Tara Browner
(Oklahoma Choctaw) -- Associate Professor in Ethnomusicology and
American Indian Studies at UCLA. Her research focuses on Native
North American music and dance; Native North American contemporary
music; musical imagery of Indians in popular culture; and
indigenous concepts of music theory and American music. She is the
author of Heartbeat of the People: Music and Dance of the
Northern Pow-Wow, and is currently working on an musical
edition drawn from pow-wow performance for the series Music in
the United States of America (MUSA), and an essay collection
based around First Nations music topics. In addition to her
scholarly activities, she is a pow-wow dancer in the Women's
Southern Cloth tradition, a professional percussionist and
timpanist, and performs in Brazilian Samba ensembles.
Thomas DeFrantz -- Thomas DeFrantz
holds degrees from Yale, the City University of New York, and
earned his PhD from the Department of Performance Studies at NYU.
He has taught theater at Stanford, NYU, and at MIT, where he is
Associate Professor and holds the Class of 1948 Career Development
Professorship. He recently founded the MIT Dance Theater Ensemble,
and Slippage: Performance Interventions in Culture and Technology,
both in residence at MIT. Most recently, he served as dramaturg
for the Spectrum Dance Theater production of the "Sleeping Beauty
Notebook" in Seattle, WA. Future projects include "Queer Theory:
An Academic Travesty" to be produced by the Theater Offensive of
Boston in 2005, and the "Women in Science Project" to be produced
by Slippage in 2005. He is the editor of Dancing Many Drums:
Excavations in African American Dance (Wisconsin University Press,
2002) and author of Dancing Revelations: Alvin Ailey's Embodiment
of African American Culture (Oxford University Press, 2004).
Victoria Bomberry (Associate Professor
in Ethnic Studies/American Indian Studies, UCR) --
Professor Bomberry
received her Ph.D. in Modern Thought and Literature from Stanford
University in 2001. Her specialties in this interdisciplinary
program were Literature and Anthropology. Her dissertation titled
"Indigenous Memory and Imagination: Thinking Beyond the Nation" is
a study of the development of a hemispheric consciousness amoung
indigenous people in the Americas and the ways in which indigenous
women are contributing to this phenomenon. From 2001-2002, she was
a UC President's Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Native
American Studies at UC Davis. In 2001, she received the Sankofa
Award from the California Arts Council for lifetime contributions
to arts and culture. She is past recipient of the Charles
Bannerman Fellowship, a national award, for her contributions to
community organizing.
Andrew Brother Elk -- Andrew
Brother Elk is Artistic Director of Earth Dance Theater. He began his
career at Stanford University, where he directed the Media Lab, taught
mass media courses, served as dean and advisor to the President, founded
arts programs, wrote and directed films and plays, and was Resident
Fellow at the American Indian Theme House. He left Stanford in 1994 to
serve as CEO of a variety of multimedia corporations. Brother Elk also
served as an Arts Commissioner for San Francisco, and as chair of the
Native American Cultural Center since 1995. He has advised Mayors and
Governors on arts and media issues, and has been honored with awards and
citations from around the world for promoting indigenous arts. Since
2000 he has devoted himself exclusively to the arts, creating and
directing new plays and films, and founding both the Indigenous Dance
Program and Earth Dance Theater.
"Work like you don’t need the money,
love like you’ve never been hurt, and dance like no one is watching.”
Stephanie Fitzgerald
(Cree) -- Co-editor of
Keepers of the Morning Star: An Anthology of Native Women's Theater,
holds an M.A. in American Indian Studies from
UCLA and is a Ph.D. candidate in English at the Claremont Graduate
University. She is a traditional dancer in both Northern and Southern
Plains styles.
