Presented during the Hemispheric Institutes 8th Encuentro, Cities | Bodies | Action: The Politics of Passion in the Americas, In São Paulo, Brazil, this teach-in was an in-depth discussion on indigenous performance, with a focus on artists and activists from Mexico, Canada, Brazil, and Bolivia.

Conveners Biographies:

Julieta Paredes Carvajal (Bolivia) is an aymara lesbian and communitarian feminist. She is a founding member of Mujeres Creando, Mujeres Creando Comunidad and the Assembly of Communitarian Feminism. She is a writer, singer and anti-patriarchal poet.

Petrona de la Cruz is co-founder of Fortaleza de la Mujer Maya (FOMMA with Isabel Juárez Espinosa. She has achieved international recognition for her work. Her play, una mujer desesperada was produced in 1993 in San Cristóbal as part of International Women’s Day and has been published in Holy Terrors: Latin American Women Perform (Duke University Press, 2003).

Helen Gilbert is Professor of Theatre Royal Holloway, University of London where she currently leads a transnational and interdisciplinary project on indigeneity and performance in the contemporary world. Her books include Performance and Cosmopolitics (2007), Sightlines: Race, Gender and Nation in Contemporary AustralianTheatre (1998) and Postcolonial Drama:Theory, Practice, Politics (1996).

Regina Polo Muller is a lecturer in the Anthropology of Dance at UNICAMP and author of the book Os Asurini do Xingu, história e arte as well as of various chapters and articles on shamanism, indigenous ritual, and performance. Her current research is on performance art at Napedra (Núcleo de Antropologia, Performance e Drama) at USP, where she is assistant coordinator.