William S. Yellow Robe, Jr.

Playwright Biography

Assiniboine playwright who also acts, directs, and writes poetry and short stories
Grew up on Fort Peck Indian Reservation in Wolf Point, Montana
Encouraged by middle school teacher to try playwriting
Has written over 45 plays
Awards include: the First Nations Book Award for Drama; first playwright to receive a Princess Grace Foundation Theater Fellowship; first Native American playwright to receive a Jerome Fellowship from the Minneapolis Playwrights' Center; and a New England Theater Foundation Award for Excellence
Member of the Penumbra Theatre Company of St. Paul, MN, the Ensemble Studio Theatre in New York, and on the board of advisors for Red Eagle Soaring Theatre Company in Seattle, WA
Currently a part-time faculty member at the University of Maine

Highlighted Play: The Star Quilter

Synopsis

An Assiniboine woman, Mona, who is renowned among her community for making star quilts, is coerced by a white woman, Luanne, into making one for her to give to the Montana Senator for display in his office. As the quilt gains attention, Luanne returns to Mona and convinces her to support her efforts to commission more women, including Mona, to make quilts for sale. Luanne loses control of the business as the quilts are sold at high prices that do not benefit the Assiniboine women who made them, and ultimately the women producing the quilts are left bankrupted. Over the course of Mona’s lifetime, she gains the strength to stand up to Luanne, who only returns to her when she wants something from her on the basis that she is Native American. This play explores the assumptions that are made by Luanne that Mona would share her values and attitudes toward the star quilt as a commodity to be bought and sold, while in Mona’s culture the quilt is emblematic of the love and work that is put into each piece and given to an individual for a special occasion. The Star Quilter addresses the results of imperialist assumptions that the values imposed upon Native Americans would replace their own values. It explores at the root the issue of exploitation of Native American culture and crafts and opens a gateway to larger discussions about the effects of colonialism on the American continent.

Suggested Activity

1. To better understand the value that objects can have, ask students to identify what their most prized possession is and to tell the story of how they came to have it. They can either ask and answer this question amongst themselves, or have them write their responses privately depending on the class dynamic.

2. Then, on a separate sheet of paper, have students write just the name of their object on the top and pass the sheets around the room. Each student writes a short sentence on each of their peer's sheets that attempts to explain what that object means. If a student does not want to provide the object they discussed initially for this part of the exercise, they can either decline to provide a sheet or they can select a secondary object that they would not mind using.

3. Once the sheets have returned to their original owners, ask students to glance over the responses. Provide an opportunity to share any responses that were especially off, and to share what their object was if they feel comfortable. When they were writing on other people's sheets, how much were their own assumptions about that person or their associations with that object influencing their explanation?

Suggested Audience / Suggestions for use

The Star Quilter is appropriate for middle school and high school students. Its language and plot are relatively accessible, and through the story of the two women it is possible to connect the play to a unit on Native American history. For college aged students, this play can be a source of discourse on colonialism in the United States. Even without possession of a strong basis in theory, it is possible for students to understand the inherent unfairness in how Luanne treats Mona and recognize the difference in their perspectives. The parallels to be drawn to the history of colonialism would provide these human dimensions to illuminate a living history; the play could make theory more accessible through the relationship between Mona and Luanne. Introducing students of any age to Native American dramatic literature is important both for students who have never learned about the experience of being Native American in the United States and for students who are of Native American heritage that do not see themselves represented in the Western dramatic canon.

Example Discussion Questions

The Star Quilter Specific

How is the history of colonization of Native Americans in the United States and the seizure of their lands reflected in the interactions between Mona and Luanne?
What does the star quilt represent to Mona? To Luanne? How does each come to value the quilt differently?
The play takes place over several decades and we see Mona and Luanne grow older as their relationship continues. What does this long span of time indicate when related to the events of the play? What might it symbolize?

