Tria Blu Wakpa

“Choreographies in Confinement” theorizes how bodily postures, movement practices, and performances—such as dance, theater, Indigenous sign language, yardwork, laundry, basketball, and yoga—sustained and amplified Native knowledge, identities, and wellbeing, despite institutional efforts to assimilate and indoctrinate Native children and their relatives. Spanning 140 years, the book focuses on two educational and carceral sites on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota: St. Francis Mission School, a former Indian boarding school that was active from 1886 to 1972, and Wanbli Wiconi Tipi, or Eagle Life Center, a tribal juvenile hall that has been in use since 2005 to the present. The book argues that institutional officials choreographed on- and offstage performances to socialize Lakota people while shaping and disseminating discourses related to the legitimacy, sanctity, and benevolence of the facilities. Meanwhile, Native people managed to enact their practices and identities, navigate settler policies and stereotypes, document their experiences and offerings, and nurture their wellbeing, freedom, and futurities. Drawing on extensive archival material that includes theatrical scripts and programs, newspaper articles, photographs, and films, as well as ethnographic research methods such as interviews and participant observation, the book demonstrates that bodily postures, movement practices, and performances in contexts of confinement have been vital to the projects of settler colonialism and decolonization, aiding colonizers and Native people.