EDITOR: Benjamin Penny W. J. F. Jenner, Australian National University EDITORIAL ASSISTANT: Misty Cook Peter Jones, University of COMMISSIONING EDITOR: John Docker Edinburgh EDITORIAL COMMITTEE: Graeme Clarke, E. Ann Kaplan, State University of lain McCalman, Tessa Morris-Suzuki, New York at Stony Brook Fiona Paisley, Nicholas Thomas. Joan Kerr, Australian National EDITORIAL ADVISORS: University Tony Bennett, Griffith University Dominick LaCapra, Cornell University Dipesh Chakrabarty, University of David MacDougall, Australian National Chicago University James K. Chandler, University of Chicago Fergus Millar, University of Oxford W. Robert Connor, National Humanities Anthony Milner, Australian National Center University Saul Dubow, University of Sussex Meaghan Morris, ARC Senior Fellow, Valerie I. J. Flint, University of Hull University of Technology Margaret R. Higonnet, University of Sydney Connecticut Martha Nussbaum, University of Caroline Humphrey, University of Chicago Cambridge Paul Patton, University of Sydney Lynn Hunt, University of Pennsylvania James Walter, Griffith University MaryJacobus, Cornell University lain Wright, Australian National University

Cover illustration: Publicity photograph of Ruth Budd in her white union suit, circa 1916. Courtesy of the Allen County-Fort Wayne Historical Society.

ISSN: 1440-0669 IEVLAIR S

CONTENTS

Alison Kibler

The upside down lady 3 Elizabeth Furniss Cultural performance as strategic essentialism: negotiating Indianness in a western Canadian rodeo festival 23 Christopher Balme Hula and haka: performance, metonymy and identity formation in colonial Hawaii and New Zealand

New CCR staff 59 New HRC visitors 62 CCR activities 64 HRC activities 67 Other forthcoming conferences 69 From the desk of the Librarian 7o

Recent publications from HRC conferences 73

ALISON KIBLER 3

THE UPSIDE DOWN LADY

As her body rolled over and oven the effect was saved from monotony only because the crowd counted the turns ... And when she returned to the ring and curtsied as prettily as a princess, the audience applauded because so little a girl had proved herself at once so dainty and so strong.'

A_ female acrobat, at first glance, appears women who pursued careers, athletics or to be merely an amusing sideshow in education outside domesticity. Much of American cultural history But the career the publicity surrounding Ruth Budd, for of Ruth Budd, an acrobat who performed example, was a multi-layered backlash in circuses, vaudeville and films, actually against the women's activism. The takes historians and cultural critics to the responses to two aspects of her career, in centre of American social and cultural life particular, cast Ruth Budd in a negative from around the turn of the century to the light. As Darwa—the 'female Darwin'—in rise of the first wave of feminism and the a 1919 silent film,A Scream in the Night, cohesion of new commercial amusements she appeared to be an animal, and in her into a mass culture. At the height of Ruth well-publicized and controversial Budd's career (in 1920) the `woman engagement to a female impersonator, movement' achieved its most pressing Karyl Norman in 1 921, she was sexually goal in the United States: the passage of the `deviant'. nineteenth amendment to the The social status of the New Woman (the Constitution, granting women the right to independent, athletic, sexual and modern' vote.2. Ruth Budd herself was known as a woman exemplified by Ruth Budd) was champion of women's suffrage; to prove closely linked with the growing business that women were equal to men, she of commercial leisure around the turn of invited observers to touch her steely the century, including the popular biceps and bragged that she could `pickup institutions of vaudeville and motion any man twice [her] own weight and set pictures where Ruth Budd earned her him out on the sidewalk'.3 While Ruth living.4 Vaudeville, a collection of disparate Budd's somersaults and swings suggested acts (comedians, jugglers and acrobats) the promise (and power) of women's marketed mainly to a family audience, political activism in the early twentieth emerged in the 18 9os and quickly became century; Budd was also ,a warning to

4 ALISON KIBLER

a national industry, with chains of theatres, cultural symbol. As female acrobats defy- controlled by a few businessmen, momentarily—physical limitations by extending across the country.5 And, in the flying through the air, they seem to rise early twentieth century, short silent films above social constraints. But the female (often only a minute long) became the fliers return to the ground; they are drawn central attraction at movie theatres, back into the social structures that their known as nickelodeons because of the soaring feats seem to resist. In her analysis usual admission charge of a nickel. Both of the promise and perils of the New vaudeville and film focussed on female Woman, Carroll Smith-Rosenberg patrons as the key to gaining a respectable describes Djuna Barnes's fictional status in the early twentieth century; these acrobat—Frau Mann—from her 1936 industries had to transform the traditional novel Nightwood as a symbol of the notion that women did not belong in the possibility of flying free of all gender public space of theatres (seen as masculine codes as well as the penalty imposed on and immoral) to broaden their audiences women for soaring above these codes. and uplift their reputations.6 As Frau Mann 'violates all social categories commercial amusements recruited female and gender restraints', while her name patrons they encouraged women's search also suggests the label 'Mannish Lesbian', for autonomy, public adventure and the category used to marginalize many romance; young working girls sometimes New Women.8 Ruth Budd's career reveals defied their parents and brothers to meet the tensions between freedom and their dates at vaudeville houses or movie restraint in mass culture, but, even more shows, and social reformers were alarmed precisely, this acrobat, widely known as at the possibility of women's the 'upside down lady', embodies unchaperoned sexual activity in these questions about the inversion of gender public spaces.7 But while these new hierarchy and the social order, from amusements eroded patriarchal authority notions of sexual deviancy (which were and Victorian notions of white women's tied to gender inversions) to assertions of passionlessness, they also established the white women's biological duty to their sexual objectification of women as a race in the battles for evolutionary primary pleasure of mass culture: women, progress. as consumers and sexual spectacles to be Ruth Budd and her brother Giles, known consumed, were the currency of mass as the Aerial Budds, first performed in culture. In this context, a female acrobat's circuses and fairs around the United States body and her seemingly masculine tricks in the early 19oos, and later in their career are indeed a rich cultural canvas. they appeared regularly in vaudeville. Historians and cultural critics have already Their juvenile act featured Ruth Budd in identified the acrobat as a contentious the traditionally masculine position in an

THE UPSIDE DOWN LADY 5

aerial routine. Because Ruth Budd was girl in a manner that makes the audience several years older and many pounds hold their breath, lest he should fall to his heavier than her brother Giles, she death.'9 undertook the tasks of carrying and In this way, Ruth and Giles Budd reversed manipulating her brother in the act. Giles, the gender division of labour in acrobatic on the other hand, displayed his body acts. Women were supposed to remain more passively, frequently posing. While largely dependent on the manoeuvres of Ruth's and Giles's ages made their male acrobats, who were expected to be positions in the act 'natural', they the muscular anchors of the stunts. nevertheless exploited the reversal of Women usually posed while men held, gender roles. A 19io advertising pamphlet twisted and swung them.'° The masculine shows Giles Budd dressed as a girl, and role—including stationary poses—was to publicity about the Aerial Budds often undergird these moments of feminine commented on Giles's vulnerability and spectacle. In his unpublished review of an Ruth's strength. One reviewer observed, acrobatic act, one vaudeville manager `The little fellow is juggled about by the stated this division quite clearly: 'The man FIGURE I in this act does some very good contortion Ruth and Giles Budd (the Aerial Budds) circa 1910. work and some novelties in the way of Courtesy of theAllen County-Fort Wayne acrobatic dancing ... the woman is excess Historical Society. baggage'." Nevertheless, many performers, including Ruth Budd, often reversed this gender hierarchy with great success. A vaudeville theatre manager, for example, noted that one act was a `hit' largely because of the novelty of the act: IT]he woman [is] doing the work usually performed by the male partner and doing it well'. r2

In fact, many vaudeville acrobatic acts contained a `sexual enigma', a tradition extending back through the history of the circus. In the late nineteenth century; as theatre historian Laurence Senelick explains, the acrobat Farini made-up one of the boys in his troupe as a woman, billing him as Mlle Lulu'. He sang a song in his routine that included the line, Wait till I'm a man!' and was celebrated as an 6 ALISON KIBLER

amazing female gymnast for seven years Giles, however, Ruth Budd continued to until a medical examination revealed the structure her acrobatic act around gender truth.l3 Acrobatic performances were often inversion. Juxtaposing masculine athletics the occasion for gender reversals in which with feminine display, Ruth Budd found women undertook 'masculine' feats of greater success as a single performer in muscle while men often dressed in vaudeville than the Aerial Budds had ever women's clothes. Feminine apparel and achieved, emerging as a 'feature' act in display were thus central to these acts for vaudeville by 1919.'5 men and women. Given this context, it is To embellish her solo performance Ruth not surprising that Ruth Budd Budd extended the song-and-dance incorporated the reversal of gender roles segments and slowed down her acrobatic in her act along with a manipulation of work; she also began to present herself in a feminine sexual spectacle; both elements more conventionally feminine way. brought Ruth Budd attention, but also some disrepute. FIGURE 2 Giles Budd's series of accidents, beginning Publicity photograph of Ruth Budd in her white in 1912 and ending with a broken leg in union suit, circa 1916. Around this time Ruth Budd 1915, demonstrate that his vulnerability began her solo act by adding new dances and was more than inflated advertising songs, such as The Girl with the Smile'. Courtesy rhetoric. Giles had four serious falls, the of the Allen County-Fort Wayne Historical Society last forcing him out of the act. Giles Budd's 1915 injury precipitated many changes in the Budds' routine. Net even if Giles Budd had not left the act, the Aerial Budds would have faced questions about how to make the transition from juvenile to adult performers. At the time of her brother's final accident, Ruth Budd was twenty years old, stretching the limits of a juvenile performer, and Giles Budd's maturity meant a change in the weight distribution in the act. Ruth Budd, in 1915, explained that their different weights and his leg injury made the routine increasingly difficult: 'Giles can't work very well since his leg was broken and I have to help him so much and he is quite heavy. He weighs 120 and I only weigh to 6."i Even without

THE UPSIDE DOWN LADY 7

Appearing at a dressing table and singing noted that women's athleticism early in about make-up, Ruth Budd began her act the twentieth century was often as a pleasing young woman eager to show- interpreted and marketed as sexual off her beauty Yet this feminine display, display. dournalists and spectators in the similar to other women's acts in early twentieth century often focussed vaudeville, was only temporary in her more on women's clothing and appearance routine, for Ruth Budd discarded her than their skill.'9 By introducing herself as vanity and dainty persona when she `The Girl with the Smile', Budd may have launched into her aerial performance. She been trying to define herself as a 'lady' began her act with her new trademark athlete. The 'lady' athlete and the song, `The Girl with the Smile', which `mannish' athlete were two referred to her 'little song and dance', and characterizations of the sportswoman that did not mention acrobatics at all!' When emerged from the late nineteenth century Ruth Budd was mistakenly billed as Queen and continued into the 192os. In the i88os of the Air' in 1916 she complained that It and 189os when middle-class and elite spoils my opening. My opening song is white women, including reformer Frances "The Girl with the Smile" and then if I am Willard, became involved in the bicycle billed like an aerial artist they wonder why craze, they were able to claim their I am singing and dancing'.17 By contrasting femininity and refinement in contrast to her song and dance opening with her rough, working-class women. Later, in the acrobatic work, Ruth Budd increased the 192os, glamorous stars in acceptably audience's awe at her athletic feats. A 19i7 `feminine' sports such as tennis publicly Variety review by Sime Silverman espoused sport's ability to enhance described the disjunction between Budd's women's beauty and charm, as opposed to femininity and her athleticism: 'The house the dangers of masculine sports and the is surprised when they see the girl go from image of the unkempt, 'mannish' female dresses to acrobatics and that surprise is athlete. Tennis champion Suzanne intensified when noting what a finished Lenglen epitomized a modern feminine gymnast Miss Budd is'. r8 Whereas. Ruth ideal—active, sensual, trim, and less Budd had played the masculine role in inhibited than the older generation of contrast to her younger brother, she women. And she promoted this ideal not created the split between masculinity and only by winning tennis matches but also femininity chronologically in her new solo by offering fashion tips and make-up act. advice. By emphasizing her feminine appearance in the first part of her act, With her new feminine and erotic songs Budd may have been trying to appropriate and dances, Ruth Budd tried to exploit the the fresh sexuality of 'lady' athletes such as sexualization of female athletes for her Lenglen. Whatever her intentions, it is own ends in vaudeville. Historians have clear that her masculine identity, built on 8 ALISON KIBLER

her gender inversions, overpowered the disrobing act of the lady member of the `ladylike' dimensions of her act. She team', concluded the Cleveland manager.2' remained primarily a `mannish' athlete It is not surprising, then, to find viewers associated with the taint of sexual focussed on the sexual nature of Budd's immorality and circus animals. disrobing: `We waited, we saw,' wrote one Many observers felt that her disrobing and critic, `It was worth the time ... Ruth is sexual innuendoes did not match billed as the girl with the smile. I didn't vaudeville's public notion of refinement. notice the'smile. Her ankles are lovely'22 Her pert song and dance at the start of her An audience member's letter to Budd on act may have offered a more conventional 13 October 1917, points to her lack of woman than the young female acrobat refinement because of her sexual who twirled her brother in mid-air; but the suggestions and appearance on stage. 'new' Ruth Budd also introduced elements Criticizing her trapeze work as second- of sexuality that remained somewhat class and declaring 'Just listen, Ruth! You controversial in vaudeville, an industry can't sing,' this disgruntled patron was which marketed itself largely as moral most upset by Budd's 'immoral' attempts to entertainment for women and their arouse the audience. He refers specifically families. Like Ruth Budd, other female to the transition to her acrobatic uniform, acrobats included disrobing as a salacious beginning at the end of her `make-up' song element of their acts; such scenes were when her maid starts to unzip her dress: sometimes cut because they were too Plhat make-up business spoilt our idea of controversial. Emerie and Silvern's your act and your character. What you acrobatic routine, for example, contained chanted and what you did was silly an innovative disrobing scene that the enough, but the last part of the thing was manager found to be provocative. The disgusting (I am no wowser—but a soldier, woman, Emerie, and her male assistant, an officer and a man). Of course the whole Silvern, began their act in evening clothes, thing was specially devised for that smack and after her partner pretended to drug of immorality. There was nothing wrong her glass of wine on stage, she kicked off with your acrobatic dress', he concluded, his hat and climbed up to her trapeze `but come on like that. The dirty part is the where she began to strip down to tights. disrobing.'23 The use of sexual spectacle The manager of a prominent vaudeville was thus complicated for Budd. She could theatre in Philadelphia concluded that reveal a sexual knowingness in contrast to `This part of the act is a little tart, but, on her previous juvenile identity and in the whole, inoffensive.'2° Another keeping with the sexual assertiveness of manager, however, found that the the New Woman. But these additions also disrobing in this couple's routine went too left her open to charges of immorality. For far: `We were compelled to cut out the Budd, respectabilitywas indeed tenuous.

