Representation Of Indigenous Peoples Research Articles

Chilean Children’s Literature and National Identity: Post-Dictatorship Discourses of Chileanness Built through the Representation of Indigenous People

This paper analyzes images of aboriginality created in Chilean narratives for children, and argues that these images try to instill contemporary ideas of national identity. The books Tres Príncipes [Three Princes] (1994) and Flora, Cuentos Andinos [Flora, Andean tales] (2008) are closely examined, showing how cultural practices and geographical motifs drive the renovated, post-dictatorship discourses of Chilean identity.

Towards Epistemic Justice with Indigenous Peoples’ Knowledge? Exploring the potentials of the convention on biological diversity and the philosophy of Buen Vivir

Notwithstanding significant attention given to indigenous knowledge in contemporary governance frameworks, historical epistemic inequalities persist. This article uses the concept of epistemic justice to contrast two governance frameworks, which on the surface have similar aspirations, namely an international agreement (Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)) and an indigenous philosophy (buen vivir), which has been adopted as public policy in Ecuador. While both frameworks stress the importance of indigenous knowledge, the CBD does so in a manner that tends to reproduce existing epistemic hierarchies, unlike the buen vivir, which makes visible a marginalized form of knowledge. However, its translation into public policy may hamper the possibilities of the buen vivir to enhance epistemic justice as a governance framework. The findings show that the formal recognition of cultural diversity does not necessarily entail a promotion of epistemic diversity and social justice. These insights call for the need to question the promotion and representation of indigenous peoples’ knowledge as an inherently political act.

A Contemporary Andean Type: The Representation of the Indigenous World in Claudia Llosa's Films

Claudia Llosa's films Madeinusa (2006) and La Teta Asustada (2009) are two interesting case studies of representation of indigenous people in contemporary cinema. Madeinusa tells about an isolated Andean village and its encounter with ‘modernity’; La Teta Asustada depicts Andean migrants who moved to the outskirts of Lima after the Peruvian 1980s Dirty War. Despite the several prizes the films were awarded (La Teta Asustada, for example, was awarded the Golden Bear at the 2009 Berlin festival), their national and international reception gave rise to controversy over the ways in which indigenous people were portrayed. This essay analyses the patterns and roots of Llosa's representation of the Andean world. Through an interdisciplinary analysis of Llosa's works, 19th-century novels, and early-20th-century and contemporary visual works, I identify and discuss a number of cultural and aesthetic strategies in the films: the actualization of a colonialist-style discourse; the employment of pre-existing models of representation of the Andean subjects developed by Indigenista artists; and the reformulation of these models through anthropological sources, kitsch and magical realism. I argue that those strategies allow Llosa to create a new contemporary Andean type, which is ultimately an unproblematic and accessible way of thinking of and symbolically representing ‘otherness’.

Bilingual Education and the Language of News

This paper presents evidence that shows for the first time that news media influence was a significant factor in the decision to dismantle the Northern Territory's bilingual education policy in 2008. It identifies and discusses five media-related overlays that have affected public discussion and policymaking during the life of the policy. They include the media's role in informing public understanding of the policy; media representation of Indigenous peoples and issues; the relationship between policymaking and journalism in general; neo-liberal discourses about education, especially literacy; and the reporting practices of journalists who have covered the issue. It draws on relevant literature, the history of the policy and interviews conducted for the Australian News Media and Indigenous Policymaking 1988–2008 ARC Discovery Project to interpret some of the connections and disconnections between these overlays and bilingual education policy. This analysis suggests that the news media exerted a complex and uneven range of influences on the 2008 decision to dismantle Australia's first and most enduring policy of Indigenous self-determination.

La representación de los indígenas en los relatos del <i>Semanario Pintoresco Español</i>: hacia una propuesta teórico-metodológica para un estudio comparado

This article aims to put forward a theoretical/methodological approach for further study of the representation/social imaginary of indigenous peoples in the press in South America from colonial times to the present. To do so, we set out 1) the theoretical background to concepts such as representation, social imaginary, press, discourse and power. 2) We also give some details of our research in the field of mass media representation of indigenous people, focusing on the case of Mapuche community in Chile. 3) Finally, we put forward a methodological approach focused on discourse analysis for the study of otherness/indigenous peoples in the Latin American press.

