For most of the recent Indigenous Enterprise show Indigenous Liberation at The Joyce Theater, a bold projected proclamation ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS loomed over the stage as eight talented artists piped a joyful exuberance into an awestruck audience. Their performance and words, celebrating Native history and the role of dance in Native communities, was education and sheer excitement all at once.
November is Native American Heritage Month, and we at Parsons Dance are learning to focus on actions over words, too. The dance vocabulary we bring to the Joyce stage may be of a different style, but dance lovers of all kinds and ages can support Native arts groups like Indigenous Enterprise and the tristate area’s own Red Hawk Native American Arts Council. They share their culture and tradition in communities all over the lands now known as the United States and Canada, where they once danced freely before those lands were taken from them by settler colonialism.
Below, we are posting just a few Native-centered actions you can take to make your own actions louder than words:
EXPERIENCE Indigenous Enterprise online, and support them through Native-designed apparel purchases
SIGN the petition for New York City to recognize Indigenous People’s Day
DONATE to Red Hawk Native American Arts Council, and hire their artists
UNDERSTAND nonprofit funding better with Edgar Villanueva’s excellent book, Decolonizing Wealth
FIND your own address and discover which Native people(s) once called it their home