University of East Anglia

Graduate Student, Sainsbury Research Unit for the Arts of Africa, Oceania & the Americas

About

I began my academic studies with an interest in Native American representation through film and media within film festivals across North America, namely the National Museum of the American Indian - Smithsonian (MA Sainsbury Research Unit, UEA, 2010).  For my doctoral research project, I have expanded my interest to Native American representation through performance, ritual and oral history.  I plan to construct an ethno-historical look of the  Native American people in the Northeast region, from the beginning of the 20th century to about after 1960 and then to the present. This region includes the Pequot, Shinnecock, Narragansett, Montauk and Mohegan to name a few. By addressing who they are, their histories as well as moving into constructed and redefined societal boundaries, such as race, tribal identification and gender, I hope to create a discourse of identity that has not been looked at in depth.

In addition to the social aspects of the community and family within this region, I am also interested in using oral history.  This includes the recording of personal experiences and the maintenance of Algonquian folklore and storytelling which will create a broader scope of who these people are in the present day as well as constructing a discourse of who they were in the past.  As James Ruppert states, I will use "mediation" (1995) to consider the multiple narratives that are displayed by Native American writers of literature and non-fiction. This will consist of a comparative analysis of writers before, during and after the "Native American Renaissance" (Lincoln 1983), that hail from the Northeast, namely William Apess, Samson Occom as well as contemporary artisans in the region.

I will be attending and documenting ritual performances such as the pow-wow.  These performances combine ritual, performance, material culture, and regalia within the framework of inner and outer tribal constructs - a notion of 'Pan-Indianism'.  These events essentially unite people from all walks of life and locations: Native, non-Native, on the reservation, and off of the reservation, etc.  Together they celebrate time-honoured traditions and rituals.  With my research I hope to create a concise understanding of the Native peoples that still reside in the North-east section of North America. 


* Lincoln, Kenneth. 1983. Native American Renaissance. Berkeley: University of California Press.

* Ruppert, James. 1995. Mediation in contemporary Native American fiction. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.

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