Indigenous Dance in Prisons as an Anti-Hate, Compassion, and Kindness Intervention

Drawing Credit: Alexander Rosado (Oglala Lakota)

Abstract

Indigenous men are overrepresented in prison, where they endure hate, violence, and death. While hate, violence, and death in prisons are complex problems, many Native American and Native Hawaiian experts who are currently or formerly imprisoned advocate for Native dance and ceremony as antidotes to these issues. Native Americans and Native Hawaiians have sovereignty as Indigenous peoples and have faced similar challenges given ongoing US colonization, including the US government legally prohibiting their dances and ceremonies. Based on interviews with Native American and Native Hawaiian experts, this project will delineate the histories, meanings, and intersections of Native American and Native Hawaiian dances and ceremonies in carceral facilities and illuminate how Indigenous people today are working to transform the US prison system through kindness and compassion. The outcomes for this project are an academic book, peer-reviewed articles, academic and community presentations, and a dance performance at the South Dakota State Penitentiary for Native American men who are imprisoned, which communicate the research findings. The act of creating and sharing such a dance also integrates compassion and kindness into the research design by enacting reciprocity with people who are incarcerated.

Field

World Arts and Cultures/Dance/Art and Architecture

Team

Tria Blu Wakpa, PhD

Tria Blu Wakpa

Tria Blu Wakpa is an Assistant Professor in the Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance at UCLA and a 2025-2026 American Council of Learned Societies Fellow. She received a Ph.D. from the Department of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley and is a mother, scholar, poet, and practitioner of Indigenous dance, Indigenous Hand Talk (sign language), martial arts, and yoga. Her research and teaching center community-engaged, decolonizing, and bodily analysis methodologies to examine the politics of Indigenous practices for Native peoples in and beyond structures and institutions of confinement. Her first book project, Choreographies in Confinement: Native Education, Incarceration, and Performance, focuses on two educational and carceral sites for children on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota: a former Indian boarding school and tribal juvenile hall. The book theories how bodily postures, movement practices, and performances have sustained and amplified Native knowledge, identities, and wellbeing, despite institutional efforts to indoctrinate Native youth and their relatives. Her writings have been translated into French and Portuguese and appeared in numerous academic journals and books. She has also taught a wide range of interdisciplinary and community-engaged classes at public, private, tribal, and carceral institutions and partnered with California tribal and Lakota experts on exhibitions, performances, and gatherings. In addition, she is a co-founder and the Editor-in-Chief for Race and Yoga—the first peer-reviewed and open-access journal in the field of critical yoga studies—and a Co-editor for the forthcoming anthology, Mindfulness, Movement, and Cultural Revitalization: Indigenous Contemplative Theories and Practices, with Dr. Laura M. Dunn.

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