Politics and Performance
November 15, 2008, 4pm
Moderator: Oskar Eustis & Sheila Tousey
Panel: Terry Gomez, Alanis King, Gloria and Muriel Miguel, Yvette Nolan, Jennifer Podemski, and Randy Reinholz.
Oskar Eustis: Ladies and Gentleman, welcome to the Politics and Performance panel, the alliterative panel of the Native Theater Festival here at the Public Theater. I’m Oskar Eustis, I’m the Artistic Director here and it’s a great honor to have all of you here. It’s, I’ve to tell you, even more of honor to sit up here with an extraordinary group of artists who I’m now going to introduce to you. Sitting on my immediate left is Sheila Tousey, who is going to… She has been working with us for the last two years of the Native Theater Festival. She and I worked together in Rhode Island, our Native work there at the Rep for a couple of years. She’s an extraordinary actress, she’s co-moderating this panel, she’s acted in films, television, on Broadway, regional theaters across the country and she is fresh off of recently directing world premiere production of Salvage, a new play by Diane Glancy that we read last year in this festival. I’m happy to say Randy Reinholz’s theater is producing it in Los Angeles at Native Voices at the Autry. It’s gotten extraordinary reviews, and it’s open for another two and a half weeks. So for those of you who can make it…two weeks? Two weeks. So leave here, fly to L.A. But we are just immensely grateful for Sheila not only for being here today but for all the work she has done. I also want to give a shout out to the Ford Foundation, which I need to do every time we meet as part of this festival, because Betsy Theobald Richards and the Ford Foundation have been unflagging, indefatigable, smart, steady supporters of this entire initiative and we would not be sitting here in this room without them. So thanks to them and somebody start a room of applause. Terry Gomez is a playwright, director, actor and educator. She’s written, produced many many plays including here at The Public, a staged reading, Inter-Tribal, it was published in the anthology of Plays by Women of Color, and she is a valued voice in all these deliberations. In theater there can never be too much applause. So I’m going to say don’t hold your applause… As soon as I’m done introducing someone feel free. Alanis King was playwright-in-residence in Center for Indigenous Theater…and is now artistic director of the Saskatchewan Native Theater Company. Yvette Nolan, a prolific playwright and director and her recent directing credits includes Death of a Chief and The Unnatural and Accidental Woman, she’s currently the artistic director of Native Earth Performing Arts, the president of Indigenous Performing Arts Alliance, works as a dramaturg across Canada, and has joined us from the middle of her rehearsals for her A Very Polite Genocide, so thank you for flying out. Jennifer Podemski is the co-creator and Executive Producer of Moccasin Flats, she’s currently producing the National Aboriginal Achievement Awards, which will air on nationally in Canada on Global Television and APTM. She is the CEO and Executive Producer of Red Cloud Studios, and I’m sure many of us know Jennifer’s work as an actress and have a deep admiration for her. So thank you for being here. You know what, I’m going to skip off and talk about Randy so I can talk about Gloria and Muriel together. Randy Reinholz is the Artistic Director of the Native Voices at the Autry, he’s the Director for the School of Theater, Film and Television at SDSU. He is director and produced over fifty plays across the United States and Canada. His next project is Joy Harjo’s Wings of Night Sky, Wings of Morning Light, which we first read here last year at the Native Theater Festival. Randy, welcome, pleasure. I cannot believe this audience really needs to be introduced to Gloria and Muriel Miguel, who along with Lisa Mayo, were the founders and core of Spiderwoman Theater Company which is without a question one the most influential Native Theater Company in the history of the country. I have been a fan of their work since I was a very young man and ran away from Minnesota to come to New York, actually first saw you at the Baltimore New Theater Festival in the mid-1970s, just a glorious performance. They are…to describe them as legends is for once not hyperbole. Their influence has extended across the United States and Canada as artists, educators, as exemplars, and we are extremely honored to have you with us. I’m going to tell you to turn off your cell phones, I’m going to warn you that a photographer will be snapping photographs and then I’m going to tell you that this conversation is basically a continuation--we’ve been rolling through this conversation last year, we’ve been through the three days of the festival this year, and this really is a continuation of the conversation; although we’re calling this Politics and Performance…really everything is politics and God knows everything is performance. We are opening up the field of issues that face Native theater in the country today, and that face our communities and what can theater do about it, and I’m happy to turn the stage over to Sheila for the next step.
Sheila Tousey: Thank you. Thank you. I’d like to begin with this: Within the history of this country, Native people like many other cultures around the world have turned to performance, dances, storytelling and songs to arm themselves. A spiritual defense against those who would try and take away their language and their livelihood. In other words, to eradicate them. One dance, one spiritual performance became so powerful it literally became a movement across the plains, the Ghost Dance, the dance given to the Paiute prophet Wovoka in a vision. In 1890, Bureau of Indian Affairs agents in South Dakota were so alarmed at the frequency of the dance by the Lakota that they called in hundreds of extra troops. What did they fear? A massive unification of Lakota people? When in any other time in United States history, can we recall that the performance of a dance had government officials so shaking in their boots they felt they had to call in the U.S. army? The deadly result, of course, was the massacre of a hundred-and-fifty-three Lakota people, mainly women and children, December 28, 1890 at Wounded Creek Massacre. At Wounded Knee Creek, excuse me. The example of the Ghost Dance and resulting murder of a hundred-and-fifty-three Lakota people may be an extreme and graphic example of “politics and performance,” but it illustrates my point that performance even as ritual has always been a powerful tool of expression for the Indigenous people of this land. Performance, though, was not just a weapon, it, arguably, helped form the core of Native existence. History of the people was taught through the oral tradition of storytelling, sometimes with dance. How were our victories over our enemies celebrated? Through singing, enactment of the deed and feasting. Ceremonies sometimes lasting for days became marathons of ritual performances. Every spring, my own people, the Menominee of Northern Wisconsin, celebrate the return of the sturgeon and the swan. In the afternoon, men dance the fish dance, literally portraying the run of the sturgeon; the women have their turn, too, dancing and enacting the flight of the swan, reminding the Menominee people who they are, what they once were and, just as importantly, what they hope to retain for the future: a spiritual connection to the land and to their animal brothers and sisters. If art is the result of the interaction of the community then politics, another result of the interaction of the community, becomes her brother. My first question to our panelists is: Given that all of our ceremonies, stories and dances, our early performances if you will, were primarily spiritual in nature, how much responsibility, if any, do you think Native theater artists today have in maintaining that tradition in their work? And I want to add on to this--what is the Brecht quote about the hammer?
Yvette Nolan: “Art is not a mirror to reflect society but a hammer in which to shape it.”
Sheila: Yeah. I’m starting to feel it’s kind of like a beauty pageant and it’s your time to answer the question. Given that all of our ceremonies, stories and dances, our early performances if you will, were primarily spiritual in nature, how much responsibility, if any, do you think Native theater artists today have in maintaining that tradition in their work? Or, shaping it?