THE UPSIDE DOWN LADY 9

As Ruth Budd earned success with her On i4 March 1 919 Ruth Budd wrote from single act in vaudeville, she also gained Miami, Florida: `You will be surprised notoriety outside of vaudeville in a film when I tell you ... I am down here working about 'Charles Darwin's theories of in a picture ... It is to be called the Female evolution, and in her engagement to a of the Species and I am Darwa'.27 female impersonator. These events Eventually retitledA Scream in the Night, articulate two interlocking strands of Ruth Budd's film examined women's place anxiety about shifting gender roles and the in Darwin's scheme: was Darwa a mother proper boundaries of sexuality in the early fit to advance the race? A scientist, twentieth century: the consternation over Professor Silvio, kidnaps a small girl, `racial' suicide and the rising attention to Darwa, and places her in the jungle near sexual 'deviance'. While Darwin had been the Amazon River for eleven years in an optimistic about natural selection in 1871, attempt to prove Darwin's theory of by 1899 he pessimistically looked at evolution.28 When Daiwa returns to America and saw `beaten men from beaten society, she is soon engaged to an races'.24 Such cynicism and xenophobia aristocrat, but Professor Silvio disrupts the laid the foundation for the notion of `race marriage plans by exposing Daiwa as a suicide'. Theodore Roosevelt and others `crossing of the species, not a true believed that women of the better classes woman:29 In Silvio's view Darwa's were squandering their reproductive successful assimilation into society was energies on careers and politics, while proof of Darwinian theory. But still women from less civilized races produced unsatisfied, Silvio again abducts Daiwa more unfit children. The birth control and imprisons her with an ape. Her movement, for example, drew on these intellect triumphs over the ape as she theories, as Margaret Sanger, the tricks the ape into shooting himself. After movement's leader, argued that birth Daiwa points the gun at her head and control would bring `more children from `pulls the trigger against the empty the fit, less from the unfit:25 This concept chamber', the ape imitates her with a was so popular that comedians joked loaded chamber. Daiwa resists the about it on the vaudeville stage; in fact, one crossing of the species or, as one publicist theatre manager ordered a performer to wrote, she escaped `a thing worse than cut his `Roosevelt squib regarding race death'.3° A Variety review recognized that suicide'.26 Women who entered the the film was confusing, pointing out that traditionally male realms of sports, politics Darwa's survival in the woods and in high and education increasingly faced the society offers no proof of evolutionary criticism that they were wasting their theory 'What [Silvio] seeks to prove reproductive capacity and injuring the by the experiment is hard to fathom' 3' `race'. The filmmakers seem to have sacrificed scientific consistency for io ALISON KIBLER

`sensationalism'.32 Promoters of the film, While some advertisements pointed out however, tried to clarify the confusion that Darwa distinguished herself from any about the film's message by emphasizing ape ancestry at the film's conclusion, other that the film refuted Darwin's theories. accounts of Ruth Budd as well as her The advertisements that they suggested vaudeville and circus associations clearly for the film said that Darwa's intellectual positioned her as a monkey. This acrobat superiority over the ape (her ability to continued to convey the darker side of think creatively as opposed to the ape's athletic women and evolutionary limited, imitative skills) disproved scenarios: she was a monkey in the Darwin's connection between monkeys hierarchy of civilization. A newspaper and humans: 'He did not consider the fact headline, for example, proclaimed that that mankind's mentality is a God-given `Movies Made Ruth Budd Real "Monkey-. gift unto itself', stated one editorial that In the article Budd complained about the publicists recommended printing in ape costume she wore, the swinging newspapers to create interest in the film.33 acrobatics she performed and the real

FIGURE 3 monkeys on the set who threw coconuts at Ruth Budd as Darwa, the female Darwin, from her. 'I had to drop twenty-five or thirty feet her feature film, The Scream in the Night, 1919. from the top of a banyan tree into a palm She complained about being treated like a monkey tuft and swing by my improvised tail, on the set. Courtesy of the Allen County-Fort which threatened to come out at any Wayne Historical Society. moment', Budd explained in the article.34 Budd's previous association with the circus also suggested her affinity with animals, for the circus was considered disreputable partly because of its reliance on animal acts and partly because of its popularity with rural ('unsophisticated') America. Some vaudeville performers, in fact, attempted to uplift their reputations by declaring that they would not appear on a vaudeville bill that included any animal acts.35 Furthermore, in the early twentieth century several vaudeville acts featured monkeys in acrobatic work, solidifying the sense that acrobats were monkeys. In 'The Monkey Hippodrome', for example, monkeys played in an orchestra, juggled with their feet, performed feats of strength THE UPSIDE DOWN LADY

and disrobed during their aerial act, Indeed, as these examples show, Budd was according to a manager's review in 1913.36 probably the wrong performer to disprove the human connection with a primate The correlation of women and monkeys past. Her inversion of gender roles in the had been established earlier by Victorian film and in vaudeville marked her, for scientists in their accounts of evolution. example, as a `less civilized' creature. As AlthoughA Scream in the Night, released Gail Bederman has demonstrated, the in 1919, should not be considered in a stages of evolution from 'simple savagery' Victorian context, this film about to 'advanced and valuable civilization' evolution starring a woman swinging were distinguished by the extent of their through trees in the jungle was a powerful `sexual differentiation'. While `civilized' reminder of this late nineteenth-century men and women embraced divergent framework. In the evolutionary scheme, a spheres of activity and had different woman often appeared as an 'arrested identities, gender differences were not as male', occupying a position beneath pronounced among 'primitives'. 'Savage European men in the evolutionary women', explains Bederman, 'were hierarchy and seething with the race's aggressive, carried heavy burdens, and did `base' characteristics. Victorian scientists all sorts of 'masculine' hard labor'.4° often saw women as children and as savages; they pointed out that women, like This film's close resemblance to the children, were physically smaller and popular Tarzan narratives of the early more delicate than men, and they argued twentieth century implies that Budd was that women's skulls, skeletons, and less a female Darwin than a female Tarzan. behaviours resembled `savages'. Unlike The comparison with Tarzan further men, but like primates, they were apt to exaggerated her masculine identity A `resort to biting and scratching', according Scream in the Night was an adaptation of to one scientist.37 The woman/monkey the well-known book and film, Tarzan of may have solidified the status of European the Apes. Edgar Rice Burroughs published men, many of whom were troubled by the Tarzan of theApes as a magazine serial in implications of evolution. `Kinship with 1912 and as a book in 1914; the first of forty- animals', explains historian Cynthia five movie versions was produced in 1918, Russett, `raised disturbing reflections, not one year before Budd began working onA least the possibility that civilization was no Scream in the Night. Orphaned by more than a thin veneer over the savage aristocratic parents in Africa, Tarzan is self.'38 Women like Ruth Budd, then, raised by an ape to become a great fighter symbolized an evolutionary stage that in the jungle; he learns from books left white men had already surpassed, and they behind by his parents, and successfully provided evidence of `masculine uses his father's hunting knife in his battles excellence'.39 with stronger, bigger apes. As a young 12 ALISON KIBLER

adult, this human 'king of the apes' falls in improve maternal health and thus stave off love with a white woman, Jane Porter, who race suicide. A pioneer in women's arrives in Africa after a mutiny. He follows physical education, Dudley Sargent, Jane to America where Tarzan realizes his argued, for example, that 'good form in noble heritage. Like Tarzan, Darwa grows figure and good form in motion ... tend to up in the jungle, becomes quite proficient inspire admiration in the opposite sex and in athletic skills of survival, and then therefore play an important part in what is embraces her position among 'socialites' termed "sexual selection'''.4' in America. Tarzan's primitive upbringing Advertisements for Budd's film bragged and elite family background combine to that the star was a 'perfect specimen of make him a particularly powerful symbol womanhood' and emphasized how of the masculine ideal in the early acrobatics had helped Budd overcome twentieth century. He was an example of ailments. In particular, publicity compared how men could be revitalized by adopting Ruth Budd favourably with vaudeville some aspects of savagery Tarzan's boyhood swimmer and diver Annette Kellerman, among the apes made him strong and another woman who had benefited from aggressive because he escaped the the healing powers of sport.42 Athletic feminizing influences of civilization that regimes allegedly cured childhood illness many observers believed sapped the for Ruth Budd as well as Kellerman, and virility of most men. Budd's association remade them into perfect specimens of with Tarzan thus encouraged viewers to womanhood. Kellerman reportedly began see her less as a virtuous woman (as the to swim because of her weak legs, while film's conclusion tries to convince Budd's father put her 'through a course of spectators that she is) than as a masculine calisthenics later setting up rings and woman. horizontal bars' to cure her slight Much of the portrait of Darwa casts a physique.43 'I started acrobatic work when negative light on Budd's appropriation of a very small child', explained Budd in 1919, masculine roles on stage and screen; yet 'by the doctor's orders'.44 The phrase some positive discussion of Budd's 'specimens of womanhood' signals that athleticism show that the characterization these women were hailed by scientists— of female athletes as masculine and savage and were presumably fit for motherhood. did not stand alone. Darwinian concerns The athletic woman—perhaps the about the fitness of the Anglo-Saxon race intimidating acrobat who can lift men were also the basis of the promotion of twice her size—could be contained athletics for women, and of Ruth Budd's through maternal service and racial uplift. film role in particular. The producers ofA Women's expanding roles in education, Scream in the Night tapped into the sport and various professions may have support for women's sport as a way to inspired fears of racial suicide, but the THE UPSIDE DOWN LADY

sporting woman's maternal 'fitness' was a impersonator billed as the Creole Fashion soothing concept. Plate. They performed on the same bill at the Tivoli Theatre in Melbourne during Sexually attractive and assertive, Ruth the last week of August in 1917.16 Three Budd was thus a symbol of the end of weak years later Budd again crossed paths with femininity; such a daring woman Peduzzi, who by this time had changed his represented the strong woman that female stage name to the deliberately reformers and physical-education androgynous Karyl Norman. Following professionals had hailed as model of Norman and Ruth Budd's announcement emancipated womanhood since the late in August 1921 that they planned to marry nineteenth century The producers ofA the following June, they often performed Scream in the Night recommended on the same vaudeville bills: Norman disseminating Ruth Budd's claim that joined Budd from his seat in the `women are not the weaker sex'. 'In this picture ... Miss Budd accomplishes feats FIGURE 4 requiring strength and agility that appear George Peduzzi (whose stage name was Karyl to be beyond a girl so winsomely Norman or The Creole Fashion Place). He probably sent this picture to her in the years after feminine', asserted one article: 'Certainly their first meeting (in 1917) when they were no member of her sex and few of the travelling in different parts of the United States opposite sex, can swing through forty or and England Courtesy of theAllen County-Fort fifty feet of space:15 Wayne Historical Society

Despite some positive interpretations of and justifications for Budd's gender inversions, her 'masculinity' brought her sexuality into question. While the film had raised questions about Budd's fitness as a mother and doubts about women's roles outside motherhood, her affair with a female impersonator suggested that women who crossed into 'male' social realms were also sexually abnormal. In one case, Budd was a primate; in the other case, she was a 'pervert'. But in both scenarios, Budd seemed to reject maternity and thus threaten the gender order and the health of civilization.

During a tour of Australia in 1917-18, Ruth Budd met George Peduzzi, a female ALISON KIBLER

auditorium or appeared as a separate act lesbians as being masculine in appearance on the bill. When Norman and Budd called and personality.49 In the hands of off their marriage one month before the sexologists, the label of sexual inversion wedding, they ignited curiosity about the became a tool for challenging and nature of their relationship and the cause discrediting the New Woman, including of the break-up. Her affair stirred up women's romantic friendships and gossip about Budd, as one acquaintance feminist goals. To counter women's wrote to Budd that someone 'had said a expanding roles, some sexologists tied number of catty things against you' after their definitions of unnatural, inverted she and Norman split up.47 Their sexuality to their eugenicist beliefs. performances together, the accompanying Havelock Ellis, for example, was reviews as well as dialogues about their concerned that professional and political upcoming marriage and hostile break-up women were selfish for neglecting their fused these two figures in the public primary roles as childbearers and spotlight. childrearers.5° The engagement of an 'unnatural' woman Published accounts of this failed romance and an 'unnatural' man pointed not to a hinted at the abnormality of Ruth Budd heterosexual union but to the gay and Karyl Norman's inversion of gender subculture of the early twentieth century. roles, and hence their 'perverted' sexuality. Definitions of sexual perversion in the One author explained the reversals of early twentieth century depended most on Ruth Budd and Karyl Norman in terms of the reversal of gender roles. Historian eagles and doves. 'Eagles and doves have George Chauncey has shown that early tried to mate before without success', the twentieth-century definitions of abnormal author explained, 'But always the eagle sexual identity were tied to the inversion was a man ... and the dove was a maid— of gender status, rather than a binary of some gentle, cooing creature who wanted homosexuality and heterosexuality based nothing save a cozy love nest.'5' This on the choice of sexual partners. Normal author tied Ruth Budd's gender inversion men, for example, were contrasted with to the physical inversions in her acrobatic 'fairies' who were identified not through act, connecting his description of her as an their sexual activity with other men, but eagle to her 'head-first' plunges on stage: through their womanliness.48 `Ruth Budd takes that breath-catching swoop at full speed, darting head first Sexologists, in addition, linked women's down the thread-like cable.'52 Theatre 'unnatural' sexuality to women's critic Karl K. Kitchen, in addition, 'masculine' traits as well as their feminist explained, II]f the Creole Fashion Plate political aims. They often interpreted was known to possess certain feminine women's cross-dressing and athletics as characteristics, his prospective bride was signs of 'sexual inversion' and described THE UPSIDE DOWN LADY

equally noted for certain masculine traits. engagement would also have been familiar For while Karyl Norman affected feminine to fans of vaudeville comedy; he relied on furbelows on the stage, Miss Budd vaudeville's popular 'mother-in-law' appeared in the most mannish "tailor- jokes.59 mades" in private life.' 53 The suggestion of Descriptions of the break-up also Budd's off-stage transvestism and her well- undermined the New Woman. Attacking known athleticism clearly point to the • Ruth Budd's career, Norman allegedly had category of the sexual invert, a label that tried to transform Ruth Budd into an ideal many late nineteenth-century sexologists wife. Budd claimed that Norman had attached to women who attempted to demanded that she give up her 'pass' as men. overprotective mother, leave the stage and Budd alleged that the affair was actually a travel with Norman as his dresser: Well, I publicity stunt, claiming that Norman even went so far as to agree to that,' `regarded his engagement to [Budd] confessed Budd, `to give up everything ... merely as the means for keeping himself and just travel about helping him dress in the eyes of the public'.54 She sued himself .6° Some observers speculated, Norman for 'breach of promise', and however, that she was not qualified to be reportedly won $8,000.35 Norman Norman's dresser. The Baltimore American countered with an alternative explanation, reported that Norman 'questioned that there was Too much mother-in-law' 56 whether she would be altogether Indeed, both performers' mothers worked successful in dressing him'. 6' Budd did not closely with their children, helping with appear to be sufficiently feminine, caring their acts and managing their professional or subservient. engagements. Karl Kitchen noted that Like other female impersonators, Norman `when the two performers found was linked in a variety of ways to a gay themselves together their two mothers male subculture. Female impersonator were not far distant'.37 Norman alleged that Julian Eltinge was reportedly popular with Ruth Budd had 'insisted on having her gay men in particular, although he publicly mother travel along with them on the disassociated himself from disreputable honeymoon and afterward when [they] female impersonators, who were more were on the road'.38 While designed as an openly associated with gay men. 62 Eltinge attack on Budd, this explanation actually proclaimed his virility in the press, using calls attention to Norman's effeminacy. His publicity photographs that showed him in attachment to his mother marks him as athletic garb and boxing gloves jabbing at weak and feminine, while Budd, as a another man. Such attempts to assert his woman, would have seemed to be more `true' manhood contrast with Bert Savoy, a `naturally' in need of a chaperone. female impersonator who regularly used Norman's reason for the failed `she' and 'her' to refer to himself, and also ALISON KIBLER

