Since 2021, high-school aged Native American youth from Oregon and beyond gather for a week at a performing arts camp with their peers. The program, Arts Learning Project for Native Youth or ALP4NY, run by Bag & Baggage Productions, gives students instructions in acting and writing with additional electives depending on their interests. It exposes them to a wide variety of skills in the performing arts, provides them with training, and facilitates relationships with professionals working in the arts. This is a unique opportunity for these students. One 2019 study found that 25% of Indigenous students don’t have any arts instruction at all, a number that’s worsened since the pandemic and the closure of many arts programs.
NPAN’s reading of Cherokee playwright DeLanna Studi’s new ‘I is for Invisible’ highlighted national commemoration of missing and murdered Indigenous women.
PORTLAND, Ore. ( KOIN ) – A local performing arts group is stepping up as part of a movement to raise awareness for National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Relatives (MMIWR). Hillsboro-based Native Performing Arts Network will present the play ‘ I is for Invisible ’ by Cherokee playwright and actress DeLanna Studi. The group is inviting theatres of all sizes, universities and other organizations to participate in the national day of action on May 5. Studi joined us on AM Extra, along with Jeanette Harrison, director and founder of the Native Performance Arts Network, to share the significance of this effort and to dive into the what the featured play is about.
Native Performing Arts Network (NPAN), a new national home dedicated to Indigenous stories, artists, and youth, is proud to announce the plays by Indigenous writers selected for its National Day of Theater Readings for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Relatives (MMIWR). On May 5, 2026, theaters and universities nationwide will host staged readings, with additional events planned around that date, to raise awareness about the ongoing crisis of violence impacting Indigenous communities.
Arena Stage, Mosaic Theater Company, Theater Alliance, and Woolly Mammoth to join in readings of plays by Native American writers that address the crisis of violence facing Indigenous people in the Americas.
Theatres are stepping up for a national series of play readings by Indigenous writers, set for May 5, 2026, National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Relatives.
Theatergoers are in for a very special occasion—a revelation, it’s not too excessive to say—if they will expand their horizons a bit and embrace a Native American perspective on view now. Currently celebrating its 30th anniversary season, Native Voices presents the world premiere of Beth Piatote’s Antíkoni at the historic Southwest Campus of the Autry Museum of the American West, formerly known as the Southwest Museum of the American Indian, deemed the oldest museum in Los Angeles. According to DeLanna Studi, Native Voices Artistic Director, the work “developed during our 2020 Festival of New Plays,” and it “perfectly embodies our spirit and mission.”
Congress passed the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act ( NAGPRA ) in 1990. The law acknowledged that human remains, and cultural items removed from federal or tribal land belong first to the descendants of the people who lived in those homelands and created those cultural and spiritual items. In other words, contemporary federally recognized tribes and Native Hawaiian organizations could — finally — bring ancestors home. Native people often consider all remains and cultural objects as ancestors, in recognition of unbroken and spiritual kinship ties. The law established guidelines and frameworks for identifying descendancy and mandated compliance from any public or private institution receiving federal funds.
A new adaptation of Sophocles’s classic will be staged at a museum that once held Native remains—but it’s hardly a staid museum piece.
OPB's Think Out Loud: Dave Miller interviews Jeanette Harrison and two students, Niyla Willow and Gia Fisher, about NPAN's annual summer camp. Miller: Jeanette, first. Why did you decide to help start this camp? Harrison: Well, the thing that we all keep saying is, we are building the program that we wish that we had had as students. We had to fight so hard to find our way to other Native theater artists, to Native storytelling, and it wasn’t something that was supported in most institutions. So I think one of the great joys, now, at this moment in time, is being able to build the program of our dreams. Miller: Well, Jeanette, just to stick with you for a second – what did that mean for you? I mean, when you were a young person interested in theater, what was the terrain like for you? Harrison: It was very western-centric. I went to school at a top research university with one of the best libraries in the entire country, and it wasn’t until after I graduated from college that I found my way to Spiderwoman Theater collective, and Bill Yellow Robe, and all these plays by Native writers. Nobody in college could point out a single Native play and – not to date myself – this was really before Google was a thing. So it was actually really hard to find work. I think that one of the joys now is that there is so much work being created, and our communities are so incredibly talented, and just finding more ways for that work to get out into the world. Miller: Gia, why did you want to go to this camp? As I mentioned, this is now your third year. Gia Fisher: I initially wanted to join this camp because it’s simply amazing that Natives are running this, and that I can meet other Native kids my age and create these amazing pieces of art. It’s just amazing, the family I’ve built here and I’m very grateful.