A Native Puppet Theater Tells the Story of the Osage Homelands

The Ozarks area in Missouri is the ancestral homeland of the Osage individuals, or the Wah.Zha.Zhe as we name ourselves. We lived within the space for roughly 1,400 years earlier than treaty removing by the U.S. authorities, which started round 1825. All that is still are the bodily impressions our Osage ancestors left on the Missouri panorama, reminiscent of mound and village websites, path programs, rock artwork, and, most significantly, burial websites. Right this moment, our Osage individuals name Oklahoma dwelling, however via the adversity of displacement, we proceed to be spiritually and culturally rooted in our homeland.

An Osage elder described our time in Missouri as a time of Osage purity, a free-enterprise system based mostly on residing in steadiness with nature and ourselves. It was a time when the Osage individuals lived in absolute freedom—and it will be the final.

Within the Wah.Zha.Zhe Puppet Theatre, we reimagine this freedom and coexistence with the pure world. We spotlight oral tales and histories via theater and larger-than-life characters to take care of our Osage id and tales.  

We fashioned the group within the spring of 2022 for the Osage Nations’ Sesquicentennial Celebration in Pawhuska, Oklahoma, celebrating 150 years of the established Osage Reservation. Stage director Russell Tallchief, playwright Candice Byrd-Boney, and myself as inventive director led the group of Osage artists and puppeteers in a novel collaborative efficiency.

To visually talk our Osage worldview and values, we conceptualized our tales by designing spectacular characters who act as catalysts in our narratives. To make our imaginative and prescient a actuality, we collaborated with puppet designer Christopher Lutter-Gardella of Large Animal Productions, based mostly in Minneapolis. Chris’s intensive data of group arts and large-scale puppet design, plus his earth-conscious ethos, made him the proper match to work with our Indigenous group. He humbly guided our group in creating performable art work from upcycled supplies whereas deepening our understanding of our ecological footprint.

With the assist of the Osage Nation Museum, we invited our Osage group to a two-week puppet-building workshop that aligned with our histories and oral tales. A number of generations of Osage individuals, together with a gaggle of language immersion college students from Daposka Ahnkodapi Elementary, volunteered their time to assist create the large puppets.

Significant conversations emerged as we labored facet by facet, reducing, stitching, gluing, and making use of layers of papier-mâché. We philosophized about our tales, in search of understanding about who we’re and the place we got here from. You could possibly hear our Osage language being spoken continuously all through the workshop by the younger and outdated alike. It was a novel and exquisite expertise.

Because the efficiency date approached, the core group fastidiously crafted our narrative, placing the ultimate touches on the script, which might change into Sky E.ko and Her Ni.ka.she (Sky Grandma and Her Individuals). It was essential we use the Osage language continuously, primarily for names and locations. We learn a collection of Osage sources, reminiscent of transcripts of interviews with elders, historical past, and the ethnographic work of Francis La Flesche, to craft our narrative. Altogether, the works impressed our imaginative and prescient for the puppets and laid the groundwork for our story.

As soon as the papier-mâché layers dried, we known as Osage painters to assist us characterize the puppets. Artists together with Erica Moore Cozad, Jessica Moore Harjo, and Yatika Fields contributed their time and expertise to the venture. The puppets had been dropped at life with a novel aesthetic that blends conventional Osage influences with every artist’s distinctive model. With a collaborative spirit that fueled one another’s creativity, the artists crafted a visible expertise that units the Wah.Zha.Zhe Puppet Theatre aside.

Osage musician Nokosee Fields composed an authentic rating that overlaid sounds of nature with violin chords that lent an ethereal tone to the efficiency. Buffalo Nickel Creative, an Osage-owned media firm, supplied extra background imagery.

On the finish of our artistic course of, we accomplished a large-scale elk, eagle, swan, wolf, waterbird, and eight two-person buffalo puppets. Every was a featured character within the present. Efficiency time was upon us, so we known as upon the Osage language immersion college students and group to recruit puppeteers and actors. After an intense week of touchups and rehearsals, it was showtime.  

