ABSTRACT
In Indigenous contexts, the “transnational turn” has been widely contested for terminological and political reasons. With a focus on Indigenous American performance and drama, this chapter makes a case for a specific reading of transnationalism as a promising conceptual stage—in the theatrical meaning of the word—for the negotiation of larger issues of border crossing that have been central to Indigenous Studies for at least a decade. Exemplarily analysing Indigenous North American plays such as Tomson Highway’s The (Post)Mistress (2011), Mary Kathryn Nagle’s Manahatta (2014), Drew Hayden Taylor’s Crees in the Caribbean (2015), and Cliff Cardinal’s Huff (2015), this chapter argues that in addition to the obvious geopolitical dimension, an expanded understanding of Transnational American Studies needs to take into account the axes of temporality and of epistemological border-crossing. This gesture not only serves the interrelated interests of acknowledging alternative systems of knowledge, and of Indigenizing the academy, but it is an attempt at identifying some of the methodological cornerstones of transnational Indigenous Studies.