Randy Reinholz: Okay, I’ll jump in. A lot of what we do at Native Voices has to do with new plays, and often our process is the text gets to a certain place but then we realize it’s ready to be produced but not necessarily finished. And we put people in the room who have certain skills and it tends to…form like jazz. People bring either elements of performance or ritual. Occasionally through that process, language comes up, but language becomes challenging to bring to a process later in the process because often permission hasn’t been asked, if language can be used, and so it doesn’t actually work very well as an add-on it almost needs to be conceived in the original form with language. So I think that’s some insight into how we use it.
Jennifer Podemski: I’d like to speak to the youth element. This has been something that has come up a lot. In terms of responsibility, I think that those of us who have been given the gift of song and dance and performance have a responsibility to continue those stories within the community. My community for example, has lost those songs and dances. So because I, and those of us from my community, are performers, I do believe we have a responsibility in the effort to continue the culture and help children learn the songs and dances and stories that have been taken away from them, using the arts to facilitate that and I think that is a big responsibility for myself and for other performers. I don’t think that when you become an actor, when you go to school and you happen to be Native and you go and train and do all that work, that you necessarily have the responsibility in every piece that you do to use those songs and dances and teachings. I think there’s a place and time for it.
Gloria Miguel: I hope this pertains to the political aspect. In, I think our fifth or fourth or fifth show, Spiderwoman has a show called Power Pipes and in that particular piece we decided, as women, to take back our power that had been given to us at one time and taken away by playing the drum and by playing the Kuna pan-pipes, and within our piece, we took that chance and that liberty to learn how to play the pipes and the drum and the performance, and politically it did have some ramifications, because women don’t, we don’t perform in that way, we don’t play the drums and the Kuna, women didn’t play the power pipes, and I think to this extent we started--there were other drum groups and as far as I know, I don’t know if the women at Kunayalla played the pipes yet, but they took that power back and I, every time I think of it and we are on the stage playing the drums, it is so powerful . When we come out playing the flute it is powerful, so that political voice that we brought forth was very very very strong and meant a lot to us.
Yvette: I think, for me, I run Native Earth Performing Arts, which is an Aboriginal theater company in Canada, and we’re always bringing in new voices, we’re always bringing out new writers and creators and new dancers, new choreographers, and we’re always making new work. We do a lot of new contemporary work. And we bring all of those people into the room. But we don’t come into the room as individuals, we all come into the room with everything, we do this at Native Earth a lot, which is all of our ancestors, everyone who came before us and everyone who has come in after us. And we realize we stand on the shoulders of Spiderwoman, for me, so much of my education, in terms of aboriginal practice in theater, has been--springing directly from Spiderwoman and then their issue Turtle Gals Performance Ensemble and then working with Turtle Gals, which was Monique Mojica, Jani Lauzon and Michelle St. John, in the beginning, and being allowed to work in the room with them. So everybody who comes to the room brings their history with them and their practices, and we’re not all the same. We’re all different nations and we’re all different practices and we bring all of that into the room, and then it begins to cross-pollinate, and so when we get into the room--now I’m working with artists, the rehearsal I left, there are artists in my room who have worked with Turtle Gals, who have worked—Waawaate’s worked with Muriel, there people who have only read Spiderwoman work, but all of that is allowed into the room. And then we begin to--we have to allow--I don’t think we can have the responsibility for that, we only accept responsibility for what we accept responsibility for, but we have to be allowed to bring all of that into the room because it’s already this place this sacred place of ritual and ceremony and we bring that in and we—sometimes, certainly in my company, in our rooms, in our rehearsal rooms, there’s a lot of negotiation about what responsibility we have, in terms of ceremony, the rituals, the practices in the room, and we all bring all of these people into the room with us.
Muriel Miguel: Yeah, yeah, and there’s something about listening and I think, I’ve been talking, on these panels, I talk a lot about listening, but it’s, there are ways of listening and waves of listening. One of the stories, I remember when Yvette was directing Marie’s play and Marie’s play was in Vancouver, we were talking about all these women who were killed and their birthdays were coming around, and things were flying around us, and all of a sudden we started to think about these women and we had to do a feast for every woman on their birthdays. And it was really important. It was really important, not only was it important because we had to honor these women, but how we felt about our past, and everyone in the cast...the murderer in the cast, the other people in the cast and how we talked about it. So, you know, sometimes it’s not just one responsibility it’s all of us and our grandmothers and grandfathers and our great great great great, you know, and it goes beyond in our responsibility and I think that’s what we carry all the time.
Alanis King: When I began theater, it was on Kumakala Unceded lndian Reserve and "unceded" means the land was never ceded by treaty and it’s a very special part of the world. It’s called Mnidoo Minissing and that means the island of great spirit-- it’s called Manitoulin Island on the old Google map. But really its history means that when the world was created, the Creator chose this island as the final resting spot so in that way it’s a very magical realm; there’s a lot of artists there. But when I worked there for my own company, the De-ba-jeh-mu-jig Theatere Group, De-ba-jeh-mu-jig -- you could say thingamajig -- De-ba-jeh-mu-jig means storytellers in the Anishnabe language and Manitoulin Island had a very interesting history in the 1800s. In 1836 a lot of people were living all over Ontario, just around the Toronto area, south of there. That’s where the three fires people are from, the Ojibwa, the Odawa, and the Pottawatomi, all the way to Wisconsin…all the way from the East, all over Michigan, Chicago, that’s an Anishnabe word that means the "big stink." That means a "skunk." So there’s a lot of land-based names that come, directly, from my people from a long long time. So I took a really captivating interest in this one story I heard, on how the people –how Manitoulin Island, why Wikwemikong was on CNN, how Manitoulin Island became settled. So in 1836 there was a grand move to push the Native people from Southern Ontario up there. If you read the treaty in that time it said, let’s move all the people up to Manitoulin and they’ll probably die off anyway; Indian problem solved. Well that didn’t happen. In 1862 there was starting to be what were called fishing licenses and Native people, on Manitoulin there were several chiefs, there would be chief of the waters, chief of fishing and several bends, they would live throughout, so there’d be three hundred people there, four hundred there, throughout the whole island. Now with these fishing licenses mandated, legislated by the government, the overseer of fisheries, the natural fishing territories of the people, because we were waterway people , that…we didn’t feel the need to pay five dollars and get the right to fish. What happened was, because this denial was happening, we were, there’s thirty thousand islanders around Manitoulin Island and that initial time of 1836 stated the Manitoulin reserve would include all those islands and that the Manitoulin reserve would be reserved for Native people from then on. So these fishing licenses were going to be implemented through a government excursion, and what they did was they brought twenty or more armed soldiers on a boat, because it was the steamboat era and that’s how everyone traveled around back then, it was a bit more sophisticated than the canoe era. And they came right into our bay, right into the Wiky Bay, with all these armed soldiers and they were going to meet the chiefs of Wiky and they were going to implement by force the fact that we now had to have fishing licenses. They were also going to deliberate over the treaty to cede and settle the entire island. Well there was a resistance that happened that day. And in the history, there was a black flag raised on the bluff and they could see the ship coming and all the people of Kamakan came and stood on the bluff, more people than who turned out for bingo. It was pretty awesome. What they did was, by that time, the church was