I write this article having participated in the inauguration of the Centro Hemisférico/FOMMA (August 2008), as the person who offered the blessing of the space,Footnote ¹ and in the Actions of Transfer: Women's Performance in the Americas conference at UCLA (November 2008) as a presenter. My perspective emerges from my own political, social, cultural, intellectual and spiritual consciousness as a Native American/indigenous woman.Footnote ² I am positioning myself within a frame that acknowledges several matrices. First is the influence of ancient teachings – what are often called, from a Native perspective, original instructions – and the ways that these indigenous knowledges, traditionally grounded or rooted, yet fluid, continue from generation to generation. My critical lens is thus influenced greatly by the oral tradition, but certainly informed, at the same time, by historical and contemporary articulations (and manifestations) of indigenous intellectual sovereignty in its many forms.Footnote ³ I have been shaped, also, by my own trajectory as a veterana of the Chicano/a political, cultural and artistic movement; by my life experience with Native ceremonial traditions, some pan-Indian and some closer to home; and finally, by current discourses in performance studies and, most centrally, in Native American (performance) studies. I call attention to two important recent edited collections: Performing Worlds into Being: Native American Women's Theater and American Indian Performing Arts: Critical Directions.Footnote ⁴

The context

It should not need to be said that Native/indigenous peoples, from their beginnings, had their own ways of being, and that these ways gave them their grounding as human beings in relation to other peoples, as well as to the rest of the natural and spiritual worlds. As a consequence of invasion, dispossession, genocide, ethnocide and the varying accompaniments to colonialism, Native/indigenous peoples were forced violently to adapt to other scripts, using new languages, with the expectation that they act only as supporting cast, if at all. In fact, their performances were rigorously prescribed, often intentionally invisibilized, frenetically erased. Historically, however, there are countless instances, moments, chapters and continuing narratives having to do with Native/indigenous people(s) assuming their roles as protagonists manifesting their indigeneity, claiming their ri(gh)t(e)s.

One concrete case is that of Chief Joseph, Hinmaton Yalatkit, my ancestor, who traveled to Washington, DC to advocate before members of Congress on behalf of our people in January 1879, after the ‘epic’ attempt to escape into Canada.Footnote ⁵ He is known for his surrender speech at Bear Paw, Montana, on 5 October 1877, and he is often remembered for the line, ‘From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever.’Footnote ⁶ Translations being what they will, there was no footnote to indicate that what he meant was that he would no longer engage militarily against the United States. He did not, however, relinquish his right to be who he was (and is, in spirit), nor did he ever relinquish the rights of his people to be once again on their land. It is this chapter in Nez Percé history that demonstrated even more his undying commitment to his people.

On 14 January 1879, before Congressmen, cabinet members, and diplomats, he delivered a speech that was subsequently published in the North American Review. In the speech, he said the following:

In my office on the UC Davis campus I have a poster of Joseph that I have watercoloured. It hangs almost directly opposite the door. He died in 1904 in Nespelem, Washington. My grandmother, my mother's mother, was a young girl at the time. My great-grandfather, Heyum Kish Kish, fought as an eighteen-year-old warrior in the ‘epic campaign’. My mother was born in Nespelem in 1921. History is present within me, it is alive within me. Memory is palpable. This memory is one of countless ones throughout the Americas, throughout what we in the United States would call ‘Indian Country’.

