Manahatta world premiere Mary Kathryn Nagle Directed by Laurie Woolery

Luke / Se-ket-tu-may-qua Luke is a young man enrolled in the Delaware Nation in Anadarko. His father, Michael, adopted him when he was very young, after the State came and took him from his grandparents. Se-ket-tu-may-qua is a young Lenape man living in Manahatta in the 1600s. He is intelligent and resourceful. He learns to speak with the Dutch and trades fur with them so he can provide for his people.

Notes by Sarah dAngelo, Dick / / Peter Stuyvesant Curtis Zunigha, Eddie Wallace, Tanis Parenteau (Jane / Le-le-wa’-you) Dick is Jane’s boss and CEO of Lehman Brothers. Dr. Margaret Bruchac and Peter Minuit is the director of the Dutch West Mary Kathryn Nagle India Company who “purchased” the island of Who’s Who Manahatta. Peter Stuyvesant is the Dutch colo- nial governor of New Amsterdam who ordered Jane /Le-le-wa’-you the building of the wall on what is now Wall Jane is a present-day Lenape woman and a citizen Street to displace the Lenape from Manahatta. of the Delaware Nation in Anadarko, . She holds an MBA from Stanford University Joe / Jakob and works in with a prestigious Joe is the CFO of Lehman Brothers. Jakob is a investment bank, Lehman Brothers. Dutch fur trader in Manahatta in the 1600s. He Le-le-wa’-you is a young Lenape woman living in serves as a liaison between Peter Minuit and the Manahatta in the 1600s. She is curious about the Lenape, and later works for Peter Stuyvesant. Dutch newcomers and begins trading with them. Michael / Jonas Michaelius Debra / Toosh-ki-pa-kwis-i Michael is a church choir director and banker in Debra is a present-day Lenape woman and a citi- Anadarko. Jonas Michaelius is a missionary, sent zen of the Delaware Nation in Anadarko, Jane’s to Manahatta by the Dutch West India Company older sister who has moved into the family home to organize a church, who attempts to convert to care for their mother, Bobbie. She is grounded the Lenape to Christianity. in her culture and works to launch a Lenape language program for her community. Toosh-ki- pa-kwis-i is a Lenape woman living in Manahatta The Story in the 1600s. She is protective of her younger sister, Le-le-wa’-you, and encourages her to leave Manahatta is based on historic events and tells Manahatta once the violence brought on by the the story of a present-day Lenape woman, her Dutch threatens to exterminate all Lenape. family in Anadarko, Oklahoma and her ancestors living in Manahatta (now called ), Bobbie / Mother during the 1600s when Peter Minuit, head of Bobbie is a present-day Lenape elder and a the Dutch West India Company, “purchased” the citizen of the Delaware Nation in Anadarko. She island from the Lenape. is Jane and Debra’s mother. She is stubborn to Jane Snake, a Lenape woman from the a fault and lives the Lenape way. Mother is a Delaware Nation, Oklahoma, is a gifted math- Lenape elder living in Manahatta in the 1600s. ematician with an MBA from Stanford University. She is cautious about trading with the Dutch Six years before the 2008 financial crisis, she relo- and worries for the future of Manahatta and the cated to her ancestral homeland of Manahatta to Lenape people. launch her career at the prestigious investment bank Lehman Brothers, on Wall Street.