General

Who is responsible for facilitating cultural education? What is the value of cultural awareness and who has a stake in its persistence?
To what extent can the invocation of stereotypes be useful in deconstructing and discussing them?
Consider this quote from William Yellow Robe (Rathbun, 2000):

“As far as homogenizing everybody, that was the "melting pot" theory, and it didn't work. People wouldn't cop to it. There was never a melting pot. George Wolf came up with the idea of gumbo, it's all gumbo,where everything is mixed around, but you can still taste the paprika, you can still taste the pork, the flee, the catfish. That's what America is, it's not a melting pot, it's a gumbo, but we want to believe the idea that it's a melting pot. This country has never been a melting pot. It's been a destructive force, a melting pot in that certain groups of people have been set on fire and vanished, that's about it - things were burned up. As far as melting pot as unification, no.”

How do we make a gumbo? What would be necessary to create a nation in which all cultures are afforded equal respect without any one culture subsuming others?

Is it possible to claim a racial or ethnic identity that you were not born into or raised with?

Additional Featured Plays

Pieces of Us

Synopsis

A multiracial man named Adam holds the pieces of what had once been his racial identity, metaphorically represented by swathes of red, yellow, black, and white fabric and family artifacts, which has been torn apart by mysterious figures. With the help of a “troublemaker” called Ink, relatives of varying degrees of helpfulness, the maternal figures of the family represented by Grandma Pearl, and the spirit of the Earth represented by Terra, Adam puts the pieces back together. Complicating Adam’s task are the Chorus of Governance - a frustrating government bureaucracy that claims the right to decide who is Indian or not - and the Chorus of Academia, who although they are not part of the community believe that they have the authority to validate Adam’s identity. Adam also meets resistance from a Chorus of Family Lost, a group of relatives who try to keep Adam from obtaining the last piece needed to complete the tapestry and then rip it apart again because they believe that claiming his heritage will mean revealing the pain in their past. With the help of Ink, Terra, and Grandma Pearl, Adam’s triumph is revealed in a tapestry that is even better than the one he started with because it represents all of them.

Suggestions for use

This play provides a thought provoking discussion on identity, identity politics, and how external forces can affect but ultimately cannot obstruct how a person chooses to identify or what parts of their heritage they wish to embrace. It would certainly be useful in a college setting, especially considering that it questions academia and challenges its right to assume control of deciding racial identity. In a high school setting, it may resonate with students who, like Adam, are trying to assemble pieces of their identity while also struggling against outside forces.

"Grandchildren of the Buffalo Soliders" photo by Katherine Fogden

Grandchildren of the Buffalo Soldiers

Synopsis

Craig Robe returns home to his family on the reservation for his niece’s naming ceremony. His insistence on accepting his family’s African-American heritage along with their Native American heritage challenges his brother Brent’s conviction that they need to be only “Indin” and should deny their African-American lineage. Brent’s desire to fully belong to the Indin community by claiming to be “full-blood” is based on a need to embrace an identity that will be protected by a community and preserve his right to participate in rituals. Craig’s life off the reservation and African-American background position him as an outsider, and he struggles to make his family and the community accept him as one of them while trying to fulfill their expectations of how he should behave. A fight that breaks out between Craig and an estranged relative at a community celebration highlights the racial tensions and prejudices that Craig and other members of the family have endured. At the play’s conclusion, Craig’s niece shares with him Indin medicinal knowledge and shows him her version of a dance that Craig’s African-American father had taught his children. Her acceptance of both her racial identities is counter to Brent’s refusal to do the same and shows hope for the family’s future through the next generation.

Suggestions for Use

Through the lives of one family, this play explores what it means to be between two races and the search for an identity that embraces both. It poses questions about race such as who decides who is Native American or African-American, and what the implications are of claiming these identities. Through a specific example of race relations on a reservation, Grandchildren of the Buffalo Soldiers explores racial dynamics on a human scale and makes it possible to grasp the personal realities of socially constructed racial categories. It is pertinent both in discussions of contemporary race relations in America and historical connections to the African-American soldiers who fought in the Civil War, who are the “Buffalo Soldiers” referenced. With a racial conflict being the center of the story, the play's discussion of race does invoke words that could be considered slurs, though specific to certain populations. With this in mind, this play would be appropriate in a high school setting with care taken to unpack the meaning of any such words.

