1149983
research-article2023
QIXXXX10.1177/10778004221149983Qualitative InquiryDenzin
Article
Ode to Museum Indians: In Honor of Ishi,
James Luna,2 and the Dakota Pipeline
Resistance
Norman K. Denzin1
Abstract
A two-act play/performance text inspired by James Luna’s performance of “Ishi: The Archive Performance”: Boston, July
2014, text courtesy of Elena Creef; see also Johns (2014).3 Contrary to Theodora Kroeber, Ishi’s story did not end with
the publication of her book Ishi in Two Worlds (1961; also Kroeber and Kroeber, 2003). In fact, Ishi has had multiple lives
since he died. Here are some of them. In fact, he became an indigenist rights activist participating in the Dakota Access
Pipeline Protest (2022).
Keywords
Dakota Pipeline Resistance, museums, performance, Ishi, genocide
Moment of Silence
San Francisco Solar Dancers:
May we begin with a moment of silence. We wish to
acknowledge the land upon which we gather today. These
lands were the traditional territory of a number of California
First Nations bands prior to European contact: The Yahi, Yani,
Mill Creeks, Maidu, Kombo, Shasta, and the Nozis, were some
of the last bands to be forcibly removed. Ishi nearly survived
the destructive forces of this colonial system.
James: A second moment of silence:
Let us pray for our Standing Rock Sioux Brothers and their
Sisters and all indigenous persons who fight for social justice.
Characters
Boots: Old Yani woman, Ishi’s best friend
Coyote: Ishi’s old friend from Deer Creek and before
San Francisco Solar Dancers (SFSD), ethnic activists,
and tricksters
Ishi: Kroeber’s name for him. The last known member of
the Yahi people, an indigenous Northern California
community.
Ishi 2: Ishi’s secret name, which cannot be printed or
spoken.
Phoebe Apperson Hearst, philanthropist, and founder,
Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology
Qualitative Inquiry
1
1­–10
© The Author(s) 2023
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/10778004221149983
https://doi.org/10.1177/10778004221149983
journals.sagepub.com/home/qix
Elena Creef, Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies,
Little Big Horn
Project, horsewoman, memorial rider, “Rashomon at
Little Bighorn,” and “Geisha Cowgirl.”
Dino Gilio-Whitake, American Studies Professor,
Indigenous activist.
John Johnson, author of Laban’s Legacy: Lessons on
Race, Gender, Violence, Peace, and Community from
my Johnson ancestors.
Alfred Kroeber–Chiep is Ishi’s name for him,
Anthropologist, Director, Hearst Museum.
Theodora Kroeber. Author of Ishi in Two Worlds
(1961/1989), wife and former student of Alfred.
James Luna, 1950–2018. Payómkawichum, Ipi, American
performance artist, photographer, and a multimedia
installation artist. Luna’s “Ishi: The Archive
Performance” critiques Kroeber’s (1961/1989) version
of Ishi’s life.
Saxton Pope, medical doctor who supervised Ishi’s cre-
mation and removal of his brain.
T. T. Waterman, anthropologist who studied Ishi
Yahi Chorus
1
University of Illinois, Urbana–Champaign, USA
Corresponding Author:
Norman K. Denzin, University of Illinois, Urbana–Champaign, 3305
South Pine Circle, Urbana, IL 61802, USA.
Email: n-denzin@illinois.edu
2 Qualitative Inquiry 00(0)