there. So through the negotiations of the government and French Jesuits, who were kind of like the liaisons because they spoke the language, they would eventually do the negotiations. So they had them open land on shore but they had to march up the great big hill and were quite exhausted by the time they got up there. I wrote a play about that, and it was in three languages and we wanted to represent how the island got ceded. And unfortunately, and sadly, what happened through the negotiations in a town about ten miles away called…, the Den of the Spirits, …that’s the great spirit, they negotiated for several days, and on the last day, the government said, okay let’s just reconvene we’re not getting the settlement, Let’s come back on Monday morning and then we’ll renegotiate, we’ll just start re-meeting. So the people of Wikwemikong were only fifteen minutes away today but they were closer than all the other island people. The people from Wiky went home for the weekend. They got back on Monday morning that ship was gone and all the government people were gone with it and they knew right there that the island had been settled. So what happened was when the rest of the chiefs had stayed and the negotiations had stopped for the weekend …the government people had brought out crates and crates of whiskey. And then on Saturday night they got the chiefs to sign and left with the document. So when the Wikwemikong chiefs came they didn’t have a hand in that settlement, so that’s why it remained ceded Indian reserve. So we had some great families who were from this whole era and it was the first time that the De-ba-jeh-mu-jig, through its ten year history, really got an audience from our own community. And then the French community -- and suddenly -- there’s French theater there and we partnered with them. So it was a way for theater to represent the true history of Manitoulin Island through representation of the three peoples involved. A lot of audience walked away by really knowing-- by basing their own aspect of interpreting what went on the play. So we had magical things, we had thunder birds, we had the clans that represent all different people from the Wikwemikong, so we brought that all out in the play, we put the thunder bird actors on stilts, we had a raked stage and we had a fire in the middle. Well if you have a fire on a stage you might have to get a lot of insurance and liability, but not on a reserve…you get to have a fire, you get to have everything. So anyways, just fast track twenty years forward, or whatever it was, I just want to quickly say…We came here to the Brooklyn academy music with a myth called The Great White Wolf and our set was one set item. And it was made entirely of birch bark, it was beautiful birch bark lodge, it was circular. Well BAM said everything you bring has to be fireproof. You know how hard it is to fireproof birch bark? So there was poor Deek, he had to put goopy gawp stuff on it for days, it was the most toxic of substances. But, you know, you have to try to get through it all and come to the setting and still retain your set and the approach and value and the originality and the true representation you’re going to go somewhere, somewhere else where you’re not from, and share it truthfully.
Terry Gomez: I feel my responsibility as a native writer is to make visible the invisible, and I think that the Native, especially the Native woman, hasn’t been seen very much. Most of my characters, I write about men too, but most of my characters are Native women. I’d like to humanize the Native people. I think a lot of people still have misconceptions about what Native people are, and how we are, and I can speak as a woman from my own nation about how we are. My stories are fiction, but I try to include a lot of the truth in there and I feel that’s what my responsibility is.
Oskar: I’d love to hear the panelists talk about, what you think the biggest challenges facing you in doing theater, in doing your practice--what are the obstacles? What are the things that make it hardest? What are the things that would, when you imagine the next things that you want to do, what would help make that more possible? I deliberately make that question vague so that it can go from the most specific things to the broadest things. Harold Clurman had that great saying, “Most artists-All artists have to dream and mostly they dream about money.” We know we could use more money but to do what? I’d love to hear people talk about that.
Muriel Miguel: You mean my druthers?
Oskar: Exactly.
Muriel: For Spiderwoman, for me, there is a huge need for me, I almost start to cry, there’s this huge need to keep on going and passing it on. Passing it on to the next generation of women, right, from my daughters, my grandchild, to these babies here, to Yvette, to Marie, you know, really passing it on. Maybe that means that Spiderwoman changes, maybe it has a different way of looking at the world, but I feel like it’s really up to us now to do that--and before I die. I really want to have a home base here in New York City for Native theater. These are my druthers, actually, and I really want a really high profile of Native people, New York City Native people, and theater people. It’s very important because there’s a lot of us that spent over thirty-one years, you know, a lot of us came up as babies doing showbiz Indian stuff here in New York City, and we welcome many people from all over the country here in New York City who we took into our homes. And these people had children here, and they’re in theater, and I think it’s really important that New York City Indians, Native people, Native theater here has a very high profile-- and with that we have a theater. But a base that really incorporates everybody and I don’t give a flying eardrum whether--you like that right--I had to realize who I was talking to!
Oskar: Swear!
Muriel: That it doesn’t matter if we disagree, doesn’t matter if we approach theater in a different way from the other person, you know, what’s important is that we have a base. That’s what’s really important here. Those are my next struggles, those are my next things. Yeah, that’s what I want to get money for.
Alanis: Saskatchewan Native Theater Company, where I am right now, Saskatoon, we have that same dream. We actually have two buildings. But if we had 1.5 million more, we’re on a major campaign and we have close to 800 plus already, but we’re doing this for the young people. We have graduated over a hundred young youth who predominantly from inner city and from outlining--there’s so many reservations in Saskatchewan. And through theater we’re really really impacting young people. We keep it limited to eighteen to twenty-five, but there’s a lot of women who are older who are just finding their voice and expression, who were raising their baby and they never got a chance to really do much, and I want to open that up to them eventually. But right now we have one building which serves as our space to train in, and it was an old furniture store. So it still has carpeting, so it could use overhaul and sprung four and some black paint and everything like that, bit we have a huge inventory of sounds and lights, and a shop downstairs, and we reuse and recycle with our next sets, and we have huge costumes, everything from Jensho they give to us later. So there’s a lot of stuff going on and a lot of our young people were trained technically so they get other opportunities, “Rabbit Fall” and all this. But right adjacent we had a black box and then we closed it down to do this major campaign and to actively renovate it into a very specific and coded black box space. So that dream and that vision is ongoing and I think I’m going to be alive for it, and I’m really really happy about that because it’s a long time going for a Native venue to actually exist in Canada. We often rent a space that’s ten feet by ten feet and that was the Toronto experience and you’re cramped. Right now we go to other spaces to put on our plays. We go to Ukrainian Hall, we go over to the refinery and we go to all these artist spaces, but that means again what we’re doing is shelling out all this venue rental money that really we should be saving for ourselves to put more productions on, get more commissions going, have more collaborations and get the Native artists employed, and working year round, and at night time and on the weekend. So that vision is really really strong and I know there’s a lot about earned revenue; and we do earn our revenue. We plan to build a bistro in there so that we can have coffee house forums and eventually serve a … bistro, and serve food that would be of interest for people to experience and taste, because that’s not there right now. So we’re cultural ambassadors, we’re tourist operators. We could be so much to so many people. And right now there’s a real overhaul of this particular part of the inner city. Actually Native people are being pushed out of it but we’re staying because we own these buildings. They can’t do that. So I’m really proud to be able to share that information. I’d also like to point out I’m not the founder, I’ve been there only just one year, but the founder, the person who has worked the hardest and has worked the most hours around the clock, is sitting right there. She’s the general manager: Donna Heimbecker.
