Diné writer Rhiana Yazzie grew up telling stories to her family in Farmington, New Mexico. Now the award-winning playwright, screenwriter and director is bringing Native stories across the nation in multiple mediums.
Her latest play, “Nancy,” debuted at the Mosaic Theater in Washington D.C. March 28 and runs through April 21.“Nancy” is a humorous take on Nancy Reagan’s real-life claim to Pocahontas ancestry. Reagan’s story converges with that of Esmerelda, a Navajo mother who is fighting against nuclear waste storage on the reservation.
In addition to “Nancy,” Yazzie is one of eight regular writers for AMC’s “Dark Winds” series, based in California, and she is the Artistic Director of New Native Theatre in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where she has lived for the past 16 years. She founded the theater to help bring Native voices to the stage.
“This has probably been my busiest month yet because I’m running my theater company from afar — we have a fantastic staff who’s really wonderful — and then I’m here in Los Angeles working on this television show, and then on the weekends flying out to rehearsal in D.C. to work on the ‘Nancy’ play,” Yazzie said.
The idea for “Nancy” came to Yazzie while writing “Queen Cleopatre and Princess Pocahontas,” commissioned by the Public Theater and Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2019, and is somewhat of a prequel to “Nancy.”
When researching Pocahontas and her older half-sister, Matachanna “Cleopatra” Powhatan, Yazzie came upon the trivia of Nancy Reagan’s ancestry to Pocahontas and pocketed it.
“I think overall I kind of consumed stories about Pocahontas through the larger mainstream media and that, I think, is why I really wanted to learn the real story of what happened, which is why I decided to write that first play about her and her sister,” Yazzie said. “It always seemed like American history first started with that connection — with the Pocahontas story — and that’s one of few Native American stories that was in the history books.”
“Nancy” is set in 1985, when the Reagans were in the White House for the beginning of Ronald Reagan’s second term of presidency. Nancy Reagan was known to use an astrologer in her office to plan out her husband’s important meetings, and Yazzie touches on Nancy’s astro-spiritual side in the play.
Though Yazzie was just a young child when the Reagans were in office, she remembers her mother talking about the former president and being anxious with the state of the world at the time.
“I remember the change in the social services — and it put a lot of people into economic disarray — and then also there was a change in Indian Health Services and how Native folks were served,” Yazzie said. “That Cold War era was very scary to me because flying across your little kid mind and constantly hearing about the threat of nuclear war, hearing about Russia and Ronald Reagan, ‘oh those Communists’ — all of that really made for a very scary time in childhood in some respects.”
In the play, Esmerelda’s daughter Jacqueline develops a debilitating anxiety disorder in the wake of her mother fighting the government against nuclear waste on their homelands.
While researching for “Nancy,” Yazzie became intrigued by how thousands of descendants of Pocahontas and John Rolfe — like Nancy Reagan and fellow first-lady Edith Wilson — maintained their white supremacy while also touting traces of Indian blood with their connection to Pocahontas. The Pocahontas Exception was used against the Eugenicist-backed Racial Integrity Act of 1924 which prohibited Virginians to marry anyone of color — including Native Americans.
“Yes, you could have Indian blood as long as it was Pocahontas and as long as you identified as white,” Yazzie said. “And so, looking at that and all the descendants of Pocahontas who weren’t in that white community — then they absolutely benefited from having that connection to her. I make a case in the play — Nancy got to be where she was because of that white supremacy exception for this Native heritage.”
Yazzie said she finds it ironic that Native Americans today are still having to deal with societal deficits but white people who trace Native ancestry are benefitting.
“I just found that dichotomy really ripe for stories and that’s why I thought, ‘okay let me take a try at having (that) in a story.’’’
An early foundation
Yazzie is born for the Tangle People and her paternal grandfather’s clan is Red Running Into the Water People. She grew up visiting family on the Navajo reservation, frequenting Shiprock, Newcomb and Kirtland.
She was involved in youth theater as a teen before graduating from Cibola High School in Albuquerque, but mainly got into performing arts while studying theater at University of New Mexico.
It was at UNM she learned her love of playwriting from famous British actor and playwright Digby Wolfe. She cites Wolfe and Assiniboine actor, author, director, educator, playwright and poet, William S. Yellow Robe Jr., as her inspirations.
She attended the University of Southern California for two years, where she earned a master’s degree in professional writing.
After winning an emergent playwright fellowship, she moved to Minneapolis to be a playwright-in-residence for a year, and fell in love with the Twin Cities.
“That was the thing that kind of cemented it for me — weaving these two things together — this vibrant theater community and this vibrant urban Indian community together in the work that I was doing,” Yazzie said. “So that’s how I started my theater company.”
Opening doors for Native actors
New Native Theater is a new way of thinking about and staging Native American stories, Yazzie said.
“I think it’s really important to not replicate the harm that larger conventional theater norms actually create because that is very much commoditizing people and bodies and you just can’t do that with a Native community,” Yazzie said. “There’s so many barriers for Native people to even get involved in the performing arts.”
New Native Theatre embraces an open-door policy, welcoming participation from Native community members of all ages and skill levels. This approach brings more Indigenous people into performing arts — which historically has low rates of Native American involvement which stems from limited opportunities for Native roles and economic stability within the industry.
“I’m really, really fortunate that as the artistic director of the theater company, I have the opportunity to grow Native artists and produce them — and then as a company writer I get to write on a Navajo cop show — and then of course as a playwright, I get to create and embrace my own personal story and then bring that to audiences,” Yazzie said. “So I’m very, very grateful, very appreciative for all of this.”
