Indigenous North American Drama by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 3408687
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Published: 2012-12-19T00:00:00+00:00

7

Theatre

Younger Brother of Tradition

Floyd Favel

J'ensevelis les morts dans mon venture.

Cris, tambour, danse, danse, danse,

Danse! Je ne vois même pas l'heure

Ou, le blancs debarquant, je tomberai

Au neant

[I bury the dead in my belly.

Shouts, drums, dance, dance, dance,

Dance! I cannot even see the time

When, white men landing, I shall fall into

Nothingness]

—Arthur Rimbaud, “Mauvais sang,” section 5

I

The presentation of Native performance has a long history in North America. Mainly these presentations, primarily traditional song and dance, are the result of the subjugation of the Native peoples by the settler society and these performances remained one of the few places that Native people could openly practice their culture to an appreciative audience. For decades government policies outlawed the practice of spiritual dances and songs of the Native peoples, in part due to misunderstanding and also deliberately, as government people observed that these dances were the expression of a unique worldview. The government rightly deduced that without their worldview, Natives ceased to be Natives. Native peoples had fought hard for their independence and their lands, many tribal leaders like Geronimo of the Apaches and Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce remained prisoners of war far from their homelands until the day they passed on into the spirit world. Government policy and intent was for the total assimilation of the Native people into the values of modern society and in order for this to succeed, their culture and independence had to be eradicated.

In the former Soviet Union, Native peoples' dances were outlawed and their spiritual and cultural leaders were jailed or killed. One of the few places that Native peoples in the former Soviet Union could express their culture was through folkloristic performances. That is, dances and songs performed out of their ritual and social context on the contemporary performance stage. The tradition of folkloristic performance became the vehicle where Native peoples could practice their culture, so much so, that according to Marina Idham, Tuuvan actress from Buryatia, Russia,

[t]he tendency of the theatre is to keep and extol traditions as much as possible, so that not to let people to be separate from the roots. Nowadays we can see our generation having this tendency of separation from the roots. The theatre is attracting everything back to the roots; and not only the theatre; the whole culture does that. All our activities further the preservation of our culture and traditions. (Interview with the author in Moscow, 2003)

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