23 Manahatta materializing the message in wampum Lenape: The Original People

Picture a midden of shells, fresh Jane navigates her identity amid the implications From the depths of the great sea, the Creator from the feasting, piled near the of her job at Lehman Brothers and the tragic (Keeshalamukonk) brought forth Turtle (Tahkokx) history of her Lenape ancestors who once called carrying mud atop its massive shell. The warm shore of what is now the north- Manahatta home. Jane’s relationship with her sunlight drew the great tree of life from that eastern . Dark and sister, Debra, and her mother, Bobbie, in Anadarko earth and human life began. Thus “Turtle Island” light, broken and whole, these becomes strained by the distance and time became the place inhabited by the Lenape, the demands of her job. Bobbie is grounded in the original people of the land. This sacred gift of life, are the material remains of the Lenape lifeways and actively resists most main- of language and culture, of tradition and spirit, marine creatures whose salty stream values. Debra’s connection to home and were honored by the Lenape through ceremony flesh fed the Indigenous people serving her community leads her to question her and thanksgiving. The ancestors knew of their sister’s lifestyle and her choices that keep her so relationship with all life and spirit, whether it be who gathered here. Mingled far away from home and the family. the waters, the mountains, the animals or the together are the chitinous Time and place flow seamlessly: The genera- forests. That’s why all of creation was given exoskeletons of crab and lob- tions of the family emerge into the action of names of kinship to honor the harmony and the play as the events of the story unfold. The balance necessary for sustenance. They lived for ster, the calcareous shells of the Lenape ancestors in Manahatta are suffering countless generations on the bounty of the sea bivalve mollusks (oysters, mussels, from the exploits of the Dutch West India and the bounty of the forests. clams) and the spiral-shaped Company and its fur trade. Faced with disease, The Lenape became known by many land encroachment, crop destruction and dwin- Indigenous people as the Ancient Ones and were shells of the univalve gastropods dling resources, the Lenape elder (Mother) agrees revered as peaceful elders. Their religious prac- (snails, whelks). to trade with the Dutch in exchange for food and tices endured through the centuries and begat This gathering was more than unwittingly “sells” Manahatta to Peter Minuit. peacemakers and prophets of great oratory skill. Her daughter, Le-le-wa’-you, and her companion, They were an inherently caring and benevolent just a meal, however. Important Se-ket-tu-may-qua, engage in fur trade with the people existing in a matrilineal society of which business was conducted here: Dutch for guilders and soon face heavy taxation. the women were the backbone. Weapons were laid aside; peace Mother’s oldest daughter, Toosh-ki-pa-kwis-i Then came Shwannock, the pale ones with encounters Jonas Michaelius, a missionary who hairy faces and long knives, sailing in large was negotiated; words were attempts to convert the Lenape to Christianity. boats along the river which flows in both direc- spoken. Minds will remember, Bobbie takes a mortgage loan to cover medi- tions [now known as the Hudson]. The Lenape but minds are fragile things. cal expenses. She quickly becomes unable to keep cautiously welcomed these strangers to allow up with the steep payments and the loan goes them respite on their shores and in their camps. Sturdier materials were needed. into default. During the peak of the financial The foreigners had already built a network of And so it is that the hands crisis on Wall Street, Lehman Brothers begins to trade and commerce with the societies of other of Indigenous artisans gathered, disintegrate and Jane’s family homestead goes Indigenous people, but now they wanted to into bank foreclosure. usurp the ’ economic power by taking from this midden, two kinds After the “sale” of Manahatta, Peter their bountiful lands. The Lenape did not know of shells: univalve and bivalve, Stuyvesant is sent by the Dutch West India of nor understand the concept of ownership of white and purple, whelk and Company to replace Peter Minuit and handle the land and the waterways. These gifts of life from “problem” of the Lenape still living in Manahatta. the Creator were for their shared occupancy quahog. From the center whorls He orders Jakob, a local fur trader and his liaison with all creation. They would soon find out that of the youngest whelk, and from with the Lenape, to launch a campaign of killing Shwannock would arrive in boatload after boat- the outer edges of the oldest on sight and to use slave labor to build a wall to load until they became like grains of sand on keep the Lenape out of Manahatta. As the past the shore. Trade and commerce first flourished quahog, beads were painstaking- and present events of Manahatta spiral into crisis but soon became forced theft upon the ly cut, sanded, drilled, and strung and collide, all are faced with difficult, life-alter- Original People. with leather from the tanned ing choices. Manahatta explores the meaning of The Lenape lived for centuries in many small family, identity, home and the cost of American villages throughout what is now Delaware, hides of deer and fibers from capitalism on human lives. —Sarah dAngelo Philadelphia, southeastern New York State and the pith of dogbane. Woven most of New Jersey. American history tells of together, water’s edge, forest great encounters with the Lenape by great men.

