"I'm All of Everything That I Am": Constituting the Indigenous Woman, the White Woman, and the Audience in 's The Monologues1

Tara Williamson is an For the past few years, I participated in Anishinaabekwe/Nehayowak from Swan Lake, a VDay Campaign. VDay has been embraced Manitoba and is a member of the Opaskwayak by women's movements across the world (but, Cree Nation. She holds a Bachelor of Social mostly in North America) to focus on the W ork from the University of Manitoba and is elimination of . Its most currently in the last year of a concurrent well-known campaign strategy is the staging of LL.B./M.A. - Indigenous Governance program (VMs) by Eve Ensler. at the University of Victoria. The play is a series of monologues that are based on interviews Ensler conducted with Abstract women about their relationships with their The author's analysis highlights the . reinforcement of stereotypical images of native As an Indigenous woman women in The Vagina Monologues. She (Anishinaabe/Nehayo), I experienced the play suggests that alternative with mixed emotion. I felt disconnected from performances/performativities of the play would many of the cast members and I disagreed with better challenge oppression and would foster a the image of the Indigenous woman that the more complex understanding of race, class, play presented. I eventually came to understand and gender. that my experience of myself could not be Résumé contained within the discourse of the play's L’analyse de l’auteure souligne le renforcement white feminism. To better understand my des images stéréotypes des femmes experience, I have scripted a 3-Act play that autochtones dans la pièce intitulée “The Vagina portrays, from my experience, the role of the Monologues”. Elle suggère que des exécutions Indigenous woman, the White woman, and the /performances alternatives de la pièce seraient Audience in The Vagina Monologues production mieux utilisés attirer des observations sur of which I was a part. The analyses that follow l’oppression et pour encourager une the first two Acts demonstrate how the play compréhension plus complexe sur la race, la stabilizes a stereotypical and essentialized classe et le genre. image of "Indigenous" and how this image is connected to the maintenance of . The final analysis attempts to give agency to the constructed Indigenous subject by exploring possible alternative performances of the play and the tropes within it.

ACT I – THE ROLE OF THE INDIGENOUS WOMAN Scene I Scene. Bare stage. Photograph of a dreamcatcher on projection screen. Pow Wow music playing. Dim red lighting. Raise spotlight on stage left while music fades.

68 Atlantis 34.1, 2009 PR www.msvu.ca/atlantis [Enter Indigenous Woman #1 – Stage Left.] deconstructed (primarily) by women of colour Scene II and non-Western women, the presence of Indigenous W oman #1: This monologue is essentialism in feminism is still felt in both based on interviews by Eve Ensler with women theory and practice. The use of the "vagina" as from the Oglala Lakota Nation on the Pine an interchange for "woman" is a good Ridge Reservation in . Their demonstration of this essentialism. stories reflect the challenges that Native women The VMs present the vagina as a face every day living in isolation and without sentient being who is anthropomorphized by her resources. According to the Amnesty woman. In the monologue "W ear/Say/Smell" International report "Maze of Injustice," the (which is actually presented by three speakers), average annual rate of and sexual assault the actors present women's answers to the among American Indian Women is 2.5 times questions: "What would your vagina wear?," higher than all other races. "What would your vagina say?," and "What [Exit Indigenous Woman #1] does your vagina smell like?" While the final Scene III question is usually answered in the form of an Scene. Same scene as Scene I, except a chair observation, the former questions involve on stage right. Raise spotlight on chair. women reflecting on an imaginary being in a [Enter Indigenous Woman #2] way that might be cloaked in a detached Indigenous Woman #2: I looked up and he third-person type of inquiry but in reality is slapped me, my husband...He had long black inevitably personal, because nobody knows the hair, combing his long hair when we made love answer but the woman being interviewed. The it got loose before...After 18 years he beat me, voice of the vagina is necessarily the woman in the morning when he was so nice again. I speaking. Christine M. Cooper describes this would braid his long hair. I would take my time reductionism as a kind of metonymy whereby "a like I cared so much and I would do it perfectly part of the body and a particular subset of crooked...Heard that he was out with a woman experience [stands] in for the whole of female making love and she was fluffing his hair when consciousness" (Cooper 2007, 732). The types he was wild on top of her...He wrapped my long of responses elicited by the vagina questions black hair around his hand, jerked my head. are even more provocative in that they can be deconstructed further to better delineate the The Role of the Indigenous Woman - nature of the woman/vagina voice. Analysis All of the answers to the questions The setting of, introduction for, and the reflect the limiting and static nature of the actual monologue "Crooked Braid" all contain questions. Women are forced to consider the problematic images of the Indigenous woman. one thing that their vagina would say or wear or By analyzing the intersection of gender and do. Certainly, some women answer with more race, these stereotypical and clichéd images than one phrase or article of clothing, but, the acquire a broader context. effect is still the same. Answering the questions As a feminist project, the Vagina involves deciding what thing (or things) Monologues is vulnerable to attack on the basis essentially defines the vagina, and accordingly, of its narrow perspective of womanhood that is the woman. The answers are not accurate grounded in racist and classist values. representations of reality - (if you accept that Feminism continues to be a largely Western the talking vagina is a literal impossibility) but movement that first asserted its power via an instead are the well-thought out versions by the essentializing claim that "all women shared woman being questioned. The following some universal characteristics and suffered responses from cast members are particularly from universal oppressions which could be good examples: understood and described by a group of predominantly white, Western-trained, women "What would your vagina wear?" academics" (Tuhiwai-Smith 2001, 166). W hile "faery wings of course" these premises have been challenged and "ninjitsu pants and randomly dress in silly costumes"

