From Buffalo Dance to Tatanka Kcizapi Wakpala, 1894–2020: Indigenous Human and More-Than-Human Choreographies of Sovereignty and Survival

Abstract:Through a Lakota, Indigenous, and dance studies lens, this essay presents the first extensive study of Buffalo Dance (1894), one of the earliest films to depict Native Americans, and in particular, Lakota men. Previous scholarship about Buffalo Dance has missed significant details about the film by failing to conduct community-engaged research and a reading of the movement modalities depicted. Instead, my analyses of the dancers' choreographies and interviews with Native experts illuminate Buffalo Dance as a brilliant expression of Lakota sovereignty and survival within and beyond US settler colonial confines. Drawing on and expanding Indigenous studies scholars' discussions of sovereignty, I define this concept as follows: Native expressions of agency and authority—rooted in Indigenous worldviews, languages, narratives, experiences, and practices—that relate to human and/or more-than-human collectives and promote Native well-being and futurities. I conclude by considering the contemporary implications of the Buffalo Dance choreographies as they relate to Tatanka Kcizapi Wakpala (Buffalo Fighting Creek), another Lakota performance of sovereignty and survival created in 2020 by George Blue Bird—a direct descendant of a performer in Buffalo Dance. Connecting these choreographies affirms how the Buffalo Dance performance extends into the present and the future.