Paper short abstract:

Drawing on collaborative ethnography and co-curation with indigenous Mapuche artists, this paper asks if and how established and institutionalised modes of remembrance can be questioned, undertaking the challenge of a redefinition of the political and poetical boundaries of ethnographic knowledge.

Paper long abstract:

Moving from collective creative work, the exhibition MapsUrbe: The invisible City (December 2018 – January 2019) staged the artistic creations of a group of young Mapuche artists addressing the politics and history of the indigenous diaspora in the capital Santiago (Chile). Engaging with urban space materiality and the trajectories shaped by displacement, migration, and the re-building of homes and selves within the city, the exhibition explored subversive aesthetics and political imaginations, crafting alternative spatialities and temporalities. Drawing on family memories, opaque remembrances of a lost land and stories of pain and endurance, the artworks disrupted the linear unfolding of history, allowing subterranean narratives to emerge and playing with unexpected connections and routings.

Building on two years of fieldwork and a collaborative ethnography with Mapuche artists and activists, the paper elaborates on the articulation of meanings conveyed by the artistic gesture of ‘performing the Mapuche city’, interrogating the possibilities of a redefinition of practices of curating within collaborative and collective artistic project that aim at opposing dominant historical narratives. By reflecting on an experience of collaborative ethnography and co-curation, it asks if and how these practices question established and institutionalised modes of remembrance, at the same time undertaking the challenge of a redefinition of the political and poetical boundaries of ethnographic knowledge.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores traditional Lakota (Western [Teton] Sioux) ceremonial life as it evolved from public performance, through a ban on religious expression in 1883, to several sun dance "reenactments" in the 1920s, and finally the revitalization period of the 1960s and 1970s.

Paper long abstract:

Traditional Lakota (Western [Teton] Sioux) ceremonial life was and is dynamic, idiosyncratic, and anti-dogmatic. It is individualistic, fueled by personal experience and innovation, and largely revelatory or vision-based. Lakota religious ceremonies were banned by the United States federal government in the early 1880s. The last public sun dance of the nineteenth century was held in 1883 at Rosebud Reservation. After the ban, Indian agents and Indian police kept close tabs on ceremonial doings, and if a Lakota was caught practicing his religion he could be punished in various ways, from having rations withheld to imprisonment. Permission for public rituals was occasionally granted in some special cases, such as victory dances for Lakota soldiers returning from World War I. In the late 1920s mock sun dances, perceived by many as reenactments of the past, were held on Pine Ridge and Rosebud at the behest of then-President Calvin Coolidge and the Indian agents. This resumption of public ceremonies was tentative but gained momentum after the influential 1928 Merriam Report and the subsequent passage of the Wheeler-Howard Act, popularly known as the Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) in 1934, which encouraged (the revival of) native cultural practices. By the 1960s and 1970s a full-blown revitalization movement was sweeping through Lakota country that combined elements of the past with practical necessity and present realities to forge a new vision of Lakota tradition for the twentieth century and beyond.

Paper short abstract:

The paper investigates how female reenactors play by or break the rules in reenacting the past. As strongly male dominated environments, reenactment groups have strict gender policies which impact female participation. Gender cross-dressing will be examined as a strategy to traverse boundaries.

Paper long abstract:

Historical reenactment entails a do-it-yourself, bottom-up and performative approach towards the past. It is thus linked to an effort to invoke the past through immersion, embodiment, heightened emotion, empathy, and through an emphasis on individual experience. Subsequently reenactment is being discussed as a more “democratic enterprise” (Hall, 1994) of representing the past that provides the potential to challenge established meanings (Davis, 2012). Despite its bottom-up and supposedly democratic features reenactment does not necessary bring along a more tolerant, liberal, inclusive or critical attitude towards history or the past (Hochbruck 2012; Engelke 2017). One crucial case in point is the fact, that as a mostly male-dominated social practice reenactment offers only limited access for other genders. Due to this male overrepresentation in reenactment groups scholars have so far studied the phenomenon by focusing on motivations and experiences of male participants (Horrwitz, 1996; Daugbjerg 2016). If gender is addressed in analyzing reenactment the male perspective is foregrounded and questions about how battle reenactment stabilizes or challenges male identities have been tackled (Hunt, 2008). This contribution will focus on female reenactors and their experiences and strategies in reenacting the American Revolutionary War. Including a female point of view not only helps fostering the understanding of the phenomenon reenactment in a more general sense, it also sheds light on how gender is being performed in this social practice beyond the assumption that reenactment idealizes and revalorizes masculinity (Jureit 2020).