www.msvu.ca/atlantis PR Atlantis 34.1, 2009 69 "a masquerade costume" non-white women in contrast with white women, "it would probably wear cotton" it's easy to understand why non-white women "black velvet and a red feather boa" would want to access the white vagina goddess. The question could just as easily have The only time violence is directly been "What would you, in expressing your addressed in the monologues is when the womanhood, wear?" The vagina thus becomes speakers are non-white. The violence that the an object of desire for the expression of non-white women experience includes rape, womanhood - a subjective, acid burning, civil war, murder, domestic archetypically-dressed woman. However, violence, dismemberment, and female genital everyday life - with its misogyny, social mutilation. These non-white vaginas are also pressures, mainstream boundaries, and inanimate - they do not dream or aspire or get practical demands - prevents women from dressed up. They are victims. Remember that being the women they envision. Instead, Indigenous women face challenges as women wander through the world always Indigenous women because we live "in isolation lacking something bigger and better (i.e., and without resources." W e are pitifully feather boas and faery wings). This is the helpless. The Afghani, Mexican, and Iraqi conception of that is espoused by the women have no voice. They are so helpless, essential, talking vagina. It fosters a feminism victimized and silenced that other women must that focuses on lack and valourizes an image of speak for them (the name of the monologue is woman as dehistoricized and depoliticized. "The Memory of Her Face" [emphasis added]). Because certainly, politics and history must be As Cooper points out, the "gender irrelevant if all you need to access the essentialism…transmutes to cultural archetype of woman is a vagina. essentialism" (2007, 747). This is particularly Except that if you are a non-white clear in the image of the Indigenous woman as woman in the VMs, you are not allowed to talk presented in "Crooked Braid." about your vagina. Or, at least it's not in your Besides being helpless, isolated, and script. In the 2007 VDay Production, there were without resources, this Indigenous woman two monologues that represented non-white speaks in extremely colloquial English - women (one of the monologues had a trilogy of sometimes inverting sentences and sometimes speakers). While every other monologue speaking with phrases that aren't actually includes either the word "vagina" or "cunt," - sentences. This Indigenous woman has long and one that instead used the euphemism dark hair and she identifies with pow wow "down there" - non-white women's monologues music and dreamcatchers with feathers. Finally, did not reference the all-powerful it is hard not to be misled by the title of the vagina-as-woman at all. Yet, it seems safe to monologue. The use of "Crooked Braid" as a assume that non-white women are still title is reminiscent of the English translations of considered women for the purposes of the Indian names that transform verbs, adjectives, monologues. After all, the stories are part of a and adverbs into nouns - Crooked Braid, Sitting campaign to end violence against women. But, Bull, Dances With Wolves. It's a very Indian even if "who counts as a woman may seem sounding name. This Indigenous woman fulfils broadened in The Vagina Monologues,…what the stereotypical and essentialized image of the makes one a woman remains fixed: the vagina, Indigenous woman that a white audience would which carries metaphysical significations" expect. Simultaneously, the Monologues also (Cooper 2007, 737). It's not that non-white manages to pinpoint an essentialized image of women aren't women per se, they're just not the non-white man. complete women. They lack the vagina and so In all of the monologues with non-white it becomes their object of desire. Or, at least it women, the abusers and perpetrators of the does under the projected gaze of the Western, violence are non-white men. The abusing white women. And, if you accept the play as Indigenous man in "Crooked Braid" is exotic accurately representing the experience of and savage, with long hair that gets loose while