Jennifer Podemski: I’ll speak from the perspective of a content creator, producer. My biggest challenge, and I don’t have a space, I don’t work at a specific space--my goal is to the bridge the gap between us, and not the mainstream, but just everybody else; the mainstream. I think the hardest thing -- and forgive me if I get emotional -- but is relevance. I think everyday I’m trying to convince people who are important that we’re real, that we have something to say, not just to invest in but to recognize, and it just doesn’t seem to change. And I can say that I don’t know how the rest of you guys do it, to support a company or a place, I’m just trying to spread the word and it just doesn’t seem like anybody cares. And that becomes incredibly difficult, and it becomes difficult to have to tell kids, for example when we have a project and an idea and everybody’s excited about doing this and that, oh that specific company did the Indian thing two years ago, so they’re not going to do it again. Or that company had an Indian company ten years ago and they let them down and now we’re all paying for it-- and I just feel like I’m getting tired of kicking and screaming. And it’s venues like this that make me, and a lot of us here, feel a little more relevant and visible and it’s just not happening. So as a challenge, I think everything, from print media to television to theater to anywhere where you can perform or present your work, seems to be pretty blind to the fact that we’re here and we’re relevant and we’re real and we have something to offer. And in this territory, on Turtle Island, not only do we have something to offer, everybody has something to learn from all Indigenous perspectives on Turtle island. And I think that there’s a huge gap there and we’re all trying to fight that everyday. I’m just tired of fighting.
Yvette: I don’t think we should be sitting beside each other. She goes, I go. For me, it’s the dark cloud of Native theater, that someone in my community, not the aboriginal community, but the brown theater community in Toronto who said “Oh yeah, the dark cloud of Native Theater”…That’s their idea of what we’re doing. So for me, the biggest thing, and a lot of it is tied into space as well, because it’s hard to be visible where you’re homeless, and if you’re always begging for space, and if you’re being curated into spaces, which we are, all the time. But then even if we can secure the space to do the show, if we’re met with “Oh yeah, Native theater is so gloomy, Native theater is so dark” and I’m constantly saying well what was the last piece you saw? And they’re like “Well I saw the Rez Sisters in 1986, or, I saw Dry Lips Oughtta Move to Kapuskasing in 1989,” and I’m like, “It’s 2008, we’ve been doing work all this time.” And there’s just this obstacle to actually wanting to engage in this conversation with us. With us. We talk about things that are important to us. Yes. But we’re not just sitting crying on stage all the time. We’re doing dance theater, and we’re doing new media work, and we’re bringing in drum and song, and all kinds of things on stage but it’s hard for you to know that if you don’t come into the room. So there’s this huge thing of trying to get over whatever that perception is of what Native Theater is these days to people who I can’t get into the room. Because it seems when people come into the room they’re engaged, but I don’t know how to get past that. And it doesn’t help to always be slotted into the spots that the white theaters don’t want, you know like spring break spots, and I’m doing Genocide just before Christmas. It’s really hard. And then, sometimes I have to submit my scripts, not my scripts but the scripts of my writers, to theaters to be considered to be allowed to rent and that’s an obstacle because I’ve already done the artistic direction for my company, I don’t need someone else doing it for me and my people. I don’t know--I feel like Horton Hears a Who, you know, “we are here, we are here, we are here,” and I just keep yelling it, trying to get people into the house to see the work. Which is why this is so important. Which is why this, being allowed in once in a while, being invited in, being allowed to speak is so important.
Terry: I guess the biggest obstacle I face is getting my work produced and I guess that’s one of the reasons why… A lot of my work, fiction, deals with some hard issues. I have one play that deals with genocide talking about our history, but I felt like that needs to be talked about because I got the paragraph in my Oklahoma history book about what happens to Indians. But I’m telling from my oral tradition what happened to my people and how we’re still there and how we survived. And then I have contemporary stories of things that happened, violence against women, and they’re not all bloody and sad and we’re not crying at the end, but on the other hand it’s things I want our people to think about because these problems do exist, and we need to think about them, and we need to talk about them and if we can talk about them, we can work towards a solution. I think I mentioned to them already that last year Amnesty International said that Native American women were most likely to be sexually attacked, out of all the women in the world, and it’s like “What the hell did we do, we’re just walking down the streets, walking around?” And it’s like, you know, people are like, “Oh well it’s just Indians.” When was the last time you heard there’s an Indian child missing or there’s an Indian woman missing? You don’t unless you’ve seen a Marie Clements movie or a J Lo act in a movie about women in Mexico. So…we have to watch out for ourselves in a way and I don’t’ know if that’s exactly what I’m doing with my writing but I at least want to speak out about it and do something positive to help with it I don’t want to only bring the problem to the table but I’d also like to be in the communities and ask them “What can I do? What do you want me to do? I’ll do it. I’ll help you.” But I think I have a really good problem because people will tell me…I was at the ABC/NBC workshop in Santa Fe and these producers just flat out told us, there’s really no interest in Native issues. We want people to laugh. We want people to see sex. Whatever. And I’m like, “Well, we have sex but you ain’t going to see it.” But, they flat out told me, “People aren’t interested,” and I thought, “You know what, you’re not interested. There are people that are interested. Just like I’m interested in what’s happening with the people from the Congo. Just like I’m interested in what was going on Barack Obama and the vote. Just like I’m interested in what her people are going through. ” There are people who are interested but we get told "Well, forget it" but I’m not going to so maybe that’s my problem.
Oskar: I’m going to ask you to say something…I have to respond…I need to differentiate, and forgive me for separating from the commercial industry, but what the commercial, television, film, theater is producing is fundamentally different from what motivates those of us who spend our lives in nonprofit arts; the tens, hundreds of millions of people who participate in the non-profit arts. Your experience is going to be really hard to package and make money off of as a story, in terms of someone else making money off of it because it’s a commodity. It’s completely different from saying an enormous number of people not interested in your experience, your voice, your history, your point of the world. Part of what we have to do is…sorry…The other point I want to make, particularly in the case to the Native experience for those of us in the United States, it’s not really question of not interested, that implies something passive that is the case. Many of us are actively afraid of confronting the Native experience because it’s scary. It’s scary for what it means about us. It’s not about the relationship to what’s happening in some other part of the world. It’s to do with the history of our country, with the reality of our country, with what has made our lives possible, what we have done. We are just beginning, as of a couple weeks ago, to maybe start a little bit to cope with the legacy of slavery in this country. Did you notice that for the last months of the presidential campaign, nobody in the media didn’t know how to talk about the fact that Barack was black, they were just like they sort of couldn’t mention it. And then the moment he gets elected; first black president. We get to say the thing we've been thinking for a month. And then we knew how to talk about it. The fact that the country was based on genocide, the fact the country was stolen, we haven’t even found a language of discourse about politically or culturally. So it’s not about not being interested. It’s actively avoiding, actively denying. And I think so much of our job as cultural workers is with this subject is saying that’s not okay, we don’t get to live in a state of denial, we as a country it’s not good for us to live in a state where we’re not looking at the reality, the reality of what our history is and who we are now. And I just needed to say that. Randy? Did you want to say anything?