Stage **James Luna, dressed as Theodora Kroeber, slow

A diorama, a revolving set of scenes displaying commodi-
fied representations of 19th-, 20th-, and 21st-century Native
Californians continuously plays on a 40 × 60-foot drop-
down screen above a long table. Included are pictures of
contemporary and historical native Americans performing
in museums, rodeos, reservations, political protest, and
everyday life, including those posed in native dress, playing
drums, in war paint, trick or treating on Halloween, riding
horses, native mothers holding their children, as well as
specimens from Northern California Indian cultures, includ-
ing a human skull, a funeral urn, a bear skin, and a bow and
arrows.
Stage Left: A spotlight shines on a life-size poster of
Alfred Kroeber and Phoebe Hearst in front of the Phoebe
Hearst Museum of Anthropology.
James, Ishi, and Coyote: (to audience):
With Gómez-Peña’s we want to challenge traditional museums
like the Hearst to become temporary sites of radical democratic
engagement. We ask our audience to consider how museums
of the future can advance the public good and go beyond
reproducing old stereotypes.
Stage Right: A spotlight shines on a life-size poster of
Alfred Kroeber and Theodora Kroeber holding hands on the
front steps of their summer home in Northern California.
dances with Ishi to ragtime piano music.
**Ishi 2, dressed as Phoebe Apperson Hearst, slow
dances with James to ragtime piano music.
On the Diorama
**Three Solar dancers in clown costumes dance a jig
while holding a bag of bones labeled, “Property of
Phoebe Hearst Museum.”
**A Phoebe Hearst poster hangs in front of a photo of
the Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology
**Fancy dancers and Ishi in white face turn cartwheels
while Elena Creff and Dustin Hoffman-as-little Big Man
hold LITTLE BIGHORN RESISTERS SUPPORT
DPRC signs
***Boots stands outside a teepee, smoking a peace pipe.
The audience, in faux native costumes and American flag
masks, sits on three sides of the stage; some hold signs: I
STAND WITH STANDING ROCK SIOUX.
***
Act One: Scene One: James and Ishi: In the
Beginning
Alfred Kroeber:

**A spotlight shines on two posters: “INDIANS ARE
THE INVENTION OF COLONISTS, MISSIONARIES
AND HOLLYWOOD”.
**ISH AND JAMES LUNA IN WHITE FACE AS
JOHNNY DEPP (Tonto) AND ARMIE HAMMER
(John Reid) in the Disney 2013 film, Lone Ranger.
Welcome to our little play. James Luna is going to perform
parts of Ishi’s story as told by my wife in her book. Actually, I
told my wife Ishi’s story first, then she wrote it.
James:
Actually, we will go into a little more than Theodora’s story.
Ishi’s story has gone global.

Center Stage: Drumroll, Lights Dim Coyote and Boots:

**An evangelist preaches to an invisible congregation,
We don’t trust Professor Kroeber.
while selling miniature Alfred Kroeber, Ishi, and James Ishi will play himself and make corrections
Luna dolls outside a peep show. in the story, as needed.

The Dakota Pipeline Resistance Collective (DPRC), wear- Theodora Kroeber:

ing American flag masks, are joined by James and Ishi 2
who are also wearing American flag masks. The protesters Ishi’s happiest days were
carry a sign reading as follows: with my husband
in his museum.

Respect Our Sacred Water Ishi:

Get Off Sacred Lands I hated my life in the museum.

**An actor named Ishi riding a wooden pony demon- James:

strates his skills with a children’s bow and arrow, shoot-
ing at balloons over the stage. They threw you in jail.
Denzin 3

Yahi Chorus: **Haggard looking Ishi just out of the wilderness—

dressed in tattered night shirt.
They threw you in jail! **Luna as Ishi with FUCK YOU on tattered night shirt.
Then made you live and **Ishi after capture with Kroeber and another White
perform in a museum!
man in nature setting: Ishi in suit, with coat and tie.
They threw you in jail!
Center Stage: Spotlight shines on Exhibit Case labeled
Çoyote:
“The Museum of Native Costumes with photographs of
(Aside): There is a long history of putting Ishi and James modeling various ~native costumes” and
Indians on stage, performances
in museums.
Buffalo Bill made a lot of **Ishi as warrior, Ishi as Indian chief, and Ishi as
money doing this wild Indian.
with his Wild West Shows. **Ishi dressed as James Luna as Reservation Indian.
**James Luna in drag, dressed as Theodora Kroeber,
San Francisco Solar Dancers: dances with Ishi dressed as A. Kroeber
**James, Elena, and Ishi 2 march in a circle with the
Amen! But they threw you in jail!
Little Big Horn Resisters and Dakota Pipeline
Resistance Collective (DPRC) waving a faux American
Ishi 2 and James:
flag:
We agree with Joni Mitchell, “sometimes we just wish we had
a river we could skate way on.” We just came in from the storm Ishi 2:
and we needed some shelter (Columbia records, 1975) and
look at us now, trapped inside the walls of a small room in a I am not Ishi,
museum performing for Kroeber and his buddies. No one knows my name.
Kroeber gave me this name.
T. T. Waterman: He said it means man in Yani.
How would he know?
Alfred and I never saw it this way.
We were helping Ishi learn about San Francisco Solar Dancers:
and adjust to this new way of life.
Ishi you were a man before
Theodora:
Kroeber gave you this name
Ishi was a great source of solace and
comfort for Alfred after his Ishi and Ishi 2 (in unison):
first wife died. We’ve always
felt indebted to Ishi. I have a painful story I will only
share with James, my brother.
Coyote: Today, we both live in museums.
We are museum Indians. People
Indians are good at doing this for whites. pay us to play natural Indians making
bows and arrows, and wearing loin clothes.
Act One: Scene Two: Will the Real Indian Stand Then Hollywood tells its stories about us.
I am not Tonto.
up
Stage Right: A spotlight shines on two life-sized photos: Çoyote:

Buffalo Bill loves you.

**Ishi and Luna dressed as Ishi outside Phoebe Hearst
Museum of Anthropology James Luna:
**Ishi with Kroeber and Sam Batwi, the Yani inter-
preter who works with Kroeber in the Phoebe Hearst I don’t care about Buffalo Bill.
museum. Just another media invention.
I am James Luna
Stage Left: A spotlight shines on three life-sized photos: I am real.
4 Qualitative Inquiry 00(0)

In my daydreams I am Yahi Chorus:

Ishi 2 disguised as James Luna.
I call this the Ishi Archive Project. Too painful,
Elena Creef helped me stage an early version of this project. Alfred’s wild Indian!!
Indeed, the last wild Indian turned
Elena: into Kroeber’s image of a civilized Indian,
white shirt, suit, and tie.
James was my dear friend and it will forever be my privilege
that I got to assist him when he debuted the earliest version of Ishi:
the Ishi Archive in Boston in 2014. We have to get history
outside museums into new performance spaces. I hated being an exhibit in the Kroeber house.
But not as bad as being in his museum.
Yaha Chorus:
Yahi Chorus:
Free Ishi now!
Of course it was painful. It was a story
Ishi 2: of genocide murder, rape,
stolen lands, broken treaties,
In my nightmares erasure of native languages.
I am James Luna disguised as Ishi
All California Indians are Ishi 2 Coyote-as-historian:
Only in our dreams are we free.
Short story. California’s indigenous people endured great
suffering during the colonial period. Then they faced the horror
Act One: Scene Three: A Story Too Painful to of government-sanctioned genocide under the nascent State of
California.
Tell
Stage Left: A spotlight shines on a series of photographs James:
and a life-size poster of Ishi taken from Theodora’ book.
I’ve devoted my entire life to contesting
James and Ishi 2 the logic behind these gross exhibition practices.
Genocide is a wicked practice. Ishi was a victim of this practice.
We are not Hollywood inventions!
If Alfred Kroeber invented us. Coyote:
why did it take the Kroebers
so long to tell our story? Alfred was part of this genocide.
I died in 1916? The book to write the story required this admission.
appears in 1963, 47 years later. But Theodora did include a version of this history of
California Indian genocide in her book on you.
Coyote:
Yahi Chorus:
No good answer. Alfred said the story
was too painful. He could not write it. So, does that make Ishi’s story any different?

Yahi Chorus:
Act One: Scene Four: Live Exhibits
Painful story! They James Luna:
Put your brain in a bottle of
Formaldehyde and shipped you off to I am not a freak
the Smithsonian. They kept this You come and stare at me
secret for over 40 years.
The White Man
Coyote: looked me in the eye and
quite honestly said, “Gee,
They hung photographs of you on I’ve always wanted to be
the walls In their living room, like in an American Indian.” Are you
a gallery—exhibits, trophy photos. a real Indian?
Denzin 5

I told him. I am not your Tonto. James:

I am not your noble savage,
No Geronimo, or Crazy Horse, no mass I am James Luna a living, breathing
media invention. Museum Indian.
“Half Indian/Half Mexican,” a
James and Ishi 2: college professor, a performance artist.
I am inspired by Ishi’s story.
We wish we had a way to get out of here. I was created by Ishi’s story.