used slang from gay subculture in his women, but their private lives were not routine. One line from his act, 'dishing the well-known to the theatre-going public." dirt', was identified as lag parlance' in a By the 192os, performers' off-stage theatrical publication. 63 Norman, in romances were more visible. The lesbian addition, became a performer at the Pansy on stage was one attraction of Harlem to Club, which opened in 193o; the club those seeking adventure in the 192os. Male offered entertainment resembling 'drag impersonator Gladys Bentley, for example, balls', the occasions which featured the wore men's clothes on stage and on the effeminate homosexual or the 'fairy' on street, and was married (dressed in a display in glamorous women's clothes.64 tuxedo) in a civil ceremony in New Jersey This club and Norman's career exemplify to a woman. The broader cultural support what historian George Chauncey has for revolt also helped lesbians establish a called the 'pansy craze', the period from community in Greenwich Village in the 192o-1933, in which gay men were 1920S. But, as Lillian Faderman has shown, increasingly visible in New York city's bisexuality was more accepted than central entertainment district—Times lesbianism; radical men in the Greenwich Square. A few comments from vaudeville Village milieu often pressured women to theatre managers reveal that they give up relationships with other women. discouraged the appearances of Despite the support for sexual freedom in effeminate men on their stages. In 1910 the 1920S, the lesbian was a 'pariah'. In Ned Hastings, the manager of Keith's particular, the lesbian became an obstacle Hippodrome in Cleveland, criticized the to the post-World War I standard of `Clipper Quartette' for just that reason: companionate marriage, a union that was `Most of the time is taken up by a supposed to feature cooperation, Dutchman chasing a "sissy" about the friendship and sexual satisfaction for stage. They were laughed at and husband and wife.67 In this period, then, it applauded, but the act would have a more was quite easy to explain the failure of intelligent appeal if ... much of their brand Budd's and Norman's romance by of comedy [was] eliminated.'65 intimating that Budd was a mannish lesbian and Norman a 'sissy'. Though a lesbian subculture was less established than a gay male subculture, Ruth Budd's fame in vaudeville faded by lesbians were increasingly visible in the the late 192os and, in contrast to the risque 1920S as sexual experimentation, publicity that had once surrounded her, particularly bisexuality but also she settled down to a fairly conventional lesbianism, was in vogue. Several male life. In 1927 she married Ray Hanna, a stage impersonators who worked in variety and hand and electrician in Fort Wayne, vaudeville in the late nineteenth century Indiana, who had corresponded with her had long-term romantic relationships with for sixteen years. After her marriage she THE UPSIDE DOWN LADY 17

continued to perform, but her star in many ways, unwelcome. Circus monkeys, vaudeville had fallen. Considering the Tarzan, Darwa and Karyl Norman. All were gender novelty of her routine and the links in a chain of deviance and disrepute gossip surrounding her affair with Karyl for 'the upside down lady'. Her career Norman, perhaps it is fitting that she was certainly shows the freedoms for women replaced on one vaudeville bill in 1927 by a in vaudeville to perform in 'men's' roles transvestite male acrobat, Barbette. A and to use a more sexually aggressive review of Barbette's appearance at the persona; and Budd was also lauded as an Palace late in his career jokingly emblem of the end of Victorian commented that theatre management had constraints on women. But Ruth Budd also forgotten to obtain the 'endorsements of symbolized the dark side of the new Ruth Budd and Karyl Norman' for freedoms for women: her resemblance to a Barbette's act." Her scandal thus lingered monkey and the suggestion of her on after she had embarked on her-married perverted sexuality pointed to the dangers life in the American midwest. When she of women outside of and unfit for injured her wrists in a fall at a Los. Angeles maternity and marriage. Her gender theatre in 1929 she sued the theatre -and inversion on stage proved to be a powerful used the settlement to finance her and enduring foundation for doubts about retirement, although she did come back to her morality and normality. the stage (mainly in Fort Wayne) several times in the 193os. Along with performing M. ALISON KIBLER intermittently, she opened a small grocery M. Alison Kibler is a departmental visitor store and worked there as a clerk with her in the Centre for Women's Studies at the husband and her parents. She died on Australian National University. December 1968. Whether hanging from a tree using her make-shift monkey's tail or swinging ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: across the vaudeville stage on her trapeze, My thanks to Walter Font and the staff at the Ruth Budd's inverted female form Allen County-Fort Wayne Historical Society for helping me with the Ruth Budd suggested a variety of social disruptions, Collection and to Janet Davis, Susan Glenn, from inverted sexuality to evolutionary Linda Kerber, Lauren Rabinovitz and the collapse. An acrobat's bodily tricks and anonymous reviewers for Humanities irreverent play with gender roles became a Research for their thoughtful readings of this symbol of women's varied challenges to essay. This essay comes from/lank Ladies: patriarchal hierarchy in the early Gender and cultural hierarchy inAmerican vaudeville, by M. Alison Kibler (in press, twentieth century And, as Ruth Budd's University of North Carolina Press, 1999). tainted reputation suggests, the changes in Used by permission of the publisher. All women's social status were uneven and, in rights reserved. ALISON KIBLER

NOTES: Smith-Rosenberg, 'The New Woman as Androgyne', p. 291. Film historians have ' Historian Wilton Eckley describing acrobat turned to the anonymous female acrobat in and circus, star Lillian Leitzel; whose career the 1901 Edison film, Trapeze Disrobing Act, overlapped with Ruth Budd's. See Eckley, to describe the gendered power relations in The American Circus (BostomTwayne spectatorship. This acrobat has served as an Publishers, 19 84), p.182. emblem of women's captivity as a sexual 2 Nancy Cott explains that 'feminism', a object in popular film in the early twentieth twentieth-century development which century for she reveals the structure of the contrasted with the nineteenth-century male gaze and female spectacle. The film 'woman movement', overlapped with the shows two men watching a woman's trapeze suffrage cause. Feminists were a minority act. They become increasingly exuberant as presence in the 'woman suffrage' movement the woman takes off her skirt, blouse and but influenced its ideology with their stockings and then performs a flip in her emphasis on rights as opposed to woman's undergarments. Robert Allen concludes that moral influence. See Cott, The Grounding of the acrobat in Trapeze Disrobing Act was Modern Feminism (New Haven: Yale 'silenced, frozen in time and captured with University Press, 1987), p. 37. the film's frame.' Robert C. Allen, Horrible 3 She Can Carry Ballot to Box', 25 September Prettiness: Burlesque and American culture 1916, clipping, box i, vol. 7, Ruth Budd (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Collection (hereafter cited as RBC), Allen Press, 1991), p. 271. See also, Judith Mayne, County-Fort Wayne Historical Society 'Uncovering the Female Body', in John Fell Fort Wayne, Indiana. (ed.), Before Hollywood: Turn of the century American film (New York: Hudson Hills 4 Kathy Peiss, Cheap Amusements: Working women and leisure in turn-of-the-century Press, 1987), 63-7. New York (Philadelphia: Temple University 9 'Exceeds Speed Limit: Acrobat act sixty miles Press, 1986), p. 7. See also, Caroll Smith- an hour produced at the gaiety', April Rosenberg, 'The New Woman as clipping, box 1, vol. 3, RBC. Andgrogyne: Social disorder and gender New York Hippodrome Winter Circus, ii crisis, 187o-1936', in her Disorderly Conduct: February 1915, box 1. folder 6, RBC. First Visions of gender in Victorian America (New opening its doors in 19o4, the Hippodrome York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 245-96. was a huge theatre, accommodating circuses 5 See Robert W. Snyder, The Voice of the City throughout the winter months. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989). " Report Book 4, p. 44, Keith/Albee Collection, See Kathy Peiss, 'Commercial Leisure and the University of Iowa . Library, Iowa City, Iowa, "Woman Question-, in Richard Butsch (ed.), USA (hereafter cited as KAC).

For Fun and Profit: The transformation of '2 Report Booki, p. 6. KAC. leisure into consumption (Philadelphia: '3 Laurence Senelick, 'Boys and Girls Together: Temple University Press, 199o), 105-17. Subcultural origins of glamour drag and 7 See Peiss, Cheap Amusements and Lauren male impersonation on the nineteenth- Rabinovitz, 'Temptations of Pleasure: century stage', in Lesley Ferris (ed.),Crossing Nickelodeons, amusement parks, and the the Stage: Controversies on cross-dressing sights of female sexuality', Camera Obscura (New York: Routledge, 1993), pp. 83-4. 23 (Spring 199o), 71-88. THE UPSIDE DOWN LADY 19

'4 Ruth Budd to Ray Hanna, 13 June 1915, box 1, 32 'A Scream in the Night', Variety, 24 October, vol. 6, RBC. 1919, quoted in Variety's Film Reviews. '5 A feature act was second only to the headline 33 Man's Power of Reason', Exhibitors' act out of the ten to twelve acts on a Campaign Book, p. 6. vaudeville bill. 34 'Movies Made Ruth Budd Real "Monkey-, n.d., Song typescript, box', vol. 6, RBC. clipping, box 2, vol. 9, RBC. 17 Ruth Budd to Ray Hanna, 24 August 1916, 35 Actress Annie Yeamans left vaudeville box 1, vol. 7, RBC. allegedly 'because she said she couldn't get '8 `Ruth Budd', Variety, 22 June 1917, clipping, on with the educated horse'. 'The Matinee box i, vol. 7, RBC. Girl', New York Dramatic Mirror, II June 1904, p. 2. Furthermore, the police reportedly '9 Helen Lenskyj, Out of Bounds: Women, sport became involved in maintaining cultural and sexuality (Toronto: The Women's Press, order when they forbade blackface, acrobatic 1986), p. 68. and animal acts to appear at the Actors' Fund 2° Report Book 6, p. 234, KAC. Benefit, a charity production that included 21 Report Book 7, p. 1i. KAC. many vaudeville as well as dramatic performers. See 'Big Actors' Fund Benefit 22 `St. Havens Tops Bill', Morning Oregonian, Given by White Rats', The Player, 6 May 1910, 3 June 1918, clipping, box 2, vol. 8, RBC. P.17. 23 Anonymous fan to Ruth Budd, 3o October 36 Report Book 15, p. 114, KAC; One trainer had a 1917, box 2, vol. 8, RBC, emphasis in the monkey perform on a swinging trapeze and original. the rings. Report Book 5, p. 136, KAC. 24 Harvey Green, Fit for America: Health, fitness, 37 Carl Vogt, Lectures on Man (London: and sport in American society (New York: Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, Pantheon Books, 1986), p. 222. 1864), p. 18o, quoted in Cynthia Eagle 25 Margaret Sanger, 'Why Not Birth Control in Russett, Sexual Science: The Victorian America?' Birth Control Review, May 1919, construction of womanhood (Cambridge, pp. quoted in Linda Gordon, Birth Ma.: Harvard University Press, 1 989), p. 56. Control in America: Woman's body, woman's 38 Russett, Sexual Science, p.195. right (New York: Penguin, 1976), p. 281. 39 Russett, Sexual Science, p. 205. 26 Report Book 6, p. 228, KAC. 4° Gail Bederman, Manliness and Civilization: A 27 Ruth Budd to Ray Hanna, 14 March 1919, cultural history of gender and race in the box 2, vol. 9, RBC. United States, 1880-1917 (Chicago: University z8 'A Scream in the Night', Exhibitors' Campaign of Chicago Press, 1995), p. 25. Book, p. 8, box 2, vol. 9, RBC. 4' Dudley A. Sargent, 'How Can I Have a Graceful 29 'A Scream in the Night', Exhibitors' Campaign Figure?', Ladies Home Journal 29 (February Book, p. 8. 1912), p.15, quoted in Susan Cahn, Coming On 3° 'A Scream in the Night', Exhibitors' Campaign Strong: Gender and sexuality in twentieth Book, p. 8. century women's sport (New York: The Free Press, 1 994), pp. 19-20. 3' 'A Scream in the Night', Variety, 24 October 1919. Quoted in Variety's Film Reviews,19o7- 42 Cahn, Coming On Strong, p. 257. 192o, vol. i (New York: R. R. Bowker, P983). 20 ALIS_ONXIBLER

43'Ruth Budd is Perfect Specimen of 5' 'Why the Strangest of Engagements Has Been Womanhood', Exhibitors' Campaign Book, Broken Off , clipping,1922, box 2, vol. 12, P. 8. RBC. 44 `A Bit of Budd', Variety, 26 December 1919, 52 'Why the Strangest of Engagements Has Been p. 3o. Broken Off .

45'Women are not the Weaker Sex, Says this 53 Karl Kitchen, 'Cancel of a Wedding B0oking', Movie Star', Exhibitors' Campaign Book, p. 6. New York World, 13 August 1 922, box 2, V01. 12, 46 Budd toured Australia and New Zealand from RBC. August 1917 to February 1918, performing on 54 'Ex-Fiancee Describes Wreck of "Fashion the Tivoli circuit in major cities such as Plate's" Romance', 4 July1 922, clipping, box Brisbane, Sydney, Adelaide, Melbourne and 2, vol. 12, RBC. This may have been a Auckland. Looking back on her international plausible explanation to the public, for by career in 1945, she recalled, among other 1931 there were other cases in which male things, the boomerangs she had received as entertainers associated with femininity, gifts in Australia. See Helyn Hitchcock, -The female impersonation and gay subculture, Girl with the Smile" Acclaimed by Audiences also set up faux marriages. George Chauncey Here, Abroad', News-Sentinel (Fort Wayne), 14 recounts the marriage of Gene Malin, a December 1945, clipping, box 3, vol. 20, RBC. performer who had been a female 47 Letter to Ruth Budd, n.d., box 5, impersonator and then became a 'pansy'. His miscellaneous letter folder, RBC. marriage to Christine Williams and their quick divorce led reporters to contemplate 48 George Chauncey, Gay New York: Gender, whether or not he was homosexual. The urban culture and the making of the gay male Daily News asked, 'Is he—?' See Chauncey, world, 1890-1940 (New York: Basic Books, Gay New York, pp. 314-318. 1994), pp. 55-6. See also, Ullman, -The Twentieth Century Way": Female 18,000 Mends Broken Heart', Zit's Theatrical impersonation and sexual practice in turn- Newspaper, 23 May 1925, clipping, box 2, vol. of-the-century America', Journal of the 14, RBC. History of Sexuality, 5.4 (1995), 573-600. 56 '$8,000 Mends Broken Heart'. 49 Lillian Faderman, Odd Girls and Twilight 57 Kitchen, 'Cancel of a Wedding Booking'. Lovers: A history of lesbian life in twentieth 58 'He'll Wed, Sure But Get Heart Balm, Try and century America (New York: Columbia Get It', Daily News, I July1 922, clipping, box University Press, 1991), p. 46; See also, 2, vol. 12, RBC. Jonathan N. Katz, The Invention of 59 At their most graphic, mother-in-law jokes Heterosexuality', Socialist Review 90., (1990), drew the censure of managers. In 1903 Carl 7-34. Julien Chevalier, a French sexologist, Lothrop, manager of Keith's Theatre in connected women's participation in Boston, instructed Mr and Mrs Robyns to 'cut `masculine' sports and politics to female that portion of [your] opening song in which sexual inversion in his 1893 Inversion sexuelle. the coffin full of cheese is mistaken for the remains of a mother-in-law'. Report Book 5° For more on the famous sexologists, see (1902-1903), p. 282, KAC. Faderman, Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers, Go 'Ex-Fiancee Describes Wreck of "Fashion chapter 2. Plate's" Romance'. THE UPSIDE DOWN LADY 21

6"Ex-Fiancee Describes Wreck of "Fashion 67 Faderman, Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers, Plate's" Romance'. chapter 3. 62 Ullman, 'The Twentieth Century Way", 68 `Barbette in Amazing Feats at the Palace', PP. 590-91. clipping, n.d., Barbette Clipping File, Billy 63 Laurence Senelick, 'Lady and the Tramp: Drag Rose Theatre Collection, New York Public differentials in the progressive era', in his Library-Lincoln Center, New York, New Gender in Performance: The presentation of York. For more on Barbette, see Francis difference in the performing arts, (Hanover Steegmuller, 'Onward and Upward with the and London: University Press of New Arts: An angel, a flower, a bird'. Someone England, 1992), pp. 37-8. wrote about Barbette's replacement of Budd in the margin of Zits Theatrical Magazine, 15 64 Chauncey, Gay NeW York, p. 4. October,1927, clipping, box 3, vol. i8, RBC. 65 Report Book 11, p. 22, KAC. 66 Senelick, 'Boys and Girls', pp. 90-93.

