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Larissa FastHorse stoodstage right and waited for her cue. Behind her, the set of The Thanksgiving Play: three white walls plastered with inspirational posters, some long brown tables and the fluorescent lights that clearly compose the average classroom — smeared and dripping with the faux blood of Native people. Before her, an audience thundering in a standing ovation. FastHorse’s name was announced, along with the title that will forever be hers: The first-known Native woman to have a play produced on Broadway.
This was a premiere-night crowd at the Hayes Theater: a carefully curated group of industry professionals — FastHorse’s peers — all sharply dressed and primed to celebrate. And FastHorse, by virtue of being on stage, her play having completed the first performance in a two-month Broadway run, was primed for their approval. After a moment, smiling, FastHorse raised the microphone and read a message in Lakota from her cellphone. Halfway through, she paused to wipe tears from her eyes. “Sorry,” she said in English to the crowd. “My father just passed recently, and I didn’t expect to cry saying his name. He’d be so proud of me being here.”
Clapping, whistles, shouts. The moment was buoyant; joy seemed to bounce off the theater’s walls. There was history made, and, yes, a bit of compromise to make it.
The Thanksgiving Play follows four non-Native amateur theater hopefuls tasked with putting on a politically correct Thanksgiving performance for an elementary school audience. Producing this finely tuned satire — particularly within the commercial New York scene, which is short on Indigenous representation — demanded a nuanced understanding of Native issues that FastHorse knew she would have to establish.
Despite having some 15 plays under her belt, FastHorse still finds herself the first Native voice in many of the spaces she occupies. Indian 101 is designed to build community and set a standard that protects rising Indigenous artists and their communities from industry ignorance.
THE BURDEN OF BEING FIRST means constantly recognizing how those before you were held back. It’s acknowledging the deep-rooted colorism that dark-skinned Native artists recognize as a closed door, and white-presenting Natives recognize as a slim crack to slither through. It’s also a reminder of exactly what Native artists are allowed to say once they reach the upper echelon of any given artistic industry, particularly those that require a team of non-Native financiers to hold final say over which projects get the green light.
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