Ishi 2 and I are post-Indians, ***

inventions, commodities.
We have needs, sexual desires, Come into my teepee.
We drink beer, mow our lawns, Another night performance in
hold our grandchildren, laugh, sing, cry. Kroeber’s Museum.

We are not part of Andy Warhol’s version
of Cowboys and Indians (1986), cut out popular
culture stereotypes, from Custer to John Wayne, Roy
Rogers, Bonnet Indians to Plains Indians
Indian mothers with child, no Kachina Dolls, or Sitting Bull.
(see Warhol’s West Family Day, Eiteljorg Museum March
12–August 7, 2022).
<shwilson@eiteljorg.com>).
***
Act One: Scene Five: Ghosts and Secrets
Ishi 2:
I never told Kroeber my name.
As you know, I lasted four years
in captivity, and then I died.
“Take a picture with a Real Indian” (1991).
I’ll pose for you. Here are three cutouts of me.
A photographer with a Polaroid Instant
Camera and a tripod-mounted camera waits
to photograph whomever chooses to join me.
I’ll wear a headband with an eagle feather,
I’ll pose in a loin cloth, and wear a beaded vest,
I’ll stand tall, long hair, dark shirt, wearing tan slacks
Half-breed, biracial, a white man’s nightmare.
I’m here to tell the real story about Ishi, who is only
a made-up person, a fiction, a ghost, Kroeber’s pet Indian.
Want more? Come see me in my
new performance. I call it Artifact Piece (1987):
I play a real Indian. I am on display
in the San Diego Museum of Man.

I’ve come back to work with my I am wrapped in a towel, lying on a

dear friend James, who wants to
set the record straight about my
life in the museum. I’m the ghost of
Ishi, call me Ishi the trickster.
I am Ishi disguised as James Luna,
James the trickster.
bed of sand, inside a wooden frame,
a live exhibit, Ishi on display.
Artifacts from my life are placed around
me, my divorce papers, my degrees, CDs of my favorite
music, my traditional medicine objects; these are things from
my life.

There is much more to I am a simulation of the natural Indian,

our story, things people didn’t like Ishi the precontact Indian fishing
want told. Kroeber would not let me for salmon in Kroeber’ book.
be alone with white women. He kept me poor,
He made me perform for little children Calm down, take a picture with a real prairie Indian.
In schools. A souvenir to take home for the grandchildren,
Put it on the mantel.
James and Ishi:
Elena:
We gotta get out of this place.
It was an honor helping James stage this performance.
*** He tears apart the idea of a real authentic Indian.
6 Qualitative Inquiry 00(0)
Coyote:
Is being authentic real? Is memory real?
What is real? What does real mean?
Ishi 2 and James (in unison; Part 1):
Authenticity is not our goal, it is the whiteman’s goal.
Memory is a prison. Our goal is to turn memory—
remembering—into an active performance, into an active
standpoint, to turn the past upside down.
I am James Luna as Ishi, wrapped in a towel, lying on a
bed of sand, inside a wooden frame,
a live exhibit, I am naked Ishi on display.
I broke out of realism’s jail.
(In Smith, 2005, p. 28).
Coyote:
Indians have never been ignored. We are the targets
of genocide, assimilation, romanticism,
we are only real if we play Indian.
***
Ishi 2 and James (in unison):
For whites we are survivors,
ceremonial clowns, performers
Poster children, perfect survivors of
Genocide, ideal assimilated INDIANS!
McIndians who can be mass produced.
But we are not Disney-land
Wild West Indians.
Sitting Bull to your Çuster,
No image for Andy Warhol’s Wild West exhibit.
Ishi 2:
I am not a McIndian. I am coyote. I am a clown, a trickster
I wasn’t born in a tepee. I was born in TV,
I’m your contemporary American Indian artist, the real thing.
Like my friend James, I reject the
history you make up for us,
You called me a relic from
the Stone age who transitioned
to the white man’s way
Ishi 2 and James:
How could we transition? Transition to
Where? We are homeless global citizens.
You destroyed our
homes, our families, our way of life.
***
Act One: Scene Six: Lies and Fictions
Ishi:
Back to Theodora. She said I made friends with Kroeber,
Waterman, and Pope. Granted, I regularly
had dinner with them. We never talked.
They were not my friends.
Kroeber wanted to study my dreams. I
Would never share a dream with him.
He thought he could be my psychoanalyst.
I saw Kroeber every day. On Sundays
He dressed me up in various costumes
and introduced me to tourists at
the museum.
I made arrowheads and I sang Yana and Yahi songs for them.
Afterwards, Kroeber took me to his house for dinner.
He said I became dependent on him for his friendship.
That is not true. When Kroeber’s wife died, he said
I helped him deal with the grief of her passing.
I had no family to turn to,
Just this strange man and his doctor buddies,
His wife never knew me.
Against my wishes he insisted I
take the trip to my homeland where
he had me pose as a wild Indian.
Then, returning to the museum.
I caught TB and died. Too painful!
Too painful! It was story of abuse and
Genocide; benign neglect. Remember,
Kroeber went on sabbatical leave in 1916,
leaving me in the hands of his friend Saxton Pope,
I’ve been dead since 1916,
They thought my story was, over,
but it exploded into front page news
when they found my brain in a
bottle of formaldehyde in a back room in
the Smithsonian in 1999. (Starn, 2004)
Act One: Scene Seven: New Inventions
Ishi:
Never forget, my story is largely all fiction. All made up.
The Kroebers invented me, made me
into the Indian they wanted me to be.
Then I invented myself.
Denzin 7