ELIZABETH FURNISS 23

CULTURAL PERFORMANCE AS STRATEGIC ESSENTIALISM: NEGOTIATING INDIANNESS IN A WESTERN CANADIAN RODEO FESTIVAL

Contestants for the Indian and White Stampede Queen titles, Williams Lake, British Columbia, 1-958

The efforts of First Nations leaders in corridors of power, nor are they limited to Canada to remodel their relationship with challenges to the institutional, legal and the Canadian state through court political/economic structures challenges, amendments to the Indian Act, constraining aboriginal lives. Rather, they and an overhaul of the Indian Affairs are also part of the very fabric of everyday bureaucracy recently have drawn much social relations in small cities and towns media and public attention. Yet the politics across rural Canada. This is particularly of colonialism are not limited to national true in British Columbia, where, after over ELIZABETH FURNISS

a hundred years of denying the existence aboriginal cultural identity. Cultural of aboriginal title, the provincial and performances, to be sure, have become federal governments are now negotiating central to the language of aboriginal treaty settlements with First Nations. In politics. From testimony presented to the many of the rural forestry communities Canadian courts during aboriginal title there is a growing concern with the cases to the actions of aboriginal potential social and economic impacts of protesters at sit-ins and roadblocks, the aboriginal treaties, and the issues of symbolic language of political protest all aboriginal rights, self-government, and the makes use of what has been called future of aboriginal/non-aboriginal `ethnodrama':3 the dramatization of relations are widely—and often cultural symbols of Indianness for political heatedly—debated in coffee-shops, in gain. The particular performance I public meetings and in community examine here, though, occurs not on newspapers. In this context, First Nations ground controlled by aboriginal peoples, leaders are striving to gain public support but in the overarching context of an for aboriginal rights and treaties by annual summer festival that challenging some of the fundamental commemorates the history of one rural assumptions of the dominant Euro- city in the province's interior region. Canadian culture. They are questioning Furthermore, this annual festival not only the widespread understandings of history is controlled by a Euro-Canadian and identity that have underpinned, and organizing committee, but it dramatically legitimated, the colonial process: the celebrates the colonial process itself: the frontier histories that erase aboriginal festival pays tribute to the region's people while celebrating the settlers' ranching and rodeo heritage, the `taming' `discovery' and 'conquest' of the empty of the Wild West and the conquest of the wilderness; the demeaning stereotypes of British Columbia frontier, all processes aboriginality that deny people their that required the dispossession of individuality and moral integrity, and that aboriginal territories and the subjugation encourage some to argue that aboriginal of the region's aboriginal peoples. people simply `don't deserve' treaty The Williams Lake Stampede is the most settlements.' important tourist event of the year. During This paper addresses one of the multitude the four-day event the city transforms of strategies that First Nations leaders in itself into an imagined Wild West one rural British Columbia community are settlement. Businesses and stores remodel employing to negotiate issues of identity their interiors into make-believe Western and history-with local Euro-Canadian saloons, hotels and stables, while images of residents? This is the strategy of cultural cowboys, Indians, horses and hay bales performance: the staged public displays of adorn store windows. There is a specific CULTURAL PERFORMANCE AS STRATEGIC ESSENTIALISM

slot assigned to aboriginal people: they are involved in the Stampede festivities. I shift encouraged to particillate as culturally from a theoretical model approaching exotic `Indians', to enter the parade on cultural performance as text to one horseback in traditional regalia, to put up highlighting performance as social action, arts and crafts booths and tipi villages on and examine how various groups involved the rodeo grounds, and to stage displays of in the festival's events are engaging in drumming and powvvow dancing. The struggles over the constitution of public incorporation of aboriginal people into identities and over the meaning of this Western frontier myth provides a performances. I ask: how do area First mirror image through which the identity Nations leaders interpret the benefits and of the city is refracted and celebrated. pitfalls of performing Indianness in the Indian participation symbolically overarching context of a Euro-Canadian- completes the script of colonial history controlled and operated festival? Why are being commemorated through the they choosing to adopt what appear to be festival's events. colonial stereotypes of Indianness in order to present themselves to non-aboriginal In the following pages I explore two audiences? My goal is not to deny the issues. First, I trace the history of hegemonic power of colonial symbols, or aboriginal participation in the Williams as recent critics of resistance studies have Lake Stampede and the ways in which put it, to romanticize resistance to the aboriginal people have adopted the point where power, domination and the dramatic roles assigned to them in this ambiguities of aboriginal responses to festival of frontier history. I want to colonialism are rendered invisible.5 examine what Rayna Green sees as the Instead, my intent is simply to create an apparent (and somewhat paradoxical) ethnographic space for understanding the willingness of aboriginal people in North strategic logic of First Nations leaders who, America to 'play Indian' in colonial far from naive about the hegemony of dramatizations of history.4 A historical colonial stereotypes, are attempting perspective on this festival reveals a core nevertheless to transform cultural ritual complex that has persisted for seven performances into vehicles of political decades. This ritual complex imposes power. limits on the symbolic resources available to aboriginal people, who—within the context of this festival—are seeking to OVERVIEW: FIRST NATIONS AND negotiate issues of identity with non- WILLIAMS LAKE aboriginal people. Williams Lake lies some five hundred kilometers north of Vancouver in the Second, I discuss the dilemma that area Cariboo-Chilcotin region of the British First Nations leaders face today in Columbia interior. The forest industry contemplating whether or not to become 26 ELIZABETH FURNISS

forms the base of the regional economy, policies of the federal Department of although ranching, mining, and Indian Affairs. With the provincial and government employment are also federal governments now engaged in important. The city has a population of treaty negotiations with a number of First about ten thousand, but serves as the main Nations, the economic marginalization of commercial and administrative center for aboriginal people is now beginning to a much wider regional population of sixty shift. Many First Nations are beginning to thousand. Rural families regularly travel to establish relationships with government the city to buy groceries, clothing, ministries, forest companies and local hardware and livestock supplies, and to businesses, all of whom are anticipating a obtain medical and government services. future in which First Nations will be in Included in the regional population are control of significant resources and will be fifteen Secwepemc, Tsilhqof in and important players in the regional Carrier First Nation reserve communities, economy. totalling about six thousand registered At an everyday level, though, aboriginal band members. Aboriginal people relations with Euro-Canadian therefore comprise at least to to 15 per townspeople remain fraught with tension. cent of the regional population. While there is a public awareness of the The non-aboriginal population of importance of the values of Williams Lake has prospered greatly since multiculturalism and tolerance, racial the expansion of the forest industry in the prejudice and discrimination against i95os. Many people are employed directly aboriginal people are still evident both in by the local mills as mill workers, truckers the subtle gestures and the openly or contract loggers, or are employed demeaning insults and behaviours that indirectly through businesses such as aboriginal people may be subjected to in machine repair shops and heavy the school yards, stores and pubs around equipment suppliers that provide the mills town. Aboriginal and non-aboriginal with goods and services. In contrast, people may occupy the same public aboriginal people in the Cariboo-Chilcotin spaces—the fast-food outlets, the grocery over the last four decades have been stores, the bingo halls, the recreational largely excluded from employment as the sports venues. But an implicit convention forest industry and infrastructure of of mutual avoidance tends to reduce social businesses, services and government interaction between aboriginal and non- agencies have grown and prospered. Their aboriginal people. They occupy relatively marginalization has been exacerbated by separate social worlds. dependency on welfare and the extensive This social isolation is enhanced by the restrictions imposed by the Indian Act, the geographic isolation of reserve Indian reserve system and the coercive communities of the region. While CULTURAL PERFORMANCE AS STRATEGIC ESSENTIALISM 27

aboriginal people move freely between Cultural performance, and particularly the their reserves and the city, a similar very public, positive expression of movement among non-aboriginal people Indianness within the Stampede festival, is does not occur. Few non-aboriginal one strategy they are contemplating. people, it seems, have visited reserve communities, and many seem to be THE HISTORY OF THE STAMPEDE unaware even of the names or locations of The Williams Lake Stampede originated the different reserves. Indian reserves are in 1919, the year the settlement of invisible to non-aboriginal people except Williams Lake was officially born. By the in the abstract: they are imagined as 1920S the Stampede had become a popular dangerous, foreign and violent places annual event attended not only by village where non-aboriginal people are not residents but by tourists, area ranchers, welcome. The cultural life of reserve and Secwepemc, Tsilhqofin and Carrier communities, and the cultural differences people. The Stampede included several among the Secwepemc, Carrier and events now commonly associated with Tsilhqofin people, also remain largely rodeo: roping competitions, bull and invisible. bronc riding events, and horse races. The In this context, one of the major tasks Stampede, though, was not a purely local facing area First Nations leaders in invention. It consisted of a ritual complex attempting to advance claims to aboriginal adopted from the Wild West exhibitions title and rights and to develop more that originated in the United States in the positive, respectful relations with non- 188os and that, through the aboriginal people, is that of initiating a entrepreneurial skills of Buffalo Bill Cody, meaningful dialogue. How might this evolved into major entertainment dialogue begin? How can First Nations spectacles shown to enthusiastic begin to challenge the negative identities audiences throughout North America and they are often ascribed—the stereotypes Europe.' This ritual genre very quickly of the 'drunken Indian', the 'Indian spread to small town festivals and fairs criminal', the 'lazy Indian living off across North America, from the well- government handouts'? How can First known Calgary Stampede and Cheyenne Nations leaders create a more positive Frontier Days to the smaller agricultural climate for the education of their children fairs and exhibitions across the Canadian in the local schools, for the treatment of and American plains.? aboriginal people within the justice The core events of Buffalo Bill's Wild West system, or merely for the way aboriginal exhibitions were the demonstrations of people are viewed in the public spaces in cowboy skills of roping and trick riding, Williams Lake? Area First Nations leaders demonstrations that eventually evolved are employing a variety of strategies. into contemporary rodeo. But it was their 28 ELIZABETH FURNISS

dramatic reenactments of scenarios from Over the next three decades the Stampede the history of the Western frontier that remained the most popular annual captured the audience's attention and gathering for townspeople, area ranchers imagination. These reenactments and aboriginal people alike. Over time, included displays of a presumably static, some events were modified and new ones `pre-contact' Indian life--tipi villages, added. By the 195os, the local economy was Indian dancing—as well as reenactments booming and the population surging. of Indian-white conflict on the frontier: There was efflorescence of popular Indian attacks on stagecoaches and cultural representations of the 'noble settlers' cabins. Together, they presented savage' in Hollywood westerns and narratives of the frontier myth of history television programs. At the same time, telling the story of the heroic encounter of there was a new awareness of the dangers whites and Indians on the frontier, the of racism, brought to international ultimate triumph of white settlement and attention through the horrors of the Nazi conquest, and the regrettable but Holocaust. In this context, the Stampedes inevitable disappearance of Native people of the 195os enacted new rituals of in the wake of progress and civilization.' community identity through which Indians and whites were represented as In Williams Lake, this ritual genre laid the existing in a balanced, harmonious foundation for the early Stampedes. Rodeo relationship. While the dramatic contests remained the central events. But performances of frontier conflict were in the 1920S a series of dramatic dropped, the displays of Indian culture, performances and contests were included Indian people and the Indian-white that highlighted the frontier themes and dichotomy remained central. In 195o, the Indian-white contrasts. Some novelty colonial ,categories of Indian and white races were, for Indians only. The 'Indian were elevated to new heights of reification Race' of 1 924 required participants to wear with the modification of the Stampede `war bonnets'. In 1926, the Stampede queen contest to include both an Indian program promised that spectators would and a white queen. At the coronation be treated to displays of 'Indians dancing ceremonies the Indian and white queens in their old-time costumes'. At the same sat on matched thrones, the Indian queen time, the ritual complex was adapted to in decorated buckskin and feathered the regional setting. The famous Wild headband, the white queen in a white satin West scene of the Indian attack on a gown and tiara. This image of a balanced, stagecoach was Canadianized: the 1924 harmonious relationship contrasted program promised audiences would sharply with the realities of ongoing racial witness an Indian attack on a Hudson's Bay discrimination and the conventional fort. banning of aboriginal people from the hotels and restaurants around town. CULTURAL PERFORMANCE AS STRATEGIC ESSENTIALISM 29