Teaching Journalism Students How to Tell Indigenous Stories in an Informed Way

Australian journalism schools are full of students who have never met an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Island person and who do not know their history. Journalism educators are ill-equipped to redress this imbalance as a large majority are themselves non-Indigenous and many have had little or no experience with the coverage of Indigenous issues or knowledge of Indigenous affairs. Such a situation calls for educational approaches that can overcome these disadvantages and empower journalism graduates to move beyond the stereotypes that characterize the representation of Indigenous people in the mainstream media. This article will explore three different courses in three Australian tertiary journalism education institutions, which use Work-Integrated Learning Approaches to instil the cultural competencies necessary to encourage a more informed reporting of Indigenous issues. The findings from the three projects illustrate the importance of adopting a collaborative approach by industry, the Indigenous community and educators to encourage students’ commitment to quality journalism practices when covering Indigenous issues.

Looking Forward, Looking Back: The Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry

AbstractWhen we talk about truth and reconciliation commissions, we are accustomed to speaking of “transitional justice” mechanisms used in emerging democracies addressing histories of grave injustices. Public inquiries are usually the state response to past injustice in the Canadian context. The Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) is the result of a legal settlement agreement involving the government, representatives of indigenous peoples who attended residential schools for a period lasting more than a century, and the churches that operated those schools. Residential schools have been addressed in a series of public inquiries in Canada, culminating in the TRC. I argue that some of Canada's previous public inquiries, particularly with respect to indigenous issues, have strongly resembled truth commissions, yet this is the first time that an established democracy has called a body investigating past human-rights violations a “truth commission.” This article considers some of the reasons for seeking a truth commission in an established democracy and looks to a previous public inquiry led by Thomas Berger, the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry, for some useful strategies for the TRC as it pursues its mandate. In particular, I suggest that a commission can perform a social function by using its process to educate the broader public about the issue before it.

Indigeneity in the Mexican Cultural Imagination: Thresholds of Belonging

Since the end of the Mexican Revolution in 1917, the state has engaged in vigorous campaign to forge a unified national identity. Within the context of this effort, Indians are at once both denigrated and romanticized. Often marginalized, they are nonetheless subjects of constant national interest. Contradictory policies highlighting segregation, assimilation, modernization, and cultural preservation have alternately included and excluded Mexico's indigenous population from the state's self-conscious efforts to shape its identity. Yet, until now, no single book has combined the various elements of this process to provide a comprehensive look at the Indian in Mexico's cultural imagination. Indigeneity in the Mexican Cultural Imagination offers a much-needed examination of this fickle relationship as it is seen through literature, ethnography, film and art. The book focuses on representations of indigenous peoples in post-revolutionary literary and intellectual history by examining key cultural texts. Using these analyses as a foundation, Analisa Taylor links her critique to national Indian policy, rights, and recent social movements in Southern Mexico. In addition, she moves beyond her analysis of indigenous peoples in general to take a gendered look at indigenous women ranging from the villainized Malinche to the highly romanticized and sexualized Zapotec women of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. The contradictory treatment of the Indian in Mexico's cultural imagination is not unique to that country alone. Rather, the situation there is representative of a phenomenon seen throughout the world. Though this book addresses indigeneity in Mexico specifically, it has far-reaching implications for the study of indigenaety across Latin America and beyond. Much like the late Edward Said's Orientalism, this book provides a glimpse at the very real effects of literary and intellectual discourse on those living in the margins of society. This book's interdisciplinary approach makes it an essential foundation for research in the fields of anthropology, history, literary critique, sociology, and cultural studies. While the book is ideal for a scholarly audience, the accessible writing and scope of the analysis make it of interest to lay audiences as well. It is a must-read for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of the politics of indigeneity in Mexico and beyond.

Raising the Volume: Indigenous Voices in News Media and Policy

This article explores Indigenous contributions to shaping public and policy agendas through their use of the news media. It reports on research conducted for the Australian News Media and Indigenous Policy-making 1988–2008 project that is investigating relationships between the representation of Indigenous peoples in public media and the development of Indigenous affairs policies. Interviews with Indigenous policy advocates, journalists and public servants identified the strategies that have been used by individuals and Indigenous organisations to penetrate policy debates and influence public policy. The article concludes that in the face of a neo-liberal policy agenda amplified through mainstream media, particular Indigenous voices nevertheless have had a significant impact, keeping alive debate about issues such as the importance of bilingual education programs and community involvement in the delivery of primary health care.

