All My Relations Collective: Skeleton Canoe

The Natural Landscape of Native Puppetry

An Essay by Opalanietet Pierce

“Puppetry is already there in cultural dances, trees.”

This quote from Anishinaabe theatre artist Ty Defoe (also called Giizhig in their Indigenous language) from his appearance on one of the panels in the Ellen von Volkenburg symposium encapsulates the organic energy exhibited in the natural world around us that is intrinsically mandatory in the craft of puppetry. Yet how does one harness that raw organic energy from the natural world and distill it into what we would consider Native puppet theater? The first, and perhaps most important, step would be to “Indigenize” the puppets. This is exactly what Defoe demonstrates for us in his puppet-theater play Skeleton Canoe, created with All My Relations Collective¹ and the Great Lakes Life Ways Institute. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, to “indigenize” is to “bring (something) under the control, dominance, or influence of the people native to an area.” In this article, I will focus on how the specificity of materiality in Skeleton Canoe Indigenizes the puppets and enhances the anthropomorphization of the characters, thus forming a cornerstone of contemporary Native puppet theater, and I will explore this Indigenizing materiality through three distinct characters in the play whose function and movement directly relate to water as the essence of life: Rainbow Trout, Turtle Activist Grandma, and the River itself. 

We will start with the river, as it is the most crucial element in Skeleton Canoe. There is no performance without River. While one can certainly legitimately argue that rivers provide the essentials for life for civilizations throughout the world, rivers are also looked upon as living, breathing relations for many Native/Indigenous communities, including my own. Yet how does one transform the Western, colonial, Euro/American concept of a river as primarily a watery avenue used to transport products and further commerce into a sentient relative capable of sharing cosmological knowledge with us? I argue that Defoe achieves this transformation through what he called on the panel, “Western puppetry and Anishinaabe values and ways of being.” The craft of puppetry in Skeleton Canoe, including River, may be informed by what Americans consider to be Western, but it is the Native values (in this case Anishinaabe) that inform the materiality of River and thus enable River to ontologically function in a way that makes the audience a vessel for River’s stories rather than the other way around. We fundamentally need River more than River needs us, and it is this humble understanding that allows a reciprocal relationship to exist that is critical in Native puppet theater. The materiality of River consists of recycled materials, which both acknowledges the importance of our climate crisis and the urgency to protect River, while also permitting River to flow, ripple, and provide a home for the other puppets. 

Rainbow Trout is one of those other puppets who has a home in River. A colorful fan forms its foundation, providing both the aesthetic for and functionality of the puppet. The spectrum of color emanating from Rainbow Trout gives authenticity to its name, while the flexibility of the fan enables the puppet to swim, flutter, and dance convincingly. Rainbow Trout, with the assistance of the colorful fan, also serves as a metaphor reminding us of the role of Two-Spirit members in Indigenous communities, bringing love, light, joy, and gratitude to our culture. As a human artifact, the colorful fan anthropomorphizes the fish, thereby furthering the interspecies communication that is essential to this Native story. Claudia Orenstein in her book Reading the Puppet Stage: Reflections on the Dramaturgy of Performing Objects writes, “Objects and materiality can have their own emotional trajectories constructed into them, and we can experience these physically” (2024: 38). We experience the beauty of Rainbow Trout through the vivid brightness of the colorful fan and freedom through its movement as it appears to swim effortlessly, allowing us to experience a watery environment even when it is not in physical water. Rainbow Trout’s freedom of movement enables direct interspecies communication with the other swimming puppets and air-breathing mammals, such as a human actor. Endowing the puppet with the Anishinaabe language reinforces the concept of the puppet being alive through anthropomorphization, something that in an email to me Defoe referred to as “breathing spirit into the puppet.” The combination of Anishinaabe language along with materiality, such as jingles from a jingle dress² being placed inside Rainbow Trout, collaborate to Indigenize the puppet with the ability to relay Anishinaabe lifeways and ideology onto a captivated audience, whether they be Native or not. 

Birchbark, however, is the most important aspect of materiality in Skeleton Canoe. It’s the material out of which the main character in the play, Jiimaan Canoe, is made. This monumental material represents so much to the Anishinaabe people that it also forms a basket that serves as a shell for the elder character, Turtle Activist Grandma. For many Native communities, including my own Lenape as well as the Anishinaabe, what Americans frequently refer to as the continent of North America is actually Turtle Island, a vast tract of land that sits on the back of a giant turtle. I, personally, am a member of a Lenape Turtle Clan. The cosmological importance of the turtle and its shell is imperative to many Native creation stories. Thus, having the turtle shell be a basket made out of birchbark Indigenizes this puppet in a way that nothing else would or could. Birchbark serves as a means to make food and supply transportation, in addition to being the material that would support etchings and writing, which also makes it a foundation for communication. This renders it an ideal material for a puppet that, as Defoe articulates in an interview, is “creating an environmental movement for a connection between humans and nature.” While cleaning the water in the play, Turtle Activist Grandma reminds us of one of the most important realities of existence by pulling out a flag that communicates, “Water is life.” Through utilizing her birchbark shell to remove trash and waste from the water and River’s shore, Turtle Activist Grandma represents the significance of environmental stewardship and that the wellbeing of the people is synonymous with that of the environment. Having both Turtle Activist Grandma and Jiimaan Canoe be associated with the materiality of birchbark (recycled in the case of the water craft), they remind us of the importance of sustainability and the interconnectedness of our shared destiny.

In order for Native puppet theater to create an environmental movement for a connection between humans and nature, the relationship between humans and the natural world must go beyond mere transactional reciprocity. It must reach into the essence of our identities as living organisms, through the specific materiality of its characters. The materiality of the puppets in Skeleton Canoe are a mixture of items that are symbolic to us as contemporary Americans, as well as essential to the traditional culture of Anishinaabe people. This blend of materiality specifically crafted for certain characters anthropomorphizes the puppets in a way that intrinsically makes them a part of us, while simultaneously through our wonderment at seeing the natural world alive through our creations, makes us a part of them.