Native Nation Project - by Larissa Fasthorse & Michael John Garcés (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

This three-play collection celebrates the vibrancy and vitality of modern Indigenous culture and draw attention to complex issues within the contemporary Native experience.

This latest volume from the acclaimed author of The Thanksgiving Play collects a trilogy of plays co-created with Cornerstone Theater Company as well as urban Native artists and culture bearers.

In Urban Rez, five interconnected stories depict members of a Native tribe in Los Angeles weighing the pros and cons of federal recognition.

Developed through talking circles with Indigenous peoples of Arizona, Native Nation is an immersive theatrical production that seeks to combat the erasure of Native people from wider American culture by telling the story of the land through the eyes of its original people.

Created with people of the Lakota and Dakota tribal nations, Wicoun centers on Áya and their brother Khoskalaka, who are already busy enough raising cousins and siblings while trying to graduate high school. Then the zombies arrive. When Áya summons a native superhero for help, they set off on a journey across the lands of the Oceti Sakowin.

Together, these plays explore a wide range of urgent issues that continue to affect Indigenous communities today, including assimilation, two-spirit identity, food equity, water rights, tribal sovereignty, broken treaties, genocide, and violation of sacred lands. They also celebrate a rich history and essential culture, telling stories by and for Native people.

Review Quotes

Urban Rez, Native Nation, and [Wicoun] are designed to be what FastHorse calls 'intentionally incompatible experiences' for non-Indigenous people. While she isn't actually trying to alienate white theatregoers, the trilogy's narratives avoid any pretense that they need or want a non-Indian stamp of approval. Instead, said FastHorse, these works are created by and for Indigenous people as a way for them to tell their stories the way they want them told.
--American Theatre

Urban Rez:

[Urban Rez] may be a story filled with struggle and sorrow but it's also a tale of resilience, passion, and (to state the obvious) love. I'll never forget my visit to the Urban Rez.
LA Explorer

For Urban Rez, company members join with nonprofessional actors representing 15 tribal nations to explore and humanize the cross-cultural challenges that go with being a truly native Southern Californian.
--Los Angeles Times

Native Nation:

While reflective of Indigenous life in Arizona, many of the issues addressed in Native Nation, as in Urban Rez, mirror broader concerns in Native country. The topics of environmental degradation, the violation of sacred lands, and the tragedy of missing and murdered Indigenous women in the U.S. and Canada are all addressed in Native Nation.
--American Theatre

Wicoun:

Through inside tribal jokes and powerful topics of rural life, the script evokes a clever, entertaining, and thought-provoking narrative that touches on kinship, Native superheroes, and the complicated dynamic of balancing white American heteronormative expectations and Oceti Sakowin cultural values.
--Studies in American Indian Literatures

FastHorse's dense and wise ninety-minute comedy contains dozens of additional life lessons worthy of unpacking...Through a satirical comedy about Lakota superheroes, her wise words resonated throughout the sparsely populated territory of her native state, from the Black Hills across the Great Plains. If only her message of inclusion, generosity, and love could somehow carry further into the collective consciousness of our greedy and unreconciled nation.
--HowlRound

About the Author

Larissa FastHorse (Sicangu Lakota Nation) is a writer/choreographer, and co-founder of Indigenous Direction, the nation's leading consulting company for Indigenous arts and audiences. FastHorse is the first Native American playwright in the history of American theater to have a play on the top ten most-produced list, with The Thanksgiving Play. The Thanksgiving Playwas the first play written by an Indigenous woman ever to be produced on Broadway. Additional produced plays include What Would Crazy Horse Do?, Landless, Cow Pie Bingo, Average Family, Teaching Disco Squaredancing to Our Elders: a Class Presentation, Vanishing Point, and Cherokee Family Reunion (Mountainside Theater). FastHorse is the recipient of numerous awards, including a MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship. She lives in Santa Monica with her husband, the sculptor Edd Hogan.

Michael John Garcés is the former artistic director of Cornerstone Theater Company. He is a recipient of the Doris Duke Artist Award, the Princess Grace Statue, the Alan Schneider Director Award, TCG/New Generations Grant, and the Non-Profit Excellence Award from the Center of Non-Profit Management. He serves as Executive Vice President of the board of the Stage Directors and Choreography Society.

His plays include 36 Yesses and Magic Fruit (Cornerstone); TOWN (Theatre Horizon); and south (Great Plains Theatre Commons). Directing credits include The Rivers Don't Know by James McManus (City Theatre Company); Highland Park is Here by Mark Valdez (Cornerstone and Latino Theatre Company's "Re: Encuentro 2021"); The Play You Want by Bernardo Cubria (The Road Theatre); Seize the King by Will Power (The Alliance); Larissa FastHorse's The Thanksgiving Play (The Geffen Playhouse) and Urban Rez (Cornerstone); and the just and the blind by Marc Bamuthi Joseph and composer Daniel Bernard Roumain (Carnegie Hall and The Kennedy Center). He is a professor of practice in English at Arizona State University.