70 Atlantis 34.1, 2009 PR www.msvu.ca/atlantis he makes love. In "The Memory of Her Face," took our land? And, to whom is this woman the men are Mexican, Afghani, and Iraqi. Even speaking? The use of "they" relieves the when there is acknowledgement of white male audience of personal implication in colonialism. influence on the abuse of non-white women It lets the audience believe that colonialism is (the dropping of bombs from planes) the focus either over or has nothing to do with them. It is less on the cause of the violence, and more lets the audience believe in the Indigenous on the abhorrent attitude of the (Iraqi/Afghani) woman as victimized, long-haired, men after the violence has occurred (i.e., that hyper-cultural, and inferior. Consequently, it lets the woman is now worthless, a commodity). the white audience believe in its own The non-white man is essentialized as a superiority. misogynist with an interest in women for their sex – be it sexual pleasure or the commodity of Act II – THE ROLE OF THE WHITE WOMAN procreation. Scene I Race and culture is how difference is Scene. Stage at dress rehearsal. performed in this play. Gender and sex are [Indigenous Woman #1 finishes introduction for moot points in The Vagina Monologues - the "Crooked Braid" and exits stage left, she is vagina presumes sex and is inextricably linked laughing and shaking her head) as the sign of a presumed gender. Differing White Woman Director #1: [offstage, to experiences of femininity are not explored as Indigenous W oman #1] Do you think the music acceptable expressions of self on a gender is funny? continuum, but instead are attributed to racial Indigenous Woman #1: Well, kind of. I think and cultural difference. The 2003 V-Day that the image of the Indigenous woman we're Campaign was entitled "Afghanistan is portraying is a bit racist. Everywhere: A Spotlight on Native American White Woman Director #1: I want to let you and First Nations Women." know that the music is authentic from a group There is white and there is Other. And, in the Prairies. while it is true that non-white women do Indigenous Woman #1: Oh, um, ok. I think that experience gender and race differently than it's too bad that this wasn't a decision made white women, this othered, dehistoricized, and with the only two native women in the cast. depoliticized over-simplification is dangerous in White Woman Director #1: I'm the Director and that it naturalizes the difference instead of I can make this decision on my own. Besides, challenging it. It is absolutely true that some I'm native. I'm Metis. Indigenous women live on reserves that are Scene II isolated and lack resources. But, is this why the Scene. A rehearsal. Mostly young, white Indigenous "race" experiences more sexual women. Dressed casually, laughing, having a assault than other "races"? Were the women good time. who went missing from Vancouver's East Side Indigenous Woman #1: [To a small group of - an urban area with an extremely high white women] I was thinking of changing the concentration of social services - living in words "living in isolation and without resources" isolation and without resources? Why are they to "living with the effects of colonization and raped and killed? Without filling in the blanks of racism." What do you think? colonialism and racism, the audience is left only White Woman #1: I don't know. I mean, what with a pity party for the Indigenous "race" and about the Highway of Tears? Those women no context for developing real solutions to the had to hitchhike because they lived in isolation serious questions posed by violence and hate. and without resources. And, without real possibilities, white audiences Indigenous Woman #1: That's true. But, is that are able to relinquish personal responsibility for why they were raped and killed? change. The "Crooked Braid" monologue ends White Woman #2: I guess not, but, it seems with Indigenous Woman #2 lamenting: "They like the woman in this monologue is in isolation took our land. They took our ways. They took and without resources, so, I think it's like that our men. We want them back." Who? Who for a reason.