In the 196os climate of civil rights protests Secwepemc, Carrier and Tsilhqofin and increased movements towards racial traditions, but also an incorporation of integration, organizers of the Stampede significant components of Pan Indian decided to amalgamate the Indian and cultural practices of powwows, white queen contests into one. But the drumming, dancing and sweatlodge duality of the Indian/white archetype was ceremonies. These cultural traditions preserved in other aspects. Aboriginal increasingly served as a currency for people, dressed in buckskin and regalia, aboriginal people to communicate to continued to enter the Stampede parade. themselves, and to non-aboriginal Secwepemc, Carrier and Tsilhqot'in audiences, the distinctiveness of families from across the Cariboo-Chilcotin aboriginal cultural and political identities. travelled to the Stampede in horse-drawn The symbols of culture that had long been wagons, setting up their canvas tents on part of the ritual complex of the the Stampede grounds where they Stampede—that could be read as remained for the week, visiting with reaffirming the colonial project—were friends and relatives and celebrating an revitalized as symbols of political power intertribal community that largely for the advancement of aboriginal excluded Euro-Canadian townspeople. interests and agendas. The political Nevertheless, the 'Indian Camp', as it was contest ultimately was not over the known to non-aboriginal people, became a symbols themselves—feathered spectacle of tourist interest and curiosity, headbands, decorated buckskin, and preserved in tourist snapshots, artists' powwow dances—but over their paintings and souvenir postcards. significance and meaning, and over how these symbols of cultural identity were to By the 19 7os and 198os the increased be read and comprehended by the general politicization of the regional aboriginal public. communities, and their struggles to address the many dimensions of political, In short, for almost eight decades the economic and bureaucratic domination Stampede has served as the major they experienced, led inevitably to public occasion for the ritual performance of debates about the role of aboriginal people Williams Lake's collective identity as a in the Williams Lake Stampede. frontier town, an identity performed not Aboriginal people were voicing only for local residents but for tourists and resentment at being assigned roles of visiting dignitaries alike. Throughout its noble savages and being economically history there has been a consistent ritual exploited as tourist attractions. Yet, at the core. What began as historical same time, area aboriginal people were reenactments of the imagined also undergoing a cultural revitalization confrontation of Indians and settlers on that involved not only a revival of the frontier evolved into symbolic displays 30 ELIZABETH FURNISS

of the Indian-white dichotomy. The action, where participants themselves Indian-white juxtaposition became an have various understandings of the archetype in the construction of the town's meanings of ritual events, and where these public identity and history, and this events become the occasion for contesting archetype, and the frontier history in dominant ideologies and creating new which it is embedded, continue to provide politicized identities of the subordinate.'3 the major symbols of public identification What may appear to be a submission to in the city today. colonial stereotypes, and what may appear to be instances of aboriginal people But why have Secwepemc, Carrier and `playing Indian', emerge from a lack of Tsilhqoein people willingly participated in appreciation for the multiple meanings at the Stampede for over seven decades? play in ritual contexts, and the way in Many anthropological studies of cultural which aboriginal people have long been performances—of rodeo, 9 parades,'" and engaging in cultural performance not only small town festivals"—take a 'textualist' to express aboriginal meanings and analytical approach. The observer reads identities, but also to subvert and these performances for their inherent challenge dominant stereotypes of meaning, arguing that cultural Indianness. performances convey deep cultural themes, play with inherent contradictions The remaining question, then, is: how do in the social order, and project images of various First Nations people of the region community solidarity that mask social view the advantages and disadvantages of conflict, domination and inequality. In this performing culture in the context of the context, the Stampede, like all small town Stampede festival? festivals, can be read as a narrative performance of the town's myths of history THE STAMPEDE TODAY and public ideology 'Textualist' The Williams Lake Stampede is held every approaches often make assertions about summer over the i July weekend. The the function of cultural performances, centrepiece of the festival is the arguing that the participation of professional rodeo, but there are many subordinate groups only reinforces their other events to entertain children, their perhaps unwitting compliance with the families and visitors to the city. Pancake systems of inequality that have rendered breakfasts and steak dinners are held in them powerless. the grocery-store parking lots. A midway, Yet this theoretical perspective cannot with rides and games of chance, is set up account for the willingness of subordinate outside the rodeo grounds. The annual groups to participate in rituals of the parade draws huge crowds to the dominant.12 Instead, cultural performances downtown streets. There are sidewalk can also be approached as forms of social sales, children's amusements, and musical

CULTURAL PERFORMANCE AS STRATEGIC ESSENTIALISM 3'

groups playing in the city's parks. The will enter the Stampede Queen contest. Stampede provides a major source of But it is the organized displays of Indian revenue to city businesses. One retailer culture on the rodeo grounds that the referred to the Stampede period as a Stampede organizers hope to solicit, and it `Cowboy Christmas', the second most is these forms of organized display and important time of the year for retail sales. performance that are now the issues of The Chamber of Commerce unofficially contention. estimates that the Stampede brings in Since the 19 7os aboriginal people in the almost one million dollars to the city's region have been using a variety of economy. symbols and ritual practices to express and The festival itself is run by a non-profit convey their aboriginal identities: Plains society, the Stampede Association, which Indian-style tipis, feathered head-dresses, is comprised of rodeo enthusiasts, area buckskin regalia, sweatlodge ceremonies, ranchers and downtown business owners. pipe ceremonies, powwow dancing, and None of the 19 94 board members or the most recently, the Indian princess contests over ninety volunteers who worked on the that accompany invitational powwows. In 1994 Stampede were aboriginal. different ways these symbols and rituals of Nevertheless, representatives have identity are being mobilized as forms of frequently stated that they would political power for advancing the interests, encourage aboriginal involvement. They status and rights of regional First Nations. see Indian participation—the erection of But these symbols are also subject to mock Indian villages, the performances of variable interpretation. Many of these powwow dancing on the rodeo grounds— symbols resonate with the noble savage as part of the 'rodeo tradition'. Organizers images of Indianness purveyed through also realize that aboriginal involvement popular cultural representations ranging would be a great tourist attraction, and from Hollywood movies and popular would economically benefit the Stampede fiction to Boy Scout traditions. Not only organization and the city as a whole. While may these symbols be interpreted recognizing that relations between differently by aboriginal and non- aboriginal and non-aboriginal people aboriginal audiences, there is also today are 'touchy', they nevertheless feel significant debate within the various that area First Nations are 'missing out on aboriginal communities regarding the an opportunity to market their culture' by legitimacy and meaning of these symbols failing to get involved in the Stampede of identity. I will limit my discussion to the festivities. Aboriginal people, however, do various Secwepemc opinions on this participate in the -festivities: as rodeo matter, as most of my ethnographic work riders, as spectators, as entrants to the in the region has been with Secwepemc parade. Occasionally an aboriginal woman groups, where I have carried out

32 ELIZABETH FURNISS

ethnographic and applied research for a argue that dressing in Indian regalia and number of years since 1 985 on topics `parading for whites' is a degrading including community revitalization and spectacle. Others argue that conveying Pan-Indianism24 My understanding of identity through these essentialist images Secwepemc perspectives on cultural ultimately limits the audience's ability to representation and ceremonialism comes appreciate the full individuality, diversity both from my long-term involvement and and humanity of aboriginal people. They from interviews conducted with various voice resentment at the power of the members of the regional Secwepemc Euro-Canadian festival organizers to community in the 1994-1995 period. control the terms—and the symbols—for their participation in the event. Academic debates regarding the nature of Remarking on the manner in which Euro- culture—whether we can speak of Canadians have assigned aboriginal `authentic' culture as opposed to `invented' people a status of virtual invisibility in the culture—find their parallel in the ways in regional social landscape, one leader which Secwepemc people debate the remarked in frustration, 'There's room for legitimacy and authenticity of cultural us as tourist attractions, but when we want symbols and rituals Not all Secwepemc to be human, the door is shut'. Ultimately, people attend powwows or sweatlodge these individuals are drawing attention to ceremonies. Some individuals dismiss the fact that the meaning'of cultural sweatlodge ceremonies, as well as other performance is derived from the broader recently-popular spiritual practices such context of power relations in which non- as the Plains Indian pipe ceremonies and aboriginal residents still hold privileged Sun Dances, as 'imported culture'. They control over when aboriginal people will argue that these practices are not be acknowledged, and on whose terms. At traditional to the Secwepemc. They see the everyday level of informal social these ceremonies as carrying no meaning, interaction, these terms of recognition and theyworry that those who engage in often are limited to a restricted range of them are being misled by spiritual leaders identities: the 'drunken Indian', the 'Indian of dubious integrity criminal', the 'noble savage'. Other Secwepemc people find meaning in Mediating these positions are a few First powwow dances and sweatlodge Nations individuals who are willing to act ceremonies, but they do not personally as 'cultural bridges', and who on occasion support the idea of performing such do coordinate aboriginal cultural rituals for non-aboriginal audiences. Their performances and displays for non- concern is not with the legitimacy of aboriginal audiences. Among these are cultural symbols of identity, but with the elected First Nations chiefs and past chiefs, meanings that may be conveyed, and the as well as individuals employed in the stereotypes that may be affirmed. Some

CULTURAL PERFORMANCE AS STRATEGIC ESSENTIALISM 33

public service. All, byvirtue of their $100,000 and $120,000 every month in town, position, have taken on roles of advocacy in the local businesses ... and the town doesn't for aboriginal people in their dealings do nothing for us! with non-aboriginal society. In the last few These leaders are concerned with being years, for example, these leaders have spatially marginalized during the organized cross-cultural training Stampede festivities: of being sequestered workshops to introduce the regional into a small space and being forced into police, court workers, judges, social secondary roles that diminish the services workers and school teachers to importance of aboriginal culture. One aboriginal cultural beliefs, values and individual saw these issues in a deeper spiritual practices, such as pipe historical context, arguing that the history ceremonies and sweatlodge ceremonies. of aboriginal involvement in the They believe in the potential for such Stampede is a history in which Euro- cultural performances to bridge the-gap in Canadians have controlled the terms of understanding between the aboriginal and aboriginal participation, including and non-aboriginal populations, and to excluding them when convenient. The improve the tenor of social relations in the most controversial event, and one still city. resented today by those area aboriginal Yet these First Nations leaders also have people who remember the earlier ambivalent attitudes towards participating Stampedes, was the Stampede in the Stampede festivities as adjunct Association's decision in the 197os to sideshows to the larger ritual and where charge aboriginal people for camping on they lack full control over the terms of the grounds. In earlier times, the fact that their participation. They share a strong aboriginal people camped on the grourrds conviction that Stampede organization, and were allowed into the rodeo for free and the Williams Lake community was taken as a sign of Euro-Canadian generally, take the aboriginal presence for recognition that the Stampede grounds granted, misinterpret cultural were located on aboriginal traditional performances, and benefit economically territory. With the policy shifts of the from displays of aboriginal heritage while 197os, aboriginal people were 'pushed out' returning little to the reserve of the Stampede and their traditional communities. One individual commented: rights were denied. Given this historical context, First Nations leaders see the What I want to know is: what is Williams Lake willing to put in? Let's talk money! The current tensions with the Stampede Stampede has been commercialized now It's organizers as rooted in issues of control: a money-making thing. We want to benefit I don't think theywant to see First Nations too ... The town of Williams Lake doesn't do people empowering themselves. They want nothing for [our] Band. We spend between to keep control ... Our people have always

34 ELIZABETH FURNISS

responded to them when they tell our people colonialism, `to acquire a hegemonic what to do. But now our people are becoming language is to submit to a framework in empowered, so [aboriginal people] don't which local meanings can take on [respond] ... We do speak up. I think people unpredictable significance in relation to are very uncomfortable about that. oppositions or associations whose Despite these concerns, most of these First determination is independent of local Nations leaders did express an interest in factors'25 When aboriginal people in the participating in the Stampede under Cariboo-Chilcotin engage in powwow certain conditions. They were willing to drumming, dancing and sweatlodge represent cultural identity through a ceremonies, how individuals experience variety of symbols of Indianness: through and imbue these events with meaning is putting up tipis, setting up booths selling contained within local fields of bannock, jarred fruit and crafts, and understanding (although, as I have staging lahal games, powwows and indicated, these local fields also are drumming performances. These heterogeneous). For a number of people, individuals are not unconcerned with the these practices have become the means for potential for general audiences to expressing deeply rooted feelings of misconstrue the meaning of cultural identity, spirituality and belonging. But to performances. Their willingness to use non-aboriginal audiences reared on these symbols of cultural identity to Hollywood movies and pulp Western communicate with non-aboriginal novels, these practices may take on quite audiences must be understood in the different signification, resonating instead terms of the broader constraints that bear with the stereotypical images of the noble down on their overall ability to negotiate savage that are embedded in popular identity in the Cariboo-Chilcotin, and Canadian culture. At the very least, the given these limitations, their pragmatic manner in which audiences understand political intentions and their strategic and interpret these performances considerations of the dual audiences to becomes unpredictable when these whom they are directing their displays and practices are transported beyond contexts performances. controlled by aboriginal people. The use of such symbols and practices, so easily The hegemony of colonial stereotypes lies absorbed into hegemonic constructs of not in the symbols themselves, but in the exotic Otherness, does not necessarily epistemological power exercised by contribute to the subjugation and dominant groups to control the meaning powerlessness of the aboriginal of these symbols. As Patrick Wolfe has population. What it does mean is that argued with regard to Australian public performances of aboriginality are Aborigines' entanglement within the sites defined by the confrontation of concepts and language introduced by

CULTURAL PERFORMANCE AS STRATEGIC ESSENTIALISM 35

multiple epistemologies variously inauthentic by some aboriginal people privileged by social fields of power. themselves. These leaders, thus, must also negotiate their way through the plural Aboriginal people of the Cariboo- interpretations of cultural performances Chilcotin are acutely sensitive to the that may exist among both the regional epistemological power of the dominant non-aboriginal and aboriginal society: the ability of non-aboriginal populations. people to misconstrue aboriginal behaviours and utterances as evidence for Nevertheless, those I spoke with were not the 'drunken Indian' or the 'Indian overly concerned with defending the criminal' stereotypes; the ability of non- authenticity of these practices. Instead, aboriginal politicians and lawyers to they responded by adopting a model of misconstrue the history of British culture remarkably similar to those now Columbia so as to deflect and deny advocated by contemporary aboriginal rights and title. They are also anthropologists, through which notions of sensitive to the hegemonic potential of a static, bounded, traditional culture have noble savage imagery. Non-aboriginal been deconstructed and replaced by a people, one Tsilhqot'in leader pointed out, model that highlights the dynamic, frequently overlook the way in which creative and fluid nature of cultural powwows, dancing and drumming systems. This very fluidity, one embody the most central values of Secwepemc leader claimed, constitutes aboriginal societies, treating these aboriginal tradition: performances like a show, an All people from the past have learned to entertainment spectacle, 'like the Shrine borrow. There has been a lot of borrowing. Circus'. He continued: It's a continuation of that trend from the past. They don't see the importance of our What it does is build on the model, the model spiritual and cultural values that are style ... If you look at some of our elders, exercised through powwows and drumming. when they dance—that's a borrowed thing. The drummers are into their own spirituality That's been going on for years. See, the other for the drum, eh, and the dancers are also thing too is that we lost a lot of our cultural into their own spirituality for honouring the traditions. It's not what it is today. Yet that's great spirit and mother earth. It's not just a part of ... our people ... searching for identity. cultural show, but there is spirituality And that's what we're taking back from the involved. earth. That's who we're becoming. We're slowly becoming this style. We use whatever The risk is not only that non-aboriginal it is. We're still-following our traditions. audiences will misinterpret these A similar understanding of tradition was performances. There is also the risk that voiced by another Secwepemc leader: these performances will be dismissed as 36 ELIZABETH FURNISS