Today, Native American and indigenous peoples are in a time replete with activism, (cultural, linguistic, political, spiritual) revitalization and world renewal. As Lawrence Gross has indicated, Native peoples are in a post-apocalyptic stage; we have seen the end of our worlds, but our world views were not completely annihilated, so we are engaged in rebuilding them, using every trace we have, every creative force and (re)source at our disposal.Footnote ⁸ The evidence of this rebuilding can be seen throughout the hemisphere, in explicitly ceremonial contexts and in the trabajo cotidiano y a la vez spiritual (‘cotidian and at the same time spiritual work’) that has to do with world renewal.Footnote ⁹ This last has to do with waking up in the morning, giving thanks, preparing the food, giving thanks, offering a prayer, giving thanks, being quiet, giving thanks, laughing joyfully with someone, giving thanks, working hard, giving thanks, meeting to strategize, giving thanks, loving, giving thanks, helping, giving thanks, resting, giving thanks. The performance of re/membering and healing can manifest in seemingly ordinary ways that you can miss if you are not paying attention, or if your awareness does not entertain such manifestations, or consider them important.

Our intellectual and activist work as indigenous peoples, at its best, is moved by spirit. Victor Montejo, Jakaltek Maya scholar, poet, novelist, writes in the poem ‘Interrogatorio de los Ancestros’ (Interrogation by the Ancestors) of the continuing dialogue between the ancestors and descendants of the Mayan people, the back-and-forth engagement in the world of spirit, wherein the descendants at first offer countless justifications for their inability to revive themselves. Finally, the ancestors say to their descendants,

Montejo's own contribution as a prolific scholar and creative writer provides the evidence that he has listened. Beth Brant – Mohawk, urban-based, lesbian feminist, poet, fiction writer, essayist, editor – says,

Among indigenous peoples the performative elements, broadly speaking, that pertain to themselves as distinct First Nations resonate deeply in a mutual reciprocity with each other.Footnote ¹²

In Chiapas, among the Zapatistas, the performative elements that manifest as group identity have to do with the practice of autonomy as a human right and a sacred rite. The manifestation of indigeneity is at once a creative, political, cultural, social and spiritual practice, imbued with consciousness, deliberation and determination. Rights practised are rites enacted in the political and sacred push not only to decolonization and re-Indianization, but to rehumanization. In this context, each step that serves the interests of liberation rather than oppression is a right sustained and won, in the series of multiple rites of passage that carry indigenous peoples back home, back to their beginnings; not in the sense of romantic nostalgia, but in the sense of critical and creative reconnection to originality, to autonomy. Kuna and Rappahannock playwright, actor and scholar Monique Mojica writes, ‘the stories that we tell will be stories . . . of our becoming whole . . . [T]he stories that we tell must be creation stories . . . Creation story begins again.’Footnote ¹³ What does it mean to reconnect indigenous peoples to each other? It means that we will respect each other's right to our creation stories, and to our transformed creation stories that speak to what has become of us and to what we are becoming.

My understanding of autonomy comes from indigenous cultural practice. The Zapatistas employ the symbol of the caracol (the snail, and snail shell) to designate their centres, insisting upon the critical importance of reflection (and privacy). The caracol represents the (personal and collective) movement inward, for (cultural, spiritual, intellectual) reflection, and the movement outward, for social, political, cultural, intellectual interaction at the regional, national and global levels. Over the years, the movement inward has begun to embrace the understanding of the personal, given that as a result of the women demanding the Women's Revolutionary Law, Zapatista women now assert the right to marry or not, to choose their partners and to choose to birth or not. This is the performance of autonomy for the good of the individual and the collective, the performance of ri(gh)t(e)s.

The personal is political

For those who know me well, it is not news that I have figured as a mediator, a cultural translator, even a MalincheFootnote ¹⁴ and often a target because I navigate and perform indigeneity, moving between ‘the North’ and ‘the South’ of these Americas, to my own rhythm, my own song, manifesting my personal autonomy unconditionally, without reservation, and without fear. From my own practice as an activist and cultural worker engaged in the myriad forms of movimiento (movement) I have witnessed and lived in my body, my mind, my spirit and my heart what were extraordinary highs and horrific lows. At its best, movimiento opens/-ed spaces that had been jealously guarded by historically repressive forces, allowing the light of consciousness to radiate softly, sometimes, like ripples of gleaming water, or powerfully, as in a rushing, cleansing waterfall. I am of a generation that surrendered itself to making change, to fighting for social justice, through politics, education, the arts and culture, and I am thankful to have lived this energy that birthed so much transformation.

