INDIANacts: Aboriginal Performance Art (2002) was a three-day conference concerned with Indigenous actions and performance practices, produced by grunt gallery and TRIBE. The title of the conference, INDIANacts, references a legacy of settler legislation governing Indigenous peoples: The Indian Act. A sense of irony is manifest in the naming of the conference and this subversion can be seen throughout Aboriginal performance as a creative intervention of the oppression of Aboriginal people(s). Through deconstructing and re-appropriating elements of dominant culture, INDIANacts transformed ideas around performance art within an Indigenous context. Exploring themes related to the diversity of Indigenous culture, ceremony, aesthetics, spirituality, pedagogy and activism, this conference was largely driven by its participants and their practices. This landmark event was one of only a few conferences/gatherings that have specifically explored performance art from an Indigenous perspective.

— From NDN AXE/IONS—a collaborative essay, by Dana Claxton & Tania Willard