Standing Between Reservation and Nation: Indigenous Performance in North America after the end of the Indian Wars

Standing Between Reservation and Nation: Indigenous performance in North America after the end of the Indian Wars Christiana Fay Molldrem Harkulich, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2017 This dissertation asserts that performance as a means of representation has a profound connection to the political position and projects of Indigenous peoples in North America. Through three case studies, my project is a constellational history of Indigenous performance’s decolonial imaginary and enactment. I theorize that the act of standing -- both figuratively standing for, i.e. representation, as well as the physical act of standing -- is a visible decolonial intervention into historical narratives of the Americas constructed and upheld by national (i.e. nation-state based) politics. Drawing from theatre and performance studies methodologies and historiographies, border theory, and coloniality, I argue that performances by Indigenous women function as critical moments of standing that destabilize and reconfigure nation-state bound histories, narratives, and borders. This is explored through three case studies of Indigenous women’s performances that span the 20th century: the first discusses Princess White Deer’s Vaudeville and Broadway performances in the 1910s-1920s and questions of citizenship; the second examines Anna Mae Pictou Aquash’s acts of standing during the protests of the American Indian Movement from 1968-1976 and questions of sovereignty; and the third analyzes Monique Mojica’s play and production of Princess Pocahontas and The Blue Spots and a decolonial dramaturgy in the 1990s. As a whole, this project points to the complicated political position of Indigenous peoples in North America and the necessity of acts of decolonial imagining