Join us for an evening of readings, performance screenings, and discussion on occasion of the launch of the new publication Native Visual Sovereignty: A Reader on Art and Performance.
With 48 contributors, newly commissioned essays and artist notes, 20 reprinted critical texts, and oral history interviews with leaders of the field, Native Visual Sovereignty is the first reader on contemporary Native art to use performance and performativity as its praxis. The book seeks to make the case that there is now a shift from sovereignty in a visual sense, to sovereignty in a performative sense. A reading by book editor, Candice Hopkins (Citizen of Carcross/Tagish First Nation), a conversation with Muriel Miguel (Rappahannock and Kuna) of the legendary Spiderwoman Theater, and a screening of DON’T MAKE ME OVER starring Arielle Twist (Nehiyaw [Cree]), the first theater work of Jeffrey Gibson (Mississippi Band of Choctaw and Cherokee), are the basis of the evening.
The book takes its impetus from a modest yet significant document—a 1969 treatise named Indian Theatre: An Artistic Experiment in Progress, published by the Institute for American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Each text, be it a script, a song, or a note, is positioned by the authors as a possible framework or idea for performance: as the texts make clear, all were intended to be tested on stage. It is the first known attempt to define “New Native Theater,” and with this, it sparked the contemporary Native theater movement. The treatise was published on the eve of the Self-Determination Era, initiated by another form of activist performance, the Indians of All Tribes occupation of Alcatraz Island in November 1969 for nineteen months. Their move, which was broadly covered in mainstream and alternative media, ushered in mainstream awareness for Native rights not just to land and water, but self-determined education, food justice, language, and culture. Little known is that many of the leaders of this groundshift, came to the movement having practiced radical street theater.
Native Visual Sovereignty is co-published by Dancing Foxes Press, in association with the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College; Forge Project; MacKenzie Art Gallery; and SITE SANTA FE on occasion of the touring exhibition Indian Theater: Performance, Art, and Self-Determination since 1969, curated by Hopkins and originating at the Hessel Museum of Art, Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College in 2023.
The publication will be available for purchase in-person on November 11 at Performance Space New York. They are additionally available online via Dancing Foxes Press.