www.msvu.ca/atlantis PR Atlantis 34.1, 2009 71 White Woman #3: Yeah, and I don't think we're group in the prairies." WWD1 tries to allowed to change the script. distinguish herself from the inauthentic and Scene III insincere, because for her, the issue of cultural Scene. Same rehearsal space. In opposite property or the appropriateness of a projected corner of the room, Indigenous W oman #2 is image is not about dignity or humanity, it is sitting and practising while White Woman about whether it is the true, authentic, and Directors #2 and #3 are watching. correct representation. Her claim to authenticity White Woman Director #2: [To Indigenous is "used as a pretext to gain discursive terrain, Woman #2] You need to be less angry. Why do while evading the question of who controls or is you think that this woman stayed with this man? trying to control, the discourse" (Root 1997, Indigenous Woman #2: Because he's a native 230). The claim to the authentic, coupled with guy with a job? [laughing] the assertion of power as the director, functions W hite W oman Director #2: No. She loved him. to "remind the Native out loud that [she] alone She must have loved him – why else would she is master" (Fanon 1961, 53). As the Director of stay? the protesting Indian, WWD1 has the power to Indigenous W oman #2: But, I think she is make whatever statement she would like about angry. She's telling this story like it's in the past, Indigenous people, as long as it is authentic. and she is angry. This is the entitlement of the self-proclaimed White Woman Director #3: Using just one non-ethnocentric and sincere settler. emotion for the whole thing is really not very The WWD1's claim to Metis-ness appealing to the audience. You really need to troubles the notion of settler and is deserving of give them a rollercoaster – help them feel it. its own analysis. As a preface to this extremely contentious issue, I would like to clarify the The Role of the White Woman - Analysis purpose of my analysis. I am not attempting to The conversation in Act II highlights delineate the lines of Metis identity for Metis how the white woman's role is dependent on people. I am only trying to show the the role of the Indigenous woman as a helpless philosophical dilemmas that I confronted in a victim who is an actor/subject in need of specific situation. I will use generalized theory direction. The interdependence of this and statistics, but I recognize that this analysis relationship reifies the settler/colonized is not necessarily applicable to or relevant for dichotomy and allows for such parasitic any other situation. practices as cultural appropriation. Between 2001 - 2006, Statistics In Scene I, the White Woman Director Canada reported that the Metis population in #1("WWD1") has chosen, without consultation Canada skyrocketed from 292,000 to 389,780 from the Indigenous members of the cast, a (in 2001, it was 204, 000) (Statistics Canada pow wow song for the introductory segment of 2006). Such an unexpected and substantial the monologue. Her justifications for this choice increase begs an explanation. Sunera are three-fold: 1) it is an "authentic" song; 2) Thobani's observations about Canada's political she is the director; 3) she is Metis. But, these shift to multiculturalism provides some useful seemingly differing justifications can be insight. Canada is a nation founded on racism - deconstructed to reveal their underlying the myth of terra nullius points clearly to that. motivation - control of the subject. The roots of Citizenship has historically been tied to race - cultural appropriation run deep: "Control and some races were "preferred" for integration into manipulation of the discourse about Native the nation. In the late twentieth century, the cultures was one of the first measures used by Canadian national project, influenced by both anthropologists and ethnologists to replace the disastrous image of racism propagated by Indians as the authoritative voices about their Nazi Germany and by the need for immigration own societies" (Browner 2000, 246). When to allay a labour shortage, shifted its political challenged about her potentially inappropriate policy from one of overt racism to one of music, the WWD1 responds with a claim of "tolerant" multiculturalism. Multiculturalism "authenticity" - "the music is authentic from a made Canada "more adaptable to changing