What else cari we do? We've lost everything. of Indianness but the widespread We don't have any memory of what we did invisibility of aboriginal people to the before ... I think sometimes you get fooled regional society. Thus, one individual felt into thinking the only way we can be a true that to not participate would be only to Indian is to live how people did one hundred further their invisibility to Euro- years ago ... Tradition evolves. It's ongoing Canadians. `[Aboriginal culture] gets most every day. It's not something that happened misunderstood when you don't see one hundred years ago. People start anything', he commented. Another leader traditions today, and people do, everyday..: And if it doesn't work it disappears. If it does, felt that participating in the Stampede it gets lodged as tradition ... and that's what would counteract Euro-Canadian we're doing now, saying that some of the tendencies to only 'see' aboriginal people things we did then aren't good for us now ... who conform to their preconceived we don't have to keep going as they did. stereotypes of the 'drunken Indian'. Aboriginal cultural displays 'would be an When engaging in cultural performances, eye opener for the people of Williams First Nations leaders are aware that they Lake', as people would realize that 'the are entering into fields of competing [aboriginal people] they see on the streets definitions of the very nature of aboriginal aren't the only ones around'. While these culture and tradition. strategies may reflect the degree to which Despite these endemic risks, most of the the dominant culture has restricted leaders I spoke with were willing to • aboriginal modes of resistance—that consider organizing cultural displays and aboriginal people have to submit to performances in the overarching context images of cultural exoticism to capture of Stampede festivities. Their motivations `positive' non-aboriginal attention— had to do with their own pragmatic aboriginal agency has nevertheless political concerns, and their assessment of survived. Stereotypes of Indianness are their potential audiences. Further, they being mobilized with an eye to their were willing to become involved only if practical implications: positive images they could exercise total control over the may afford some temporary relief to the terms, conditions and processes through continual denial of worth to which' which these performances would be held. aboriginal people are subjected through When directed to general audiences, these many forms of everyday racism. leaders felt that cultural performances Furthermore, such performances may could only raise the positive public profile create a context for people to create and of aboriginal people of the region. These renew positive cultural identities amongst individuals are explicitly attempting to themselves!' First Nations leaders felt counter not only the negative stereotypes strongly that these positive, public

CULTURAL PERFORMANCE AS STRATEGIC ESSENTIALISM 37

assertions of Indianness within the counteracting the invisibility they are context of the Stampede festivities would typically ascribed in many other also be of great benefit to area aboriginal dimensions of their relationships with people in boosting their own cultural non-aboriginal people. In other arenas of pride and self-esteem. As one individual political action, First Nations leaders are remarked: mobilizing their political (and imminent I think, all of these types of activities [tipis; economic) strength in current provincial lahal, fish barbecues, arts and crafts booths] treaty policies, and their moral power as will ... make our young people, and even our victims of racism, in order to challenge older people, be proud of who we are. We various aspects of their relationship with need to be very visible. In a positive way. non-aboriginal society In the ritual The fact that these performances would be context of the Williams Lake Stampede, enacted in the risky setting of a Euro- First Nations individuals are Canadian festival only enhances their contemplating manipulating the power political significance. Rather than inherent in the public's fascination with undermining aboriginal meanings, the Indian culture, and the centrality of public Euro-Canadian festival context Indians in the Stampede's ritual script, in transforms these performances into order to draw attention to issues of defiant assertions of moral worth and cultural pride, power and racism in local integrity that contrast sharplywith the social relations. They are making use of racism that pervades other dimensions of the unwitting power they can draw from the regional non-aboriginal society. When the 'colonial gaze' in order to begin this directed at aboriginal audiences, the process of renegotiating the meaning of question of non-aboriginal audience aboriginality. response becomes irrelevant to these As James Carrier points out, there are leaders. It is the very juxtaposition of dangers inherent in 'ethno-Orientalisms', dominant and subordinate constructions essentialist representations of of the meaning of aboriginal culture that aboriginality by aboriginal people would empower these performances as themselves. These constructions can modes of resistance to the dominant Euro- `mislead and have unfortunate Canadian culture. consequences if they are applied In conclusion, in order to negotiate issues unreflectively in novel situations'.' 7 The of identity and history with non-aboriginal danger of these homogeneous audiences, First Nations leaders of the representations of Otherness, however, Cariboo-Chilcotin must first of all develop lies not in the representations themselves, a means to command public attention. but in how these representations are used They must develop a means of and their social, political and economic 38 ELIZABETH FUR.NISS

consequences. Further, the individuals I to express identity to non-aboriginal interviewed here are not unreflective or audiences. These individuals are naive, but are experienced players in the concerned vvith the difficulties of cross- contemporary politics of identity. As cultural translation, and the potential for various scholars of colonialism have general audiences to misinterpret cultural argued , strategic essentialisms may be performances. The risks of extremely powerful representational miscommunication, though, are strategies for both mobilizing indigenous outweighed by the pragmatic political peoples into collective political action and potential that these performances may for advancing their collective political bring to the enhancement of aboriginal interests in particular historical and self-pride and the improvement in the political contexts.r8 state of local social relations. While neither First Nations leaders nor But First Nations leaders in the Cariboo- anthropologists can predict with certainty Chilcotin are not rhetorically committed the outcomes of their representations,2° it to these essentialisms. In many other is the intentionality of those agents, and contexts aboriginal people are the considerations and forces that guide deconstructing essentialist stereotypes and constrain their choices of action, that and/or are making claims to equality and are critical to trace for understanding the similarity with other non-aboriginal continuing, determined efforts of Canadians through a rhetoric based on aboriginal people to use `old' symbols to drawing 'strategic equivalences' with their negotiate new identities and relationships non-aboriginal audiences.i 9 In the ritual with non-aboriginal audiences. c‘zz,,, context, however, by virtue of the power engendered in the colonial category of the ELIZABETH FURNISS Indian, engaging in cultural displays and Elizabeth Furniss is a Visiting Fellow at the performances of Indianness is a powerful Centre for Cross-Cultural Research at the counter-hegemonic strategy. Australian National University First Nations leaders, like anthropologists, at times are concerned with the issues of NOTES tradition, authenticity and the hegemony 'This article is a revised version of a chapter of of colonial symbols. In private settings, The Burden of History: Colonialism and the powwow songs, dancing, sweatlodge frontier myth in a rural Canadian community ceremonies and other events are (University of British Columbia Press, in press, 1 999 ) in which I trace more broadly providing the means for expressing and the contemporary cultural politics of experiencing unique identities. aboriginal/non-aboriginal relations in a rural Increasingly, these practices and community in British Columbia. The performances are being used as a language research and writing of this article were

CULTURAL PERFORMANCE AS STRATEGIC ESSENTIALISM 39

. supported by doctoral and post-doctoral power through Bedouin women',American fellowships from the Canadian Social Ethnologist,17 .1 (199o), 41-55; Sherry B. Sciences and Humanities Research Council Ortner, 'Resistance and the Problem of and by the Centre for Cross-Cultural Ethnographic Refusal', Comparative Studies Research, Australian National University, in Society and History, 37 .1 (1995), 173-93; where I am currently based. Michael F. Brown, 'On Resisting Resistance', = In formal discourse aboriginal people in American Anthropologist, 98.4 (1996), British Columbia use the terms First Nations 729-49. and aboriginal to refer to themselves, and I 'Don Russell, The Wild West: A history of the have followed that usage here. In more wild west shows (N.p.: Forthworth, Texas). informal contexts, people in the Williams 7 James Gray, A Brand of its Own: The roo year Lake region frequently refer to themselves as history of the Calgary exhibition and Native. The terms Indian and white, however, stampede, (Saskatoon: Western Producer are also commonly used in informal settings. Prairie Books, 97o); Mary Lou LeCompte, These terms are not self-referential but are `Wild West Frontier Days, Roundups and used to designate others, but not necessarily Stampedes: Rodeo before there was Rodeo', with a derogatory connotation. I use the term Canadian Journal of History of Sport, 16.2 Indian only rarely, when I am referring to (1985), 54-67; Jon Whyte, Indians in the non-aboriginal perspectives on aboriginal Rockies, (Banff: Altitude Publishing, 1985); people. In this sense, I speak of negotiating Keith Regular, 'On Public Display ,Alberta Indianness as a public negotiation of the History, 34.1 (1986), r-ro; Katherine Pettipas, manner in which Euro-Canadian Severing the Ties that Bind: Government townspeople are to view aboriginal people. repression of indigenous religious ceremonies Finally, the majority of townspeople in on the prairies (Winnipeg: University of Williams Lake are of European ancestry, and Manitoba Press, 1994). I have used the term Euro-Canadian to designate this group. This term is considered 8 Richard Slotkin, Gunfighter Nation: The myth appropriate in formal, academic discourse of the frontier in twentieth-century America (New York: Atheneum, 1 99 although it is rarely used in informal 2), pp. 63-87. discourse in rural towns. 9 Beverly Stoeltje, 'Cowboys and Clowns: Rodeo 3 Robert Paine, 'Ethnodrama and the "Fourth specialists and the ideology of work and play', World": The Saami Action Group in Norway, in Richard Bauman and Roger Abrahams (eds), And Other Neighborly Names', Social 1979-1981', in Noel Dyck (ed.), Indigenous Process and Cultural Image in Texas Folklore Peoples and the Nation-State: Fourth world politics in Canada, Australia and Norway (Austin: University of Texas Press, r98r), r23- (St. John's, Nfld.: Institute of Social and 51; Elizabeth Atwood Lawrence, Rodeo: An Economic Research, Memorial University anthropologist looks at the wild and the tame 1985), pp.19o-91. (Knoxville, Tennessee: University of Tennessee Press, 1 982); Frederick Errington, 4 Rayna Green, 'The Tribe Called Wannabee: 'The Rock Creek Rodeo: Excess and Playing Indian in America and Europe', constraint in men's lives', American Folklore, 99.1 (1988), 3o-55. Ethnologist,1 7 .4 (1990), 628-45. 5 Lila Abu-Lughod, 'The Romance of 1° Carole Farber, 'High, Healthy and Happy: Resistance: Tracing transformations of

40 ELIZABETH FURNISS

Ontario Mythology on Parade', in Frank MA Thesis (University of British Columbia, Manning (ed.), The Celebration of Society: 1987). Perspectives on contemporary cultural 15 Patrick Wolfe, 'On Being Woken Up: The performance (Bowling Green: Bowling Green dreamtime in anthropology and in Australian University Popular Press, 1983), 33-50; settler culture', Comparative Studies in Denise L. Lawrence, 'Rules of Misuse: Notes Society and History, 33.2 (1991), p.198. on the Doo Dah Parade in Pasadena', in '6 See Holland and Skinner, 'Contested Ritual', Alessandro Falassi (ed.), Time out of Time: for a discussion of this point. Essays on the festival (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1987), '7 James Carrier, 'Occidentalism: The world 123-36. turned upside-down', American Ethnologist, 19,2 (1992), p.198. " Robert H. Lavenda, `Family and Corporation: Celebration in central Minnesota', in Frank '8 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, The Post- Manning (ed.), The Celebration of Society; Colonial Critic: Interviews, strategies and Frederick Errington, `Reflexivity Deflected: dialogues, Sara Harasym (ed.), (London: The festival of nations as an American Routledge, i990); Annie Coombes, 'The cultural performance', American Ethnologist, Recalcitrant Object: Culture contact and the 14.4 (1 9 87) , 654-67. question of hybridity', in Francis Barker, Peter Hulme and Margaret Iversen (eds), 12 See James Scott, Domination and the Arts of Colonial Discourse /Postcolonial Theory Resistance: Hidden transcripts (New Haven: (Manchester: Manchester University Press, Yale University Press, 199o). 1994), 89-114; Benita Parry, 'Resistance '3 Ronald Grimes, Symbol and Conquest: Public Theory/Theorizing Resistance or Two ritual and drama in. Santa Fe, New Mexico Cheers for Nativism', in Barker, Hulme and (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 197o); Fred Iversen (eds),Colonial Discourse /Postcolonial R. Myers, 'Culture-Making: Performing Theory, 172-96; Nicholas Thomas, aboriginality at the Asia society gallery', Colonialism's Culture: Anthropology, travel American Ethnologist, 21.4 (1994), 679-90; and government (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Dorothy C. Holland and Debra G. Skinner, University Press, 1994). `Contested Ritual, Contested Femininities: '9 Elizabeth Furniss, In the Spirit of the (Re)Forming self and society in a Nepali Pioneers, pp. 174-85, 216-28. women's festival',American Ethnologist, 22.2 (1995) 279-3o5; Julie Cruikshank, '° And in keeping with my theoretical `Negotiating with Narrative: Establishing argument, these outcomes cannot be cultural identity at the Yukon international determined by an observer's 'reading' of a storytelling festival', American ritual—they must be ethnographically Anthropologist, 99.1 (1997), 56-69. demonstrated through tracing the application and consequences of cultural 4 Elizabeth Furniss, A Sobriety Movement representations in a social context. Among the Shuswap Indians of Alkali Lake, CHRISTOPHER B. BALME

HULA AND HAKA: PERFORMANCE, METONYMY AND IDENTITY FORMATION IN COLONIAL HAWAII AND NEW ZEALAND'

Each April in Hawaii, local attention is In this paper I wish to explore what could focussed on the Merrie Monarch Festival perhaps be termed the roots of this new on. Big Island. Every year, the foremost performance phenomenon as parallel hula troupes of the various islands developments in the late nineteenth and compete for prizes in a variety of early twentieth centuries. The aim is to disciplines, traditional and modern. The explore a particular nexus between festival is a cultural event of considerable colonial contact and identity formation.2 magnitude. For several evenings in Although this general question has been succession local television provides live much researched in recent years, the field broadcasts of the performances lasting of performance is one area that has many hours. Two months earlier the Kapa received little systematic attention, even Haka Festival in New Zealand enjoys though Polynesian performance forms similar attention from public and media belong to those cultural aspects that are, alike as the country's Kapa Haka groups for outsiders at least, almost synonymous compete against each other. In both cases with these cultures. The focus is twofold: the indigenous culture of each country firstly, to demonstrate how two particular attains nation-wide media attention performance forms—the hula and the thanks to a performance form: the hula in haka—became subject to a European Hawaii and the haka in New Zealand. strategy of folklorization and While both forms had always enjoyed a theatricalization. Secondly, and perhaps certain popularity—the hula being almost more importantly, to indicate the way synonymous with the image of Hawaii as a Hawaiians and Maori themselves adapted tourist paradise, and the haka representing their cultural performances to meet an not just the Maori people but also on ever increasing ensemble of new occasions bi-cultural New Zealand as a functions ranging from the traditional to prelude to All Black rugby games—the the tourist, from the religious to the new prominence attained is certainly one political. manifestation of the so-called 'cultural Whatever these new functions maybe, renaissance' among Hawaiians and Maori where an indigenous people is required to alike. perform for the colonial gaze, the CHRISTOPHER B. BALME

performance enacted tend to have in most Said defines orientalism as a mode of cases the metonymic gesture of standing representation and 'learned field', and in for the whole of the respective culture. notes that a field 'is often an enclosed The interrelationship between space'. He continues: performance and metonymy, or perhaps The idea of representation is a theatrical one: more precisely performance as metonymy the Orient is the stage on which the whole of culture, needs to be prefaced by a few East is confined. On this stage will appear remarks on the concept of metonymy. As a figures whose role it is to represent the larger figure of speech, metonymy is closely whole from which they emanate. The Orient related to notions of inauthenticity and seems to be, not an unlimited extension incompleteness. The dictionary beyond the familiar European world, but definition—`the substitute of an attribute rather a closed field, a theatrical stage affixed to Europe.4 or adjunct for that of the thing meant'3— points to this disjuncture between a The discourse of orientalism, according to metonymic trope and the actual thing or . Said, `theatricalizes' the East in the sense the thing in its entirety. Viewed in this that it reduces and defines it, rendering it context, metonymy as a trope of cultural observable; it is as though the East or discourse carries with it more than just the Orient were a stage on which a set of signature of abbreviation typical of most dramatic figures of the Orient make their figures of speech. It has inscribed in it exits and entrances for the delectation and already a discursive strategy symptomatic edification of the Western beholder. Said's of colonial discourse: the penchant to concept of theatricality is both metaphoric circumscribe and contain. When and metonymic. It is metaphoric in the Hawaiians or Maori perform for the sense that he invokes the old theatrum (usually colonial) other, they are rendering munch simile. It is metonymic to the extent themselves observable and definable. The that the process he terms theatrical or whole tradition of folkloristic theatricalization embraces more than the performance, which begins in the old trope. It designates a particularly nineteenth century in Europe and is then Western style of thought which ultimately exported to the colonies for adaptation by was brought to bear on most of the the indigenous peoples, is framed within colonized world. Taking Said's use of the the metonymic notion that performance(s) term one step further, we can postulate can stand in for the culture as a whole. that theatricalization and colonialism are related phenomena. The link between metonymy and the very broad and often ill-defined concept of Theatricalization carries with it a number performance can be usefully focussed if of interrelated processes involving fixture we link it to the notion of theatricality as and closure necessary for, or inherent in, defined by Edward Said in Orientalism. any kind of mise en scene. The mise en