James: (see https://theculturetrip.com/north-america/usa/california/articles/

the-10-most-controversial-statues-still-standing-in-california-2/)
Then I came into Ishi’s life
I was made to be Ishi. I We are part of several national movements: contesting native
Started performing him and he sports mascots, the celebration of public parks on Native lands,
started performing me supporting the Trail of Broken Treaties Collective, the Battle of
He taught me how to be him Little Big Horn Resistance (Creef, 2022), demanding the
I’m Ishi being James luna removal of statues celebrating catholic priests—Father Serra—
I’m James Luna playing Ishi. (and earlier) soldiers and public figures who enacted slavery
and racial oppression, and genocide of First Nation Peoples,
James and Ishi 2: and Native Americans.

Sometimes we live together Coyote:

In a museum, and travel
from town to town performing one another, Protestors are turning history back on itself, using the cracks
joining protest movements. and contradiction of the past to imagine new futures. A large
We are wild, angry traveling Yahis group gathers outside the Carmel Mission, mocking the
turned into activists. Churches and the state of California’s response to past
injustices.
He said, you are not a freak,
You are not a curiosity They do not want apologies. They want formal apologies,
You are not Kroeber’s invention reparation for slavery, segregation, and genocide; they want
You are a man stolen lands returned; and educational and housing programs.
I am a man too
Yahi Chorus:
I am your brother, many things you
shared with me. We want straight stories about the past; stop the endless running
Many things we would not tell Kroeber of Hollywood western movies about the Indian wars and battles
About nature, about our God with white settlers (see Screenpix Westerns).4 No more pretend
Kroeber had no interest in understanding us apologies and fake history.

Museums are not our natural homes
We have no natural home
We can never go home
I am a warrior, standing in a meadow,
shooting my bow and arrow
Come, take a picture with a real museum Indian
With his tomahawk and scantily dressed;
He lives in a teepee in a museum.
I am a live exhibit, see my scars,
I am a bar fighter, a drunk, I drink too much
We learned from our fathers.
We long for our mothers, our
brothers and sisters, our children.
Act One: Scene Six: New Inventions, Part Two
James, Elena, and Ishi 2 (in unison):
Recently, sollowing since the controversy over the discovery
of my
brain (Starn, 2004) we’ve gotten more political.
The legacies of genocide and racial hatred
run deep, moving from one generation to the
next , stolen land, broken treaties, racist monuments,
and statues.
Elena Creef, aka Geisha Cowgirl:
My students are reenacting the Battle of Little Big Horn
narrative, telling the story of the battle through Indigenous
eyes. We are also working with the Dakota Pipeline
Resisters.
Coyote:
Call it the Reparation Blues. The state built its missions,
schools, and laws on land stolen from Native California Indians
(Denzin, 2021, pp. 1–6).
James, Elena, and Ishi 2:
We must have a new model of resistance and protest (Gilio-
Whitaker, p. 44). It starts with the earth, and the air we breathe
and the water we drink.
Restoring lands to Indigenous control is where we start. Then,
we need new ways of rethinking and repairing the damage of
too many centuries of colonial racism.
John Johnson:
History lesson: 1607, 104 English men and boys arrived in
North America to start a settlement. On May 13, they picked
8 Qualitative Inquiry 00(0)

