Abstract
Cutcha Risling Baldy’s introduction begins, ‘A:diniw A’ydyaw ‘A:dit’e:n/ We Do It, We Did It, We Are Doing It. Whereas subsequent chapter titles such as Ninis’a:n-na:ng’a’/The World – Came to Be Lying There Again, the World Assumed Its Present Position and Hyayah-no:nt’ik’/It Reaches so Far, the Story Extends to There (author’s italics) further beckon and call upon her primary thesis: coming-of-age ceremonies are powerful relational embodiments of Native Nations’ gendered ways of being.
Risling Baldy distinctly positions the significance of coming-of-age ceremonies through arduous historical research, sophisticated contributions to Native feminisms, and Indigenous narrative interweavings. Her major contributions are her coherence and grounding of Indigenous methods and acknowledgment of the work completed to (re)vitalize the Flower Dance, paying particular attention and contributing to Native feminism’s body of work. She then offers the significance of these revitalizations to Native Nations, Native women/girls, and Indian county’s collective futures, while, through Indigeneity practices, calling out the genocidal efforts that disrupted the vitality and vitalness of the coming-of-age ceremonies. Lastly, she merges these research findings together to take readers through contemporary layered offerings utilizing current scholarship and Indigenous epistemological practices, for example, applied theory, collective principles, and ancestral locating. Throughout, she accounts for and demonstrates the sacredness of gender and sexuality expectations as well as the systematic violence, institutional demands, challenges, and contradictions placed on gender and sexuality that were and are still being negotiated and responded to today.
Her thesis is based on what happens when a meaningful group is there for you—that sings and dances for you without asking or prompting. The roots of this question are entrenched in the recognition of meaning, these songs—these ceremonies—echo and reverberate, ancestrally, traditionally, and contemporarily. When the ceremonies are practiced, young Native girls come to know that they will never be alone; young Native girls come to know they are important, and we—their mothers, aunties, and sisters and those who have come before and await our futures—let them know by dancing/singing for them.
The book is well written and organized in distinctive chapters, with major threads of (re)writing, (re)righting, and (re)riteing; she takes the reader on a larger comprehension of Indigenous ways of beings that exist in the third space and subsequently interrogates and deauthorizes/disempowers colonial writing, righting, and riteing of Indigenous menstruation, gender, and sexuality. As she begins and ends these writings, this work is a treatise—itself a type of ceremony—in cyclical seasonal fashion, bringing the reader into comprehensions of Indigenous ways of being that are contemporarily traditional, moving through and among literatures, narrative data, histories, and embodiments. Her book dedication is saturated in the significance of this relational ceremonial practice as it recognizes those who came before us and those who will come after us—the song and dance ever-present.
In her introduction and chapter one, Risling Baldy centers this revitalization as another iteration of the value, role, and place of Native women in Native cultures, politics, and futures. She places the recollections, experiences, and narrative evidence from chapter one within a context of California history and efforts of genocide in chapter two, and within critiques of anthropology and salvage ethnography in chapter three. Herein, she anchors her work in Native feminism’s decolonial foundations that (re)claim Native traditions and ways of being as “integral to the enactment of our culture and to our survivance, decolonization, and Indigenous futures” (p. 31). Her work moves on to an analysis and positioning of Indigenous menstrual beliefs and politics of the taboo in chapter four. She continues to pull in and engage Native feminisms and Indigenous works, to counter earlier interpretations and “truisms” that have plagued Native menstruation representations and interpretations, while offering voice and voices of Hupa menstruation beliefs. All of this foreshadowing takes the reader to chapter five, where she specifically discusses the Hupa coming-of-age ceremony.
Her methodological approach is highly appropriate given her thesis, the core tenants of Native feminism as well as the fundamental needs of Indigenous scholarship, for example, making it accessible and community relevant. Her specific research methodology aptly engages in comprehensive ethnographic practices of interviews, content analysis, and participant observation as well as Indigenous research methodologies of visits, oral traditions, and place-based practices: dance, songs, and ceremonies.
Her work ultimately brings forth a consciousness borne out of the logic that “songs, stories, and research—they come to you” (p. xiii). Yet, she also reminds us that we must sing and dance for them to come. Poignantly, in her conclusion she summarizes, Women’s ceremonies are not the exception to cultural revitalization; they are part of a continuing revivification and survivance, enacted not as a response to colonization but as a testament to how these ceremonies, prayers and philosophies provide important foundations for our Indigenous futures (p. 149).
Thus, the audience for we are dancing for you is broad.