UC Riverside

In this dissertation, I investigate cross-cultural perspectives of Indigeneity through Danza and powwow communities in the Southwestern United States. Exploring sonic and corporeal intersections between identity, place, and decolonizing strategies, I demonstrate how Indigenous peoples dismantle settler colonial narratives and negotiate their sovereignty. Founded in present-day México, Danza is a multi-generational, music, dance, and spiritual group practice that draws from Mesoamerican intertribal rites of passage ceremonies and Conchero traditions. In the context of Danza in this region, talking circles were my primary entry into research–a decolonizing strategy for community building and revisiting contentious topics between powwow participants, dancers, and community. Talking circles provided spaces for conflict resolution in terms of detribalization, feminist interventions, and questions of Indigenous belonging. By centering critical relationality narratives for danzantes and Two-Spirit women through methods of autoethnography, dancing, listening to local communities, and virtual connections, I examine: 1) How do danzantes practice and reflect communal and individual praxes of Indigeneity in powwow spaces? 2) How has Danza in powwow hubs changed intertribal relations in the Southwestern United States, including gendered notions of Indigeneity and decolonial praxis? 3) How can hybrid autoethnography inspire decolonizing, feminist perspectives in future Danza and powwow spaces and the academy?Unpacking the variations and tensions concerning what it means to be Indigenous—and which groups get to claim it—reflects understanding the gendered sociopolitical histories among Danza and powwow participants from differing Nations. My decolonizing, feminist approach joins an ongoing dialogue documenting Danza history, politics, and its emergence as a decolonizing movement. Drawing from BIPOC feminist praxes of refusal and relationship-building, I expand discourse on Indigeneity and explore how Indigenous worldviews are relational and reciprocal avenues for self-determination and to combat dominant colonial structures like xenophobia and homophobia. My findings on fostering decolonial interpersonal relationships go beyond Southwestern powwows to extend to Native hubs and spaces online—a global powwow network —and further demonstrate why critical feminist and Two-Spirit perspectives are crucial in ethnographic music research.