24 Mapping Manahatta

Audiences new to the performance of thicket, and open fields materi- contemporary Native American plays will find alized the message. the storytelling style of Manahatta refreshingly In strings, arm’s lengths, or different from other theatrical genres. This is because Native theatre is its own field of perfor- fathoms, these shell beads— national anthropological archives/smithsonian institution archives/smithsonian anthropological national mance. It is broadly described as an embodiment called Wampumpeag, or of the practices found in Western European Wampum—encoded and com- theatre interwoven with the creative expressions of Native ways of being. Given the vast diversity municated the intentions of of voices, experiences and traditions found those who carried them. Some throughout Indian country in the U.S., it is problematic to describe Native plays within a were used in healing ceremo- single paradigm. Native theatre is by nature nies and rituals of condolence, a hybrid artform privileged by the diversity of or worn as protective adorn- Native experiences and distinctive Native Delaware (Lenape) women: Jennie Bobb and her daughter, ment. Some were woven into Nellie Longhat, Oklahoma, 1915. aesthetics rooted in memory, the oral tradition and performative storytelling. diplomatic collars and belts, and William Penn’s treaty with the Lenape would give meticulously patterned into rise to the City of Brotherly Love, Philadelphia. The Collapsing the boundaries of form paths, rafters, diamonds and Dutch established the colony of New Amsterdam While Manahatta centers on the Lenape people on the island known as Manahatta (“the place who celebrate their own cultural practices, beliefs other symbols. These patterned where they gather wood for bows and arrows”). and language apart from other Native nations, wampum objects were assigned The English replaced that colony with New York the play reveals characteristics and topics that specific meanings to recall the and the governor, Sir Thomas West, Lord de la are intertribal in nature and meaningful across Warr, named the river valley and its native inhab- the nations. The canon of contemporary Native significance of that encounter, itants Delaware. American plays offers a range of theatrical the history of that tribe, or the George Washington desired a relationship creative expression and a multiplicity of voices. intentions of those parties. with the Lenape (now called the Delaware), Yet similar themes and structures often emerge. because of their strategic location during the The themes found in Manahatta examine iden- For centuries, the Indigenous American Revolution. On September 17, 1778, at tity, tribal history, the complexities found in people of these eastern Fort Pitt, the new United States used its new traditional and contemporary lifestyles, the shores—Lenape, Mohegan, authority under its new Constitution to make tensions between Christianity and traditional the first treaty with an Indian nation, the practices, intergenerational households, the Montauk, Narragansett, Niantic, Delaware. The Lenape demonstrated neutrality passing on of traditional knowledge and the Shinnecock, Wampanoag, and then alliance with the “Longknives,” only to be presence of native languages. others—have made wampum later betrayed and pushed westward. From The interwoven nature of these topics is Wilmington to West Point, they became refugees revealed through the Native understandings of beads. They shared these beads in their own homeland. motion, place and time. When enacted within with the Haudenosaunee— But the enduring spirit of their ancestors who the context of the Native theatre aesthetic, Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, sprang from the first Tree of Life would sustain these elements collapse the boundaries of the them through decades of deprivation and forced forms found in traditional Western theatre. A Cayuga, Seneca, and Tuscarora— migration. As long as they could stand before a dynamic style of performance occurs that is both who perfected the art and sci- sacred fire and pray in their language, they theatrical and representative of the way Native ence of wampum diplomacy. survived. As they traversed the Trail of Broken epistemology emerges in the aesthetic of all Treaties, they settled in Ontario, Canada, and in expressive arts. In Manahatta, we see the action Native people shared their Oklahoma, where they continue to live. Their of the play move episodically through temporal/ understandings of wampum resilience, tempered by their enduring ancestral platial realms similar to the style of the oral with strangers from across spirit, has maintained a continuity of identity as tradition and Native storytelling, which mirrors the Original People, which still exists today. the experience of human memory. The overlap the ocean—Dutch, English, —Curtis Zunigha and simultaneous occurrence of time and place French and others—who, at