Our first efficiency on October 21, 2022, was magical. Because the solar set over the Osage Nation’s rolling hills, orange, pink, and blue hues brushed throughout the clouds, complementing our puppets and our story. It grew to become clear to all in attendance that the Creator blessed us with the suitable background to current our model of the Osage cosmological story and worldview.

Sky E.ko and Her Ni.ka.she, informed in English and Osage, is the story of a younger Osage lady who struggles to seek out her method with out her not too long ago deceased grandmother. As her grandmother makes her method dwelling to the heavens, she seems to her granddaughter for the final time. Comforting her granddaughter, Sky E.ko explains the place house is by displaying her the numerous locations Osage individuals have lived, from our creation within the skies to our present-day dwelling on Earth.

Wa.kon.da, the Creator, first gave life to the Osage individuals as non secular beings who got here down from the celebrities. This act was carried out via a sequence of occasions and celestial-themed props. The spirit beings ask the Solar, the Moon, the Morning Star, and the Night Star for help to find their technique to Earth.

On the set, a mound-shaped construction resembling the blue sky is hooked up to a slide in the back of the middle stage. The spirit beings, performed by kids, slide right down to signify the descension from the heavenly our bodies onto Earth. Main the beings via the sky is the immature Golden Eagle, which we crafted as a three-pole puppet. As soon as on Earth, they take human type and acquired additional assist from water spirits and the Nice Elk.

In line with the Puma Clan, the Nice Elk is the principal determine within the Earth’s creation. He threw himself onto the bottom, and his physique grew to become the hills, mountaintops, rivers, streams, and ridges. Crops and grasses grew from the Nice Elk’s hair left on the bottom. The Nice Elk and the 4 Winds breathed life onto Earth, so we name him Mon.zhon.ga.xe, Earth Maker.

Whereas discovering our method on Earth, our management studied the cosmos and the cyclical modifications within the setting. They acknowledged the pure order discovered inside the duality of earth and sky, which based our Osage worldview. This division and different pure observations of the universe knowledgeable our social organizations and clan identities. Even our villages had been organized to reflect our cosmology of earth and sky. This lifestyle supplied order and steadiness, which we nonetheless honor and observe immediately.

Sky E.ko then recounts our lifeways with the buffalo. Stampeding onto the stage, the two-person buffalo puppets graze the plains. Sky E.ko talks about our historic ancestors who constructed the mounds round St. Louis, grounding our worldview. She then describes a particular place throughout our time in Missouri.

The Place of Many Swans, or Marais des Cygnes River, is a revered web site for Osage individuals that gives many components and symbols for our lifeways. Representing this web site is a big swan puppet, constructed by Chris to suit over an Osage performer Elizabeth Moore’s wheelchair. As Sky E.ko tells the story of the Place of Many Swans, the swan gracefully glides throughout the sleek waters. This was represented by 4 lengthy rows of royal blue chiffon, stretched throughout the stage to type the flowing river.

The play culminates with the tribe’s closing motion into Oklahoma. Sky E.ko recites a conventional oral story a few big wolf scouting out our present homeland. For the grand finale, we current the most important puppet of all of them. An enormous waterbird rises to represent our Osage Native American Church and non secular id. This represents a spot the place our Osage individuals will be nearer to Wa.kon.da, the Creator, and our ancestors.

Our individuals have a saying: Wash.kon. “Do your finest.” The Wah.Zha.Zhe Puppet Theatre was created with this idea in thoughts, showcasing a community-based strategy to inventive creation that intently aligns with our communal traditions. We engaged over 100 individuals within the venture, together with thirty performers. Our distinctive strategy, puppets, and tales honor our complicated historical past and beliefs and current a technique for modern Osage to find and create significant narratives of their very own.

Sooner or later, we’ll attempt to create extra performs and large-scale puppets to maintain the reminiscence of our oral tales and histories alive. We uncover different tales to jot down about and new characters to develop every time we collect. In the end, we search to make use of our community-based mannequin to work with different tribal communities and assist them make their tales come to life.

Welana Fields Queton (Osage, Mvskoke, Cherokee) is a museum skilled and creator of the Wah.Zha.Zhe Puppet Theatre. She loves her Native tradition, artwork, kitschy issues, and Kewpie dolls.