This article considers Native American/indigenous (women's) theatre from the perspective of performing indigeneities/embodied spiritualities, in relation to ceremonial and ‘cotidian’ ri(gh)t(e)s, and the practice of personal and collective autonomy as a ri(gh)t(e). I situate my discussion within particular sites of the performance of indigeneity and the embodiment of spirituality in Chiapas, Mexico, where my research has taken me, within my own work with a performance course I created at the University of California, Davis, and within critical perspectives offered in Native American studies. I also provide some commentary on the two related gatherings that took place at the Centro Hemisférico/FOMMA, in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, August 2008, and the Actions of Transfer: Women's Performance in the Americas conference at UCLA, November 2008. Both events were co-sponsored by the Hemispheric Institute on Performance and Politics of NYU and they were announced on the UCLA website as ‘sister’ events. In August 2008, FOMMA officially became a ‘branch’ centre of the Hemispheric Institute.
Native American Scholarship and the Transnational Turn