On a crisp October evening, Indigenous stories will take center stage at Arizona State University\u2019s Tempe campus.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The event, an advance book launch and reading of <\/strong>\u201cNative Nation Project<\/a>,\u201d written by ASU faculty members and playwrights\u00a0Larissa FastHorse<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>and\u00a0Michael John Garc\u00e9s<\/a>, promises to be a living, breathing celebration of community storytelling.<\/p>\n Event details<\/p>\n “<\/strong>Native Nation Project<\/strong><\/a>“<\/strong> \u201cNative Nation Project,\u201d which publishes next month, gathers three groundbreaking plays created by FastHorse and Garc\u00e9s in collaboration with Indigenous communities across the United States. The stories reflect on land, identity and the ongoing pulse of Indigenous resilience.\u00a0<\/p>\n The trio of works \u2014 \u201cUrban Rez,\u201d \u201cNative Nation\u201d\u00a0and\u00a0\u201cWi\u010doun” \u2014 each originated from years of conversations, trust-building and immersive artistic exchanges with Native people in Los Angeles, Arizona and the Great Plains. The result is a trilogy of theatrical works that confront the historical erasure of Indigenous voices while centering the humor, strength and sovereignty that define them.<\/p>\n Larissa FastHorse<\/p>\n FastHorse, a member of the Sicangu Lakota Nation and a\u00a02020 MacArthur Fellow<\/a>, has long used theater as a tool of reclamation. It practically drives every page of\u00a0“Native Nation Project,” which documents over a decade of collaboration and cultural exchange.\u00a0<\/p>\n The plays were born from genuine relationships built through listening, shared meals and creative partnerships that lasted years.<\/p>\n The Arizona chapter of this journey began in 2019, when\u00a0ASU Gammage produced\u00a0“Native Nation<\/a>” as a large-scale, immersive performance developed with 17 tribal nations across Arizona. Audience members didn\u2019t just watch; they participated, walking among scenes that unfolded around them in parks, parking lots and open spaces. The effect turned spectators into witnesses.<\/p>\n Michael John Garc\u00e9s<\/p>\n This month, that spirit returns to ASU. FastHorse and Garc\u00e9s will be joined by ASU English Professor of Practice\u00a0Ty Defoe<\/a>, who will moderate a discussion following live readings by nearly 20 original cast members and current ASU students.\u00a0<\/p>\n The 90-minute event<\/a> will offer a glimpse into how \u201cNative Nation Project\u201d continues to evolve by bridging campus, community and culture. Books will be available for purchase and signing, with an informal reception to follow. The evening is also part of ASU’s\u00a0Humanities Week<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve been at this for 13 years,\u201d said FastHorse, a professor of practice in English. \u201cThese plays belong to the people who helped create them. Every performance, every conversation, is a continuation.\u201d<\/p>\n ASU News spoke with FastHorse about \u201cNative Nation Project\u201d and why Indigenous communities need to tell their stories in their own voices.<\/p>\n Question:<\/strong> I love the premise of this book \u2014 going into Native American communities and developing plays with them. How did that idea come about?<\/strong><\/p>\n Answer:<\/strong> It actually started with my partner, Michael John Garc\u00e9s. I don\u2019t do this work alone \u2014 we\u2019re full collaborators. Michael was the artistic director of Cornerstone Theater Company in Los Angeles, which is known for creating work in and with communities. He commissioned me to write a play for Cornerstone, and I said, \u201cWell, I\u2019d love to work with the local Indigenous community and make that the focus.\u201d<\/p>\n So we started working together on that play, and the partnership just kept growing from there. Every step since has been a shared effort between us.<\/p>\n Q:<\/strong> Was there ever any hesitation or trust issues from the communities you worked with? How did you address that?<\/strong><\/p>\n A:<\/strong> Oh, absolutely \u2014 all the time. Native people are very aware, and others are beginning to understand, that Western arts have long functioned like an extraction industry: People come into Indigenous communities, take what\u2019s interesting, then leave and profit from it. That\u2019s not what we wanted to do, but it took time to prove it.<\/p>\n We spend a minimum of two years in each community \u2014 that\u2019s actually our shortest timeline, which happened in Arizona when we partnered with ASU Gammage. ASU already had a great relationship with Native nations, which helped build trust. But in California and South Dakota \u2014 even though I\u2019m from there \u2014 it took longer.<\/p>\n We had to show that we weren\u2019t there to extract stories, but to collaborate, to stay and to have the community decide how their stories were presented and where. We also raised money to ensure that community members were paid for creating their own art within the theater framework.<\/p>\n Q:<\/strong> What are the names of the plays, and which communities are they connected to?<\/strong><\/p>\n A:<\/strong> The first play was \u201cUrban Rez,\u201d which focused on the Indigenous peoples of the Los Angeles Basin. We started with the Tongva people, the original caretakers of that area, and expanded to include others like the Cahuilla, Chumash and Kumeyaay \u2014 as well as many Indigenous people who now live in LA because of federal relocation programs. There are no federally recognized tribes in Los Angeles or Orange County, so we describe the play as representing \u201cthe Indigenous people currently living in the LA Basin.\u201d<\/p>\n The second play was \u201cNative Nation,\u201d which we developed in Arizona. We worked with about 16 or 17 of the 23 tribal nations in the state, and always by invitation. We never show up uninvited; we reach out, explain what we do and only go where communities want us there.