Plays by William S. Yellow Robe, Jr.

Plays listed by anthology:

Where the Pavement Ends: Five Native American Plays (2009)

The Star Quilter

The Body Guards

Rez Politics

The Council

Sneaky

Grandchildren of the Buffalo Soldiers and Other Untold Stories (2009)

A Stray Dog

Grandchildren of the Buffalo Soldiers

Mix Blood Seeds

Better-n-Indins

Pieces of Us: How the Lost Find Home

Seventh Generation: An Anthology of Native American Plays (1999)

The Independence of Eddie Rose

Selected Additional Plays*:

The Rose

Our War

Pendleton Blanket

Thieves

Wood Bones

Wink-Dah

*Many of these titles are not published as the above anthologies have been; for the purposes of providing titles that could be readily available to educators, I am not including a complete corpus here.

A complete list of William S. Yellow Robe's work can be found here.

Media

Excerpt from Sneaky by New Native Theatre

William S. Yellow Robe Jr. speaking at Brown University on December 5th, 2013.

Bibliography of Additional Resources

Amerinda. (n. d.) Native American Artists Roster: William S. Yellow Robe Jr. Retrieved from http://www.amerinda.org/naar/yellowrobe/playwright/playwright.htm

Beete, Paulette. (2014, April 8). Art Talk with William S. Yellow Robe, Jr. Retrieved from https://www.arts.gov/art-works/2014/art-talk-william-s-yellow-robe-jr

D’Aponte, M. G. (1999). Seventh generation: An anthology of Native American plays. New York: Theatre Communications Group.

Haugo, A. (2008). Storytime on the stage: Native playwrights & troupes. Native Peoples Magazine, 21(2), 24-29.

Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics. (2007). Interview with William S Yellow Robe, Jr (Video). New York: Hemispheric Institute. Retrieved from http://hidvl.nyu.edu/video/003335551.html

Krasner, David (2009). Coming-of-age on the rez: William S. Yellow Robe's The Independence of Eddie Rose as Native American Bildungsdrama. In S. E. Wilmer (Ed.), Native American performance and representation, (pp. 171–181). Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

Lukens, M. & Yellow Robe Jr., W. S. (2010). Two worlds on one stage: Working in collaboration to prevent encroachment, appropriation, and other maddening forms of imperialism. In H. Geiogamah & J. T. Darby (Eds.), American Indian performing arts: Critical directions. Los Angeles: UCLA American Indian Studies Center.

Newsdesk: Newsroom of the Smithsonian. (2010, March 3). National Museum of the American Indian presents production of Grandchildren of the Buffalo Soldiers. Retrieved from http://newsdesk.si.edu/releases/national-museum-american-indian-presents-production-grandchildren-buffalo-soldiers

Pulitano, E., & Yellow Robe Jr., W. S. (1998). Telling stories through the stage: A conversation with William Yellow Robe. Studies in American Indian Literatures, 10(1), 19-44. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/20739434

Rathbun, Paul. (2000). Native Playwrights Newsletter interview: William Yellow Robe, Jr. In H. Geiogamah & J. T. Darby (Eds.), American Indian theater in performance: A reader. Los Angeles: UCLA American Indian Studies Center.

Uno, R. (1989). MELUS interview: William Yellow Robe. Melus, 16, 1683-1690.

Weagel, D. (2011). The quilt as (non-)commodity in William S. Yellow Robe Jr.'s The Star Quilter. Western American Literature, 46(1), 46-64.

Weinert-Kendt, Robert. (2010). In the trenches: William Yellow Robe. Retrieved from http://www.tcgcircle.org/2010/05/in-the-trenches-william-yellow-robe/

Yellow Robe Jr., W. S. (2009). Grandchildren of the Buffalo Soldiers and other untold stories. Los Angeles: UCLA American Indian Studies Center.

Yellow Robe Jr., W. S. (2009). Where the pavement ends: Five Native American plays. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.

Photo Credits: Header Photo by Laurie Lambrecht

Web page was compiled by Melissa Gabilanes (2017)

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