72 Atlantis 34.1, 2009 PR www.msvu.ca/atlantis global conditions" (Thobani 2007, 153) and a touchstone of pan-Indianism. These therefore more cosmopolitan. The distinction considerations do not matter if you are a between the old racist national and the new biological Indian. But, this version of Indigeneity multicultural cosmopolitan allowed Canadians is too easy. It demeans the versions of to shirk responsibility for their colonial past Indigeneity that other Indigenous people - who because it wasn't their colonial past. It belonged were raised as Indigenous, who cannot pass as to a racist citizen who no longer existed. white, and who belong to an Indigenous The shift to multiculturalism has meant community - do live everyday - whether or not that non-white identities have become reduced on any particular day it is beneficial for them. to depoliticized, non-raced cultures. And, those This is the most deceiving form of cultural cultures, sans politics, are openly welcomed appropriation, because it takes the guise of and even celebrated. This is an important factor being authoritative from within. Ultimately, in understanding the skyrocketing numbers of WWD1 is accessing the same kind of Metis in Canada. Many "new" Metis tell the discursive control that she attempted in story of their ashamed grandparent who never claiming that her pow wow music choice was identified as being Indigenous and as a result authentic; only now, the claim to authenticity is nobody in the family ever embraced that aspect one of identity. Yet still, the new Metis person of their identity. It is a terrible truth that many approaches Indigeneity as a white person trying people coped with internalized hate and racism to identify as Indigenous. Deborah Root by passing as white, not speaking their explains this desire as a kind of anti-capitalist language, and/or never acknowledging their angst: "White hippies do tend to recognize Indigenous relations in public (or even in some of the oppressive aspects of industrial, private). I do not discount this reality or the consumerist society but manifest this by harm that it has caused. The Canadian focusing on and identifying with people who explanation for this phenomenon would be that seem to be even more oppressed, thus these Indigenous people lived in a time when reproducing the 1970s movie version of the racist national was intolerant. Today, in a Indigenous as defeated victims who exist only multicultural society, it is perfectly acceptable to in the past" (Root 1997, 228). This desire for a recognize your cultural "heritage." In fact, it's more oppressed victim also helps to explain the quite hip to do so - cosmopolitan even. resistance the white cast members had to However, to identify as Metis solely on the basis replacing the language of "living in isolation and of a blood relation naturalizes the notion of without resources" to "living with the effects of depoliticized and dehistoricized race: "the term colonization and racism." 'Metis' has been constituted according to racial The coming together of women for the rather than indigenous national constructions. purposes of helping other women can play an In such an ordering, any (indigenous) individual important function in the self-constitution of who self-identifies as Metis is counted as such, individual women and gender solidarity. In order regardless of the terms used by his or her to constitute the self as empathetic and ancestors to collectively self-identify" (Anderson compassionate, the helping woman requires an 2008, 348). This definition gives the person object that needs to be helped. It is not that any claiming Metis status the power to claim women would disagree that isolation and lack of entitlement to a Metis voice of her own accord resources are caused by colonization and and at her own whim. It does not matter that racism, it's just that, for some reason, it seems she was raised as a white woman, can pass as more appropriate to describe the Indigenous a white woman, and does not disclose her woman as lonely and lacking. Furthermore, in identity among other Indigenous women. It defining Indigenous men (and thus does not matter that the recording of traditional Indigenousness) as "unfree" (slaves to sexual music is a contested issue among different desire, addictions, and violence) and nations and peoples and that it might be "intolerant" (misogynistic), whiteness becomes considered sacreligious or that the use of sketched as "virtuous and free" (Brown 2006, Prairie culture outside of the prairies has been 103). Constituting whiteness as tolerant

