Indigenous Dance and Dancing Indian: Contested Representation in the Global Era by Matthew Krystal (review)

Indigenous Dance and Dancing Indian focuses on four different dance traditions in the United States and Guatemala as examples of "secular ritual" that make use of the special formal properties of dance to construct "multivalent" models of ethnic identity for their performers and audiences. After describing this basic theoretical framework in chapter 1, Krystal spends chapter 2 critiquing the idea of authenticity as a "folk theory" about culture that can accord value to indigenous identity and imagery symbolic in the global era, but that if uncritically deployed can also constrain or undermine the efforts of marginalized groups to cultivate valued identities in the present by stigmatizing evidence of contemporaneity and change. These two chapters establish a compelling framework for the case studies that follow.

Chapters 3 and 4 look at the K'iche' Maya "Dance of Conquest," the subject of Krystal's dissertation research in Guatemala in 1994-1994, during which time he apprenticed at a traditional dance regalia shop in Totonicapan. The chapters explore how the Dance of Conquest, introduced by the Spanish as part of an effort to convert the K'iche peoples and later appropriated by the Guatemalan state to encourage nationalism, "codes counter-hegemonic strategies and ideas" while providing a "storehouse of meanings and symbols, the nuts and bolts of the belief and practice Maya cultural activists seek to preserve and revitalize" (p. 84).

Chapters 5 through 7 focus on American Indian powwows. Based on fieldwork at a dozen powwows in the Upper Midwest, plus some additional "electronic ethnography" on powwow websites (p. 94), Krystal recounts the general history of the powwow from the late nineteenth century to the present, offers analyses of some ritual elements of its repertoire, and then reflects on the various forms of Indian identity enacted within them. He argues that in addition to its self-representational functions, the powwow "enacts one dimension of sovereignty" by defining norms for group behavior and articulating individuals to them (p. 105).

Chapters 8 through 10 focus on "folkloric dances" as non-ritualized, theatrical performances depicting indigenous cultures, originally developed and sponsored by states as part of efforts to appropriate indigenous images as elements of national cultures. Drawing on fieldwork in Guatemala and Chicago, Krystal looks at how such dances have been appropriated, and counter-appropriated, by indigenous peoples and immigrants as the means to assert cultural difference in situations defined by social inequality and the denial of cultural diversity.

Chapters 11 through 13 focus on a fourth example of representational dance, American Indian sports mascot performances in the United States. Krystal argues that such dances are appropriations of indigenous dance traditions and turn their symbolism into secular rituals reproducing settler identities. Krystal uses the controversy surrounding the University of Illinois's mascot "Chief Illiniwek," which uses stereotypical imagery of the befeathered plains warrior to draw out the colonial myths of the "Vanishing Indian" invoked by such mascots, suggesting that they function as a mode of "imperialist nostalgia" that affirms their non-indigenous devotees as the authentic successors to the "real Indians" of the past (p. 229).

The conclusion consists of two chapters, the first of which compares the four forms of dance and a final chapter that reflects on the role that ideas of authenticity play in such performances. Krystal criticizes non-indigenous audiences for reacting to the alienation of "market capitalist modernity" in terms of a mythology of conquest that obscures the inequalities and injustice plaguing contemporary indigenous lives (p. 291). He notes that representational dance offers indigenous people a symbolic vehicle for a politics of "decolonization," and gives to ethnically marginalized immigrants a way to counter negative stereotypes with ennobling images (291).

Indigenous Dance and Dancing Indian offers a valuable overview of the themes present in these four dances. Given the theoretical strength of the introduction, it is unfortunate that Krystal did not attempt a final synthesis of...