Susan Foster (Professor
in World Arts and Cultures, UCLA) --
Choreographer, dancer, writer, Foster began presenting concerts of her
own work in 1977. Since that time she has created several solo concerts
which she has toured in the United States, Canada and Europe. She is the
author of Reading Dancing (University of California Press, 1986),
Choreography and Narrative (Indiana University Press, 1996) and
Dances That Describe Themselves: The Improvised Choreography of
Richard Bull (Wesleyan University Press, 2003). She is also
editor of
Choreographing History (Indiana, 1995) and
Corporealities (Routledge, 1996). Ms. Foster's work has been
supported by grants from the National Endowment of the Arts, the
National Endowment of Humanities, and the Rockefeller and Jerome
Foundations. Ph.D., History of Consciousness, University of California,
Santa Cruz; N.A., Dance, University of California, Los Angeles; B.A.
Anthropology, Swarthmore College.
Hanay Geiogamah (Department of Theatre and
Chair of American Indian Studies, UCLA) --
Professor Geiogamah,
a Kiowa/Delaware born and raised in Oklahoma, taught at Colorado College
and the University of Washington before coming to UCLA. He has served as
principal investigator of Project HOOP (Honoring Our Origins and Our
People) for the past four years, shaping it as an innovative force in
introducing Native theater and performing arts teaching and production
in tribal colleges, universities, tribal schools and communities across
the nation. An internationally renowned scholar and playwright, Prof.
Geiogamah is a writer, director, choreographer, producer and teacher of
American Indian performing arts. He is the author of more than a dozen
plays, the editor of Stories of Our Way: An Anthology of 12 American
Indian Plays and Voices of the Seventh Generation: A Native
American Theater Anthology and coeditor of A Reader for American
Indian Theater Studies. Professor Geiogamah is managing editor of
the American Indian Culture and Research Journal.
Anita Gonzalez (Florida State University)
-- Anita Gonzalez currently teaches at the
Florida State University School of Theatre. She earned her Ph.D.
in Theater/Performance Studies from the University of
Wisconsin-Madison (1997). Gonzalez has written book reviews and
articles about multi-cultural performance for Modern Drama, The
Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, and Dance Research
Journal. Her book Jarocho's Soul is about nationalism and
Afro-Mexican dance. Gonzalez has been a scholar in residence at
Rockefeller's Bellagio Center (2003) and this year she is a
Fulbright Senior Scholar Specialist to Guatemala.
Michael Greyeyes
(Plains Cree) -- Greyeyes is a dancer, actor and choreographer who
danced as a full corps de ballet member with the Canadian National
Ballet from 1987 to 1990, and in the company of Eliot Feld in New
York City from 1990 to 1994. He has performed in numerous films
and television programs, and was seen in
He Who Dreams: Michael Greyeyes on the Powwow Trail on
the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in 1997.
Monte Kugel
(Associate Professor in History, UCR) --
Rebecca "Monte" Kugel attended the University of
Iowa planning to enter the Writer's Workshop. She received a BA
from the University of Iowa in English with a History minor in
1974. Two years spent working with Native American organizations
convinced her that the historical study of Native Americans was
essential for understanding present-day issues and problems. She
entered the UCLA history graduate program in 1976, earning her
M.A. in 1978 and her Ph.D. in 1986. Her research focuses on the
nineteenth century Minnesota Ojibwe and on the internal social and
political divisions that occurred in Ojibwe villages. She is
currently at work on a study of the attitudes of Great
Lakes-region Native American towards “race” as a social construct
introduced by Anglo-Americans in the early nineteenth century.
Tanya Lukin-Linklater (Alutiiq
Nation of Kodiak Island, Alaska) --
Tanya, an Alutiiq woman from Kodiak Island, Alaska, originally an
actor, began dancing in Toronto in 1998. She has attended
Stanford University (B.A. Honors), the Centre for Indigenous
Theatre, and University of Alberta (M.Ed.) where her Master's
paper focused on traditional Alutiiq and Yup'ik performance art.
Her choreographic work (Qalnga'aq
cali kumagyak and
Kumagyak I) draws upon modern dance, yoga, Alaska
Native stories and songs, and powwow dance. In 2003 she
fulfilled the role of Artistic Intern for the Aboriginal Dance
Program at The Banff Centre for the Arts. Her past credits
include Michael Greyeyes'
Songs in Toronto and Georgina Martinez's
Miinigooweziwin in Banff. She has developed dance
workshops for Native youth in Alberta and Alaska.
