In the 185 years since Andrew Jackson drafted and signed into law his Indian Removal Act, portrayals of Native Americans in the American theater have changed very little. The redface performances that originated at the time of removal continue to dominate the American stage today, but for the first time, now, we have the opportunity to change the narrative. We have the opportunity to replace a false representation with a real one.
In this respect, Harjo’s placement of an articulate, brilliant, and musical Native woman front and center on the American stage constitutes nothing less than an act of revolution. Wings is a magnificent rebellion. Redbird’s narrative demonstrates defiance.
In contrast to the majority of contemporary Native representations onstage, the Native protagonist in Wings does not grunt incoherent sounds, nor does she portray the loss of her Muscogee ancestral homelands as a joke in a modern day rock musical. Instead, the reality of the Trail of Tears is introduced as a shared communal experience of survival, an experience that continues to shape the journey and identity of Muscogee Creek Nation citizens today. Harjo writes,
CEHOTOSAKVTES CHENAORAKVTES MOMIS KOMET AWATCHKEN OHAPEYAKARES HVLWEN
Two beloved women sang this song on the trail of tears. One walked near the front of the people, one near the back. When either began to falter, they would sing the song to hold each other up.
DO NOT GET TIRED. DON’T BE DISCOURAGED. BE DETERMINED, TO ALL COME IN. WE WILL GO TO THE HIGHEST PLACE. WE WILL GO TOGETHER. (22)
The power of Harjo’s portrayal of the Trail of Tears is not that Andrew Jackson is transformed from hero into villain (as one might imagine a Native playwright would want to do), but rather, the power comes from the fact that both Jackson’s presence and his voice are erased entirely. In Wings, Andrew Jackson’s voice is replaced with the voice of Redbird. Indeed, the only mention of Andrew Jackson in this Muscogee story comes in a few short lines on page 27:
Don’t ever forget the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, said my father. Andrew Jackson’s forces killed almost everyone as we stood to protect our lands. Your grandfather Monahwee was shot seven times and still survived.
The power of this replacement cannot be underestimated. In the United States today, Andrew Jackson continues to be celebrated as a hero. His face adorns the most common form of our currency, the twenty-dollar bill, and he is characterized as the sexy protagonist hero of a modern-day rock musical that has been performed on American stages from Broadway to hundreds of colleges and high schools across the nation. In classrooms across the United States, school children study all of the “wonderful” things that Andrew Jackson did to ensure American democracy. Or as David Greenberg claimed, writing for Politico Magazine in summer 2015, Jackson is “the president who made American democracy democratic.”
As a citizen of Cherokee Nation, and as a direct descendant of Cherokee leaders who fought—and won—the right to continued tribal sovereignty in the United States Supreme Court (Wooster v. Georgia), I know all too well the price we pay for celebrating the “legacy” of the only president in United States history to openly defy an order from the Supreme Court. In 1832, just nine years after the Supreme Court declared Indians incapable of claiming legal title to their own land because they constitute “an inferior race” in Johnson v. M’Intosh, Justice Marshall issued a ruling declaring that the State of Georgia could not exercise jurisdiction on Cherokee lands because Cherokee Nation is a sovereign, “distinct community, occupying its own territory” with “the preexisting power of the Nation to govern itself.” Following this victory, my grandfather John Ridge visited President Jackson in the White House. My grandfather asked how the federal government would enforce the Supreme Court’s decision. Andrew Jackson told him, “John Marshall has issued his decision. Let him enforce it.” And with the turn of his hand, Andrew Jackson became the only president in the history of the United States to refuse to enforce an order from the Supreme Court.
Jackson not only defied the Supreme Court—he also violated the plain text of congressional statutes that he himself signed into law. In 1830, Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act, the plain language of which required a removal treaty with an Indian Nation before its citizens could be moved. However, as Suzan Shown Harjo points out in her 2015 article for HowlRound, “Andrew Jackson Is Not as Bad as You Think, He’s Far, Far Bloodier,” Jackson never negotiated or signed a removal treaty with the Muscogee Creek Nations; instead, there “was no removal treaty and removal was carried out at bayonet point … Tens of millions of acres were taken illegally, and the Muscogee Peoples still grieve over the displacement, ill treatment, and injustice, and for the homelands and ancestors left behind.”
The substitution of the voice of a Muscogee woman for that of Andrew Jackson in Wings constitutes a significant, and laudable, departure from the traditional American theater cannon. Wings does not offer lengthy exposition, nor does it purport to educate the audience on all of the events in American history that their grade school educators failed to teach them. Instead, Wings offers what nearly all contemporary American theaters refuse to show: an honest, authentic portrayal of an American Indian woman’s journey in the twenty-first century. The fact that Wings’ protagonist happens to be a direct descendant of the people Jackson violently and forcibly removed on a Trail of Tears renders Harjo’s work a powerful contrast to the majority of redface being performed on the American stage today. Harjo’s presentation of story and character is delivered in such an artistic way that, as audience members, we cannot help but gulp in her words breath by breath. With each inhale comes human experience, and with each exhale, we bid farewell to a now useless stereotype.
Harjo’s Wings redefines the American Indian experience from the Andrew Jackson removal era to the boarding school era to today. We now find ourselves fighting to restore the sovereignty of our Tribal Governments, the authenticity of our stories, and ultimately, the right to define our identity. And nowhere is this fight more critical than in the lives of our Indian women. Today, on the American stage, in Hollywood, and in Halloween costume shops across the United States, Native women are portrayed as nothing more than objects to be conquered sexually. From “Pocahottie” costumes to Disney’s Pocahontas, the message is clear: Native women are not to be respected—they are to be exploited.
As a Cherokee woman, and as an attorney, I cannot separate the high rates of violence against our women from the artistic expressions that dominate American society portraying Native women as sexual victims with no agency or power. And we are exploited more so than any other group in the entire United States. Today, reports from the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) reveal that Native women are more likely to be battered, raped, or sexually assaulted than any other US population. One in three Native women will be raped in her lifetime, and six in ten will be physically assaulted. On some reservations, the murder rate for Native women is ten times the national average. Native children suffer similar rates of trauma and sexual abuse, as their rates of violent victimization ranks 2.5 times higher than the national average for all other children.
Wings offers an alternative narrative. Redbird’s examination of the violence in her community is inextricably linked to the intergenerational trauma her family has suffered since forced removal. Wings makes clear that violence against Native women in tribal communities is the continuation of a cycle of trauma and grief that began with the Trail of Tears, and, unfortunately, has not yet been allowed to conclude, in large part because we have not been permitted to honestly discuss it on the American stage and in society at large.
In a nation that has instructed Native women to remain silent, Wings signals to Native women that it is permissible for them to publicly share their stories of survival. Through