The theatre, as we know broadly in the United States, is a colonial art form. While there is talk about the power of stories and meaningful change that can come from theatre, as long as the western European model of theatre is being regarded as the only model of theatre, our art form remains a colonizing force.

I was forced to learn English when I was five years old through the deliberate tactic of making me learn and read the King James bible and Shakespeare’s sonnets - and that was my first exposure to “theatre”. It was violent. It was another tool of genocide. And to a degree, it was successful. How can I pretend that the theatre is simply about storytelling when it has continued to be weaponized, gatekept, and held against people like me?

For my people, the purpose of theatre (which we’ve been doing since the sun first shined in the sky - way before the Greeks figured it out) is to not just tell a story, but ignite a change. When we’re told stories about owls it’s because we’re being given warnings. When we’re told our creation stories it’s to remember why everything we do is for the next seven generations. When we gather to tell stories, it’s a political act of resistance because we weren’t supposed to survive this long. My hunger is not with plays. It’s with people. I’m not inspired by amazing works of art. I’m inspired by babies learning to walk. I’m not driven by gaining more national fame. I’m driven by my descendants not carrying the same intergenerational trauma we’ve all been carrying since the apocalypse began in 1492. Stories don’t exist for story’s sake. They exist to remind us to take action and make change in our lives and the lives of our descendants. A shift in action. A shift in understanding. A shift in the public to join in the fight for Tribal Sovereignty.

All my work is in pursuit of just that: Tribal Sovereignty. As a person whose existence is political just because I was born breathing, I do not have the privilege of creating art that isn’t political. Every time I walk into a room, it’s intentional to demonstrate decolonization in action while further uplifting my peoples’ inherent ability to self-govern as we are Nations. I do that through the kinds of stories I’m telling and even through the illustration of how I expect other artists in the room to create: with Creative Sovereignty.

Creative Sovereignty is a term I coined, but it is a practice that is thousands of years old. It means: the inherent ability to self-govern how one creates. As a director that means when actors make choices I disagree with and those choices are within the world we’re building, I do not intervene. What happens every single time is a story is given more authenticity and depth because I did not colonize another’s artistic expression because it did not match my “aesthetic” or particular taste. Rooms are robust, free, and creative. Agency is instilled in every artist as we create through circles. Care is at the center of the process.

And the work is always better than anyone initially expected. Always. Not just through the overwhelmingly positive reviews and exceeded financial goals, but through centering my peoples’ specific way of creating allows all artists to thrive outside the colonizing force of theatre as we’ve been forced to know it. When artists walk away from a process talking about how held they felt as artists who were able to create authentically rather than serve my vision, that’s how we know we did it.

I stand on the shoulders of William Yellowrobe who was my first introduction to Native theatre artists when I was told that there weren’t any, Thomas Highway who wrote the first play not about our ongoing colonization and genocide I encountered assuring me that our stories do not have to be exclusively positioned in educating non-Native audiences, and Murielle Miguel who was the first to create theatre deeply rooted in our traditions, not the western European one. I am mentored by Murielle Borst-Tarrant through her specific technique of story-weaving, Quita Sullivan through her deep and intentional practices around Indigenous ethics in the theatre, and Martha Redbone through her unapologetic displays of both her cultures in ways that ring true for her - not in the ways non-Native audiences expect for a Native person. I am inspired by my great colleagues Madeline Sayet and her accountability rider to ensure her work doesn’t harm other Native people, Andrina Wekontash Quanuwayu Smith and her dedication to the truth and resistance to erasure especially as a Black and Shinnecock woman fighting against lateral violence from the Lenape in New York, and Madeline Easley and her ability to just be unhinged as a writer. I am held accountable by my family, the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, and my ancestors. I do this work for the next seven generations of my descendants and for my ancestors like Tecumsah Harjo, the last Seminole born on my father’s ancestral land before removal and James Wise, my mother’s father stolen from his Mescalero Apache people and sold to white Mormons.

All of this, all of these ancestors, all of these living and thriving Native people, and all those who are to come are who I create with and for.

Mvto.