Gloria: This is all interesting, and I know it, but how do we overcome that? Okay, I know and I’ve heard it before, but we still have this talent, we still have something important to say, and we have to do it. What we have to do is railroad over that, somehow, and be very very tough and mean and aggressive and actors aren’t bad.
Muriel: Thinking about it in that way, one of the ways that Native people are led into places is…we’re let in and then we’re told what we should do and what we shouldn’t do. And how we should keep quiet and what’s not protocol for them. Being the way we are, Native people, we go along with that a lot of times, we don’t want to make waves, we don’t want to say too much about things, we don’t want to hurt people’s feelings, it’s not the right place. So I say now, if you invite me in, you can’t tell me what to do anymore. What I say to you is, move over. And that’s how I feel about this now.
Gloria: We had a show once where we said those words and people came up to us and said, “That’s not nice. You’re not sharing. We thought Indians were going to share.” You know? And at the end of that particular show…we had to go on. Maybe we’re not sharing. No, we’re not…sharing.
Randy: Mine are simpler. At the Autry we have a stage that’s ten foot deep by thirty foot wide. I’d like to…at least double the depth and we have nowhere to hang anything up here. So we do a theater in what’s essentially a movie theater. So we have to put some jacks out here, and throw some lights up on stage, and we build these little tiny spaces. I think the artists have grown to where they’re worthy of better circumstance to show their work and to tell their stories and in more deep, meaningful artistic ways. So that’s the first thing. The second thing we need is a little more capacity to fund our youth program. We need more staff to make that work because the youth, as we know from the school systems, we can’t put one person in a room with forty kids and expect much to happen. So we just need more capacity. And the amazing thing is the giving nature of Native theater artists. We have such a deep talent pool and they re so excited every time they have the opportunity to work with the youth in the area. They’re ready to go, and they’ll put their careers on hold and go do it. So it’s not a large capacity that we need.
Oskar: Sheila, did you want to say anything?
Sheila: I have a question about identity politics in theater. I see identity politics…it’s going to become a bigger and bigger issue and we all know it’s going to become a bigger and bigger issue and we all know federal funding decisions are based on…blood quantum. We all know. This is not something new I’m talking about. Do you guys see, in terms of theater and your own work, identity politics, playing a role in the future, or other stuff you’re thinking of doing now?
Gloria: Could you say a little bit more?
Sheila: This idea of identity politics, who’s Indian, who’s not Indian, it’s a big hot potato. And it’s only going to become a bigger hot potato because we just had this enormous crash in the economy. And federal funding, you know there are some reservations who have casinos that are able to help the reservations but there are many, many, many reservations that depend on federal funding, through treaty, their responsibility to provide education, medical facilities, a way of life. That’s what we agreed upon. That was the payment. But that is based on blood quantum. For most tribes it’s like a quarter, sometimes it’s been reduced to an eighth for some, some now say you’re eligible to go see the clinic if you can prove you’re a direct descendant or anything like that. It’s a big deal. It’s a big issue. I’m just wondering, do you see it in your own work? Or have you seen it in your plays, people writing about identity politics? And, that’s the question. Do you see it playing a part in what you might be doing? Have you thought about it?
Yvette: It plays a little differently in Canada because the blood quantum plays differently in Canada. There’s not as much…we’re not tied up in it. We don’t have anything to fight over really. But definitely, it’s such an issue. One of my young writers, Falen Johnson, is working on a play called Salt Baby. She was born in and her folks lived in …she’s Mohawk, Tuskaroran, but she’s really fair. So she started working on this play in the Young Voices program and now it’s expanding and she’s going to get her DNA tested. She wants to know. And I’m making her write everything before…if she gets to that point. Because there’s a lot of chatter in her community why she’s so white and who her ancestors are. She’s writing and writing, which is great for us, all of this stuff where she’s told by the doctor over and over again what her genetic makeup is. “Congratulations, you’re 100% Aboriginal. This is your breakdown.” “Congratulations, you’re at least 33% aboriginal this is your breakdown.” “Congratulations, you’re all Caucasian, here are keys to the new car and a thousand dollars.” So it is something our young people are exploring, very personally. Very personally as opposed to what they’re …because what they’re going to lose, what she is going to lose is a sense of self, and it’s not tied to money, it’s not tied to land, and it’s strictly who her idea of self is. I think we are going to be struggling as a people in a much bigger way because of our relationship to capitalism and because of our relationship to the land. And I think as Aboriginal people, certainly in Canada, we are starting to struggle against that because who are we as Aboriginal people? If it’s about land and language and all we’re really doing is pursuing is the buck, not the tall handsome one but this one, then what kind of Aboriginal people are we? And I think that is going to start paying a lot more in the work, that struggle about all of us as aboriginal people and our relationship and what that means. So it’s less of a blood quantum, right now I think, at least what I’m seeing coming across the desk and the program.
Sheila: I’d actually like to expand on that, that the question of identity is as broad as possible, identity too in terms of Canadian versus United States versus the Indigenous people of Mexico. In my mind, we were up in Canada a long time, we were back in forth…you know, I’ve seen my brothers and sisters from there. When I speak of Indian people I mean everybody and I’ve always been that way and it’s really only since I’ve been working in theater, someone has brought this attention, this subject of separate groups of people. I think that is an issue. It was an issue here in this conference. I think that I’d like to hear opinions on this. Here’s a forum.
Alanis: Well I used to do the Great Indian bus Tour in Toronto for seven years. Prior to contact actually, there was a vast trading system throughout the Americas. That’s why certain objects were found in certain sites that they weren’t indigenous to and so forth. But it was because of the vast waterways, and there was a trading protocol and actually landmarks where you knew Cree or North of that…this part here was these nations…so there was this constant north and south sharing for many many centuries prior to people that came from the west. So I think with the north, south, there’s a great connection. It’s true, the identity, our identity is all about language and the land. Everything’s derived from there, and I think that’s our total approach to the theater. Someone else can talk. Good to say something. You’ll come back to me.