Les peuples autochtones aux Nations unies : un nouvel acteur dans la fabrique des normes internationales

This article examines the manner in which representatives of indigenous peoples use the platform of the United Nations and an international movement in ninety countries to construct the principles upon which they may be recognized as collective, rights bearing subjects. In 2007, this movement – largely unstructured but effective in terms of strategic alliances – successfully established a legal instrument at the level of the international community : the Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. In order to be moral and because they can have political, financial and legal consequences, these measures are capable of giving rise to significant transformations in the fields of politics, governance and autonomy. The need to participate in the activities of the United Nations allowed the formation of a collective native « us », structured a space for demands that went beyond the institution and related it to the field of human rights in other areas of public policy. By contributing to the fabrication of norms, this multi-headed policy actor furnished itself with a collective voice on the international scene capable of resolving the tensions inherent to spatial dispersion, linguistic fragmentation and political atomization. As an international entity, it raises a number of questions regarding locally observed discrepancies, modes of identification, state classifications and political and economic experiences.

Reservation reelism: redfacing, visual sovereignty, and representations of Native Americans in film

In this deeply engaging account Michelle H. Raheja offers the first book-length study of the Indigenous actors, directors, and spectators who helped shape Hollywood's representation of Indigenous peoples. Since the era of silent films, Hollywood movies and visual culture generally have provided the primary representational field on which Indigenous images have been displayed to non-Native audiences. These films have been highly influential in shaping perceptions of Indigenous peoples as, for example, a dying race or as inherently unable or unwilling to adapt to change. However, films with Indigenous plots and subplots also signify at least some degree of Native presence in a culture that largely defines Native peoples as absent or separate. Native actors, directors, and spectators have had a part in creating these cinematic representations and have thus complicated the dominant, and usually negative, messages about Native peoples that films portray. In Reservation Reelism Raheja examines the history of these Native actors, directors, and spectators, reveals their contributions, and attempts to create positive representations in film that reflect the complex and vibrant experiences of Native peoples and communities.

THE SALAMANCA WARRIORS: A Case Study of an "Exception to the Rule"

Within the larger context of global concerns over representations of indigenous peoples by their colonizers, the issue of racialized sports team mascots based on the White Man's image of Native Americans has been hotly contested within the United States for several decades. After much protest, team names and mascots have been successfully changed at numerous universities. In contrast to these more visible examples, this case study of Salamanca Central High School (New York) and its athletic teams, the Warriors, represents a contrary example because in this community both Native and non-Native people associated with the school are fighting to keep the Indian iconography connected with its teams.

Editorial

This special edition of the International Journal of Critical Indigenous Studies highlights the work of emerging scholars in the field of Indigenous Studies. The five featured authors were all finalists for the prize awarded by the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA) to the best post-graduate student paper at the NAISA meeting held in 2010 in Tucson, Arizona. While the breadth of scholarship encompassed by the term 'Indigenous Studies' and the global representation of Indigenous peoples at NAISA mean that the topics and approaches vary widely, a common thematic of fraught post-colonial relations can be discerned within all five articles.

Diasporic Indigeneity: Place and the Articulation of Ainu Identity in Tokyo, Japan

Representations of Indigenous people as rooted and sedentary reinforce ideas of their presence in cities as strange and out of place. This is problematic. In a world where an increasing number if not majority of Indigenous people live in urban or metropolitan areas, cities are now critical sites of Indigenous negotiation, appropriation, marginalization, and emplacement. This paper opens up the analysis of urban Indigenous life from the perspective of place and its role in the articulation of urban Indigenous identities. It takes as a case study the situation of indigenous Ainu in and around Tokyo. The interrogation of place highlights how Ainu are socially active in the city and critiques the regionalization of Ainu affairs to northern Japan.

Apaches de Víctor Hugo Rascón Banda: identidad y representación del septentrión entre indios y mexicanos

This study, following the theoretical work of Homi Bhabha, analyzes Apaches by Víctor Hugo Rascón Band as a discourse of the alterity and representation of indigenous peoples. The intention is to unveil the identitarian uncertainty of conquerors and conquered, as well as the ambivalence of colonial discourse, which is manifested when the "native" be­comes an object of scorn, but also of desire. The dramatic progression of the play is explained in terms of the action of seeing — seeing in the Other and seeing oneself. In this sense, the problematic representation of Apaches in the ethno-social constructions of Mexico in the Nineteenth Century is brought to the fore. What role did these indigenous people play in the creation of national sovereignty? How was the transitory territory of the Apaches understood in Mexico?