Jamestown, Virginia for their settlement, which was named No more museums. No more photographs on the wall
after their King, James I. They claimed immediate sovereign
control over all territories including all lands in an Indigenous No kachina dolls, Tonto, no more Andy Warhol’s Wild
empire involving several nations: Powhatan, Iroquoian, West exhibits
Nottoway, and Meherrin. Native Americans and African
No more unreturned Native bones in the Hearst Museum
Americans were enslaved from the very beginning.
We are a reminder of what Anthropology might have been,
Coyote: but never was

We can trace the beginning of Ishi’s story back to Jamestown And still they will not change the name of Kroeber Hall to
and King James. Ishi Hall.
It took two federal acts for us to get free:
John Johnson:
The National Museum of the
So can I!
American Indian Act of 1989
Dino Gilio-Whitake
and the Native American Grave Protection and
Repatriation Act of 1990 (see Denzin, 2021,
Here here! And here lies the origins of the “original sin” of
colonialism and its twin pillars of slavery and indigenous pp. 104–106).
genocide and land theft. Three cheers for old King James. And they still put us in museums.
Coyote and Gilio-Whitake: Freedom came slowly:
Read your history:
American Indian people must regain control and jurisdiction
over the lands they stewarded for millennia. This means the The American Indian movement,
return of public lands and restoring Indigenous control over to
them. This is environmental justice. Red Power,
Red Pedagogy,
Act Two: Scene One: Ode to Our Dakota Indianismo,
Brothers and Sisters
the New Indian
Narrator (to audience):
Wounded Knee II,
James ends his performance of Ishi with a request, invoking
World War Two, the Nazi Holocaust,
memories of the past when Native Americans rallied against
war and social injustice. Hiroshima,

James, Elena, and Ishi 2: the civil rights movement, tribal capitalism,
indigenous mobilizations,
We must pray for our Dakota Brothers and Sisters and thank
them for reminding us that the battle for justice is never Indigenous history, sovereign rights,
done, it is only beginning. We must celebrate the spiritual
rights of indigenous peoples. Indeed all of their rights— broken treaties
environmental, treaty, religious, and sacred—must be Theodora, Alfred, Karl, Clifton, Theodora (Ursula)
honored. Their view of nature as a force to be lived with,
not destroyed or consumed, packaged, and sold must be Three Decades of the World’s Indigenous People,
implemented as a national value.
the 2017 Standing Rock Sioux Tribe
*** and the Dakota Pipeline Resistance.
Gerald Vizenor, Sandy Grande, and Vine Deloria
ODE TO ISHI AND JAMES Cuter died for his sins
Don’t call us Ishi, ever again Sitting Bull, CrazyHorse,
Not Ishi 2, not James as Ishi 2, or Little Beaver
Ishi 2 as James Graham Green, Jane Fon∂a
Denzin 9

