Native American Performance and Representation

Introduction

this book bears witness to the traditional and modern forms of artistic expression among the Indigenous people of Canada and the United States. It is groundbreaking in its attempt to investigate a broad range of contemporary Native work from the viewpoint of Native scholars and practitioners who have engaged in these activities for most of their lives as well as from the perspective of non-Native scholars who have studied these practices with a theater, film, performance, or anthropological background. Applying diverse methodologies such as postcolonial discourse, feminism, literary and film theory, and autobiographical narrative, the essays consider the performance strategies of specific individual practitioners and groups, and they address a variety of current issues relating to the position of the Native in North America today. The book considers a variety of art forms in order to emphasize the importance of performance both historically and in the modern world as a means of preserving and reasserting cultural values amid Eurocentric incursions and globalized lifestyles. The aim of the book is not to investigate traditional performance practice from an anthropological point of view, as much ethnographic scholarship has done in the past. Neither is it to dwell on the tragedy of the inhuman treatment of the Indigenous people in North America and the demise of their earlier lifestyles , as some historical literature has done. Nor is it simply to glorify the ideologies implicit in Native belief and custom, as is prevalent in “new age” literature. The objective of the book is more to review and assess the changing nature of Native performance strategies in a multicultural society. This is quite a new field, and it arises out of the proliferation since the Red Power movement of the 1960s and 1970s of Indigenous performance activity in such media as theater, dance, performance art, film, video, and multimedia. Theater and performance scholarship has been somewhat slow to tackle these new genres. The book reveals the ways in which Native culture and artistic expression have been controlled by non-Native culture, through Indian reservations and prohibitions on dance, ritual, Introduction 2 introduction and religious practices, and through the residential schools whereby Native children were taken from their parents and put in boarding schools so that they would be taught to forget their Native customs, values, and culture. This resulted in the suppression of Native languages and lifestyles and the gradual obliteration of Native identities. Thus many tribes have become dispersed and in some instances have recently sought outside help to re-educate themselves in their former practices. It is significant that during 2008, the prime minister of Canada apologized officially to the First Nations for their treatment in the past, and particularly for the residential schools. The political and economic situation of Native North Americans has substantially improved in recent years, owing to successful campaigns for land rights and sovereignty that have been connected with a worldwide struggle since the 1960s for the legitimacy of the traditions, cultures, and lifestyles of Indigenous peoples. For example, the Canadian government made large political concessions to the Inuit population through the creation of the new territory of Nunavut in 1999, and in 2007 the United Nations adopted a Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples “to protect their lands and resources, and to maintain their unique cultures and traditions.”1 Commenting on the effectiveness of this political struggle, Simon Critchley has written, “indigenous political identity is that rare thing, a brand new political phenomenon. . . . What is fascinating about the example of Mexican indigenous political identity is the way in which a new political subject is formed against the repressive actions of the state through the articulation of a new universal name—the indigenous.”2 Often, Indigenous peoples have used performative strategies to further their visibility and achieve their political ambitions. For example, in 1972, Aboriginal activists erected an “Aboriginal Tent Embassy” outside the National Parliament in Australia to demand the restitution of Aboriginal land rights and a respect for their cultures. This “beach umbrella on a lawn in Canberra,” according to Critchley, had “the effect of calling into question the entire legality of the state and calling for redress to a massive historical wrong.”3 The “Aboriginal Tent Embassy,” which the Australian government has refused to recognize as the embassy of a sovereign nation, has been relocated or firebombed on several occasions, but since 1992 it has maintained a permanent presence, and the Australian government has gradually recognized the legitimacy of some of the Aboriginal claims. In...