www.msvu.ca/atlantis PR Atlantis 34.1, 2009 73 empowers the white person to control the lives Scene II of non-white people in the name of tolerance, Stage is set-up like the house of a theatre. as intolerant as that may seem. It is this Audience is in rows, seated, grumbling, faint self-constitution that allows women to feel good clapping. Audience wearing all brown. about helping - even though the history of Scene III helping Indigenous people has included the Stage is set-up like the house of a theatre. over-imprisonment of Indigenous men, the Audience is in rows, standing and clapping. apprehending of Indigenous children, and the Audience wearing (insert costume here). vilification of Indigenous women as unfit mothers. The Role of the Audience - Analysis Alas, a discussion of self-constitution Art represents life, or so they say. The and whiteness doesn't good theatre make. The play, as a work of art, attempts to represent show is about acting and communicating with "real" life. At its heart is an attempt to speak to the audience. W hen the directors suggest ways an audience in a way that creates a relationship to perform a character, it is with the audience in of sorts so that the audience can identify with, mind. When Indigenous W oman #2 wanted to or at least appreciate, the work for its perform "Crooked Braid" with anger, she was representative message. Judith Butler coaxed to consider what this woman would articulates that the difficulty with have been feeling. At an earlier rehearsal, representations is that they have the capacity to numerous white women tried to "help" "produce the subjects they subsequently come Indigenous Woman #2 to better understand the to represent" (Butler 2006, 2). I am not positioning of her character by explaining suggesting that one staging of the VMs has the oppression and cycles of violence. Given that effect of solidifying racial difference or the the character is fictitious, nobody actually knew image of the Indigenous woman as a societal what this woman would have been feeling. norm. But, as part of a larger discourse that Despite scripted words, the character is nothing privileges whiteness over non-whiteness, the more than an interpretive creation that gains play becomes a "reiterative and citational meaning from the actor's portrayal and the practice" (Butler 2006, 2) that repeats the audience's interpretation. Yet, the white cast representation or performance one more time and directors were convinced that their in a series of other actions and performances in interpretation was superior. They expressed day-to-day life. These representations are concern that the audience wouldn't respond productive in that they project not only to white well to an entirely angry monologue. This audiences but also Indigenous audiences who assertion is in spite of the fact that one of the come to internalize this racism. Internalized (white) monologues was premised on anger racism "makes us doubt the validity of the and called "My Angry Vagina." Given the roles existence of our people, and thus ourselves" that were assigned to the Indigenous woman (Anderson 2000, 106). Indigenous women and the white woman, perhaps what the become constitutive of white women's directors meant was that the audience wouldn't representations. respond well to an angry Indian. Regardless, In this way, the Indigenous subject that these speculations bring us to the final Act is represented in the play is also constituted by starring "The Audience." the play. This does not mean that the representation is not real; indeed, the Act III – THE ROLE OF THE AUDIENCE representation is material - the play's the thing! Scene I But, what it is representing - the subjectivity of Stage is set-up like the house of a theatre. the Indigenous woman - is constructed by the Audience is in rows, standing and clapping. representation itself. And, the representation is Audience wearing all white. dependent upon the interpretation of the audience for meaning. This interpretation is necessarily "imaginary" in the sense that "what is represented...[is] not the system of real

74 Atlantis 34.1, 2009 PR www.msvu.ca/atlantis relations which govern the existence of about Native peoples. We can rewrite our individuals, but the imaginary relation of those history, and we can mobilize our future" (Bird individuals to the real relations in which they 1998, 30). live" (Althusser 1995, 125). The ability to I acknowledge that it is somewhat influence the representative subjectivity of the problematic to speak of whiteness and Indigenous woman, in the context of the play, Indigeneity in the context of performativity. can happen by manipulating the audience or by Certainly, these two constructs are not exempt manipulating the representation. In the from the production and representation model. production I participated in, the cast was However, Butler contends that "for an identity to predominantly white. The city it was produced in be an effect means that is neither fatally is notoriously white. This meant that the white determined nor fully artificial or arbitrary" (2006, cast assumed a white audience and as a result 201). Indigeneity needn't be discarded as a appealed to the representations in the play that valid signifier of identity but, in order to maintain naturalized whiteness and reified white the agency that comes with privilege. I was startlingly aware of my identity subjectivity-as-an-effect, neither can it be a as being constituted both for and by white closed category. Otherwise, the conclusive women. To trouble this experience, all I need to category of "Indigenous" will stifle and preclude do is recall the first time I saw the Monologues the consideration of shifting subjectivity. Instead with an all-Indigenous cast and an almost of the capacity to manipulate effects (agency), all-Indigenous audience. Suddenly, the abused the subject-as-effect that does not fit within the Indigenous woman in the script was not the only parameters of the category will be discounted, Indigenous woman. There were old Indigenous disempowered, and without the agency to ever women, angry Indigenous women, funny be included in the discourse. Indigenous women, and plain Indigenous Performance is important. We perform women (to name just a few). Indigenous every day without considering the rationale euphemisms for vagina were inserted in behind our performance. The arts have a appropriate places and despite my concern special way of making us aware of the about reductionist gender politics, my representations we enact. I do not regret my experience of the play was empowering and I own performance in the VMs. On the night of was not aware of my difference from the actors the performance, I changed the words in the or audience. introduction from "living in isolation and without In order to destabilize the subject in the resources" to "living with the effects of VMs it doesn't matter whether it is the colonization and racism." I also refused to performance or the audience that is perform with pow wow music, so the director manipulated because they are constitutive of cut the music instead of me. It was a stressful each other. Perhaps the script could be experience, to say the least. While other changed, the demographic of the audience women were receiving flowers backstage and manipulated, or the cast altered. The goal is to hugging and talking about the solidarity of inquire as to the "conditions of [the subject's] sisterhood, I was on-stage debating with the emergence and operation" (Butler 1993, 7). director about racism and stereotypes and the What is it about the representation that image of the Indian. I find solace in knowing privileges whiteness and disempowers that performing with those repetitions - the Indigeneity? If we accept that this is not fixed victimized and "cultural" Indian - would have and a new representation has the power to help been just as stressful. The words of change this reiteration, what can we choose to Waziyatawin, a Dakota scholar, give me represent instead? Indeed, many Indigenous strength: "when we challenge those who have artists view these kinds of inquiries as disregarded our cultural perspective and necessary to art itself. Gloria Bird reminds us attempted to make what is [Indigenous] that art, "at its liberating best, it is a political act. conform to the colonizer's standards as a Through writing we can undo the damaging means to deny its validity, we are resisting" stereotypes that are continually perpetuated (Wilson 2005, 47). By not conforming, I was