Tonto, Minnie HaHA represented in archives, comic books, and ethnology

exhibits
Ishi-the-pretender
Museum Indians are relics of the past;
The Ghost of Ishi
residential schools aren’t
The performances of James Luna
Peace!
The will and desire to resist must prevail.
No peace without Repatriation Acts and Truth and
There is another Dakota
Reconciliation Commissions
Pipeline Disaster waiting to happen.
New performances of Indigeneity
***
Refusals to enact stereotypes
President Trump took executive action on January 24,
Celebrations of
2017, encouraging the Army Corps of Engineers to over-
ride environmental review and speed up construction of Red skin, Red People, Red Magic, and
the Dakota Access Pipeline near the Standing Rock Sioux
Aboriginal theater
Indian Reservation,
Performance as empowerment.
Saying it as in our national interest to do this.
We dance our way home, the living earth our drum
Ishi and James:
We play on Turtle Land.
Nonsense. We must never stop resisting
Our new home
We must dream
Drum Roll:
***
THE STANDING ROCK FANCY DANCERS, LED BY
ISHI 2, ELENA, AND JAMES PARADE ACROSS
Headline: February 22, 2022 THE STAGE, WAVING A BANNER:
Today the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the Dakota pipeline
THANK YOU BROTHERS AND SISTERS
to shut down.
FOR REMINDING US THAT THE
A major victory
FIGHT FOR JUSTICE IS NEVER OVER
for environmentalists and
***
the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe
LONG LIVE OUR SACRED LAKE OAHE
who had rallied support
AND ALL OTHER SACRED INDIGENOUS LAKES
from across the world and
AND RIVERS
sued the U.S. government to stop the environmentally
affecting pipeline from being built on tribal lands. Declaration of Conflicting Interests
*** The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with
respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article.
Act Two: Scene Two: Ode to Museum Indians
A dream comes true Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research,
A new space for Ishi 2, James the trickster,
authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Red Power, and
Notes
The New Indian
1. Written and performed by James Luna and featuring art-
In remembrance of ist Sheila Skinner, ISHI: The Archive Performance tells
All the wild “Indians” who have moved to Hollywood portions of the story of Ishi who, in 1911, walked into the
small Northern California town of Oroville. Civic leaders
Or find themselves contacted Alfred Kroeber who said Ishi would be under his
10 Qualitative Inquiry 00(0)

care and vouched for his welfare and for the advancement Indian Horse, Pocahontas, Squanto, The Power of the Dog,
of science that Ishi would be involved—Kroeber’s name for The Revenant, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, and Wind
him. It was decided that Ishi would live in the Kroeber-Hearst River.
Museum on the University of California Berkeley’s campus,
where he performed as a living specimen, dying in 1916. The References
archives suggest there is more to this story, which has never
Denzin, N. K. (2021). Re-reading Ishi’s story: Interpreting rep-
been told. I shamelessly steal from “ISHI; THE ARCHIVE
resentation in three worlds. Routledge.
PERFORMANCE” 41 FINAL DRAFT 6/5/112014. Elena
Johns, S. (2014, October 16). Nocturne star James Luna: Ishi:
Creef shared this draft with me. She assisted James Luna
The Archive Performance. Coast. https://www.thecoast.ca/
when he debuted the earliest version of the Ishi Archive in
halifax/james-luna-ishi-the-archive-performance/Content?
Boston in 2014.
oid=4438345J
2. 1950–2018. Payómkawichum, Ipi, American performance
Kroeber, K., & Kroeber, C. (Eds.). (2003). Ishi in three centuries.
artist, photographer, and a multimedia installation artist.
University of Nebraska Press.
Luna’s performance critiques Kroeber’s (1961, 1989) version
Kroeber, T. (1989). Ishi in two worlds: A biography of the last
of Ishi’s life.
wild Indian North America. University of California Press.
3. See also Johns (2014).
(Original work published 1961)
4. For example, “ScreenPix Westerns,” 1789 is an Xfinity
Smith, P. C. (2005). Luna remembers. In L. T. Smith (Ed.), James
channel. It features 24-hour a day Westerns programming
Luna: Emendatio: Exhibition (pp. 25–48). Smithsonian
that “retells the wildest tales of the most lawless times” in
National Museum of the American Indian.
American history and includes classic titles, such as The
Starn, O. (2004). Ishi’s brain: In search of the last “wild” Indian.
Way West, Red River and Man with the Gun, Gray Eagle,
W. W. Norton.
Billie Two Hats, Sitting Bull, Comanche, Quincannon,
Western Scout, Davey Crockett, and Oklahoma Territory.
Recent Neo Westerns with an American Indian theme include Author Biography
Smoke Signals, Yellowstone, The Missing, Buffalo Dreams, Norman K. Denzin’s most recent book is Re-Reading Ishi.