25 Manahatta

times, embraced the protocols express exchange with a multiplicity of realms She encounters rhetorical aggressions from her of wampum diplomacy as an and realities. The interplay between realities and non-Native superiors and colleagues who assume the co-occurrences of temporal and platial realms knowledge about her identity and experience effective means of building alli- is understood and accepted as a natural part of growing up Native in Oklahoma. By returning ances. But during the settler the human experience in Native epistemology. to her ancestral homeland, the power of place colonial era, these strangers drives Jane to navigate and reconcile her Lenape Tracing Lenape history identity. As her ancestral knowledge deepens over also used wampum beads for Manahatta playwright Mary Kathryn Nagle’s the course of the play, her literal and metaphoric money, transmuting the shells research included interviews with Lenape elders belonging in the world deepens. of these once-living beings who specifically requested the names of their For Debra and Bobbie, Oklahoma informs their historical leaders be assigned to characters in identities shaped by lineage, language, spiritual- into dead agents of commerce. the play. Ultimately, only one character carries ity, history and home. Debra works to build a Wampum was strong, but it the name of an actual Lenape leader, Se-ket-tu- language preservation program for the Lenape was vulnerable; when war broke may-qua. Se-ket-tu-may-qua, however, was not people in the community and does not share present in Manahatta in 1626 when the Dutch Jane’s career pursuits beyond Anadarko. Bobbie out, even wampum belts would “purchased” the island. Se-ket-tu-may-qua was a lives in the home built by her grandparents on be marked with blood. Yet blood legendary leader of the Lenape in the mid-19th the family land, passed through the generations could be washed away by the century when the Delaware Nation was removed from the allotment days. The homestead is a site from their reservation in Texas and placed where of connection, linking Bobbie to her relatives exchange of good words and they are today in Anadarko, Oklahoma. who were relocated to Oklahoma from the good wampum. Nagle writes, “To the Delaware Lenape today, Brazos Reserve in Texas in the mid-19th century. And so it is that the hands Se-ket-tu-may-qua continues to serve as an Although Bobbie has never physically been to example of the sort of intelligence, integrity and Manahatta, she understands the experience one of Indigenous artisans have bravery that comprise the character of the Lenape has of ancestral presence in the land. She speaks always gathered these shells— people.” Beginning early in the play’s develop- to Jane about Manahatta in the Lenape language dark and light, broken and ment, the dramaturgical elements of motion, and passes on ancestral knowledge about the place and time embodied by Se-ket-tu-may-qua significant Lenape sites hidden in the present-day whole, old and young, quahog brought to life the collective memory of the Manahatta landscape. and whelk, purple and white— Lenape people marking different time periods in those days, and in these, to and places in Lenape history. Survivance The linguistic presence of the Lenape language weave new wampum. The rootedness of place spoken in the play is significant and resonates —Dr. Margaret Bruchac In the staging notes of the play, Nagle states, in real-world terms beyond the theatrical. Most “Manahatta takes place in two time periods, Native languages in the present day are at risk simultaneously. One half of the play takes place of extinction due to colonial efforts to collapse in Manahatta, in both the 17th and 21st centuries. Native culture and assimilate children as young The other half of the play takes place in modern- as five years old through government-mandated day Anadarko. It is important that the two worlds residential schools. These schools were estab- begin separately but immediately commence on lished in the late-19th and early-20th centuries a course that ultimately results in a collision.” and continued to be federally mandated until The places of Manahatta and Oklahoma are the passage of the Indian Child Welfare Act in integral to the story and structure of the play. 1978. Separating children from their parents and Both places figure so prominently in the story communities has had a devastating impact on that one could say they function as actively as all Native cultures, leaving a very small number the characters themselves. The dynamics of place of fluent speakers in the present day. Native lan- relates to the Native understanding of the knowl- guages contain identity markers and codify cul- edge, experience and meanings held within the tural nuances and histories that connect Native very landscape. As Jane navigates the modern- peoples to place. Bobbie speaks of her experience day business world in Manahatta at a non-Native as a young girl at the Riverside Indian School in investment bank, cultural challenges emerge. Anadarko, and the harsh physical punishment