www.msvu.ca/atlantis PR Atlantis 34.1, 2009 75 able to validate my own existence and perform References with most of my integrity still intact. Althusser, L. "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses," Mapping Ideology, S. Zizek, ed. Review/Revue : Verso, 1995, pp. 100-40. At the cast party on the last night, as I was leaving with the other Indigenous cast Anderson, C. "From Nation to Population: The member, we were stopped at the exit by some Racialisation of 'Metis' in the Canadian other cast members who were smoking Census," Nations and Nationalism 14.2 (2008): outside. In a friendly and honest manner, one 347-68. cast member asked us, "So, uh, my parents were wondering, like, uh, how much native are Anderson, K. A Recognition of Being: you?" Taking a deep breath, I replied, "I'm all of Reconstructing Native Womanhood. Toronto: everything that I am." Sumach Press, 2000. The Vagina Monologues fails to account for whole people. It asks its cast and Bird, G. "Breaking the Silence: Writing as audience to pick a role – feminist (misogynist), 'Witness'," Speaking for the Generations: woman (man), vagina (penis), Indian (white), Native Writers on Writing, S. Ortiz, ed. Tucson: white (Other). Inasmuch, it cannot account for University of Arizona Press, 1998. more diverse experiences and it reinscribes the power differentials it claims to be challenging. Brown, W. Regulating Aversion: Tolerance in I refuse to pick a role. I am not a the Age of Identity and Empire. Princeton: colonial label. Colonial labels are for colonial Princeton University Press, 2006. people, so that they can claim to know me. W aabishkimakoonse dizhinikaaz. Browner, T. "'They Could Have an Indian Soul': Gaabishkigaamag gaye Opaskwayak Crow Two and the Processes of Cultural nindoonjii. Anything short of that falls short of Appropriation," Journal of Musicological me. Research 19 (June 2000): 243-64.

Acknowledgement Butler, J. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Special thanks to Cheryl Suzack, Gillian Calder, Limits of Sex. New York: Routledge, 1993. Rebecca Johnson, and Jason Stabler for their assistance with this paper. _____. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, Endnote 2006. 1. All quotes from The Vagina Monologues can be attributed to Eve Ensler, including the Cooper, C. "Worrying About Vaginas: Feminism entirety of the "Act I, Scene I" and "Act I, Scene and Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues," II" sections of this paper. Their wording is from Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society my own personal copy of The Vagina 32 (Spring 2007): 727-58. Monologues as presented to me by the directors of the VDay production I participated Ensler, E. The Vagina Monologues. New York: in. The remainder of the mini-plays presented in Villard, c2001 the paper are my creation (as based on real conversations) and are not from the script of Fanon, F. The Wretched of the Earth. New The Vagina Monologues. Furthermore, the York: Grove Press, 1961. scripting is from memory and is not intended to be verbatim. Root, D. "'White Indians': Appropriation and the Politics of Display," Borrowed Power: Essays on Cultural Appropriation, B. Ziff and P. Rao, eds. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1997.

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Tuhiwai-Smith, L. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. New York: Zed Books, 2001.

Wilson, W. Remember This!: Decolonization and The Eli Taylor Narratives. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska, 2005.

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