<\/p>\n The third play, \u201cWi\u010doun,\u201d was created with Lakota, Dakota and Nakota communities in the Great Plains \u2014 South Dakota, North Dakota and beyond. We\u2019ve now worked with people on 10 different reservations for that project.<\/p>\n Q:<\/strong> In what ways does \u201cNative Nation\u201d use immersive theater to challenge the erasure of Indigenous people from American culture? How does this approach affect audiences differently from traditional theater?<\/strong><\/p>\n A:<\/strong> The immersive aspect is crucial. What we\u2019re doing now, through the \u201cNative Nation Project,\u201d continues the process of these first three plays with support from the Mellon Foundation.<\/p>\n Each project looks different depending on the community, because we always start by asking: \u201cWhat do you want to share, and how do you want to be seen?\u201d<\/p>\n More from the Labriola Center<\/p>\n Book Award Lecture featuring Bethany Hughes<\/strong><\/a> Immersive theater lets audiences come face to face with Native people and stories \u2014 literally walking alongside them, seeing them as human beings rather than abstract cultural symbols. Western art often places Indigenous cultures at a distance, sometimes on a \u201cpedestal,\u201d even with good intentions. We wanted to bring that experience down to earth, to eye level.<\/p>\n It can be uncomfortable for non-Native audiences, because they\u2019re no longer just watching from afar because they\u2019re standing in front of someone saying, \u201cThis is my life.\u201d That discomfort, though, makes it more powerful and humanizing.<\/p>\n Q:<\/strong> These plays address themes like assimilation, sovereignty and sacred lands. Which theme do you think most strongly connects the three stories \u2014 and why?<\/strong><\/p>\n A:<\/strong> I\u2019d say sovereignty. It shows up differently in each work. In \u201cUrban Rez,\u201d the focus is on the lack of sovereignty, since the U.S. government declared many LA tribes \u201cextinct\u201d in the 1950s \u2014 even though, of course, those people are still there.<\/p>\n In \u201cNative Nation,\u201d Arizona tribes have strong sovereign voices, yet they continue to face challenges from dominant culture.<\/p>\n And in \u201cWi\u010doun,\u201d we created the play at a time when the governor of South Dakota was directly challenging tribal sovereignty \u2014 both legally and physically. So, across all three, sovereignty is the thread: whether it\u2019s absent, powerful or under attack.<\/p>\n Q:<\/strong> Beyond struggle, your plays also celebrate Indigenous culture and resilience. What creative choices helped you strike that balance between hardship and joy?<\/strong><\/p>\n A:<\/strong> The first thing every community told us was, \u201cThese plays have to be funny.\u201d Every single one! And we agreed, completely. I\u2019m a comedy writer by background and Michael is brilliant at directing humor. But more importantly, humor is cultural for us and not just a coping mechanism.<\/p>\n For years, I used to say that Native people use humor to \u201covercome hardship.\u201d Then, while working in Arizona, a grandmother corrected me. She said, \u201cStop saying that. Humor is who we are. It\u2019s not about survival \u2014 it\u2019s part of our identity.\u201d<\/p>\n That really stuck with me. It reminded me to stop filtering Indigenous culture through a dominant-culture lens. Humor connects all three plays as it\u2019s integral to our storytelling, our joy and our survival.<\/p>\n Q:<\/strong> How long did it take to complete the three plays?<\/strong><\/p>\n A:<\/strong> About 13 years total, from the first project to the last. We did take a break during COVID, but even then, we kept working remotely. We did this by doing storytelling and journaling workshops with youth groups when in-person meetings weren\u2019t possible. So it\u2019s been 13 continuous years of creating and evolving the work.<\/p>\n Q:<\/strong> Tell me about the upcoming ASU event and what the audience will experience.<\/strong><\/p>\n A:<\/strong> We\u2019re so excited about it! The book officially releases in November, but ASU is hosting an advance launch on Oct. 20. Michael and I both teach in ASU\u2019s English department, so we arranged a special early printing just for the university. We\u2019ll be joined by about 20 original cast members from \u201cNative Nation\u201d \u2014 nearly half of the original ASU Gammage cast \u2014 for a staged reading and discussion. Ty Defoe will moderate the Q&A with Michael and me.<\/p>\n Afterward, there will be a book signing and reception. The special advance edition will be available through the ASU bookstore, and the full release comes next month.<\/p>\n Q:<\/strong> What\u2019s next after this event?<\/strong><\/p>\n A:<\/strong> Just that Michael and I are continuing to collaborate. We\u2019re currently working on an adaptation of \u201cOroonoko\u201d (a novel by Aphra Behn) in New York \u2014 a project I recently received a Guggenheim Award for. We\u2019ll be developing it at the\u00a0Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies<\/a> this year, doing readings and workshops in Tempe. So, more to come!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On a crisp October evening, Indigenous stories will take center stage at Arizona State University\u2019s Tempe campus.\u00a0 The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":506052,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3938],"tags":[3444,77,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-506051","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115387922261223745","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=506051"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506051\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/506052"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=506051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=506051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=506051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
6:30 p.m., Oct. 20
Labriola National American Indian Data Center<\/a>
Hayden Library, Tempe campus<\/p>\n
Noon, Oct. 23
Labriola National American Indian Data Center
Hayden Library, Tempe campus<\/p>\n