Emerging Consensus and Concerns in Collaborative Archaeological Research

Emerging Consensus and Concerns in Collaborative Archaeological Research Celeste Ray (bio) Archaeologists have taken a central role in pioneering collaborative research in anthropology, in part because of the types of resources they consult and the friction that can surround their study. While many anthropologists are just beginning to grapple with issues of intellectual property rights for cultural traditions, archaeologists have long negotiated conflicts over the study not only of material culture but of human remains. These conflicts have in many cases fostered positive dialogues in which social scientists actively seek to cooperate with descendant communities, so that in collaborative approaches, those whose ancestors are the subjects of research become partners in archaeological inquiry. Over the last three decades, reflections on the social and political dynamics of archaeological research, critiques of anthropological endeavors as themselves colonial exercises, and bitterly contested claims about ownership of "the past" have produced a parallel evolution in archaeological methods and theory. As previously disenfranchised people around the globe have reclaimed the right to interpret their own heritage, archaeologists in different research fields responded simultaneously by adopting new strategies for inclusion, dialogue, and "community archaeology" before their varied approaches became collectively thought of as "collaborative." By the late 1980s and early 1990s ownership of the past had become a regular theme of academic exchange (see, e.g., Gathercole and Lowenthal 1990), and in 1990 the World Archaeological Congress adopted a Code of Ethics indicative of the move to collaborative approaches. Among other "principles to abide by," archaeologists were enjoined to "establish equitable partnerships" with [End Page 1] "indigenous peoples whose cultural heritage is being investigated" and to "seek, whenever possible, representation of indigenous peoples . . . in setting research standards, questions, priorities and goals" (World Archaeological Congress 1991). Scholars in the late 1990s and early 2000s pointed to the potential of public archaeology as applied anthropology (see, for example, Thornton 1998; Watkins 2000; Zimmerman, Vitelli, and Hollowell-Zimmer 2003; Shackel and Chambers 2004; Smith and Wobst 2005; Scarre and Scarre 2006). In the last three years archaeologists have published several instructive and theoretically innovative volumes on collaborative research that articulate its methodological challenges and advantages. Chip Colwell-Chanthaphonh and T. J. Ferguson's edited collection Collaboration in Archaeological Practice: Engaging Descendant Communities (2008) offers international case studies that tackle perennially difficult issues such as repatriation, social class, sacred lands, and the politics of identity and that also offer insightful views of changing academic ethics. They present collaborative approaches as existing on a continuum from simply informing descendant communities about the research process to synergistic cooperation that yields results neither group could achieve independently. Also in 2008 Quetzil Castañeda and Christopher Matthews edited Ethnographic Archaeologies: Reflections on Stakeholders and Archaeological Practices. This thin volume considers the use of ethnographic methods in work with Indigenous populations who have an attachment to archaeological sites. Essays especially consider reflexivity for a critical engagement with heritage stakeholders and the use of ethnographic archaeology to inform public policy debates, archaeological study of ethnic groups, and public interpretations of the past. Julie Hollowell and George Nicholas (2008) offer a particularly strong essay commenting on the contributions of "archaeological ethnographies" in understanding the multiple meanings and implications of "the past" for living people and in the development of a political economy of archaeology. Jordan Kerber's 2006 edited volume Cross-Cultural Collaboration: Native Peoples and Archaeology in the Northeastern United States considers the challenges of maintaining fruitful dialogue and cooperation when academics and descendant communities have conflicting perspectives on research goals and site interpretation. Their collection particularly examines regulatory compliance with the National Historic Preservation Act and the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation [End Page 2] Act and the ways in which descendant communities and archaeologists can cooperate productively in the stewardship of archaeological sites and sacred places. Their examples are regional but yield applications relevant elsewhere. Other publications have already begun to take collaborative approaches for granted and stress civic activism. Jeremy Sabloff 's 2008 Archaeology Matters: Action Archaeology in the Modern World is perhaps less about collaboration than it is about subjects that can be addressed through collaborative archaeology. His message is about applying archaeological understandings of the past to improve the contemporary...

Pilgrims, Fieldworkers, and Secret Agents: Buryat Buddhologists and the History of an Eurasian Imaginary

AbstractThis article looks at the pre-Revolutionary history of Buryats' engagement with greater Eurasia, drawing on the legacies of the long underappreciated Russian Buddhological school and exploring the intellectual and political context of its emergence in the late nineteenth century. Exploring the role of Russian Orientalists and political figures such as the Orientalists V.P. Vasil'ev and Prince E.E. Ukhtomskii, and taking a close look at the fieldwork of the first Russian-trained indigenous Buryat Buddhologists G.Ts. Tsybikov and B.B. Baradiin, I demonstrate that this ultimately Eurasianist school of Buddhology was borne out of conflicting sentiments towards Russia's cosmopolitanism, statehood, and imperial destiny in Asia, as well as representations of indigenous peoples of southern Siberia. As a conclusion, I map the emergent forms of what I call 'Asian Eurasianism', linking it to contemporary cultural debates in Buryatia. I suggest that the term offers us a better way to understand the many ways by which many non-Russians position themselves in relation to the vast Eurasian continent.