Gloria: I was thinking…when we started, maybe it’s not that New York City itself is different in terms of funds and theater, but when we started, we started Native women in theater and we were in theater already and we had what we had to say we put down and we wrote and we performed, as theater in New York City, Native women. And the funds in the beginning when we wrote for them, correct me if I’m wrong, I don’t think they ever mentioned quantum. We said our different nations because it was only the three of us and we didn’t get a great amount of funds but the funds came without any questions, so I think, in New York City, we had a different experience. It was theater that we were theater people and it was Native theater. I think that made it a little different for us. Not any greater because we traveled all over and that question did come up. So as a result, we went back to Kuni… and got all kinds of papers just in case it came up again. “Here are your papers. Now shut up.” But, we started just from what we had to say as indigenous people and our experience politically growing up in New York and then we were actors, we were all actors, we all started as actors. Maybe that combination made our experience a little different.
Alanis: I think also, in terms of identity, we have the land claim issue in Canada but we have a leadership chief who has major priorities beyond the arts, but I think what’s going to happen now and I think that would help is that through our identity and our leadership, that if we’re First Nation people we can negate the Canadian government from negotiating with us. Rather, we can make our own economic impact by taking major stake and control of any raw resources that are going to constantly come out of Canada; for instance, water. Fresh water, as we know, is drunken heavily in the States and all over France. It’s being shipped everywhere and it’s coming from there. Diamond mines. Native people are working in the diamond mines. Uranium. It’s reopening in Saskatchewan. And that’s why I want to do Marie’s play Burning Vision, because it’s really timely. But I think if we didn’t have to economic raw material capital bank account I think there would finally be room for the arts, for leadership to sanction arts as 25%, as equally important as education, research and science and all the other professions…sports. That’s…maybe I won’t say anything.
Yvette: Because right now our chiefs don’t have the policy on arts and culture.
Jennifer: Can I speak to you a little bit to that question? There was a time, in first grade as you say, when I thought that my dream was to be a dancer. So I trained only to be a dancer. Trained in theater, in performance, everything I could get my hands on, not realizing identity was ruling my life or the lack of identity. For many years, I aspired to just be an actor or a performer or a dancer until I reached a level where I could be employed by other people. And then that was when I recognized that my identity may have been an issue for me personally in my personal life. My dad’s Israeli. My grandfather was in the Holocaust, lost all of his family, my mother is Saulteaux from Saskatchewan. My grandfather lost his identity because he was a drinker and sold it, basically. So, I was born with identity issues and thought that the theater was what would save me ultimately because it didn’t matter. In the professional world, it mattered to everybody else and it was really what made me realize I hated identity. I hated it so much. I hated that it was even an issue. That you can’t be cast in something because you don’t look brown enough, that you can’t be cast in something or be hired to do something because they had an Indian and it was a bad experience. Identity always played into everything and it’s suddenly come full circle where I’m so concerned about it all the time that when I cast something, I may have to step back and look at all the Natives that I’ve cast in this play happen to be light skinned and I wasn’t even paying attention. So I have to rehire people because it is not accurately reflecting the fabric of our society. And that’s a responsibility that I don’t love. However, I’m not sure if I should be so careful because I’d sooner choose talent over skin color. The issue of politics and identity is kind of what makes me want to run away all the time but also keeps me doing what I’m doing because I’m so afraid that if I don’t continue, it’s just going to…there’s just that one element at that certain television level, that certain network I’ve been able to have a relationship with…it’s just going to fall apart and someone’s going to have to open that door again. And I’m always afraid that everything’s to do with identity. I’ve come to terms with my own lack of pigment, my own whatever it is and I really don’t care that much anymore to explain myself, but it seems like the world continuously wants explanations of what we’re putting out there and why. Not just the world, our own communities…
Sheila: I’d actually like to say something on that note and open it up to the audience. It’s interesting. You talk about casting and how you always want them to look at talent ideally, you want as artists to be recognized for your talent as opposed to anything else. At least I do anyway. It’s truly a double-edged sword. I don’t know what the point is but I’ll tell you now, when I first got out of NYU, I mean the reason why I got into acting was because I wanted to play something greater than myself from an acting perspective. I always want to play these great characters and that’s why I went to this great acting school and I got training and was in these plays by these amazing, truly great playwrights from around the world and never thought once about being Native. When I came out, thank god when I was here in New York I got cast, I got called in. One of my favorite roles all time was play by Janusz Glowacki called Antigone In New York at Arena Stage where I played this Puerto Rican from Brooklyn. It was based on Antigone. It took place in Tompkins Square Park. It was a fabulous role, and I loved it, I worked hard at it… I had to develop a New York Puerto Rican accent and I did my homework and I did all that but now I don’t think there’s a chance in hell anyone would call me in to play that. Which is really sad because now I can’t grow as an actor. And just from an actor’s perspective, it really bums me out, you know.
Muriel: So what happened? I came from Oakland Theater, I played Mere Ubu. I went to France and did Mere Ubu with students hailing me in the streets. So what happened that things turned around, that we lost a lot of these types of theater groups that let anybody play anything? Where did they start to go wrong?
Sheila: Well, Randy, you said you wouldn’t even think of casting a non-Native in any of the work Native Voices does because someone would try to burn down the theater.
Randy: Yeah. If the role were Native.
Sheila: It’s like when you asked me who my druthers were? My druthers would be…I would love to have a company where I had actors of all races and what we did is we’d mix it up. And then maybe we could get over this stupid hump. Just drives me nuts.
Muriel: It may be a hump, but it’s a hump because we don’t have it yet. We’re not allowed to go out and play Juliet. So we’re not allowed a lot of these things so of course we’re holding on.
Sheila: I was. I did.
Muriel: Maybe you were, but there are a lot of people here that had to make it themselves.
Sheila: How do you think I made it? I was just out auditioning like everybody else.
Oskar: True, Sheila, but there’s absolutely no question what you’re saying is correct. There’s a whole range of parts that historically and in our lifetime have not been available to actors of color. There very limited ways by certain producers and certain companies and that’s a terrible history. For instance, one of the difficulties Randy’s talking about was a reaction and a healthy reaction which was an attempt to say, “All right, at the very least, we’re not going to cast white actors playing Asian roles. We’re going to try and allow people of their own ethnicity play themselves.” But then of course that becomes its own kind of trap. One of the beautiful things…I feel like we have an example in this building. It’s not about ideology, it’s about experience. Labyrinth Theater Company was a theater company that began as a Latino company and then became multicultural. So it’s not a Latino company strictly anymore by any means anymore, but the fact that it began as a Latino company and then let some other folks in, continues to inform the feeling and the casting that is really fresh and beautiful. You can’t…Last year, we produced Yellow Face and Passing Strange. Yellow Face, an Asian American play; Passing Strange, an African-American play. Both of them are so interesting because both of them are struggling with this issue of, how do you deal with identity politics, racial identity politics, when you have to say on the one hand racial identity is not a sufficient category to contain my experience and yet we’re still in a world where it matters a great deal; and if you try and pretend it doesn’t matter you’re a racist asshole and if you try and make it matter too much, you’re cutting off reality in one way. And I don’t think there’s any royal solution to that. I think that the only solution to that is earnestly and with integrity, everybody trying to struggle with that and trying to figure out what the right answer is with that principle that it always has to be about expanding on experiences but making sure expanding on experiences isn’t code for ,“Now we don’t have to worry about affirmative action anymore because really everybody is equal so lets give all the parts away,” which is really what sometimes happens. The amount of people who feel let off the hook because they’ve been able to go, “Oh great, we’re beyond that identity politics” and what that’s allowed them to do is go right back to casting people who look like them. It’s disastrous.