At the same time, one of the life lessons I have learned by my involvement with both the Chicana/o and Native communities is that the passion of movement, the hunger for social justice, the yearning for spiritual growth, the fervour for bringing about transformative societies can sometimes engender fundamentalism, prescription, rigidity of agendas and scripts, exclusionary politics that turn on elitism and create processes of anointing and erasing that are formidable. When these phenomena occur within communities or movements, they are, from my perspective, not always acknowledged – there is sometimes no room for reflection, for critique, for transformation. Returning to the Zapatistas, this is why their use of the caracol is so important, because they acknowledge that in the space of reflection it is possible to admit mistakes and transform them.

In relation to the individuals (scholars, politicians, media) who professionally g(r)aze on these communities and movements, there is another aspect that has to do with the (sometimes) prejudicial assessments that are grounded in historically/culturally embedded notions of intellectual, racial, ethnic, class superiority. From this external g(r)aze into indigenous communities, there are also processes of anointing and erasure, of discovery and dismissal. Even when the assessments are apparently benign, the impact can be devastating. When indigenous peoples manifest our indigeneities, there are still those who pretend to be able to say which performances are authentic, as well as those who insist on a particular performance because it suits their interests and they can make their wishes economically advantageous to Native people. In this ambiance, it is important for indigenous people as protagonists to engage in the process of becoming and owning their own presence, which often means defying and challenging a scripted presence. Mojica states, ‘the Native artist . . . needs to take responsibility for making work that matters, that provokes, subverts, takes risks, and refuses to be co-opted or commodified, work that touches, transforms, and has the power to heal’.Footnote ¹⁵

W(R)iting the Native (in and out of) ceremony

My body is the inscribed cartography of the work of spirit within me and on me, the lesson(s) of will, the heart of the mind. These mappings have come sometimes with high cost, but even when the lessons have been painful, the discoveries are invaluable. I know how to enter the world of spirit and move with it, I know how to touch it and be with it, speak it, sing it or dance it when I need to or when I choose to. It is often called a blessing, or a healing, or a kind of ceremony, such as the sweat lodge.Footnote ¹⁶ There are times when I am honoured by being asked to manifest as a spiritual woman, and when this happens I understand that I am not being asked to perform a ritual for ritual's sake; indeed, I am not being asked to ‘perform’. I am being asked to enter the world of spirit; to communicate with spirit; to surrender my body, my self, to a higher consciousness; to lose consciousness of my earthly self – because it is at this moment that a heightened consciousness of the earthly self is not the intent. The intent is to open the space, to recognize the space, to hold it, to receive and be with Spirit. When I am so engaged, the performative mode that I take is not of this world.

I was invited by Isabel Juarez Espinosa, one of the directors of FOMMA,Footnote ¹⁷ to offer a blessing for the inauguration of their renovated space, which on 28 August 2008 officially became the Centro Hemisférico/FOMMA. I took time to think about the song(s) I might sing, and the way I would frame the actual prayer for the blessing. I knew that I would burn incense, copal (for the spirits of the south) and sweet grass or sage (for the spirits of the north). Consulting with Isabel, I decided that there would be an altar, where it would be placed, and that there would be flowers and water. Earth, air, fire and water were intimately involved. Before the inauguration, I was asked to rehearse the blessing, which I could do to some extent, but the words I spoke in the moment of the blessing could not be rehearsed. To carry out this blessing, I had to release the secular world and enter spirit. My prayer for the renewed space, and for the people involved with the space, honoured the four directions and the centre itself, as well as the earth, and the sky world, with each direction corresponding to a major aspect of their beings, body, mind, will, spirit, heart. Once I finished the blessing, I asked everyone to stand and do simple steps to a second song, but this component was scripted by someone for me.