The Tule River Tribal History Project: Evaluating a California Tribal Government's Collaboration with Anthropology and Occupational Therapy to Preserve Indigenous History and Promote Tribal Goals

Postcolonial and indigenous scholars suggest that creating alternative histories is a necessary activity for Native peoples in their recovery from the destructive emotional, behavioral, and political effects of colonial domination. The literature on history-making as a restorative process has focused on mental health, reversing negative representations of indigenous people in mainstream histories, and using Native histories to reclaim land and rights. In 2004, the Tule River Indian Tribe of Central California initiated an innovative history project to engage tribal elders in contributing historical information about themselves and their families for preservation by the Tribe. Theories and methods from postcolonial scholarship, anthropology, and occupational therapy (and its academic discipline occupational science) focused the Tule River Tribal History Project on providing meaningful and enjoyable activities—creating family trees, a tribal photo archive, interviews with elders, social gatherings and commu...

"When the Indian Was in Vogue": D. H. Lawrence, Aldous Huxley, and Ethnological Tourism in the Southwest

“When the Indian was in Vogue”:D. H. Lawrence, Aldous Huxley, and Ethnological Tourism in the Southwest Carey Snyder (bio) The southwest is the great playground of the White American. The desert isn't good for anything else. But it does make a fine national playground. And the Indian, with his long hair and his bits of pottery and blankets and clumsy home-made trinkets, he's a wonderful live toy to play with. D. H. Lawrence, "Just Back from the Snake-Dance—Tired Out" "I had the same idea as you," the Director was saying. "Wanted to have a look at the savages. Got a permit for New Mexico and went there for my summer holiday." Aldous Huxley, Brave New World In her 1934 classic Patterns of Culture, the anthropologist Ruth Benedict asserts that no one has written a better description of "the form and spirit of Pueblo dances" than D. H. Lawrence (93). Although contemporary studies have examined the ethnocentrism of Lawrence's [End Page 662] representations of indigenous people,1 scholars surprisingly continue to praise Lawrence for his "extraordinary effort to get inside Indian culture" (Kinkead-Weekes 27) and for his "true engagement with the primitive" (Storch 50–51). Reading Lawrence in this way misses a more interesting element of his Southwest writings: they are illuminating not only because they shed light on specific cultural practices, but because they also (at times, inadvertently) illuminate the practice of cultural observation itself—which takes this writer into terrain traversed by ethnologists and tourists alike. As made clear in his 1929 essay entitled "New Mexico," the diverse tribes of the Southwest were remarkable for Lawrence insofar as they preserved their "tribal integrity" amidst the rush of modernization. Threatening to overwhelm this tribal integrity was the already extensive commercialization of the region, epitomized for Lawrence by the figure of "the Indian who sells you baskets on Albuquerque station or who slinks around Taos plaza"—two popular venues for sightseeing and buying souvenirs. In seeking to avoid modernized Indians and commune with "a remnant of the most deeply religious race still living," Lawrence emulates the protocol of professional anthropologists like Benedict ("New Mexico" 144). The construction of the Southwest as a site of threatened authenticity relies on a notion of cultural purity that has been complicated in recent years by James Clifford and others.2 Yet even within its historical and ideological context, what makes this claim of discovering an unaltered indigenous culture dubious is the picture Lawrence himself paints of the region: choked with thousands of tourists crowding its plazas and pueblos, the Southwest emerges in Lawrence's derisive description as the trendy, "picturesque reservation and playground of the eastern states" ("New Mexico" 141), and Southwest Indians as "wonderful live toy[s] to play with" (Letters 609). In essays like "The Hopi Snake Dance"—in which three thousand tourists amusedly regard a native ceremony as if it were a "circus performance" (138)—Lawrence elaborates the process by which tribal customs and ceremonies are converted into the stuff of ethnological spectacle.3 With the figure of "the Indian who sells you baskets on Albuquerque Station," Lawrence suggests that the star attractions of the region, its "befeathered and bedaubed darling[s]" ("Indians and Entertainment" 101), sometimes participate in their own touristification. It is hard to imagine the ideal of unchanged tribal life coexisting with the aggressive commercialization of native culture Lawrence describes. As vividly depicted in Lawrence's essays and his novella, St. Mawr, the reservations and pueblos of the Southwest served in the interwar period as a kind of ethnological theme park. Adapting Langston Hughes's phrase, one could say that in the 1920s and 1930s, the Indian was in vogue.4 [End Page 663] Joining Lawrence in his satirical treatment of Southwest tourism is Aldous Huxley, whose depiction of the Southwest and its inhabitants is in fact indebted to Lawrence's essays and letters, the latter of which he had just finished editing for a posthumous collection when he began writing Brave New World (1932).5 Although Huxley's dystopia has not been read as a novel about tourism, Brave New World echoes Lawrence's critique of the hype surrounding Southwest...