Joel Martin
(Interim Dean of the College of Humanities, Arts, and Social
Sciences and Costo Professor of American Indian Affairs, UCR) --
Joel Martin studied philosophy and religion at
Birmingham-Southern College, German at Essens Universität, and
theology at Harvard Divinity School and later Harvard University.
After receiving his doctorate in Religion and History at Duke
University, he taught for a dozen years at Franklin and Marshall
College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. In 2000, Martin joined the
Departments of History and Religious Studies at UCR. Martin’s
research recovers how different peoples responded to contact and
colonialism in America and interprets how the memory or
suppression of this history relates to power, defines communities,
and shapes narratives, art, and politics. He is currently
researching the lives of New Englanders and Cherokees involved in
an early mission, writing a book on landmarks of American
religious history, and directing an editorial project dealing with
Native America. Martin is directing collaborative projects that
will produce an annotated bibliography of Luiseño culture and
history, a large website to support California Native Studies, and
a multi-volume encyclopedia on Native American History and
Culture.
Susan Manning -- Susan Manning is an Associate
Professor of English, Theatre, and Performance Studies at
Northwestern, where she teaches the history of 20th c theatrical
performance. Her research concerns the cultural politics of
modern dance. Her first book, Ecstasy and the Demon,
traced the shift from modernist bodies to fascist bodies in the
choreography of Mary Wigman, Germany's leading dancer between
the two world wars. Her recently published book, Modern
Dance, Negro Dance: Race in Motion, explores changing
relations between modern dancers and African-American
choreographers in New York City from 1930 to 1970. She is the
founder of the Performance of the Americas Caucus within the
American Studies Association and the convener of the Chicago
Seminar on Dance and Performance.
Zoila S. Mendoza
(Mestizo) --
Zoila S. Mendoza is a Peruvian anthropologist and Associate
Professor at the department of Native American Studies, University
of California, Davis. She is the author of Shaping Society
Through Dance:Me stizoRitual Performance in the Peruvian Andes,
(University of Chicago Press, 2000). She has published widely in
Spanish and English on the subjects of Andean festivals, music and
dance, and ethnic/racial identity in Peru. Some of her English
pub lications have appeared in edited volumes such as Music and
the Racial Imagination (University of Chicago Press 2000), and
journals such as the Journal of Latin American Anthropology,
Bulletin of Latin American Research, and Latin America n
Music Research. She is currently finishing a second book on
the history and politics of ethnic/racial representation,
regionalism and nationalism through folkloric music and dance
throughout the twentieth century in Cusco Peru.
Muriel Miguel
(Kuna/Rappahannock) -- Choreographer/director Muriel Miguel
co-founded and is artistic director of Spiderwoman Theatre, the
longest running Native American feminist theatre group in North
America, which has toured internationally for 25 years. Muriel is
the co-founder of the Thunderbird American Indian Dancers in New
York City; she co-founded Shy Woman Singers and Dancers, a
traditional women's drum and dance troupe; and she has developed
two shows for The Minnesota Native American AIDS Task Force in
Minneapolis. She has been awarded an honorary Doctorate in Fine
Arts from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. In 1999 she
choreographed Throw Away Kids
as the guest choreographer for the Chinook Winds Aboriginal Dance
Program at The Banff Centre, and was a featured
performer in
BONES: An Aboriginal Dance Opera,
there in 2001. (more)
Douglas
Miles
-- Using vivid colors and strong forms,
Douglas Miles explores the past and present of Indian life in his
art. “I love traditional Indian art, but I know people need to
break away from that for the art to grow,” he says. “You need to
show Indian people in the 21st century and not so much as museum
pieces. Contemporary Indian people do lots of things—they’re
teachers, actors, poets, scientists, and journalists.” Miles, a
former social worker who also writes poetry and has acted in
several movies, works in prismacolor pencil, watercolor, and
acrylics. Recently, he’s been working on an unusual surface:
skateboards. The decision to paint on the boards was influenced by
his teenage son. “I think there’s a spiritual side to
skateboarding,” Miles says. “There’s kind of a warrior aspect to
it—it’s a solo effort, something that you do continually.” He is
currently the heading the first ever Native owned and operated
skateboard company: Apache Skateboards and has created the first
ever all Native skate team. His skateboard art won the Best of
Painting Division prize at March’s Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair
and Market. His Apache Skateboard is currently being featured in
Artrain USA’s Native Views: Influences of Modern Culture exhibit
opening in Phoenix, Arizona this spring. He also was awarded the
1st Place in Mixed Media at the annual 2003 Santa Fe
Indian Market for a set of Apache Skateboards. In addition to
participating in the Santa Fe Indian Market, his work was featured
in We’re Still Here with the Mountains, a show of works by Apache
artists including Bob Haozous, and Allan Houser at New Mexico’s
Hubbard Museum of the American West earlier this year. He is
represented by Mark Bahti Fine Arts, Tucson, AZ, and Galerie-
Kokopelli, Germany.
