Music Library Association Conference 2023

While creating an appropriate land acknowledgement is a step in the right direction at identifying the original peoples that continue to live in these United States, the efforts should not stop there. This plenary session will look beyond the land acknowledgement and highlight Indigenous performers and creators of the 20th and 21st centuries, who deserve to be celebrated for their contributions to the arts.

Dr. Laurie Arnold (Sinixt Band Colville Confederated Tribes), Professor of History and Director of Native American Studies at Gonzaga University, will begin with a look at Indigenous theatre’s new vibrancy and visibility. She will explore how contemporary Native American playwrights are expanding the historical dialogue by remaking American theatre with historical narratives that audiences have either forgotten or never learned. She will discuss how topics like the Cherokee Trail of Tears, federal Indian boarding schools, and tribal jurisdiction are being confronted while asserting tribal political and cultural sovereignty, enhancing the audience’s comprehension of tribal histories and perspectives and the importance of this work.

Erin Fehr (Yup’ik), Assistant Director and Archivist for the Sequoyah National Research Center at University of Arkansas at Little Rock, will highlight early 20th century Native American musicians that were educated in off-reservation boarding schools whose Federal Indian policies included “Kill the Indian, save the man.” While the purpose was to strip Native peoples from their cultures, the boarding school education instead gave them a new form of music to utilize professionally and for individual expression. From travelling performers like Tsianina Redfeather Blackstone (Cherokee/Creek) to librettists and composers like Zitkala-Sa (Yankton Dakota) and Louis Ballard (Quapaw), Native American musicians have left their mark on the realm of classical music for over a century.

Heidi Senungetuk (Inupiaq) will explore how Indigenous methodologies that foreground cultural advocacy, revitalization, and education can be articulated using Indigenous music, language, and cultural metaphor. She will introduce several Native American contemporary composers for consideration and how they perceive values of interconnectedness, relationality, continuity, politics, and soundscapes in Indigenous composition. She will include a performance of a portion of a recent work, For Zitkála-Šá (2022), by Pulitzer Prize winner Raven Chacon.