Invisible Indigeneity: First Nations and Aboriginal Theatre in Japanese Translation and Performance

Invisible Indigeneity:First Nations and Aboriginal Theatre in Japanese Translation and Performance Beverley Curran (bio) Abstract This paper will investigate the politics of theatre translation and translation theatre at work in the recent Rakutendan productions of The Rez Sisters and Up the Ladder, in order to suggest how indigenous theatre travels and is transformed by different bodies, languages, and audiences. The essay begins with a brief historical overview of the myth of Japan’s racial/cultural homogeneity and the particular issue of visibility in somatic and semantic terms. It then focuses on the two productions and considers telling aspects of their textual translations, as well as the ways in which they negotiated the fine line between translation theatre performance and cultural appropriation. Introduction "Translators are angels," begins a poem by John Mateer, "perfect nobodies: nameless/voiceless, winged incandescence, except when we're bad."1 This describes a popular albeit problematic notion of the invisible role of the translator/interpreter, who assumes a faithful or neutral posture in his or her linguistic mediation. But can it ever be applied to a theatre translator whose linguistic mediation is meant to be embodied and performed? The Japanese term yakusha aurally conflates the roles of translator and actor, and Emori Tooru, who translated Peter Shaffer's 1979 play Amadeus, has described the process of theatre translation as one that "makes its passage through the body."2 Emori refers specifically to the attention paid by the translator to the sounds of the original text, its rhythms and tempo that will be expressed onstage through the actor's voice and body. The suggestion that theatre translation must take into account the fictional orality of a dramatic text right down to its vibrations in the vocal chords seems extraordinarily demanding as a very physical translation theory. Nevertheless, this essay argues that the task of the theatre translator and its somatic demands grow even more complex when First Nations and Aboriginal drama "makes its passage" through the tongues and bodies of translators and actors in contemporary Japan. The plays discussed in this essay, The Rez Sisters by First Nations playwright Tomson Highway and Up the Ladder by Australian Aboriginal playwright Roger Bennett, were both performed in Japanese by the Tokyo-based Rakutendan theatre group. The plays themselves are intimately concerned with the politics of representation as well as interpretation, so it matters who tells these stories and who enacts them onstage. In their performance by Japanese actors, the politics of theatre translation come into play as well because "the physical connection to the living history of these stories has been broken [End Page 449] by the play's journey to Japan—one cannot simply 'act' indigenous."3 The Rakutendan productions, then, are provocative because contemporary performances of these plays in Canada or Australia, for example, would likely acknowledge the sensitive issue of cultural appropriation by casting Native actors to play the roles. For theatre audiences as well, the "adequacy or inadequacy of a performance cannot deny the interference of non-Other playing Other."4 More importantly, as Aboriginal director and playwright Wesley Enoch, who collaborated as a director on Rakutendan's production of Up the Ladder emphasized in a post-performance talk, "In indigenous productions, the politics of the play are written on the body." The question that motivates this essay is: what then are the politics of theatre translation of such plays? The Japanese bodies onstage seem to erase the somatic representation of the political, but a closer consideration of Rakutendan's productions suggests that the missing body is a deliberate translation strategy that allows the First Nations and Aboriginal playwrights to tell their stories as well as allow the performances to address the particular situation of assimilated and invisible minorities in Japan. The plays themselves resist a verisimilitude or essentialism that is so often a central concern in representations of indigenous people in all genres.5 Their casting and production in Japan not only call into question the mythic homogeneity of the Japanese, but also assist the playwright in undermining the representation of indigeneity as homogeneous and unchanging. In short, the First Nations and Aboriginal plays speak of and perform how indigenous bodies come to matter...