The "agitators"
started in soon after Margo Lukens began teaching a class in Native
American literature at the University of Maine. The UMaine students —
Penobscot and Passamaquoddy — discovered aboriginal plays in her classes
and had a thirst for more.
The students were responding to familiar issues and situational humor in
plays like Dry Lips Ought to Move to Kapuskasing by Canadian Cree
writer Tomson Highway. The play's conversations and relationships
tapping into the cultural undertow resonated with students like Dale
Lolar of Indian Island in Old Town, Maine.
"The work we did in
Native American literature caused me to pause and rethink," says Lolar.
"The stories took me back to my childhood, helping me learn more about
myself. After reading that play in her class, I wanted to do more than
that, and I kept bringing it up."
Inspired by their
interest, Lukens developed a new graduate course in Native theater for
spring 2003. Of the 10 students who signed up, more than half were
Penobscot or Passamaquoddy. It was the first time Native students were
in the majority in one of her literature classes.
That January, Lukens
and a handful of the students traveled to Rhode Island to attend the
Trinity Repertory Company's reading of Grandchildren of the Buffalo
Soldiers, written by Assiniboine playwright William Yellow Robe.
Following the production, actors and members of the theater company
joined Yellow Robe on stage for a discussion of multiracial identity.
For Lukens, it was a watershed moment.
"It was emotional and
interesting," says Lukens of the evening in Providence. "I'd also heard
people on Indian Island talking about racial prejudice depending on
whether someone is full or mixed blood. That's when I knew that, if the
Maine community could see this play, it would be so healing and an
opportunity for healthy discussion."
That semester, Yellow
Robe accepted Lukens' invitation to visit her class at UMaine, and
conversations began in earnest about the utility of theater as "a tool
for expression, healing and letting the world know the humanity and
perspective of Native people." In some ways, says Lukens, Native theater
echoes the oral traditions of the past and "the way people used to
receive that kind of information."
"There is emotional
and temporal/physical involvement of people — from the actors to the
audience — in Native theater. That's part of the power of it," she says.
"Audiences come expecting to have their emotions engaged. Actors give
voice to characters that can work through and experience issues that we
find personally difficult.
"Native playwrights
often write merciless satire of people and institutions and forces that
cause pain. They write of genocide, loss, stunted growth of generations
of Native people. But when they take those themes on the stage in the
caricature of nuns or (Gen. George) Custer or the enemy of the people in
such a way that provides some release and relief, the playwrights and
actors — and, ultimately, the community audience — get the upper hand."
Yellow Robe, who has
been writing plays for three decades, as well as acting and directing,
says his works are "an examination of humanity — how to nurture and
maintain humanity in this pop culture of materialism."
"It's also about how to nurture and maintain your sense of humanity in
the face of great adversity," he says. "Margo's work is looking at the
issue of white privilege."
Lukens' Ph.D. research at the University of Colorado focused on
four 19th-century women — Margaret Fuller, Harriet Jacobs, Sarah
Winnemucca and Zitkala-Sa — who subverted literary and imaginative
paradigms of the dominant culture to express the particular reality of
women marginalized because of gender or ethnicity.
During a 1999 UMaine
sabbatical, she researched the literary history of Maine's Wabanaki
people. She sought out-of-print story collections of Wabanaki
storytellers from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and on the
recommendation of a local tribal leader, she discovered Aboriginally
Yours, Chief Henry Red Eagle, an anthology of writing by Henry
Perley of Greenville.
Lukens also teaches
what she calls "the literature of mixed blood," in which authors or
their characters are of diverse racial heritage. In Anglo-American
literature, especially that of the 19th and 20th centuries, mixed blood
often was emblematic of disadvantage or convoluted loyalties; sometimes
the idea of mixed blood inferred tragedy, a sense of doom over the
character, or an evil that must be overcome.
In more contemporary
Native literature, there's been a shift, with authors "beginning to see
a different way of dealing with mixed blood and its widespread
incidence," Lukens says. "What comes up is the idea of mixed blood
having the potential for an amalgamation of strengths instead of
weaknesses. Through cultural connection, the person goes through the
difficulties of mixed heritage, but overcomes through ties to the
community."
The first semester of her graduate course in Native theater,
students performed two plays on two local radio programs: Yellow Robe's
Better-n-Indins and Indian Radio Days, written by Choctaw
playwrights LeAnne Howe and Roxy Gordon.
Later that year,
members of the Penobscot community asked Lukens to serve as an adviser
for their staging of scenes from The Independence of Eddie Rose.
The production was part of Domestic Violence Awareness Month on Indian
Island. The poignant play by Yellow Robe raises issues concerning sexual
abuse, alcoholism and denial.
"It was held in the
community center with an adult audience during the day," says Lukens.
"It was very powerful. There were people in the audience who wept. It
was at that moment that I learned how powerful this could be and how an
amazing, instantaneous connection to deep issues can happen.
"My touchstone is that
there are Native people for whom this is working."
In fall 2004, Lukens
secured a Visiting Libra Diversity Professorship for Yellow Robe, who
spent 10 weeks on campus, teaching playwriting and directing
Better-n-Indins at the Cyrus Pavilion Theatre.
Since then, the
presence of Native theater in central Maine has grown from a novelty to
a nuance. This past September, UMaine's Readers' Theater featured two
plays by Yellow Robe, Falling Distance and A Great Thing,
performed by the playwright and three local Native actors, with Lukens
reading stage directions.
In the community,
members of the Penobscot Players, a group formed by Dale Lolar that
includes other students who took Lukens' classes, gather informally for
readings when not giving public performances.
"There are all kinds
of dynamics when you grow up in an oppressed situation," Lolar says.
"What happens when you put a lot of this stuff away is it stays inside
you. But when you read this stuff (in literature and plays) happening to
someone else and it's so similar, it reaffirms your own experience.
Revisiting it helps to make sense of things you're struggling with and
sheds light on your identity. To take that out and share it with each
other, there's a sense of community that happens. We are all survivors."
While Lukens' scholarship is in Native American literature, she
sees herself more as a facilitator than an authority on the subject, a
position that has everything to do with being sensitive to a community
finding its voice after generations of oppression.
"It's important always
to be in consultation with the community," says Lukens. "It's also
important that the publication of any of my work does no harm, that the
Native community doesn't feel disempowered or that something was stolen
from it."
According to Yellow
Robe, Native communities "are tired of academics putting them under the
microscope." But with Lukens, the relationship is different.
"They've never felt
that with Margo, because they know they're being considered as human,
not a theory or a research project," he says. "She wants to present
documentation of life lasting, a framework of a new wheel to provide
accessibility for Native and nonnative people to present ideas. Almost
like a new thought," says Yellow Robe, who returned to UMaine a year ago
where he is a part-time instructor in the English Department.
This past fall, Yellow
Robe taught a 400-level topics course in Native American drama. In
December, his play A Stray Dog was staged at the Public Theater
in New York City as one of five productions in its Native Theater
Festival. This spring, he is teaching Lukens' survey course on Native
American literature while she is on sabbatical. In addition, he has been
asked by some members of the Penobscot community to help them write a
play.
"The Native community
must know this is an achievable art form that they can develop," he
says. "The nonnative community must know that this is the voice of their
neighbors that they've not heard before and that they were not taught to
listen to. It's not a question of being politically correct, it's a
question of being aware of your environment, society, people who live in
your community."
by
Margaret Nagle