26 from tulips to houses she and her husband, Charlie, endured there for A meta-theatrical creation story In 1637, the “tulip bubble” burst, speaking Lenape. Bobbie asserts her identity and During its early development, the performance sending the Dutch economy cultural presence by speaking Lenape. The act history of Manahatta is a meta-theatrical of speaking Lenape intrinsically creates a mate- creation story, also informed by motion, place into a tailspin. Prior to 1637, the rial rootedness and reciprocal relationship to and time. The play was developed during Nagle’s value of prized tulip bulbs sky- Manahatta through motion, place and time. 2012–2013 residency with The Public Theater’s rocketed as investors began to Spoken Native language, affirmation of iden- Emerging Writers Group in New York City. It was tity and connection to place are enactments presented as a featured staged reading during pay more and more guilders— of what Anishinaabe cultural theorist Gerald the Oklahoma City Theatre Company’s 4th annual the Dutch currency at the Vizenor refers to as Survivance: the act of resist- Native American New Play Festival, April 20, 2013. time—for a single tulip bulb. At ing the Native stereotype of a “vanishing race” The play was presented in New York City as a with a sense of Native presence over absence, reading on May 22, 2013, during the United the mania’s peak in February nihility and victimry. Manahatta and Oklahoma Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous People. 1637, single tulip bulbs sold for are integral to subverting colonial mindsets It also received a reading later that year as a more than 10 times the annual through language, identity and ancestral connec- part of The Public’s New Work Now series co- tion as the characters move between and within presented by New York City–based Native theatre income of a skilled craftworker. each place as the events of the story unfold. company The Eagle Project on September 14, 2013. Some 371 years later, in 2008, The Oklahoma City Theatre Company’s 5th annual the “housing bubble” burst, Memory Native American New Play Festival selected Nagle also states in her staging notes, “The cast Manahatta as the featured festival production, sending both the American and consists of seven actors total. Each actor must and performances ran May 8–17, 2014. The Public world economies into a tailspin. play the characters as they are outlined. The Theater workshopped Manahatta during its inau- Before 2008, the value of homes double/triple casting is not optional.” The double gural Public Studio series, where the play opened and triple casting enacts motion through the May 15, 2014. The workshop production at The skyrocketed as investors contin- characters who transform intergenerationally, Public Theater opened with a prayer in Lenape ued to pour money into residen- from place to place, and from one time period to from the Delaware Tribe’s Tribal Operations tial mortgage-backed securi- another. The world of the play expands through Manager and former Chief, Curtis Zunigha. the compression of the characters. Each one In December 2014, Manahatta was named a ties—a financial instrument actively moves into embodied enactments of top-three finalist for the 2014 William Saroyan Wall Street created to sustain, ancestral coexistence and expressing a connec- Prize for Playwriting, and was named the runner- briefly, a market for the mort- tion to place and the cyclical nature of time. In up for the 2015 Jane Chambers Playwriting Award. moments, the characters generationally intersect Manahatta is also on the 2015 Kilroy’s List and gage loans necessary to support across the centuries. The characters Jane / Le-le- has been read in college and university classes an inflated housing bubble. At wa’-you, Debra / Toosh-ki-pa-kwis-i, Luke / Se-ket- around the country. the peak of the bubble, in 2007, tu-may-qua, and Bobbie / Mother become one and the same as they move through and between Tribalography hundreds of mortgage com- their ancestral bloodlines. Based on historic events, Manahatta represents panies were making mortgage The nature of this staging further articulates the Lenape voice as each of the characters engages loans to millions of the Native understanding of ancestral coexis- with non-Natives in a living intersection of motion, tence, blood memory and identity, all of which place and time. Manahatta invites audiences to to purchase homes at prices are rooted in motion, place and time. Ancestral transform into a community bearing witness in many times the annual income coexistence and blood memory refer to the way the tradition of Native storytelling to re-vision the of a skilled craftsworker. ancestral stories and events remain within an Lenape narrative and how Manahatta came to individual as inherited, somatic information be. Choctaw writer and literary theorist LeAnne What happened in 2008 encoded and passed through the generations. Howe’s notion of Tribalography resonates in the isn’t complicated. It’s repetitive Nagle’s stated casting and staging requirements interwoven construction of this cross-cultural of what came before. Perhaps of merging place, characters and time periods exchange. According to Howe, “Tribalography is a structures dramatic meaning and conveys the story that links Indians and non-Indians,” which this time we can take action to fluid motion between temporal and platial realms. gives a fuller version of individual and tribal ensure it won’t happen again. identities. Manahatta dramatically presents the —M. K. N.