Marrie Mumford (Metis/ Chippewa-Cree) --
Recently appointed the Canada Research Chair for
the Native Studies Department at Trent University, Marrie has a BA
in Theatre from the University of Alberta and an MFA from Brandeis
University in Boston. Her career has spanned over 30 years in
professional theatre in Canada and the US. She has worked in
Toronto with Native Earth Performing Arts Inc., Tarragon
Theatre, Theatre Passe Muraille, Factory Theatre and
Toronto Free Theatre, as well as with
De-Ba-Jeh-Mu-Jig Theatre Group, Theatre
Calgary, Citadel Theatre, Manitoba Theatre Centre
and the National Arts Centre in Ottawa.
From 1992 to 1995,
Marrie worked with the Ontario Ministry of Culture to
implement a strategy for established and emerging Aboriginal Arts
organizations. During her tenure as artistic director of
the Aboriginal Arts Program at the Banff Centre (from 1995 to
2003), she initiated and facilitated innovative professional
development programs in dance, visual arts, new media, writing and
publishing and music. This included initiating Aboriginal
Performance programs such as the Aboriginal Dance program, the
Creation of New Works program and Aboriginal Women’s Voices
projects in music; as well as initiating the Aboriginal New Media
program, the Aboriginal Screenwriter’s program and the Aboriginal
Curators series at the Walter Phillips Gallery.
Marrie has participated in activities supporting national and
international Aboriginal arts communities including the Second
Aboriginal Advisory Committee for the Canada Council and the
Canadian Aboriginal Music Awards. In 1996, she was honoured with
the first James Buller Award for the Advancement of Aboriginal
Theatre by the Centre for Indigenous Theatre.
Robert Perez
(Assistant Professor in Ethnic Studies/American Indian Studies,
UCR) --
Robert's dissertation is a study of Spanish
colonialism in what are now the states of Sonora, Arizona, and
California. More precisely, the dissertation examines Indian
rebellions against the Spaniards as a way of understanding what
motivated Native peoples during this period and how they adjusted,
reorganized, fought against, and survived the Spanish colonial
assault. The dissertation uses an analysis of ritual, symbolism,
dance, and Native spiritual practices to show that resistance to
colonialism was multi-faceted and continuous. Robert integrates
oral histories, botanical knowledge, and traditional archival
sources to present a more complete picture and an Indian
perspective. Ultimately the goal is to present an Indian-centered
history that is concerned with the ramifications of colonialism
for Indian peoples. Robert believes that colonialism has not ended
in any way, shape, or form for Native peoples and that the current
colonial governments of the United States, Canada, and Mexico must
be put into the proper perspective as occupying forces which are
historically and intimately linked with the previous colonial
regimes.
Karen Pheasant is
an Ojibway band member of the Wikwemikong unceded reserve on
Manitoulin Island, Ontario. She resides in the rural community of
Wikwemikongsing with her three children and is a contributor to
the Banff Centre Press. They have travelled extensively
throughout Indian country on the powwow trail as Grass dancers and
Jingle Dress dancers. Karen has been head dancer for the Toronto
International SkyDome Powwow, and in 1992 she was invited to
perform, along with her children, at the World Council for
Indigenous People in Mexico City as part of the500 Years
celebration. Karen is a committed proponent of education, having
spearheaded Path That We Walk, a cultural program for
Wikwemikong youth to encourage pride, knowledge, and confidence.