Gloria: It’s the experience in the 60s and 70s of every actor who made the rounds to be…I was told, in New York City, that I couldn’t be cast because I looked like I would kill somebody in an alley. Stupid, stupid things like that. What you end up saying is well I’m not going to act anymore, they won’t cast me. The other way is saying, oh yes, give us all your Native people and we’ll cast them first. I don’t know what happened with that. We threw all our eight by ten glossies in and they called us first and then we opened our own stage showcase, at the Community House, and it did get a little better, and then all of a sudden a group of people came in and said “Well we don’t care, we’ll take any part.”
Muriel: I think it’s more than getting over the hump. More than getting over a hump.
Gloria: It’s a role that keeps on changing. But that’s why we started Spiderwoman together.
Audience 1: I’m gonna attempt to blend it all together. First off, I have to say, my background is African-American blended…you look like my grandmother, you look like my grandmother so we’re near definitely Native American…I would say don’t take it as I know exactly what you are…maybe Mexico…seen you at a bar in Barcelona…I’m being honest. This is wonderful. We’ve blended in as Native American, or Native people. Really bizarre. Seeing you two, of course in France I’ve seen you. I’ve seen you in Darjeeling. Like I said, my great aunt. You’re in there too but I’m focused on the women. And the wonderful thing about it is just blending the roles in there. You’re absolutely right. Once you’ve had an identity to come and forge yourself a certain thing and things are rich and important. “Wow, these people are doing these things!” Other people come in and kind of take over and blur it out, unfortunately. Then when you look at of course, what’s going on in the past politics in terms of civil rights movements which you know, African-Americans but not Native Americans so technically they’re a part of our experiences, to keep forging, pushing and pushing to open up the doors…we’re a little bit more pushy in terms of, “I’m here…you can’t ignore me forever.” I’m not sure that’s part of the Native experience because it is a spiritual thing and you guys may not be as pushy as we are. But that needs to kind of come up. The feeling of guilt, which you mentioned. What happened in America to Native Americans, Native people…awful. So to even bring it up, it may be a great story but someone’s feeling guilty and doesn’t want to hear it. It really is unfortunate. I don’t even know how to get past that when there’s people all over the world…I was in South of Spain and I actually had a gypsy stop me, “Where you from?” and I said, “America” and she said “Where are you from? I know this answer.” and I said “New York” and she said “No, where’s your family from?” and I said “I’m so confused, what? Do I look like I’m from Spain?” and she said “No. You actually look like my family from blablahblah.” I’m like, “Really?” It’s like you can travel so many different places and your faces are already seen all over the world. That is really the gift. I don’t know how in order to make it more acceptable people see themselves in the pieces…in the native…which really encompasses the world. This is not a monolithic discussion we’re talking about. We’re talking about the Native people. We’re talking people who span continents. How can I see you in Darjeeling? That’s twelve hours that way. How can I see you at a bar in Darjeeling? How are you in their faces? I thought that was a bizarre thing. I thought that was so empowering to feel like you’re connected and then you’re hearing the individual stories and I just don’t know how that can be brought out and made mainstream. Maybe that’s a question…does that make sense to anybody?
Sheila: Do you have a specific question?
Audience 1: My specific question is, I don’t know if the collective stories, if you see your faces in so many people spanning not just North America but the world, how do you say to a person in Paris my story in Mexico matters to you because my …of these people is in Africa. But when you come in here you’re still saying a story about a specific person. Is it too broad to say your faces are in all places of the world? I see it. I don’t know if anybody else sees it.
Dianne Yeahqho Reyner: I’ll try to be brief; I know I talk a lot. It is an issue. It’s a horrible issue and it’s one we face everyday. We face it with our own families. We face it with my granddaughter who is not considered Indian because she doesn’t hit the blood quantum of my tribe. But I’d like to say, Sheila, when we get beyond the point that I hear and look for you on "LA Law" or "Law and Order," because you’re just playing a judge, when Graham Greene is just a detective, when Adam Beech is just a detective, and when you hear Native people all over go, “Oh did you see the Indian? She was a judge. id you see the Indian who played a detective?” never mentioned they were Indian. You were playing people and it’s like-- when we get beyond the point that we can get work and be accepted that a Native person can be a judge or a Native person can be a detective, a Native person can be a doctor and it doesn’t have to be racially specific, we don’t have to always star in Chris Eyre’s productions. It’s unfortunate, yeah, and it ticks us all off but we’re moving. And I do. I loved it when I’d see you on "Law and Order." She’s regal, she’s a judge, she handing out judgments. But when we get to the point where that’s not something that completely stands out as unusual, you know, and so yeah, we tend to go overboard with casting Natives as Natives and not doing a blended theater because it hasn’t been there.
Audience 1: And Natives are all over the world, that’s my point.
Audience and Panelists: No, no, no.
Betsy: I think for the purpose of moving forward in Native theater, I have a question about from the different perspectives, from different artist and different communities in Indian country, I just want to kind of give a little Indian 101. We’ve been talking about today, through sovereignty, Native nations decide who their citizens are. The federal government has a standard. The federal government either recognizes that or does not recognize that. There are many stories in all of this. I would just love to hear from the panel, and I think it was part of Sheila’s question, but I think the question isn’t just about who decides who’s Native and be measured against the government’s standard, or how do the partners that you work with negotiate that? How does when you’re working with a production company or a theater like the Public Theater or the Autry that is not a Native-run organization, what are the responsibilities, what is the knowledge base and who decides? From your perspective.
