Indian Theater: Native Performance, Art, and Self-Determination since 1969 is the first large-scale exhibition of its kind to center performance and theater as an origin point for the development of contemporary art by Native American, First Nations, Métis, Inuit, and Alaska Native artists, beginning with the role that Native artists have played in the self-determination era, sparked by the Occupation of Alcatraz by the Indians of All Tribes in 1969. Native artists then and now are at the vanguard of performance art practices and discourse. As part of Indian Theater, their work uses humor as a strategy for cultural critique and reflection, parses the inherent relationships between objecthood and agency, and frequently complicates representations of the Native body through signaling the body’s absence and presence via clothing, blanketing, and adornment. In the exhibition, song, dance, and music are also posited as a basis for collectivity and resistance and a means to speak back to a time when Native traditional ceremony and public gatherings were illegal in both the United States and Canada.

— From the Hessel Museum of Art’s website