NEW: THIS LAND IS WHOSE LAND?

The set was sparse compared to the familiar Broadway-inspired musicals that have been popular fare in Freeman over the years. A pair of chairs and tables, two music stands, a few nondescript boxes and a hall tree draped with colorful fabric helped make up the performance space — a simple sea of black on the Pioneer Hall stage.

But “We Own This Now,” presented the evening of Saturday, June 10, is not your typical production. Twelve loosely linked scenes spanning five centuries offer a provocative and unsettling look at history rooted in the concept of the Doctrine of Discovery, a principle that says when a nation “discovers” land, it acquires rights on that land.

Presented by Ted & Company TheaterWorks of Harrisonburg, Va., the play featured two actors — Ted Swartz and Michelle Milne. There was great chemistry between the two as they brought life to the script by Alison Casella Brookins, with non-stop but sharply-focused energy. There were moments of pathos and moments of humor.

The underlying theme — from the opening scene “Home” to the final scene “The Road” –was the land on which we live and the nagging question of what came before.

The play, described as historical fiction, is centered around a father, Chris (Ted), and daughter, Riley (Michelle). We meet Riley as a precocious and curious 4-year-old as she and her father “hunt” dandelions on their Kansas farm. We watch her grow up into a curious and strong young woman in search of answers about the land on which her great-drandmother Oma established her home after fleeing Russia a century earlier. The land has continued as the family’s home in the decades that followed.

The story advances with Ted and Michelle also assuming additional roles and playing other characters that help drive the narrative that begins in 1513 and continues to the recent protests of the construction of a crude oil pipeline in North Dakota.

Ted and Michelle easily and naturally transitioned from character to character in the free-flowing action. Their performances were consistently powerful as they moved the story forward seamlessly.

Notable was Michelle’s physicality – watching her pantomime pumping herself on a swing (simply perched on a chair) was convincing and mesmerizing. And Ted’s uncanny ability to introduce notes of comedy  – sometimes subtly and other times more broadly (a cigarette dangling from his bottom lip, for example) – helped break the tension and kept the audience engaged. Musical transitions (recorded) by the Steel Wheels effectively helped set the evolving mood from scene to scene. Props and costumes were simple but effective.

The storyline takes us from a reading of the “Requirement” by Lord Carlos, a Spanish conquistador, to Riley’s discovery that the Kansas land on which her great-grandmother Oma Wiebe arrived had been home to the Potawatomi, a Native American people. Pushed to the west by European/American encroachment in the 18th century, the Potawatomi were relocated to Indian Territory, Nebraska and Kansas.

“We Own This Now” doesn’t end with a resolution or easy answers of how to deal with these issues of justice compromised by politics and the precedent created by the Doctrine of Discovery.

On the contrary, after 90 minutes it concludes with this conversation between Riley and Chris.

“So what now?”

“I don’t know.”

Talkback offers insight

Following their bows, the two actors retook the stage for a “talkback” in which they engaged the audience of about 100 in conversation.

“What we’re looking for right now is just a couple of words or a phrase … feelings that are with you right now,” Michelle said.

Responses included single words – powerful, troubling, heavy, sorrowful, pertinent.

Others referenced lines from the play: “I’ve lived here forever,” “a child died,” and “close to home.”

It was the start of a thoughtful conversation between actors and audience members that lasted 40 minutes.

“The whole play is asking ‘what do we do with all this information? How do we move forward?’” someone noted. “Have you had responses to that question?”

“We’ve had many people ask that question,” Michelle said. “I can’t remember a show where we haven’t had that question in the talkback.”

“It feels like asking the question is the first important step.

“One thing our culture encourages us to do is fix it quick, quick, quick.

“Let’s just fix it really quickly so we don’t have to look at it too hard. We want to feel better so, let’s fix it. That’s a great impulse that’s coming from a great heartfelt place.”

But she cautioned, “we sometimes do more damage if we try to fix it quickly to make ourselves feel better.

Michelle and Ted suggested exploring the issue more deeply as the next step.

“Riley started by learning,” Michelle said.

And so, she said, start “by reading, following indigenous people on social media, looking for articles, looking for books, talking to people that maybe you know and then looking to create actual relationships.

“It’s a slow process,” she cautioned. “But to learn and to listen and to seek out that information and start to know what did actually happen on this land where we are sitting right now is a great place to start. It may not feel like doing much but at least we’re becoming aware of something.”

And by doing that, Ted added, “you may find things you didn’t know you were looking for.”

That gives a new perspective on “discovery.”

The larger Freeman community is fortunate to have had the opportunity to discover Casella Brookins’ script and witness Ted Swartz and Michelle Milne’s interpretation. It’s clear the conversation they started has the potential to continue; after all, we do own it now.

Thanks to the Freeman Network of Justice and Peace and additional sponsors Heritage Hall Museum & Archives and Sermon on the Mount Mennonite Church (Sioux Falls) for making that possible.

Pre-show statement

from Freeman Network for

Justice & Peace prior to the performance

“We are gathered tonight on the unceded land of the people collectively known as the Yankton Dakota tribe, also known as the Yankton Sioux, who are still present today. They lived on this land until a treaty was signed in 1858.  The Yankton Dakota or Sioux tribe resided on a significantly large section of Southeast South Dakota. This land was stolen from them and given to the government and the tribe was then moved onto a small reservation in Charles Mix County, near present-day Wagner. The Freeman Network for Justice & Peace has formed a friendship with the group Horizons in Wagner. Horizons seeks to address repairing & restoring relationships between Native and non- Native peoples in the area.

Doctrine of Discovery

From the program: The Doctrine of Discovery is the philosophical and legal framework that justified invading and seizing Indigenous lands and dominating Indigenous Peoples by 15th century Christian governments. This framework formed the basis for patterns of oppression that continues today through concepts of precedent and ideas of ownership, including U.S. Supreme Court rulings as recent as 2005. These concepts created a foundation of domination that legitimizes ongoing displacement of Indigenous Peoples and harms the earth.

The Requirement

From the World History Encyclopedia, a non-profit organization publishing the world’s most-read history online at worldhistory.org: The Spanish Requirement was a document intended to be read out to and agreed upon by indigenous peoples during the Spanish conquest of the Americas. Created in 1513, the document outlined the history of Christianity, the superiority of the pope, and the obligation from this day onwards for all indigenous peoples to submit themselves to Spanish royal authority.

Ignoring the fact that the text was usually incomprehensible to its intended audience, the document was simply a way for the Spanish to ease the guilt of their imperialism. Despite the absurdity of the document and its delivery, the Requirement illustrates that even in this relatively early stage of European global imperialism, rulers were not entirely confident they had every right to trample over people in another part of the world, Christian or otherwise. If anything, it was written for the benefit of the Spanish rather than the indigenous people claimed to be its actual audience.

The Requirement, a justification that Spain was bringing light to a dark corner of God’s kingdom, offered the indigenous people a peaceful solution to a new political, military, and religious reality. If they chose to reject it, then the Spanish were, they thought, legally and morally justified in pursuing whatever means possible to complete their aims of conquest.