Randy: I put it back on the artists. We talk with people and their self-identify. There are some people that are enrolled, many people are enrolled. There’s lots of people in Hollywood who are enrolled. There’s lots of people who would surprise you. People have all kinds of different reasons for not being enrolled. There were some people, for instance in the Oklahoma tribes with the Dawes Acts, some of the more militant people didn’t sign up on the rolls because it was an act of protest. It was an act of activism and then once the rolls were closed, a lot of those families were left off. So even some descendents of the most militant people weren’t enrolled. We talk with people and they self-identify. And then when people start to tell me about their story and maybe they’re not enrolled, I try to say, “This is going to be a heated issue if you’re not enrolled.” I’m not going say, “Don’t bother my sister she’s not enrolled.” They’re going to have to answer for themselves to the community and there’s a community of artists. It’s not a Native community, a homogenous community, it’s a Pan-Indian artist community and it’s pretty fierce. It’s pretty fierce. I don’t expect it to be different. I’ve been doing it for ten years. It doesn’t surprise me when people challenge me. “Are you chocked up?” “Yes. I’m an enrolled member.” Nobody’s really done anything too nasty about that to my face. The worst has been my faculty. I’m a professor at San Diego State University. Two years ago I was a full professor but not the director of the school and one of the minority professors talked about being the real minority in the room. And I just made a little joke, “Don’t’ forget I’m Choctaw.” He said, “But you’re not really Choctaw, you’re not really Indian.” And I calmly didn’t blow up. I brought my tribal enrollment card, my VIA card to the next faculty meeting, and I said, “These are my cards. You’re welcome to look at them once. You can come touch them. Anyone else ever says that in my presence again will speak with the lawyers. Do you understand me? Good. Anybody wanna see ‘em?” So, I’ve been in a lot of situations where I’m challenged. I’m not surprised to be challenged. But at the same time, other people don’t identify who I am. The way I was reared and who I am does. So that’s how we handle it at the Autry and I think that’s how artists need to be prepared if they want to step into this arena. They need to be very sure of themselves. It’s not particularly …at the Public Theater. This is not an arena for people to discover themselves. There are classes for that. This is an arena where you’re speaking for a lot of people.
Audience 2: Can’t you do both at the same time? Can’t you discover yourself and speak for a lot of people at the same time?
Randy: I would say it’s not a pleasant experience to discover something very private in front of a lot of people if you’re not used to being in front of a lot of people. If you are used to being in front of a lot of people I think it’s fairly simple to sit up here. But you know, what do they say? Public speaking, most people have a greater fear of public speaking than death. It’s not a simple task.
William: Speaking from the heart is more difficult because it’s more vulnerable. A community actually helps you discover who you are so it’s a difficult process. The fact that you… we always have to jump over barriers that weren’t established by us. And we have to change those barriers. The reality is, it’s nice to be in a place where we have that privilege to do these things. I just had an email from a student of mine from South Dakota who’s just trying to learn how to act again. He wants to act but right now at South Dakota…he’s only cast as a Native. He won’t get a chance to do David Mamet, he won’t get a chance to Shakespeare…why? He’s too Indian-looking. So we have to remove that.
Randy: That’s not the same at all universities. I just directed Desire Under The Elms with a Latino kid playing a European character and an Asian woman playing an Asian woman and a white kid playing an Indian, so it does happen at lots of different schools in lots of different ways.
Gloria: I just have to go ahead anyway because society is like that. I had an interview once and I said, “Why can’t I just be the lady next door…in a movie? Just a lady next door.” The society doesn’t let you be the lady next door. You got to change society. Maybe we’ll do our work and change society.
Jennifer: Can I just add on to Betsy’s question? Could you just rephrase that quickly just so I make sure that I understand what you’re asking?
Betsy: With producing organizations of any sort, the relationship with an external organization, there are rules within tribal nations and federal recognition of those things of who is an indigenous person. So how do you navigate something? What is your opinion? The tools that you follow to navigate that.
Jennifer: From my perspective, and I don’t know if the Canadians in the room feel the same way, but I feel like once you have a certain name, you’re like…The One…that every non-Native company goes to. Out of laziness or I’m not really sure…fear. It’s probably fear. Yeah, they might pick someone wrong. So I think they’re at least aware of community acknowledgement. “Oh I’ve heard that person does that.” “Oh, go see her!” So it amazes me. If I had more time…I could probably be working on other people’s project all the time because they need that Native person. I could fill quotas, I’m sure we all could, until the end of my career. What ends up being a full-time job is the ignorance, teaching just even a language, a common language. You cannot go into a Native community just because you’re my partner and address them in that way. It’s even teaching…This is how you acknowledge a community when you walk in. And that tends to be a full-time job. It’s extremely tiring but I find that it falls on the shoulders of very few people because it’s like the go-to -- you’re just the go-to person. And I think that’s an education thing. When you say that you need a Native partner to do this, it’s not like you’re going to be asking for people to show their status cards, you have to go to organizations. Or we as a collective should have an organization with a database which would be extremely helpful where people can go and just look through and call. Call around.
Audience 3: One is, I found…I have not been to Toronto.
Yvette: You’re not missing much, White Horse is better.
Audience 3: The point is, if I come back there again… I may want to do that. I hope that my Native friends surround…I will have to go to New York. The point is, that’s number one. Number two is, I’ve had to deal with expansiveness in my identity. I’m not Native American, and I’m two other people, one is I’m gay and I’m a dwarf. Apparently there are two spirits…there’s a celebration of gayness in the very heart of Native community, and from what I understand also, there’s a book, by a Native person, called “The Logic Dwarf” where there has been a celebration of dwarfism and it says that the little people will save us. If that’s true than my answer is, “Oy.” The point is, that I’ve heard that, and I’ve heard that more than once, in its in the book, and believe it or not…so the point is, if that’s identity is your culture, in your play or theater, how do you include the gays and lesbians…if I’ve done it in a gay and lesbian organization…do you do that, have you done that, have you considered that sort of thing?
Muriel: I’m a two spirit woman. And in Spiderwoman, it’s very important to somehow, in all of our pieces, to talk about that and address that. I work with two spirit women and two spirit young men and it’s just as important for them to talk. And so you know, I’m out there all the time in those places in the two spirit gatherings, you should find out about that.
Alanis: And in Sas’ Native Theatre, our Circle of Voices program that’s been in its ninth year, we’ve always picked a theme every year. We’ve dealt with suicide, addictions, residential school effects, this year we dealt with two spirit identity. Basically this program gets fourty to eighty applicants throughout Saskatchewan and we accept twelve of them. Through circles, with a theme, we generate stories. One of the young men who was involved, Tyson Knight, who was a two spirited fellow, who fled the reserve after he saw on the arena wall, "Tyson Knight likes young boys," and that horrific experience for him was able to be the impetus for the whole play content. And actually the origins and the gifts of two spirited people which are the visionaries, the name givers and the prophets, and there was a lot of artistic meaning behind all that. So that juxtaposed with current realities in our homophobic reservations due to Christianity, he can try to go home with this play and that we can revisit those origins to create some sort of identity and not have suicide as a choice. We’re not having to be ostracized and leave our community. My sister used to play with little people. The little people in our home were actually probably a third of your size, and they’re way back in the bush, and my cousins and my eldest sister who is gone now used to play with them. They loved children. They also, I think, would only be around people who could believe in them so they wouldn’t appear with anybody and they wouldn’t appear around anyone who didn’t have an energy level that was welcoming or accepting. So we call them Iosuk and they’re still there.
Muriel: I just thought of this. My mother, she was a psychic, and she used to play with little people. And they lived in the Nasturtium leaves. She told these stories all the time about playing in the back of the garden with these little people that lived in the stertion leaves. For that reason, I’ve always grown Nasturtium leaves.
Oskar: And for that, among many reasons, we should all stay together down in the lobby for the reception which is about to happen.