The other participant in the blessing of the space that day was Roselia Jiménez Perez, Tojolobal Maya writer, composer, singer, cultural activist and schoolteacher. She is one of the founding members of ELIAC – Escritores en Lenguas Indígenas, A.C. – providing her leadership to the first executive committee of the association.Footnote ¹⁸ Born in Napité, municipio de las Margaritas, and now living in Comitán, Chiapas, she has received regional and international recognition for her creative work as a singer–composer. She sang two songs as her contribution to the blessing: one was her powerful song for the Mother Earth titled ‘Nan Lu'um K'inal’.Footnote ¹⁹ The first time I heard her sing this song in Quintana Roo several years ago, I immediately closed my eyes, struck at the way her voice and her song were creating such a sacred, radiant and profound space. I saw the histories of our peoples, indigenous peoples of the Americas, pass before my eyes and through my body. I believe this song came to Roselia from an ancient source; in her, the idea of song reveals itself as the oral power that can open at once a deeply grounded yet cosmic force of space.Footnote ²⁰ Every time I hear her sing this song, I am moved in the same way. At the inauguration I was aware that perhaps not everyone felt the intent or the spirit of the work we both did that evening. In retrospect, I think of the common secularization of spirituality and profanization of the sacred that occurs in academia.

Often, Native/indigenous women are presumed to be able to engage in the performance of ceremony as performance. It is what we are (mistakenly) known for. It is what is expected of us. We are the performers and others comment on, study, analyse, expound upon these ‘performances’ – or our spiritual work is taken simply as a perfunctory gesture of inclusion, after which those of us who offered the ceremonial words or songs are marginalized or dismissed. Many of us are routinely asked to ‘do blessings’, almost as if the blessing takes care of indigenous (women's) participation. My colleague at UC Santa Barbara, Ines Talamantez (who is in religious studies) and I laugh at the times we were asked to ‘do blessings’ in the Quincentennial Year of 1992. Sometime we were asked to do the blessings together. While we are both capable (and have the authority) to offer blessings, we are also both indigenous intellectuals.

Need I say that humour has been an incredibly sharp critical tool for Native/indigenous peoples throughout our histories with invading powers, and in the subsequent years of living with the consequences of invasion. The mode of the West is to discover, categorize, compartamentalize, reduce and segregate, rather than to see the whole, and even Native/indigenous peoples themselves have been known sometimes to adopt (or adapt to) this mode. The reality is that Native/indigenous performers, playwrights and intellectuals still must depend on recognition (and other forms of support) from the West to have their work reach broad audiences. The mode(s) of recognition often give(s) pause for reflection.

The inauguration of the Centro Hemisférico/FOMMA and the Actions of Transfer Conference

I want to comment on the two gatherings, the inauguration of the Centro Hemisférico/FOMMA in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, and the Actions of Transfer: Women's Performance in the Americas conference at UCLA, particularly the significance of both events relative to indigenous women's performance in the Americas and to the Hemispheric Institute on Performance and Politics at NYU. Regarding the Centro Hemisférico/FOMMA, I am curious as to how the relationship between FOMMA and the Institute will play out, and not a little taken aback that the name of the space in San Cristobal now positions the Centro as the ‘embracer’ of FOMMA. On the Actions of Transfer website (http://www.performancestudies.ucla.edu/actions/actions.html), FOMMA is described as ‘a joint research/cultural center and performance space in San Cristobal de las Casas’.Footnote ²¹ This description reflects the new partnership that FOMMA has with the Hemispheric Institute. But FOMMA – Fortaleza de la Mujer Maya (Strength of Mayan Women) – is also a women's centre that has stood for many years on its own, offering alternatives (such as vocational training and literacy) to (mostly) single Mayan mothers who are seeking avenues out of poverty and domestic servitude. I realize that the relationship between the Centro Hemisférico and FOMMA was forged in agreement with the parties concerned, and that the exact shaping of this forging is unknown to me. Certainly, the benefits to all parties are immense. I merely want to express my concern, however, that in the naming, FOMMA seems to have been somewhat usurped.