HULA AND HAKA 43

scene of a culture, country or ethnic group examples examined here—Hawaiian and implies that this group can be represented Maori cultures—I will explore how the by a finite set of mostly recurrent props, `theatrical stage' of indigenous culture, costumes and corporeal signs. Whereas while not 'affixed to Europe' in Said's theatricalization is primarily a spatial and terms, is nevertheless subjected to visual limitation of culture, in the colonial analogous processes of synecdochical context it is invariably accompanied by the limitation. temporal closure of folklorization. The discourse of folklorization, whether in a REINVENTING THE HULA European or a colonial context, seeks to The history of hula in. Hawaii runs in many `fossilize' cultural artefacts somewhere on ways parallel to the fortunes of the an ill-defined but usually pre-modern, pre- indigenous culture. In pre-contact times it technological time line. As we shall see, was an integral part of the religious and theatricalization and folklorization work cultural fabric of Hawaiian society. From hand in hand as concomitant processes in 1820 onwards it was severely attacked by colonial and indigenous discourses which missionaries of different persuasions until reevaluated and recoded performance it all but died out except in more remote forms for an altered cultural and political areas.' Under King Kalakaua, who ruled context.5 from 1874 to 1891, hula flourished again, Dance is perhaps the form of expression yet within a fundamentally altered cultural the West most often used and adapted for context. When the Nerrie Monarch', the purpose of theatricalizing other assumed the Hawaiian throne in 18 74 he cultures. In the context of Hawaii, the called kumu hula (hula teachers) to his performance form of hula became court and revived the tradition of hula synonymous with its dance component, performers as part of the court retinue, as which in turn came to stand for the had been the case in pre-contact times. indigenous people of the country. In the With Kalakaua begins what might be called case of Maori, it was mainly the `wardance% a conscious reinvention of tradition for the the haka, which from a variety of purpose of cementing Hawaiian national performance forms attained the identity and reinforcing indigenous metonymic force of representation. The political aspirations which were coming process of colonization was concomitant under pressure from the white settlers.% with the theatricalization of the objects of Although the reintroduction of ancient colonization. The strategies of hula as a form of court entertainment was representation that Said terms orientalist initially conceived as a demonstration of are thus metonymic and theatrical with a indigenous traditionalism, it led ironically few selected figures having to stand in for (or perhaps logically) to major innovations the larger whole of the Orient. In the in the performance form itself; it `became a

44 CHRISTOPHER B. BALME

breeding place for change', as dance contact times had consisted of a skirt made ethnologist Adrienne Kaeppler notes.' of tapa cloth, necklace and head-wreaths, These changes received dynamic public bracelets and anklets for both male and demonstration during the 188os when female dancers. There was, however, Kalakaua staged large hula festivals. These considerable variation in the costume celebrations were extensively depending on status, sex and type of dance. photographed, and a large number of Early evidence, which is exclusively these photographic documents have reliant on pictures and descriptions by survived. Analysing a selection of these European explorers and travellers, iconographical documents I am suggests that women danced bare- particularly concerned to read the breasted, which was certainly one of the semiotics of hula costume as an indicator causes of missionary opposition.9 This of the multiple cultural functions that the earliest photograph of hula, an ambro performance form was coming to assume. already prefigures the tradition of studio- produced studies for the tourist market. Figure 1 dates from i858 and is the earliest The floor has probably been retouched to extant photograph of hula. By this time give the appearance of sand. The costumes missionary influence had completely depicted here are also characteristic of one changed the costuming, which in pre- image of hula that was to persist FIGURE I throughout the nineteenth century. The Hula dancers, circa 1858. (AmbroOpe, wide cloth skirts, tightly buttoned blouses photographer unknown). Reproduced by and fibre anklets represent the exact permission of the Bishop Museum. opposite of the scantily clad South Seas maiden of the popular imagination. This photograph was taken one year before the passage of legislation regulating public performances of hula. The dance was permitted provided it was 'not of an immoral character, to which admission is obtainable by the payment of money.'i° Against this background the picture seems to be conveying a double message. On the one hand an image of tightly buttoned respectability, where anything less likely to arouse immoral passions is scarcely imaginable. This certainly holds true for the photographic image and it is only this particular function we can study On the

HULA AND HAKA 45

other hand, the dancers' kinaesthetic Within this context photography had appeal, it would seem, is deliberately already begun to establish itself as a effaced in this static pose. The other purveyor of commercial interests, implicit message is a commercial one. particularly in the realm of theatre and Here we have to take cognizance of the performance. context and purpose of representation. The various guises under which hula was Already hula was being manoeuvred into a demonstrated and promoted can,be context of commercial exploitation as the illustrated by reference to its appearence tourist industry in Hawaii began to grow in King Kalakaua's court, who, as in the second half of the nineteenth mentioned, was chiefly responsible for century. Further legislation was passed in revitalizing hula. Figure 2 shows hula 1865 and 1870 to remove most restrictions, master Inane Ukeke with four of his opening the way for wide participation in troupe. Ukeke was responsible for staging hula performances throughout the islands.

FIGURE 2

Inane Ukeke and court dancers, circa 1885 (photographer unknown). Reproduced by permission of the Bishop Museum.

46 CHRISTOPHER B. BALME

Kalakaua's festivals and earned the name most famous landmark—quintessential 'Honolulu Dandy'. The dancers are clad in touristland, even in the late nineteenth what has become regarded as 'traditional' century. Thus we have a conflation of a attire. The costume closely resembles that courtly dance troupe, dedicated to the of figure i, with the calf-length dresses, preservation and practice of hula, with a long-sleeved voluminous blouses and standardized, even stereotypical, vista and head-wreaths. This set the fashion a somewhat hybridized Hawaiian male standard for 'traditional' hula, and it has presence. persisted with slight variation until today. Figure 3 also depicts hula dancers against a Ukeke presents himself in an intriguing stereotypical South Seas backdrop. The mixture of top-hat, jacket, lei and cigar. central figure is also a court dancer for The backdrop is a painted view of Waikiki Kalakaua, yet the costume could not be beach and Diamond Head, Honolulu's more different from that used in court

FIGURE 3

Court dancers forKalakaua, late .t88os (photograph unknown). Reproduced by permission of the Bishop Museum.

HULA AND HAKA 47

performances. The grass-skirts and lei, Western music ideas available to them in the commonly associated with Hawaiian hula, second half of the nineteenth century.'a were introduced about this time. The Both process and performance document origin of the grass-skirt is uncertain. It a moment of cultural and performative may have been introduced by visiting self-fashioning as a response to heavy Tahitian troupes, from whom the acculturative influences. The picture of Hawaiians certainly learned the famous the girls in grass-skirts with the ukulele hip-rotating dance, which has come to be reveals, however, the ambivalence of this known as synonymous with hula, but was process. Seen together, these photographs in fact entirely unknown to ancient hula. suggest that a multiplicity of images and Some scholars identify Gilbert Islanders, performative identities had begun to present in Hawaii as labourers, as the evolve around the `traditional' source of inspiration for what was to performance form. Under the putative become one of the most famous dance strategy of reviving ancient hula, the court costumes of all time." The ukulele also dancers created a modern form, became synonymous with hula, incorporating new movements (Tahitian incorporated into the performance hip-gyrations), new musical instruments tradition by Kalakaua's court dancers at the and idiom. Out of an initially folkloric time, along with hymn singing and band impetus arose a highly inventive syncretic music. European music was refashioned performance genre. and syncretized during these years to produce a distinctively Hawaiian music But what did this mean for the and dance tradition, which found ethnographer or ethnomusicologist in acceptance by both Hawaiians and search of genuine ancient hula? Where Europeans alike. They were introduced in could it be found at the end of the one spectacular performance as Kaeppler nineteenth century? Their searches may notes: have led them to the scene in figure 4, dating from 18 99. In a grove of trees, two In Kalakaua's court all these influences bare-breasted hula dancers (or are they converged and at his jubilee celebration in dancers?) pose. They are accompanied by a 1886 a famous Hawaiian dancer appeared in a hula accompanied by ukulele and steel woman in a sleeveless dress with a guitar guitar. The new music was sanctioned by the and an elderly man in a loincloth playing a King, teachers, and performers, and loved by noseflute. In a single image, this the audience. Soon most new compositions photograph contains the multiple were in this style ... This new idiom is now identities of hula at the end of the century, known as `Hawaiian music.' In truth it has encapsulating a range of projections. The little indigenous Hawaiian music in it, but is forest setting corresponds with the uniquely Hawaiian in that it was developed in ethnographer's intuition that genuine `old Hawai'i by Hawaiians out of a combination of

48 CHRISTOPHER B. BALME

hula' might best be found in a remote without it. The old man playing the area, far from the madding crowd.'3 The noseflute is a marker of the pre-contact bare-breasted women correspond to the period, indicated in both his dress and the eroticized image of hula—an image, musical instrument he is playing. however, which had more to do with However, in the context of this European, especially missionary photograph, it is the guitar-playing woman projections, than with the actual costume who is at odds with its staged primitivism. codes of the form, whether ancient or The image is written over with the whole modern. The guitar suggests that for genealogy of European projections Hawaiians, or for the European regarding hula: the contradictions and photographer staging the photograph, the impositions. It is a composite image trying instrument that was introduced by the to cater for all these desires. It is perhaps Portugese in the mid-nineteenth century, the image that would have met with the had become synonymous with hula, to the ethnographer's approval, if he could have point perhaps that it was inconceivable been convinced it was authentic.

FIGURE 4 Hula dancers, ca. 180 (photographer unknown). Reproduced by permission of the Bishop Museum.

HULA AND HAKA 49

My final hula image (figure 5) dates also The photographer has caught the from the late 18 9os. It is a snapshot (as far characteristic but subtle sway and hand as snapshots were technically possible at movements of ancient hula, as performed the time) of hula being performed in a today. Of primary interest here, however, is backyard, probably somewhere in less the question ancient or modern: we Honolulu. Although this performance see that hula is part of a living tradition would certainly not have met with within the fabric of Hawaiian society. It is a ethnographic approval—the urban setting formal occasion judging by the attire of alone would have been a great the spectators—a birthday or wedding disappointment—it is 'authentic' to the perhaps—and hula dancers have evidently extent that it appears to be an indigenous been employed or invited for that special performance context. With the exception celebration. The dance is performed perhaps of the photographer, there are no neither for the tourist gaze nor for courtly European spectators. The dancers are clad delectation and political self- in simple dresses without decorative representation. Here it appears to occupy a wreaths (lei) or anklets. They are third space, somewhere between the accompanied by two men playing calabash private and the public, continuing some of drums, a sign of hula kahiko, dances its traditional functions, although in new performed in a broadly traditional way. clothes.

FIGURE 5 Backyard hula dancers, Honolulu circa thgos (photographer unknown). Reproduced by permission of the Bishop Museum.

5o CHRISTOPHER B. BALME

TAMING THE HAKA: ROTORUA rgoi Diamond Jubilee celebrations in London, New Zealand chose to send along with its Turning to a second example, I wish to pakeha troops a contingent of Maori extend some of the issues raised so far. If soldiers clad in modern army uniforms. the hula is metonymic of Hawaiian Those same soldiers then performed the culture, then the same function is assumed haka in traditional attire at the Holborn by the haka, the wardance of the Maori. Restaurant in London, watched on by the This dance represented more than any New Zealand premier Richard Seddon, the other cultural manifestation of the Maori former New Zealand Minister of Labour its dominant image in the mind of and ardent imperialist William Pember Europeans—both at home and abroad: the Reeves and assorted British guests (figure Maori as a fearsome warrior.' That the 6). It is had to imagine a more 'fitting' Maori had almost defeated the mighty image of the construction of performance British army in the wars of the 186os was under the imperial gaze. The artist has still very much in public consciousness. It individualized the guests of honour was thus only logical that for the 1897

FIGURE 6

Maori warriors pezforming the haka at the Holborn Restaurant, London, July 1897 (J. Begs, London Illustrated News, .r7 July 1897). Private Collection. HULA AND HAKA

Seddon is recognizable (to New ceremonial gathering) brought together Zealanders at least) even without the representatives from all the major tribes legend—whereas the haka party vies for in Aotearoa, providing the royal party and iconographic attention with candlebra and each other with an unprecedented display bowls of fruit. Nevertheless, their presence of indigenous performance. The choice of here is remarkable The foes of yore were Rotorua was not surprising. Rotorua could now providing delectation in an upmarket already boast an established touristic London restaurant on the 'eve of a large- infrastructure dedicated to presenting scale colonial conference, where Seddon Maori culture to European visitors.r8 The promoted, among other things, New local people, the Arawa, were also famous, Zealand's claim to annex various Pacific or infamous, for having deliberately sided territories.'5 with the settlers in the Maori-European wars in the 186os. The planning of the The success of this performance may have hui was in the hands of a Maori committee perhaps planted the seeds for what four under the chairmanship of the Minister of years later was to become the largest ever Native Affairs, James Carroll, himself half demonstration of Maori performance for Maori. The result was a gathering on an Maori and European alike. In 1901, New unprecedented scale with over six Zealand and other British dominions were thousand Maori from all over the country blessed with a royal tour by the Duke and in attendance. Duchess of Cornwall and York, the duke being the grandson of recently deceased The resulting meeting provided ample Queen Victoria, Empress of India and evidence of the dialectics of spectacle: that sovereign of many far-flung dominions. is the mutual desire to see and be seen in The tour was clearly designed to reinforce an aesthetically controlled environment. the symbolic claim to imperial sovereignty While Maori were certainly on display to by the royal family after the death of its the Europeans, the latter, especially the most important figurehead. While the royal party, were equally on display to royal party's reception by the white settlers Maori and the Maori tribes were on display was presumably never in doubt—`a to each other. The uniqueness of this event thousand miles of loyalty' in the words of was apparent to the participants, and the offical historian of the tour' s— the subsequent historians of Maori culture same could not necessarily be said for his have drawn attention to its importance in Majesty's Maori subjects.' ? It is perhaps not terms of scale and organization.'9 The surprising then that Maori participation large Maori contingent camped together was focussed almost entirely in one place: for about ten days prior to the actual a three day 'carnival' of Maori ceremony. The camp was divided along performance culture in Rotorua from 13 to tribal lines and the time was used for 15 June 1901. This hui (the Maori term for a extensive rehearsals. 52 CHRISTOPHER B. BALME

