A public lecture delivered by Robin Raven Prichard, Fulbright Scholar NZ and Professor of Dance at Akron University.

In the world of contemporary artmaking, Indigenous cultures are not always legible as innovators. The performance innovations of Native Americans, Māori New Zealanders, and Australian Aboriginal peoples have often gone unacknowledged as they are shoved into categories originally designed to benefit the Anglo-modernism of the mid-20th century.

Through a trans-Indigenous lens, I show examples of Native American dance and performance that challenge modernist and colonialist dichotomies to reveal Indigenous dancers as innovative and original creators of dance and performance practices.