27 Manahatta mary kathryn nagle

Mary Kathryn Nagle is a partner interconnected nature of the aesthetic manifesta- at Pipestem Law and an award- tions that distinguish Native American plays from other styles of theatre performance. —S. D. winning playwright. She is a citizen of the Nation of Oklahoma and an honorary Writing Plays to Change Laws member of the Ponca Tribe of People often ask me “When will you stop being Nebraska. a lawyer and just be a playwright?” My answer: Prior readings of Mana- Never. I am a storyteller, but the stories I tell are the ones that U.S. law, for many years, sought to hatta took place at The Public silence. Our inability to tell our stories—until Theater’s New Work Now series now—has ensured the survival of laws designed and at the 2013 United Nations to take our lands, our dignity and ultimately, our sovereignty. But we are still here. To change the Permanent Forum on Indig- law, we must tell our stories. Playwright Mary Kathryn Nagle enous People. The play was a As a lawyer, I know that the near erasure of finalist for the 2014 William Tribal Nations wouldn’t have been possible with- a direct descendant of a survivor of genocide, I’ve out the law. The law made genocide possible; for committed my life’s work to eradicating the Saroyan Prize for Playwriting. example, The Indian Removal Act (IRA) of 1831, or harmful stereotypes and false stories this nation Nagle’s new play Sovereignty the Supreme Court’s 1823 decision in Johnson v. created to justify the “legal” extermination of my will premiere at Arena Stage in M’Intosh, wherein the Court declared that Tribal people. So no, I will never just be a “playwright.” Nations could no longer claim legal title to their I will always be a lawyer who writes plays to January 2018. Her other plays land because “[t]o leave [Tribal Nations] in pos- change the laws that sought to strip my Nation include Miss Lead, Fairly Trace- session of their country, was to leave the country of its sovereignty and right to exist. —M. K. N. able, In My Father’s Eyes, Sliver of a wilderness,” and as a result, colonial “[c]onquest gives a title [to the Conqueror] which the Courts Further Reading a Full Moon, Diamonds . . . Are a of the conqueror cannot deny.” Boy’s Best Friend, Katrina Stories, As a storyteller, I know these laws wouldn’t • Hanay Geiogamah and Jaye T. Darby eds. Welcome to Chalmette, To the have been possible without a narrative to sup- American Indian Theater in Performance: A Reader. port them. Just as blackface was created in the The first comprehensive collection to present the 7th Degree and Waaxe’s Law. 19th century to support the legalization of the views of leading playwrights, directors, scholars Nagle graduated summa institution of slavery, redface (the portrayal of and educators in contemporary Native theatre. cum laude from Tulane Law Indigenous people by non-Native actors and playwrights) was concurrently created to support • Birgit Däwes, ed. Indigenous North American School. Her law review articles the taking of Indian lands and lives. It’s no coinci- Drama: A Multivocal History. This collection have been published in five dence that redface became increasingly popular traces the historical dimensions of Native North different journals, including the before, and after, the passage of the IRA in 1831. American drama through overviews of major More than 180 years later, the IRA has never developments, individual playwrights’ perspec- Tulane Law Review and Tulsa been declared unconstitutional, nor has the tives and in-depth critical analyses. Law Review. She is a frequent Supreme Court overturned its decision in Johnson. speaker at law schools and And the same redface performances that made • S. E. Wilmer, ed. Native American Performance the IRA possible in 1831 continue on American and Representation. This volume provides a wider symposia on issues related to stages today. But something is different. Major and more comprehensive study of Native perfor- restoration of tribal sovereignty, theatres are beginning to produce Native mance, not only its past but also its present tribal self-determination, Indian stories—plays by Native playwrights. and future. Contributors use multiple perspec- As a lawyer, I know the telling of Native tives to look at the varying nature of Native civil and constitutional rights, stories will counter—and ultimately change— performance strategies.—S. D. and safety of Native women. the dehumanizing narrative that made the legal —Eddie Wallace framework of genocide possible. As a lawyer and

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