Abstract

Hate does not always manifest as a sudden and shocking spectacle. Related to the US legal system and mass imprisonment, sometimes hate emerges as a slow, structural, legal process, (mis)represented as “equity” and “justice.” Carceral Hate and Kindness: The Power of Prison Performances intervenes into existing scholarly literature using the lenses of hate and kindness to examine mass incarceration and pow wows, boxing, rodeo, and yoga in carceral contexts, which serve the interests of detention centers and incarcerated people. Through dance performances, this project also reports back on research findings to community members and organizations. Often, US carceral violence is not framed as “hate,” but doing so challenges dominant mythologies that the legal system is just and incarcerated people are well fed and live a cushy life. In fact, imprisoned people are served rotten food, locked up in tiny cells for 23 hours a day, and/or go days without being outdoors. Such conditions are anything but “kind” and can cause health and behavioral issues. Conversely, illuminating acts of “kindness” that occur in prisons challenges stereotypes of incarcerated people as “scary,” “threatening,” and “savage” and offers possibilities for more life-sustaining and lifesaving interventions both within and outside of prisons.

Field

World Arts and Cultures/Dance

Extramural Partners

Louisiana Parole Project, Native American Council of Tribes, Ohana Ho’opakele (Family Rescue), Project Koa Yoga, Try Think Hawai’i, Women’s Community Correctional Center

Team

Dr. Tria Blu Wakpa dance shoot
Tria Blu Wakpa

Tria Blu Wakpa is an Assistant Professor and the Director of Undergraduate Dance in the Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance at UCLA. She earned her PhD in Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley. At UCLA, she is also affiliated with the American Indian Studies Center and the Center for Community Engagement. She is a mother, scholar, poet, and practitioner of Indigenous dance, North American Hand Talk, martial arts, and yoga. Her award-winning research and teaching apply community-engaged, decolonizing, and bodily analysis methodologies to examine movement practices for people in and beyond structures and institutions of captivity. Currently under peer review, her first book project, Decolonial Choreographies: Native Education, Incarceration, and Performance, historically and politically contextualizes dance, theater, basketball, and yoga at two sites of child confinement on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota: a former Indian boarding school and a tribal juvenile hall. Her second book project, From Carceral Hate to Kindness: Performances in US Prisons, delineates how pow wow, rodeo, boxing, and yoga in men’s and women’s detention centers both reify and challenge confinement logics, discourses, and policies. Her published writings appear in academic journals and books. In addition to her research, she is the Co- Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Critical Yoga Studies journal. She has taught a wide range of interdisciplinary, community-engaged, and movement classes at public, private, tribal, and carceral institutions. In 2023, the mayor’s office appointed her to the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Commission for which she served as the Vice President from 2025-2026.