Michelle H.
Raheja (Ph.D., University of Chicago) -- Michelle works in
Native American literature, with a special interest in
autobiography and visual culture. Her book project, entitled
Screening Identity: Beads, Buckskins, and Redface in Autobiography
and Film explores the history of filmic representations of Native
Americans through the personal narratives and visual aesthetics of
indigenous actors and entertainers. Other current projects include
an essay on contemporary First Nations (Canadian) film and an
essay on Native American representations in silent film. Professor
Raheja's training and teaching cover all periods and genres of
American literature up to the present, with a special emphasis on
early colonial literature, autobiography, performance
studies, multi-ethnic literature, and film and visual culture.
Wendy Rogers
(Assistant Professor in Dance, UCR) --
Wendy
Rogers choreographs dances conceived as personal geography,
evoking themes of breath and atmosphere, darkness and light. Her
work is rooted in the tradition of modern dance experimentation,
learned through study and performance in California and New York
since 1957 with artists including Ruth Hatfield, David Wood,
Margaret Jenkins, Carolyn Brown and Sara Rudner. As founder and
Artistic Director of Choreographics, she has produced dance
activities in the S.F.Bay Area since 1977. The Wendy Rogers Dance
Company, Choreographics' primary project 1977-90, performed her
work nationally, in Europe and the Middle East. Her film work
includes location choreography for George Lucas' Return of the
Jedi . She taught choreography and improvisation at the
University of California Berkeley 1982-92 and in 1993 received a
Masters from Stanford School of Education. Numerous honors include
grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Foundation
for Contemporary Performance Arts, Inc. and a 1988 Guggenheim
Fellowship.
Anna Beatrice Scott
(Assistant professor in the Department of Dance at
University of California, Riverside) -- Currently serving as a
Provost’s Fellow in Theater, Film and Dance at Cornell University.
She is completing an e-book investigation of Carnival,
Completamente Pirado: O Carnaval Depois o Novo Linguagem do Pé
(Flipped-out Tongues/Wagging Heads), a multimediated,
user-driven experience of the ‘Grand Folly’ and race in Bahia,
Brazil. Dr. Scott is also working up/out a book manuscript on
techniques of blackness in the African diaspora:
Decipherments--Carnaval, Citizenship, & Race in
Salvador, Bahia-Brazil.
Her most recent article, “What's it Worth to Ya? Adaptation and
Anachronism: Rennie Harris' PureMovement & Shakespeare,” appears
in Discourses in Dance, spring 2004. Anna’s one-woman show,
Fish Tales, Rivers and Other Female Parts has been
presented at UC San Diego, RISD/Brown University, and MIT. Fish
Tales and other collected works can be found, in part, on the
World Wide Web at http://www.negressdeterminata.com.
Jacqueline Shea Murphy Assistant
Professor in the UCR Department of Dance, where she teaches
courses in dance history and theory. She has a Ph.D. in English
from the University of California, Berkeley, and is co-editor of
the collection Bodies of the Text: Dance as Theory, Literature
as Dance (Rutgers, 1995). She has published and taught in the
field of Native American studies, including articles appearing in
American Literary History and in the collection Dancing
Bodies, Living Histories: New Writings about Dance and Culture,
eds. Anne Flynn and Lisa Doolittle (Banff Centre Press, 2000).
Shea Murphy is currently completing a book on Native American and
Aboriginal dance in North America and its relation to modern dance
history, “The People Have Never Stopped
Dancing”: Native American Dance and Modern Dance History.
Earl Sisto
(Director, Native American Student Programs, UCR)
Priya
Srinivasan (Assistant Professor in Dance, UCR) --
Priya
Srinivasan's work explores the inter-relations between gender,
immigration, diaspora, citizenship, and performance in the United
States and various Asian diaspora. Ranging from the inter-twining
histories of American modern dance and Bharata Natyam, an Indian
classical dance form, she also explores the influence of Asian
films on Asian American performance practices, and art as
resistance. Prof. Srinivasan has been working as an experimental
dance/ theatre choreographer in Chicago and LA, and has extensive
training as a professional dancer in Australia.
