movement 89 Red Power Rising (Shreve) 89 Red Sky Performance 136 Reinholz, Randy 129, 149, 150, 152, 191–2, 225–6 Reinventing the Enemy’s Language (Harjo) 12 relocation programs 204 Rendon, Marcie 14, 105, 147 residential schools 23–4, 111, 133 Reunion (Gomez) 223 Reverb-ber-ber-rations (Spiderwoman) 102f, 105 Rez Sisters, The (Highway) 114, 117–21 Rickard, Clinton 111, 112 Ridge, John 183 Riggs, Lynn 13, 64, 65–6 The Cherokee Night 67, 68, 72–7 “A Credo for the Tributary Theatre” 67 Green Grow the Lilacs 63–4, 65, 67, 68–72 Knives from Syria 78, 84

Index Out of Dust 67, 68, 77–8 Russet Mantle 67, 68, 78–85 Riggs, Rose Ella (Buster) 68 River-Home, The (Kane) 140 Roa, Andrew 184f, 221–2 Rodgers, Richard 63 Rolo, Mark Anthony 185–6 Ross, John 183 Russet Mantle (Riggs) 67, 68, 78–85 Sabor, Claudette 146 Sacred Hoop 172 Sacred Hoop, The (Gunn Allen) 8, 103 Sahran, Adeye 129 St. Bernard, Donna-Michelle 136 Santa Fe, New Mexico 78 Sayet, Madeline 181, 185, 207–9 Scalia, Antonin 181–2 “scoop-up” 125, 126 Scott, Jean Bruce 149, 152, 225–6 Scrubbing Project, The (Turtle Gals) 133 Seiden, Jan 164, 165 Seminole Nation 17, 45, 65 sense of humor 127 settler colonialism 64, 65 Seven Fires Prophecy 203 sexual assaults 182 sexuality 193 Shakespeare, William 79, 207 Shaw, Peggy 105 Shea Murphy, Jacqueline (People Have Never Stopped Dancing, The) 11, 26, 27, 52 Shorty, Robert 96 show Indians, and native agency 30–8 Shreve, Bradley G. 89 Shubert, J.J. 57 Sicangu Writing Project 147 Sicard, Bunny 114 Silent Enemy (film) 56, 57 Sioux songs 50 Sitting Bull (Hunkpapa Lakota) 30–2 Six Nations Native Pageant 38, 112 Six Nations of the Grand River Reserve 33 Sleeper, Martha 84 Sliver of a Full Moon (Nagle) 180–1 Smith, John 19 Smith, Molly 222 Smith, Paul Chaat 202–3

Smith, Valerie St. Pierre 212–14 Society of American Indians 48 Someday Trilogy (Taylor) 125–7 SongCatcher: A Native Interpretation of the Story of Frances Densmore (Rendon) 147 Song of Hiawatha, The (Longfellow) 34 sovereignty 11–13, 192 Sovereignty (Nagle) 179, 182–3, 210, 222 Spider Woman’s Granddaughters (Gunn Allen) 9 Spiderwoman Theater 6, 60, 101–3, 136–9, 231 legacy 105 Native feminist storyweaving 103–5 Split Britches 105 Spotted Elk, Molly (Mary Alice “Molly Dellis” Nelson) 13, 48, 54, 56–60 Stage Yankee 20 Standing Bear (Lakota Sioux) 29, 30–2 Standing Rock Agency 31 Stand Off at HWY #37 (Ramirez) 186 Stanlake, Christy 70, 71, 156, 164, 165, 166 Steinem, Gloria 182 Stone, John Augustus 21 Stories of Our Way 145 Story of a National Crime, The (Bryce) 111 storytellers 219–20 storytelling 7, 123 storyweaving 103–5 Stray Dog, A (Yellow Robe) 108 Studi, DeLanna 129, 163, 185, 215–17 Studio Theatre 74 Sun, Moon, and Feather 105 Sun Dance Opera, The (Zitkala-Ša) 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53 sustainability 174 Talking Stick Festival 130, 141 Taunton, Carla 13 Taxonomy of the European Male (Monkman) 196–9 Taylor, Drew Hayden 114, 117, 123–9, 149, 186 Girl Who Loved Her Horses 124–5 Someday Trilogy 125–7 Toronto at Dreamer’s Rock 124 Teaching Disco Square Dancing to Our Elders: A Class Presentation (FastHorse) 187

263

Index Te Ata (Mary Thompson Fisher) 42–8, 60–1, 79f, 157, 159, 167 Te Ata (Oliva) 156, 157–66, 167, 176, 186, 229 Teller, Henry 27 termination policies 89, 204 Thanksgiving Play, The (FastHorse) 185, 187–9 Theatre Arts Monthly 80 Theatre in the House 148 They Came for the Children 135 Thompson, Thomas 44 Throwaway Kids 138 Thunder, Julie Pearson-Little 98, 105 Thunderbird Theatre 148 To Catch a Never Dream (King) 106 Tombs of the Vanishing Indian (Clements) 167 Toronto at Dreamer’s Rock (Taylor) 124 Toronto Sunday Globe 36 Trail of Broken Treaties 91, 98 Trail of Tears 65, 71, 183, 186, 215 Training and Industrial School, Carlisle, Pennsylvania 24, 49 tribal art 9 tribal colleges and universities (TCUs) 143 tricksters 194–5 Trojan Women, The 45 Trudeau, Pierre 113 Truth and Reconciliation Commission 135–9 Turner, Frederick Jackson 22–3 Turtle Island 3, 111, 113, 131, 210, 213 Two-Spirit Acts: Queer Indigenous Performances (O’Hara) 193, 196 Two Worlds Theatres 224 Uintah Ouray reservation 50 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Article 11 3–4, 11, 13 United States Indian Band 59 University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma (USAO) 162 Unnatural and Accidental Women, The (Clements) 167

264

Urban Ink Productions 167 Urban Rez (FastHorse) 188 Urban Tattoo (Clements) 167 Verve, Pam 103 Vestal, Robert 129 Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) 181 Vizenor, Gerald 36, 93 Wabanaki Club of Indian Island 53 Wakinyan agle na ohakab wiconi (After the Storm—Breath of Life) 145 Waln, Frank 205 Warrior, Clyde (Ponca) 89 Warrior, Della 95 Warrior, Robert Allen 52 Weaver, Jace 12, 64, 66, 69 Weaver, Lois 105 Weesageechak Begins to Dance 114, 136 Wells Fargo Theater 150 West End 63 Western films 29 Westport Country Playhouse, Westport, Connecticut 63, 78 What’s an Indian Woman to Do? (Rolo) 185–6 What Would Crazy Horse Do? (FastHorse) 188 Where the Blood Mixes (Loring) 199–200 Where the Pavement Ends (Yellow Robe) 108 White Paper of 1969 (Canada) 113 Wickquasgeck Trail 3 Wild West shows 13, 16, 22, 28, 29–30, 32 Williams, Tennessee 109 W. K. Kellogg Foundation 143 Women in Violence 103, 138 Woniya (Breath of the World) 145 Worcester v. Georgia 182, 183, 184 Wounded Knee, South Dakota 91 Wren, Celia 180 Yellow Robe Jr., William 107–10, 149, 155, 176 Zitkala-Ša (Gertrude Simmons Bonnin) 48–53

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