Music, Dance, and Theater

Faculty and students in the Indigenous Studies Working Group are collaborating to develop a comprehensive sampler of different music and dance forms from Indigenous peoples across the world. Download the working list below.

We welcome any and all comments and contributions.

Folklore Society of Greater Washington featured music rooted in Native American traditions with legendary Jamie Fox, Joanne Shenandoah, Robert Mirabal– March 7, 2021 zoom recording.

This site also features theatrical productions both by and about Indigenous peoples across the globe. 

Sovereignty – Mary Kathryn Nagle (COL ’05)

Debuted on January 24, 2018 as part of Arena Stage’s Power Plays Initiative and the Women’s Voice Theater Festival, Sovereignty – written by Georgetown Alumna Mary Kathryn Nagle and directed by Molly Smith, the artistic director of Arena Stage – illustrates the personal and political struggles of an Indigenous family in the United States. 

Sovereignty travels the intersections of personal and political truths, historic and present struggles. Sarah Ridge Polson, a young Cherokee lawyer fighting to restore her Nation’s jurisdiction, must confront the ever-present ghosts of her grandfathers. With shadows stretching from 1830s Cherokee Nation (now present-day Georgia) and Andrew Jackson’s White House to the Cherokee Nation in present-day Oklahoma, Sovereignty asks how high the flames of anger can rise before they ultimately consume the truth.

The play was featured at Arena Stage from January 12 – February 18, 2018.

For more information regarding Ms. Nagle’s revolutionary work, please see the January 17, 2018 New York Times article, “Fighting for Native Americans, in Court and Onstage.”