In like manner, regarding the Actions of Transfer: Women's Performance in the Americas gathering, I was struck by the main conference title, Actions of Transfer, and the question came to me, ‘does an “action of transfer” equal a “right of discovery”?’ Does the very title of the conference prepare the way for (even implicit) claims to the (work of) indigenous women artists who came to perform (and talk about their work) before the audiences at UCLA? The phrase suggests acts that are legally binding: transfer of title, ownership, rights, property, come to mind. In art, I am aware of the transfer (or appropriation) of digital, photographic or other images to canvas, via the use of gel or other mediums, so I think of the use of an image, and the right to do all of the above that seems to be inherent in the title Actions of Transfer. The term ‘action’ is associated with war, also, but in this case the ‘actions’ are apparently benign, having taken place without combat.

In ‘Creation Story Begins Again: Performing Transformation, Bridging Cosmologies’, Rick Knowles asks, ‘When, for Aboriginal artists, does . . . collaboration consist of sleeping with the enemy? When does scholarly ‘support’ become co-optation? When does the dissemination of Native work in print, in classrooms, in Western-style theatrical performance become commodification? Who owns or benefits from the work and whose interests does it serve?’Footnote ²² Wendy Rose writes, ‘rob us word by word by word / of that most ancient copyright’.Footnote ²³ In my comments on these two conferences, I am looking at the power and politics of naming. At the same time, I am convinced of the astuteness of the indigenous women performers and I do respect their judgement regarding the choices they make. No matter how they do it, they show themselves to be dangerous women, because there is the obstinate edge, the trickster energy, the provocative subversion in the action, the performance, the counter dance, the refusal to surrender autonomy. There are often secrets in the performances, puzzles, rooted in the land, in the mystery of their belief systems, in the constancy of their ancient teachings. I trust this edge and look for it when I see Native women artists perform.

The women of FOMMA work with gendered, racial/ethnic, class notions of identity, representation and community(-building) as they pertain to indigenous/Mayan ideas of autonomy. The staging of performance from the personal to the political, artistic and spiritual is intimately interrelated with their own distinct cultural/ethical protocols, and it emanates from particular belief systems of their peoples that merge with their shifting cultural lived realities in urban areas. Issues of naming, language and location have been and are (re)configured in multiple ways, and in particular the women of FOMMA articulate a ‘home’, a compromiso (commitment), and a spirit of struggle and triumph against the terror-ridden dehumanization and repression that Mayan women have endured. From the earlier plays that speak to the utter brutal horror of the lives that indigenous women live, to the pieces that incorporate humour, the women engage in daring critiques of the power plays they face on a daily basis.

Native American literature in performance

The birth of Native American studies as a field has to do with sovereign and/or autonomous narratives,Footnote ²⁴ actions and studies that foreground indigenous conceptual theoretical frames, at the same time acknowledging our own training in Western institutions. At Davis, our graduate programme, now in its tenth year, is hemispheric in its approach to the study of indigenous peoples. Our undergraduate programme has been hemispheric from its inception forty years ago. With our small number of faculty, we have achieved departmental status, and we are the second of two graduate programmes in the United States in Native American studies.Footnote ²⁵ As an academic programme, we have sustained the space created by our founders for the hemispheric study of these indigenous Americas, for four decades, consciously and adamantly refusing, in the face sometimes of egregious hostility from multiple fronts (including those who would favour a singular US approach to the study of Native peoples), to allow national borders to have supremacy in our analyses. We of course recognize the ways in which national borders trespass upon original lands, violently separating relatives, communities and systems of knowledge from each other.