Our most comprehensive document of performative event I wish to restrict my this event is the extraordinarily detailed comments to the question of how these account in the official history written by extensive performances may have Robert Loughnan, a 'descriptive narrative', functioned as indicators of cultural as he terms his lavishly illustrated book. redefinition for Europeans and Maori His narrative is, not surprisingly, not only a alike. This 'gathering of the clans', as descriptive account but also an ideological Loughnan terms the coming together of one. That the book is a paean in praise not the various tribal groups," was certainly just of the monarchy but also the whole unprecedented in scale and form of colonial enterprise goes almost without interaction. As well as oratory, the main saying at this time in the country's history. mode of communication was by means of Within this unadulterated tribute to haka and waiata, costume and poi. Perhaps colonial discourse the account of the the dominant chord in the plethora of Rotorua hui is somewhat anomalous. Not information provided is the tension only is it the most detailed section of the between the past and the present. whole book, amounting to almost one Loughnan's account stresses the occasion hundred pages of denselywritten as an opportunity for Maori to rejoice in descriptions and commentary, but the the glories of their ancient, pre-contact - usually clear monotone of the narrative culture. Using a theatrical metaphor, voice is varied or perhaps fractured by the Loughnan describes the preparations as a presence of other voices. As Loughnan welcome chance to revive past grandeur: admits in the preface, substantial sections Old scarred warriors waxed wrathful in of the chapter are from the pen of Sir heated debate over ancient war-dances to be Apirana Ngata of the Ngatiporou. With the used in mimic warfare at Rotorua, the almost exception of an interpolated poem by him, obsolete peruperus that were wont to awake however, his voice is never made explicit. echoes in the New Zealand forests in the Rather we have the impression that fighting-days of the past. Once more the Loughnan reworked extensive comments Maori lived in the past. For a brief space the by Ngata into his own text. This is edge of the heavy curtain that screened it was raised, old memories revived, old chords particularly evident in the detailed were touched anew, and hearts thrilled and accounts of Maori performance culture, vibrated to the weird music of the dead which stand beside racist views of the ages?' people themselves, sentiments which Apirana Ngata himself would scarcely have The Maori past is troped here as a stage on uttered. which a historical drama thematizing the `dead ages' is to be produced. It is not the In the following examination of what is an `debased' Maori present that is to be extremely multi-textured and complex unfolded before the royal visitors (and the HULA AND HAKA 53

New Zealand politicians accompanying fantastic anachronisms characteristic of a them), but an idealized version of an time of transition. The past was revived, and heroic and 'homeric' past: mingled with stately dignity in the whirl of the present, seeking to grasp the bewildering Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, changes that a century of contact with theatrical performances only allow civilization had effected?' themselves to be stage-managed to a While the quotidian, informal dress codes certain degree. Theatre, like culture, is reflected indeed the cultural-syncretism always subject to the vicissitudes of time characteristic of most 'times of transition', and change. This was nowhere more the formal performances revealed much obvious than in the costuming for the tighter control and conscious fashioning. event. Like the hula in Hawaii, the Maori Not only did each tribe adopt a special performances were subject to precise dominant colour, but most tried to control and conceptualization. The emulate within the bounds of Christian Rotorua performances saw a similar propriety the traditional past that was process of conscious and unconscious eagerly sought by European and Maori adaptation to the special requirements of alike. the unusual event. Traditional clothing became increasingly refashioned as The extent of this 'conscious fashioning' theatrical or folkloristic costume: at once a can be illustrated by comparing two signifier of the 'dead past' and the cultural photographs. Figure 7 shows the changes of the present. During the performance of a haka by members of the preparations for the arrival of the royal Ngati Kahungunu tribe of the East Coast" party Loughnan describes the appearance region, welcoming guests at a wedding. of Maori in the informal situation of the The photograph is contemporaneous with camp: the Rotorua festivities. Like the backyard There was a curious mingling of the old and hula, this is an indigenous performance new Deeply tattooed warriors, some of context: Maori performing for Maori. With whom had witnessed a cannibal feast, rubbed the exception of the figure right, all are noses with young men who rode bicycles and dressed in formal, everyday European- pounded the big drum in the brass band. In style clothes. If we compare this image the dresses an effective compromise was with a photograph taken of the Wanganui effected. Over a creaseless frock coat fresh haka party at the Rotorua hui23 (figure 8), from the hands of the pakeha tailor a Maori all performers are now clad in traditional mat was thrown, and a belltopper piupiu. The dominant impression is a surmounted the combination. A high-born move from clothes to costume. Although lady decked in silk of bright hues yet wore a both occasions can be considered hui — piupiu round her waist and a heitiki round ceremonial encounters in the Maori use of her neck. It was one huge fancy ball, full of

54 CHRISTOPHER B. BALME

FIGURE 7 Members of the Ag- ati Kahungunu tribe perform a haka, welcoming visitors to the wedding of Maude, daughter of George andAirini Donnelly at Taradale, East Coast of the North Island. Early Igo os (photographer unknown). Auckland Star Collection. Reproduced by permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library National Library ofNew Zealand, Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa. F-68581-112.

FIGURE 8 Haka party from nganui at Rotorua during Royal visit, .Tune Igor. Auckland Star Collection. Reproduced by permission of theAlexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa. G-342-th.

HULA AND HAKA 55

the word—the Rotorua gatherings are world could a sight comparable to it be seen. evidence of a new configuration of The broad glare of the sun played on stage performative and cultural codes catering and players; the stage might have been the to the European gaze. whole world, and the players children of Nature, untutored, yet endowed with This conscious staging of anachronism by instinctive grace and the marvellous art of means of costuming was matched by suiting word to action and action to word.25 careful attention to the type of weapons on The theatrical performance being played display: 'They were admired by all who out is, in Loughnan's interpretation, a kind saw them—they and their good humour, of historical drama resurrecting 'the and their vigour, and their weapons. No buried treasures' of the Maori past and weapon was there, however, of European celebrating 'the remnants of a proud origin; no gun of any period from the time race'.26 The metaphor also carries a of Hingis [sic./ wars ... no pouch, no belt, no metonymic force for colonial peoples as a tomahawk or axe of the whole fire-and- whole. When he claims that 'the stage steel period of their wars.' 4 Already here might have been the whole world' on we see a feature typical of folklorization of which 'children of Nature' perform for colonized cultures in general: the their colonial rulers, no sophistry is effacement of all signs of post-contact required to interpret this vision as one culture. All material signifiers of culture— pertaining to all colonized peoples. In this costume and properties (in this case sense the Rotorua performance is both weapons)—were placed in the temporal highly specific and symptomatic of wider frame of pre-contact times, the generic issues and processes pertaining to time of folklorized performance forms. At performance in cross-cultural colonial Rotorua we can speak too of a situations. theatricalization of Maori people and their performance forms as they were adjusted SUMMARY to the new receptive code of a European desire for performed primitivism. The Two cultures under heavy assimilative ineluctable logic of this discursive pressure—both threatened with cultural, construction explains why Loughnan if not physical extinction—resorted to a himself resorts to an extended theatrical revitalization and redefinition of their metaphor at the 'climax' of his account: performance traditions. In Hawaii, the hula revival dating from the late 18 7os, and The carnival had not lasted more than an hour. But for the spectators who saw it for the in New Zealand the new idea of cultural first time how many impressions had been performance festivals after the turn of the crowded into that brief space! It was century, resulted in a significant recoding something to dream of. In no theatre in the of performance forms. The need to CHRISTOPHER B. BALME

perform one's culture to a cultural Other fulfil important functions in their arose as a response to an altered cultural indigenous context. With the arrival of the and political situation: the addressees are, royal party in 1 901, Maori were called upon on the one hand, the colonizing majority to present themselves to European guests and, on the other hand, members of the in a theatrical mode. Dancing and singing same culture, with whom in pre-contact and brandishing weapons of pre- times intercourse would have been European origin, they were induced to unlikely or problematic. Thus the sharing present a staged version of an earlier of performance traditions becomes a first period of ancient vigour untainted by step toward reorganizing cultural European influence. boundaries and creating new identity Both hula and haka are quintessential formations. In New Zealand, tribal groups cultural signs, acting as focal points for the gathered to share traditions in a new cultural identity formation of their communicative situation. What today is respective cultures. Of equal importance, deemed `traditional' Hawaiian or Maori however, are their functions as theatrical performance (the hula and haka) can in forms, acts of performance combining fact be located at a particular point in time, music, symbolic and mimetic movement, a moment of historical crisis, where the and, in the case of hula, narrative and remedial strategies were performative as lyrical poetry. The changing dress codes much as political, or indeed where the two during these periods of change merge. demonstrate that a clear binary of These revisions include the strategic `traditional' performance on the one hand folldorization of King K,alakaua's court and an 'inauthentic' touristic version on dancers who revived a putative traditional the other is extremely problematic. In hula but paved the way for the terms of physical presentation hula and commercialized touristic forms. The haka were subject to a complex dynamic touristic manifestation of hula in turn of cultural borrowings and redefinitions reveals itself to be a curious composite, that incorporated historical exigencies, requiring the form be deliberately aesthetic innovation and cultural identity primitivized in a way in which it had never formation. Performances always represent existed. Maori performance, particularly a particular manner of staging the body for the haka, had by the end of the nineteenth a particular audience at a particular time century become subject to similar and place. As such they are replete with processes of revaluation. In Rotorua in cultural and aesthetic meanings that are particular, these performances had been invariably read differently by different discovered and refashioned for the tourist spectators. This multivalency suggests, as I gaze. At the same time they continued to have argued, that performance is a HULA AND HAKA 57 particularly productive place to study the For different perspectives see (in. complex cross-cultural exchanges chronological order) Nathaniel Emerson, characteristic of colonialism. Unwritten Literature of Hawaii: The sacred songs of the hula (Washington D.C.: CHRISTOPHER B. BALME Government Printing Office,190 9); Dorothy Barrere, Mary Kawena Pukui and Marion Christopher. Balme holds the chair in Kelly, Hula: Historical perspectives theatre studies at the University of Mainz, (Honolulu: Bishop Museum, 1980); Roger G. Germany Rose, Hawaii: The royal isles, exhibition catalogue (Honolulu: Bishop Museum, 1980); Adrienne Kaeppler, Polynesian Dance NOTES (Honolulu: Alpha, Delta Kappa, 1 983); and, ' This essay is based on a paper given at the most recently, Elisabeth Buck, Paradise conference `Adventures in Identity: Remade: Politics of culture and history in Constructing the Multicultural Subject' held Hawai'i (Philadelphia: Temple University at the Goethe Institut, Sydney, 30 July-2 Press, 1993), esp. p.12ff. August 1998. It is part of an on-going 7 The term 'reinvention of tradition' is used research project funded by the German here in the sense defined by Hobsbawm and Research Council (DFG), within the Ranger, although I am aware that it is a very framework of its interdisciplinary focus, contested term among Pacific scholars. As Theatralitie. My thanks to John Docker for Hobsbawn and Ranger propose in their now encouraging me to rework the paper into the classic definition, an 'invented tradition' is 'a present form. set of practices ... of a ritual or symbolic 2 Cf. particularly Jocelyn Linnekin and Lin nature, which seek to inculcate certain values Poyer (eds), Cultural Identity and Ethnicity in and norms of behavior by repetition [and] ... the Pacc (Honolulu: University of Hawaii attempt to establish continuitywith ... a Press,1990). suitable historical past.' Eric Hobsbawm and 3 The Concise Oxford Dictionary (Oxford: Terence Ranger (eds), The Invention of Clarendon Press, i99o), p.747. Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pd. As the contributors to the 4 Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage volume show, this process is most effective in Books, 1978), p.63. forms of ceremony and performance. For a 5 For the notion of folklorization as discussion of the term in the Pacific context, `fossilization' in the European context, cf. cf. Jocelyn Linnekin, 'Cultural Invention and Marianne Mesnil, `The masked festival: the Dilemma of Authenticity,A merican disguise or affirmation?', Cultures 3:2 (1976), Anthropologist 93:2 (i99i), 446-49. 11-29. Fora discussion of time in the 8 Kaeppler, Polynesian Dance, p.23. anthropological context, cf. Johannes Fabian, Time and the Other: How anthropology 9 Cf. Caroline K. Klarr, Hawaiian Hula and Body makes its object (New York: Columbia Ornamentation, 1778 -1858 (Los Osos, Cal.: University Press, 1983). Bearsville Press and Cloud Mountain Press, 1996. 'The history of hula, particularly its ill-fortune under the missionaries, has been extensively l° Barrere et al., Hula, p.41. documented and need not be repeated here. " For the origin of the grass-skirt, see Barrere et al., Hula, p.72. CHRISTOPHER B. BALME

12 Kaeppler, Polynesian Dance, p. 24. cannot be easily summarized. In the '3 For an extensive discussion of the place of nineteenth century, a number of Maori hula in European discursive and leaders still viewed the British sovereign as iconographical constructions at the end of an impartial place of appeal for their the nineteenth century, see Balme, 'Dressing conflicts with the white settler government. the Hula: Iconography, performance and '8 Cf. Ngahuia Te Awekotuku, The Sociocultural cultural identity formation in late nineteenth Impact of Tourism on the Te Arawa people of century Hawaii', Paideuma: Mitteilungen .cur Rotorua'. PhD Thesis (University of Waikato, Kulturkunde 45 (forthcoming, D999). 1981). '4 For a discussion of the image of Maori as a '9 Cf. Jennifer Shennan, who points out the warrior people as an invention catering to a importance of hui for the exchange of European discursive construction, cf. the performance ideas. 'Such gatherings may article by Toon van Meijl, The Maori as have sharpened an appreciation for the Warrior: Ideological implications of a contrast between area styles and conventions historical image' in Toon van Meijl and Paul within the dance forms, but there may also van der Grijp (eds), European Imagery and have been incentive for encouraging Colonial History in the Pacific (Saarbriicken: uniformity in some features'. The Maori Verlag fur Entwicklungspolitik Breitenbach, Action Song (Wellington: New Zealand 1994 49-63. Council for Educational Research, 1984), 15 For a discussion of Seddon's imperial P.23. ambitions, especially in the South Pacific, cf. 20 Royalty in New Zealand, p.63. Keith Sinclair,A History of New Zealand, Royalty in New Zealand, p.63. (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 198o), 22 Royalty in New Zealand, p.74. pp.217-2J. 23 The leader of the group is Mrs Kemp, wife of a '6 Robert A. Loughnan, Royalty in New Zealand: Wanganui chief who fought with the New The visit of their. Royal Highnesses the Duke Zealand militia during the land wars of the and Duchess of Cornwall and York, lo-27 186os. June 190 1. A Descriptive Narrative, (Wellington: John Mackay, Government 24 Royalty in New Zealand, p.76. Printing Office, i9o2), p.v. 25 Royalty in New Zealand, p.99. '7 The relationship of the Maori to the British 26 Royalty in New Zealand, p.99. Crown has been and still is a vexed one, and