Abstract
In this article, we use examples from contemporary Anishinaabe artist Rebecca Belmore and the works of the Spiderwoman Theater Troupe to explore how contemporary Indigenous artists in the Americas negotiate the representation of Indigenous identities, identities which are always performed and entangled in a mesh of geographical locations, cultural practices and ideological borders. Through their artistic productions, many Native artists and authors participate in a larger community of voices discussing what it means to be Indigenous in the Americas and what ethical responsibilities or commitments to community are entailed in and by their work.
Highlights
America: it depends how you look at it
Taylor’s discussion of a shared hemispheric reality of “tangled systems of expression, representation, and economic and power relations” in which trying to understand identities themselves entangled with geographical locations, cultural practices, naming practices and “heavily policed ideological borders” make both lives and scholarship a challenge (1417) is of interest not just for scholars in performance studies but for all of us working in Inter American Studies or hemispheric studies
We take up the examples of Rebecca Belmore and Spiderwoman Theatre to explore how contemporary Indigenous artists in the Americas negotiate the representation of Indigenous identities, identities which are always performed and entangled in a mesh of geographical locations, cultural practices and ideological borders
Summary
America: it depends how you look at it. What you call it. For the women of Spiderwoman Theater, the Comarca Kuna Yala is the place of dreams, poems and stories, as well as both the stage on which they perform and the earth on which their Guna relatives walk.
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