Native Theatre Movement Receives 250 Signatures Urging For Stronger Native Representation in Theatre

The recently-formed Native Theatre Movement has launched an initiative across the country that advocates for stronger Native representation and leadership in American theatre.

The initiative launched with open letter, signed by more than 250 Native and non-Native artists, urging theatre companies to go beyond symbolic gestures and actually make meaningful commitments to Indigenous artists, American Theatre reports.

The complete letter is available to read below and signatures can be added here.

“In response to institutional theatremakers and the industry at large: 

 Before the lights dim, theatres across this country offer land acknowledgments. They name the original stewards of the land. They thank us. They move on. 

And then the season begins without us. 

Because acknowledging us is not seeing us. 

So We, a collective of Native and Indigenous artists and allies, have come together to say: 

SEE US. HEAR US. JOIN US. 

Since the beginning of this business, Native artists have organized, spoken up, provided countless hours of unpaid labor, asked for community meetings, and protested harmful, inaccurate depictions of our people onstage, ranging from Broadway to regional productions in every area of this country. And since the beginning, we have been belittled, dismissed, threatened, and silenced. Nevertheless, we have persisted through every risk to our careers, our health, and our reputations. These years of silencing and being ignored have resulted in a pattern of institutional, field-wide harm to our community. Unfortunately, this hostility and contempt have only grown toward Native people over the last several years as we have gathered to address institutional and individual harm. 

2025 is the straw that broke the camel’s back. 

Now, in 2026, we stand alongside the Native artist-activists who have laid the foundation for all Native work today, saying enough. 

This letter, signed by Native artists and our allies, is a declaration. 

We are done asking permission to exist in an art form our ancestors helped create. In an industry built on truth, authenticity, and belonging, we are still denied the space to speak for ourselves and tell our own stories. We are denied the inherent right to share our experiences and the impact that redface, stereotypes, and exclusion have on our communities. That is settler colonialism in action, and we name it as such.

We are living, working artists who carry the weight of genocide while watching this federal government continue its threats against our sovereignty, and we will not surrender our voices in the one space that is supposed to welcome full human expression. The theatre cannot claim to be a place for everyone while actively silencing the people on whose land it stands. 

We are not metaphors. We are not mascots. We are not backdrops. We are not land acknowledgments. We are not figures of someone else’s imagination. We are human beings. 

We, 250 Native and non-Native artists, demand community accountability, transparency, and the unequivocal recognition that the only people who can speak for us, about us, and on matters that implicate us, are us. 

We will soon be demanding from institutions several things: Make public vows to produce Native-authored work, invest in training for Native artists, finally commit to the decades of offerings provided by the matriarchs of Native Theatre, defer to the leadership of Native artists and our beloved Native-founded organizations, and move into genuine relationships with us for the first time. We will ask our allies to lend their voices to uplift ours, join us in cross-cultural collaboration and deep partnership, and build a coalition for a more equitable theatre for us all.

Stand by.”

The movement was co-created by Ida Aronson (Houma Nation of Louisiana), Jorden Charley-Whatley (Absentee Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma), Madeline Easley (Wyandotte Nation of Oklahoma), Daniel Leeman Smith (Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma), Bradley Lewis (Acoma Pueblo), Kelly Lynne D’Angelo (Tuscarora Haudenosaunee), Tara Moses (Seminole Nation of Oklahoma), Chingwe Padraig Sullivan (Shinnecock and Montaukett), Quita Sullivan (Shinnecock and Montaukett), and Becca Worthington (Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma), with an advisory council including Jennifer Bobiwash (Ojibway), Murielle Borst-Tarrant (Kuna/Rappahannock Nations), Azie Dungey (Pamunkey), Kimberly JaJuan (Haliwa-Saponi), Vickie Ramirez (Tuscarora), Betsy Richards (Cherokee Nation), DeLanna Studi (Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma), and Rhiana Yazzie (Navajo).