Our hemispheric approach is our unequivocal multilayered intervention as protagonists in the national, transnational, globalizing politics of indigeneity (within and outside of academia); it is a manifestation of our conciencia (consciousness). Many of us are participating, also, in NAISA, the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association, which is a newly formed international organization that hosts yearly conferences at different sites. This association has attracted indigenous scholars, as well as allied scholars of Native American/indigenous studies and related fields, from the United States, Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, Bolivia, New Zealand, Australia, India and various countries in Europe.Footnote ²⁶

In my own teaching, in the spirit of activist performativity, I have created a course called ‘Native American Literature in Performance’, through which my students and I prepare productions that we perform publicly on the Davis campus at the end of the quarter.Footnote ²⁷ While I provide choice to the students about what they will perform, I do guide them by offering them pieces that I think will translate well to stage.Footnote ²⁸ The students are usually undergraduates, with some graduate students as well. My main motivation for creating the course was that I had never seen Native theatre on our campus, and I want(ed) Native/indigenous students and the community to see themselves on stage. The Department of Theater and Dance has been very supportive of my efforts, and I am honoured that the new graduate group in performance studies has asked me to be a member of the core group of faculty for this programme. While my academic and instructional duties do not allow me to spend my entire time working in this area, it is and always has been in my nature to realize the power of performance, and to think about performance, as an activist, as a poet, as an intellectual, as a former member of two Chicano teatros, and as someone who is now translating some of my fictional and poetic pieces to stage.

In fourteen years I have taught the course perhaps eleven times, and my students and I have adapted to stage the works of Sherman Alexie, Beth Brant, Victor Montejo, Anna Lee Walters, Leslie Silko, Peter Blue Cloud and myself, among others. Sometimes the students create their own pieces in collaboration with all of us. I tell the students that this course allows them to become the literature, to lift the characters off the page and bring them to life. We have manifested local (California Indian), regional, national and hemispheric indigenous identities in performance. We have also demonstrated our understanding of what Lawrence Gross would call the ‘peopled universe’; that is, our relations in the natural world.

The first time I taught the course in 1995, my students insisted on translating Victor Montejo's Testimony: Death of a Guatemalan Village to stage. We agreed on six chapters that could be adapted to stage without reducing the profundity of the violence suffered in the village. I paired the story of Testimony with Beth Brant's ‘Telling’ (the poem–preface to her short story collection Food & Spirits), so that we could speak to the domestic violence that occurs within Native communities, as well as the violence of political repression. While Brant's poem makes clear that the source of the violence has its historical roots in the larger dynamics of what Native people have experienced, she forces Native people to see what they have done to themselves (similar to what Sherman Alexie has done). We began with ‘Telling’, and ended with Testimony, and in between, as a transition, we darkened the stage, and showed images above, in the balcony area, of Mayan people in Guatemala, in differing situations, some happy, communal, familial scenes, some scenes of the documented tortures and massacres. The students sang U2's ‘Mothers of the Disappeared’ to the images.

We made full use of the stage for the performance of Testimony; we had two narrators who spoke from the balcony; and for the purposes of the military aggression and the demand by the officer in command for names of traitors, the audience became the villagers. The students asked for the challenge of this performance, and each time Victor visited our rehearsals they remembered that the ‘characters’ they were playing were real people in the village, some of whom survived, some of whom did not. One of the most powerful scenes was that of a mother, Doña Malcal, whose fourteen-year-old son runs to seek his father when the violence begins. The stage is lit in red and the only actor is the woman playing Doña Malcal. The scene begins with her having a presentimiento (foreboding) about her son so she rushes to look for him. When she finds him, he refuses to return with her, so she starts back, only to hear a gunshot and a scream, which cause her to run back. Her son has been mortally wounded, so she pulls her baby from her hip to her front, puts her son on her back and drags him home where he dies after she frantically tries to save him. She screams her pain and anguish, shouting to her husband to come see their son. The scene ends with her weeping supplication to God. Wenonah Red Horse, the young Native woman who played Doña Malcal, carried the whole scene alone; we decided that it would be more effective for her to appear to put her son on her back rather than trying to get another student to be the son. This scene received a standing ovation, as did both performances of the whole production. The theatre was filled to capacity at each performance. Victor was present at the performances and joined us onstage afterwards.

