UNIVERSITY of CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Dancing
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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Dancing Breath: Ceremonial Performance Practice, Environment, and Personhood in a Muskogee Creek Community A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Ethnomusicology by Ryan Abel Koons 2016 © Copyright by Ryan Abel Koons 2016 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Dancing Breath: Ceremonial Performance Practice, Environment, and Personhood in a Muskogee Creek Community by Ryan Abel Koons Doctor of Philosophy in Ethnomusicology University of California, Los Angeles, 2016 Professor Tara Browner, Chair This dissertation presents an ethnography utilizing a multispecies perspective of the "busk" ritual cycle as performed by the southeastern Muskogee Creek American Indian community, Pvlvcekolv (Apalachicola). Humans construct humanity and personhood partially via interactions with other-than-human persons, such as animals, plants, and objects. I examine ritualized interactions between humans and others-than-human in a southeastern Indigenous "natureculture," exploring the intersections of ontology, personhood, and performance practice. Pvlvcekolv, an animistic Florida-based tribal town with a ceremonial Fire that pre-dates European Contact, maintains a centuries-old ritual tradition, the busk. Sometimes known as "Green Corn Ceremonialism," many Native communities share this tradition, including ii Cherokee, Chickasaw, Seminole, Yuchi, and other Creek peoples historically and in the present day. Performing the songs, dances, and ritual actions of the busk places participants into dialogue with other-than-human persons. Participants thank, propitiate, and communicate and transform with these beings. Busk performance articulates worldview and actuates inter-species relationality. Ethnomusicological studies often ignore movement/dance in favor of sound/music. Especially in Indigenous contexts, however, excluding the corporeal privileges a Euro- Americentric construction that splits sonic and physical activities into separate categories. I develop a method of performance analysis that addresses both modalities using Pvlvcekolv's ethnophilosophy. With this analytical model, I investigate meanings that arise in Pvlvcekolv's busk performance practice. I explore the Turtle and Bench Dances as forms of Indigenous library/archive/museum/storehouse (LAMS) science. These dances facilitate participants' interactions with, and corporeal accessioning of, history and ritual. I also contrast the life histories of object persons accessioned in LAMS with the lives and experiences of their cousins in use in ceremony, treating another facet of Pvlvcekolv's Native LAMS practice. Several animal dances, such as the Feather and Buffalo Dances, place performers into dialogue with animal persons. Through ritual, humans and other beings merge, further developing their interrelationships. Pvlvcekolv community members regularly interact with plants, conversing with, and, in turn, hearing plant speech and song. I push at boundaries surrounding "voice," developing a definition that can apply equally to humans and others-than-human in an animistic cosmology. I conclude with breath and silence, the media through which all beings interrelate in Pvlvcekolv's cosmology. Based on over a decade of collaborative ethnographic research, observation-participation, and LAMS research, this dissertation proposes that ritual performance iii practice articulates relationality between beings, maintaining inter-species relationships in this southeastern Indigenous natureculture. iv The dissertation of Ryan Abel Koons is approved. Elisabeth Le Guin Daniel Neuman Anthony Seeger David Delgado Shorter Tara Browner, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2016 v Dedication For Hakopē. For Kim Lacey Rogers and Jean Weaver. And for those of Pvlvcekolv who have already traveled to the Campfires of the Departed. Mvto. vi Table of Contents Abstract of the Dissertation ......................................................................................................... ii Dedication ..................................................................................................................................... vi Table of Contents ........................................................................................................................ vii List of Figures ............................................................................................................................... xi List of Musical Examples .......................................................................................................... xvi Note on Terminology, Capitalization, Pseudonyms, and Spelling ....................................... xvii Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................... xix VITA......................................................................................................................................... xxvii Chapter One: Introduction .......................................................................................................... 1 Approaching the Body ........................................................................................................ 5 Literature Survey ................................................................................................................ 9 Methods and Field Research ............................................................................................. 12 Outline of the Dissertation ................................................................................................ 23 Chapter Two: Pvlvcekolv History and "Authenticity" ........................................................... 29 Mississippian Pvlvcekolv.................................................................................................. 30 Colonial Pvlvcekolv .......................................................................................................... 37 Treaties, Removals, Hiding in Plain Sight ........................................................................ 46 Pvlvcekolv Now ................................................................................................................ 60 Issues of Race ................................................................................................................... 65 "Authenticity" ................................................................................................................... 71 The Vnahetv ("Conclusions") ........................................................................................... 89 Chapter Three: Pvlvcekolv Cosmology and the Busk ............................................................. 91 vii Creek Cosmology.............................................................................................................. 91 Historic Accounts of the Busk .......................................................................................... 99 James Adair on the Busk ..................................................................................... 102 William Bartram on the Busk .............................................................................. 104 Benjamin Hawkins on the Busk........................................................................... 106 John Howard Payne on the Busk ........................................................................ 107 Social Scientists Write the Busk ..................................................................................... 111 Frank Speck on the Busk ..................................................................................... 112 John Witthoft on the Busk ................................................................................... 116 Amelia Rector Bell on the Busk .......................................................................... 118 Edwin Schupman Jr. on the Busk ........................................................................ 119 Jason Baird Jackson on the Busk........................................................................ 121 The Busk at Pvlvcekolv .................................................................................................. 123 The Vnahetv ("Conclusions") ......................................................................................... 128 Chapter Four: Embodying the Busk ....................................................................................... 130 Approaching Sound and Movement ............................................................................... 130 Corporeal Ethnography ................................................................................................... 133 Muskogee Approaches to the Body and Movement ....................................................... 136 Muskogee Approaches to Music ..................................................................................... 147 The Fast ........................................................................................................................... 150 Ribbon Dance.................................................................................................................. 154 The Vnahetv ("Conclusions") ......................................................................................... 166 Chapter Five: The Body as "Archive".................................................................................... 168 LAMS ............................................................................................................................