Cliff Trafzer
(Wyandot) Professor of History and American Indian Studies at the
University of California, Riverside -- From 1982-1991 he served as
Chair of the American Indian Studies Department at San Diego State
University and as Director of American Indian Studies at the
University of California, Riverside, from 1991-2003. His most
recent books include Death Stalks the Yakama,
Exterminate Them!, The People of San Manuel, The
Native Universe, and As Long As the Grass Shall Grow and
Rivers Flow. He is currently working on Boarding School
Blues and Field Nurses Among Southern California Indians.
He is a member of the California Native American Herigate
Commission and the Symposium Committee of the National Museum of
the American Indian.
Tharon Weighill
(Doctoral Candidate in Dance, UCR) -- Tharon has a B.A. from San
Francisco State in History with an emphasis on the history
of native legal policies and treaties. He also received his M.A
from San Francisco State in Anthropology, where he began his study
on ritual theory and medical anthropology of Aboriginal Peoples in
California. Tharon’s M.A. Thesis focuses on the political economy
generated between ritual Chumash dances and Pow Wow Chumash
dances. His dissertation in Dance History and Theory at UCR,
entitled The 2-Step tales of Hahashka and Pullack’ack:
Experiences in Corporeality and Embodiment in Aboriginal
California, engages a comparative analysis and historical
reconstruction of the relationships between his tribal Peoples,
the Chumash of Coastal California, and both Hawaiians and the
people of Baja California. Additionally, it examines the
historical shifts in corporeal meaning and embodied presence of
California Aboriginal dance practices. Tharon has received many
awards and acknowledgements for his scholarship and research, and
has taught many courses on ritual theory, the legal history of
California Indians, modern California Indian history, and a course
on race and ethnicity in Hawaii. Tharon is a member of the
swordfish clan of the Chumash nation.
Vincent
Whipple --
Vincent Whipple is of Native American ancestry, being from the
Navajo, Oglala Sioux, and Santee Sioux tribes. He appeared in
MGM’s Windtalkers, directed by John Woo and starring
Nicolas Cage. From 1999-2004, Whipple has starred in The Ramona
Pageant, the Official California State Outdoor Play. He was a
principal dancer in the American Indian Dance Theatre
and performed with Rosalie Jones' Daystar Dance Theatre. Whipple
was awarded an Inland Theatre League Award in 2002 for
“Outstanding Contribution to Native American Music, Dance, and
Theatre” and also received ITL Awards for his 2001 & 2002
portrayals of “Alessandro” in The Ramona Pageant. Whipple
is the Artistic Director for the Wichozani Native American Dance
Theatre, a Southern California-base theater company, and obtained
a BA in Anthropology from Harvard and an MA in American Indian
Studies from UCLA. Presently, he is completing his PhD in Dance
History and Theory at UC, Riverside
Craig Womack
(Oklahoma Creek-Cherokee) -- Womack teaches Native Literature in
the English Department at the University of Oklahoma and is author
of Red on Red, a literary history of the Muskogee Creek
Nation, and Drowning in Fire, a novel.
Hertha Dawn Sweet Wong
Department of English, UC Berkeley -- Hertha Sweet Wong is
Associate Professor in the English Department (affiliated with
Ethnic Studies and American Studies) and Assistant Dean in the
College of Letters of Science at the University of California,
Berkeley. She is author of Sending My Heart Back Across the Years:
Tradition and Innovation in Native American Autobiography (Oxford
UP, 1992) as well as numerous articles on Native American
literature, autobiography, and environmental non-fiction. She is
editor of Louise Erdrich's "Love Medicine": A Casebook (Oxford UP,
2000) and, with John Elder, co-editor of Family of Earth and Sky:
Indigenous Tales of Nature from around the World (Beacon, 1994 ).
Currently, she is co-editing an anthology of contemporary short
fiction by Native North American women and working on a book
manuscript on visual autobiography.
