Why do you need to know the history of federal Indian policy to fully understand Shakespeare’s role within communities and on this land?

Americans have long assumed Shakespeare is a prevalent literary voice because he is the best—but, when one voice is loudest, it is hard to hear the others. After a while, it becomes difficult to recognize that there could be alternatives, that those quieter voices might have something to say that is equally, if not more, significant. Shakespeare’s prevalence and power in America persists by upholding the tastes and the social and political paradigms of settler colonial cultures.  

It is important when teaching Shakespeare in America to acknowledge the colonial legacy that brought his texts to this land. Because American history is usually taught solely from the settler perspective, with a false narrative of progress, very few non-Native Americans are familiar with the history of Indian policy. Without the knowledge of this history, it is easy to view Shakespeare as a purely artistic or cultural pedestal, rather than as a political tool within the settler colonial project. Federal Indian policy represents centuries of (unconstitutional) legislation that led to the destruction, assimilation, removal, and erasure of Native peoples.  

Without the power systems that seized Native land, languages, arts, and culture, Shakespeare would not hold this position in the American literary canon.  

To engage students in the performance history of Shakespeare in America, they need to be familiar with the political landscapes in which his plays were taught and staged. Further, to bring the Indigenizing Shakespeare Movement into our classrooms, it is imperative that our students are informed and knowledgeable of this history—one that most of them were never taught.

What the Indigenizing Shakespeare Movement teaches us about Native theater and 21st-century Shakespearean performance

Each Shakespearean performance is an opportunity to see choices that are unique to the culture, community, moment in time, and artists inhabiting each production. The specificity of each Native nation’s culture and sovereignty is incredibly important, and one of the key expressions of that sovereignty is language. The Indigenizing Shakespeare movement centers language first and foremost, but not through reverence to Shakespeare’s texts. Instead, the Movement centers Indigenous languages in conversation with Shakespeare’s, exposing more people to hearing and speaking the hundreds of Native languages indigenous to these lands. Audiences understand the power that such language holds as equal to Shakespeare’s language.  

The use of Indigenous languages onstage is common in Native theater, but in an Indigenizing Shakespeare production, who is speaking what language wields additional power and intention. Philosophy and poetry already loved by Shakespeareans are more deeply engaged when more languages are considered. Shakespeare’s poetry can be reinterpreted through the lenses of the cultures of this place, just as has been done internationally for centuries. The Indigenizing Shakespeare Movement is a place-based sovereign continuation of the way all peoples who have received these texts are finding new ways to interpret them through their own cultural frameworks and empower their own communities today.  

Native theater has existed in different forms since before the colonists came to America. There has always been storytelling on this land, manifesting in different practices across Native nations. Before the Contemporary Native Theater Movement arose in the 1960-70s, performances or plays written by Native peoples manifested in unique ways in each era and community.

The Native Theater Movement began in urban Indian communities alongside a series of Indigenous rights protests, and shifts in policy toward the return of Native rights and freedoms during the civil rights era. Native theater has never lost its sense of deep political engagement because Native people are still being affected by Indian policy, every day.  

In the last decade mainstream theaters have begun welcoming Native plays on their stages. However, most mainstream theater practice remains embedded with the tropes of centuries of non-Native representation of Native peoples onstage.  

​​​Before American theaters were ready to produce Native plays, or understood anything about Native peoples or cultures, Shakespeare often acted as a bridge for representation to include Native peoples in theater productions. Shakespeare in the hands of Native theater makers was and is a powerful tool for asking more of contemporary theater at large.