Diné writer Rhiana Yazzie grew up telling stories to her family in Farmington, New Mexico. Now the award-winning playwright, screenwriter and director is bringing Native stories across the nation in multiple mediums.
Her latest play, “Nancy,” debuted at the Mosaic Theater in Washington D.C. March 28 and runs through April 21.“Nancy” is a humorous take on Nancy Reagan’s real-life claim to Pocahontas ancestry. Reagan’s story converges with that of Esmerelda, a Navajo mother who is fighting against nuclear waste storage on the reservation.
In addition to “Nancy,” Yazzie is one of eight regular writers for AMC’s “Dark Winds” series, based in California, and she is the Artistic Director of New Native Theatre in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where she has lived for the past 16 years. She founded the theater to help bring Native voices to the stage.
“This has probably been my busiest month yet because I’m running my theater company from afar — we have a fantastic staff who’s really wonderful — and then I’m here in Los Angeles working on this television show, and then on the weekends flying out to rehearsal in D.C. to work on the ‘Nancy’ play,” Yazzie said.
The idea for “Nancy” came to Yazzie while writing “Queen Cleopatre and Princess Pocahontas,” commissioned by the Public Theater and Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2019, and is somewhat of a prequel to “Nancy.”
When researching Pocahontas and her older half-sister, Matachanna “Cleopatra” Powhatan, Yazzie came upon the trivia of Nancy Reagan’s ancestry to Pocahontas and pocketed it.
“I think overall I kind of consumed stories about Pocahontas through the larger mainstream media and that, I think, is why I really wanted to learn the real story of what happened, which is why I decided to write that first play about her and her sister,” Yazzie said. “It always seemed like American history first started with that connection — with the Pocahontas story — and that’s one of few Native American stories that was in the history books.”
“Nancy” is set in 1985, when the Reagans were in the White House for the beginning of Ronald Reagan’s second term of presidency. Nancy Reagan was known to use an astrologer in her office to plan out her husband’s important meetings, and Yazzie touches on Nancy’s astro-spiritual side in the play.
Though Yazzie was just a young child when the Reagans were in office, she remembers her mother talking about the former president and being anxious with the state of the world at the time.
“I remember the change in the social services — and it put a lot of people into economic disarray — and then also there was a change in Indian Health Services and how Native folks were served,” Yazzie said. “That Cold War era was very scary to me because flying across your little kid mind and constantly hearing about the threat of nuclear war, hearing about Russia and Ronald Reagan, ‘oh those Communists’ — all of that really made for a very scary time in childhood in some respects.”
In the play, Esmerelda’s daughter Jacqueline develops a debilitating anxiety disorder in the wake of her mother fighting the government against nuclear waste on their homelands.
While researching for “Nancy,” Yazzie became intrigued by how thousands of descendants of Pocahontas and John Rolfe — like Nancy Reagan and fellow first-lady Edith Wilson — maintained their white supremacy while also touting traces of Indian blood with their connection to Pocahontas. The Pocahontas Exception was used against the Eugenicist-backed Racial Integrity Act of 1924 which prohibited Virginians to marry anyone of color — including Native Americans.
“Yes, you could have Indian blood as long as it was Pocahontas and as long as you identified as white,” Yazzie said. “And so, looking at that and all the descendants of Pocahontas who weren’t in that white community — then they absolutely benefited from having that connection to her. I make a case in the play — Nancy got to be where she was because of that white supremacy exception for this Native heritage.”
Yazzie said she finds it ironic that Native Americans today are still having to deal with societal deficits but white people who trace Native ancestry are benefitting.
“I just found that dichotomy really ripe for stories and that’s why I thought, ‘okay let me take a try at having (that) in a story.’’’
An early foundation
Yazzie is born for the Tangle People and her paternal grandfather’s clan is Red Running Into the Water People. She grew up visiting family on the Navajo reservation, frequenting Shiprock, Newcomb and Kirtland.
She was involved in youth theater as a teen before graduating from Cibola High School in Albuquerque, but mainly got into performing arts while studying theater at University of New Mexico.
It was at UNM she learned her love of playwriting from famous British actor and playwright Digby Wolfe. She cites Wolfe and Assiniboine actor, author, director, educator, playwright and poet, William S. Yellow Robe Jr., as her inspirations.
She attended the University of Southern California for two years, where she earned a master’s degree in professional writing.
After winning an emergent playwright fellowship, she moved to Minneapolis to be a playwright-in-residence for a year, and fell in love with the Twin Cities.
“That was the thing that kind of cemented it for me — weaving these two things together — this vibrant theater community and this vibrant urban Indian community together in the work that I was doing,” Yazzie said. “So that’s how I started my theater company.”
Opening doors for Native actors
New Native Theater is a new way of thinking about and staging Native American stories, Yazzie said.
“I think it’s really important to not replicate the harm that larger conventional theater norms actually create because that is very much commoditizing people and bodies and you just can’t do that with a Native community,” Yazzie said. “There’s so many barriers for Native people to even get involved in the performing arts.”
New Native Theatre embraces an open-door policy, welcoming participation from Native community members of all ages and skill levels. This approach brings more Indigenous people into performing arts — which historically has low rates of Native American involvement which stems from limited opportunities for Native roles and economic stability within the industry.
“I’m really, really fortunate that as the artistic director of the theater company, I have the opportunity to grow Native artists and produce them — and then as a company writer I get to write on a Navajo cop show — and then of course as a playwright, I get to create and embrace my own personal story and then bring that to audiences,” Yazzie said. “So I’m very, very grateful, very appreciative for all of this.”