I am happy that the students also take my suggestions and are drawn to certain texts that have lent themselves beautifully to staged performance. One such story, performed at the Wyatt Pavilion, is ‘This Place’, by Beth Brant. ‘This Place’ (w)rites the Native (into) ceremony, reverberating at the level of mind, spirit and body, taking us into the place of chaos and bringing us out whole, taking us into history and bringing us back safely and renewed into present time. The story is about David, a young gay man who goes home to the reservation to die of AIDS. He left because he thought he would not be accepted there, but when he returns to die, he discovers that he is being healed by Joseph, a queer medicine man who never left. The elder queen performs a ceremony for David, helping him bring his scattered pieces, his fragmented self, back together so that he can cross over in peace.

One of the most powerful moments, centre stage, is when David, after drinking a strong tea that Joseph gives him, stands up as in a dream, moving and looking around, speaking while his spirit reaches out for his disparate pieces. (We know as we observe him that it is his spirit that is walking, while he remains resting on the sofa, because he is so weak he can no longer walk, or move.) Joseph is softly singing and burning sage on the periphery, occasionally answering David's questions. Joseph tells him,

As David returns to the sofa, his heart beating strongly, he hears his grandmother, his father, his people asking him, ‘Are you ready?’ And finally, in the heightened moment before passing, he says, ‘I am ready . . . I am ready I am ready I am ready.’Footnote ³⁰ This story and performance create historicized, gendered, cultured spaces that reinscribe traditional healing practices to bring about individual and community reintegration, placing in relief the autonomy that is (at) the heart of the culture.

In my class, I also encourage students to come forth with their own ideas for the collective manifestation of creativity. One memorable example is a tribute by Rosalinda Meza, a young Zapotec woman student, to her grandmother. The storyline was simple. The young woman was raised by a single mother, and her mother was also raised by a single mother, her grandmother. Rosalinda wanted to honour the fact that throughout her life her grandmother always had the courage to dance alone in the community fiestas, even in the face of public contempt for her supposedly improper and unwomanly behaviour. The staging was sparse; we began with a projection of images of the grandmother at different moments of her life, images of her with her daughter and granddaughter, images of her dancing. The projection was accompanied by a brief narration by Rosalinda, in voice-over, to tell the story. Then the stage darkened and the light came up on Rosalinda, dressed in traditional dress, playing the role of her grandmother as a young woman. She spoke as her grandmother about the importance of shining like a star. As she moved forward to stage centre, Zapotec banda music came up and she began to dance, gracefully, beautifully. As the lights went up on stage, the audience could see community people (students) gathered at the fiesta around the edges of the stage, pointing fingers at the grandmother, calling her names, acting offended at her bravura. Suddenly the lights dim, and, in voice-over, Rosalinda says, ‘but times change’; the lights go up, the fiesta is once again in motion, but this time the grandmother is dancing with the acceptance of the community. The performance was simple, powerful, even more so because the mother and grandmother were in the audience to see the performance and later to be introduced to everyone.

To come back to the beginning, as Mojica says, ‘Creation story begins again.’ Within Native and indigenous communities, there is a collective critical consciousness that is complex, fraught, combustible, but vibrant and provocative. There is a creative energy that is far-reaching, inclusive, risky, electric, inspired, insistent. The two are really one, called Memory, called Ancestors, called Trickster, called Spirit, called Heart, called Dignidad Rebelde.Footnote ³¹ There is no map, no fixed script, no particular guide but the autonomy that is (at) the heart of Native/indigenous cultures. Here is how we arrive at the performance of Native/indigenous ri(gh)t(e)s.