Season 2, Episode 5
Renewal Dance
Dance, Ceremony and Native civil liberties
June 4th, 2024
For the Paiute of the late 1800s, the “Ghost Dance" promised a new world where the beloved dead would return home and white settlers would disappear into the earth. It was a dance of hope and rebalance in a world devastated by U.S. policies bent on the destruction of Native cultures and sovereignty. This new dance was – and still is – often referred to as a ‘religion’ by outsiders, even though the very words ‘religion’, ‘magic’, and ‘spirituality’ are external ideas historically imposed upon Indigenous practices. This story of the Ghost Dance is a story of grief, renewal, and political resistance. But the story of Native dances and Ceremonies – and efforts by the U.S. government over the decades to restrict them – is also the story of just how limited the word ‘religion’ really is.
Featuring Jennifer Graber, Abel Gomez, Tria Blu Wakpa.
FEATURING
Shive, Lindsay, and Gray Professor of Religious Studies and Affiliate Faculty in the Program in Native American and Indigenous Studies at the University of Texas at Austin
Professor Graber works on Native American religions, religion and violence, and inter-religious encounters in American prisons and on the American frontier. She is the author of two books: The Furnace of Affliction: Prisons and Religion in Antebellum America, (UNC Press, 2011) and The Gods of Indian Country: Religion and the Struggle for the American West, (Oxford UP, 2018). Her current research on the Ghost Dance is supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Guggenheim Foundation.
Assistant Professor of Native American and Indigenous Spiritual Traditions, Texas Christian University
Abel R. Gomez is Assistant Professor of Indigenous spiritual traditions in the Religion Department at Texas Christian University. His research and teaching examine relationships between sacred sites, ceremony, gender and sexuality, Indigenous cosmologies, and (de)colonization. He is a steering committee member for the Native Traditions in the Americas Unit of the American Academy of Religion and advisory board member for the Center for Religion and Cities at Morgan State University. His research is published in Political Theology and Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture and his public-facing work is featured on various podcasts and online publications
Assistant Professor of Dance Studies, Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance, UCLA
Tria Blu Wakpa is an Assistant Professor in the Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance at UCLA. She received a Ph.D. from the Department of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from San Diego State University. Her research and teaching center community-engaged, decolonizing, and dance studies methodologies to examine the politics and practices of dance and other movement modes—such as theater, athletics, and yoga—for Indigenous peoples in and beyond structures and institutions of confinement. She is a mother, scholar, poet, and practitioner of Indigenous dance, Indigenous sign language, martial arts, and yoga. Dr. Blu Wakpa’s publications are available open access here: https://ucla.academia.edu/TriaBluWakpa
CREDITS
Host: Heather Freeman; Producer: Amber Walker; Editor: Lucy Perkins; Associate Producer: Noor Gill; Sound Design: Jennie Cataldo; Fact Checker: Dania Suleman; Executive Producer for PRX Productions: Jocelyn Gonzales; Music: APM Music and Epidemic Sound; Project Managers: Edwin Ochoa and Morgan Church; Advisors: Danielle Boaz, Abel Gomez, Daniel Harms and Meg Whalen; Guests: Jennifer Graber, Abel Gomez, Tria Blu Wakpa; Funding and Support: The National Endowment for the Humanities and The University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
TRANSCRIPT
LEARN MORE
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