Journal Article

Indigeneity and Immigration in Susan Glaspell’s Inheritors

Cox, James H., Pettit, Alexander

2019

Overview

6 Glaspell’s imagining of herself and Cook as occupants of an Indigenous space and her gesture at the “pain and terror” that resulted from the park owners’ seizure of Native land anticipate concerns central to her play Inheritors, begun in January 1920, and first staged by the Provincetown Players in 1921.7 A less exclusive gathering held on July 1, 1911, approximately one hundred miles away may have also provided inspiration; surely it demonstrated the abiding cultural and political power of Black Hawk’s memory in the Midwest. For Glaspell, Indigeneity accrues formal and political value through its assumption of broad exemplarity. [...]she leaves Indigenous people strategically unrepresented: In the earlier reading, she regards Glaspell’s decision as a device for accenting a “remov[al]” of Indigenous people “from the American landscape” that Glaspell considered factual.14 Later, she argues that “the disappearance of Native Americans from the landscape is the only obstacle to the pioneer characters’ absolute topophilia.” 16 But Glaspell, habitually attuned to matters of current importance, must have known that she was writing near the end of a decade of vigorous debate, generated in significant part by the “citizen Indians” or “Indigenous intellectuals” of the inter-tribal Society of American Indians (SAI), about the legal and cultural status of American Indians.17 After its founding in 1911, the SAI held conferences across the West and Midwest and promoted citizenship and education, the activating sites of political engagement in Inheritors, as major planks of its platform.

• Publisher: Comparative Drama,Western Michigan University,Western Michigan University, Dept. of English,Western Michigan University, Department of English
• Subject: Aesthetics / Aiken, George D / American Indians / Autobiographies / Biographies / Black Hawk, Sauk chief (1767-1838) / Colonialism / Cook, George Cram (1873-1924) / Drama / Dramatists / Emigration and immigration / Epic literature / Garland, Hamlin / Glaspell, Susan / Hindus / Idealism / Immigrants / Immigration / Indigenous peoples / Literary canon / Literary characters / Literary devices / Literary influences / Multiculturalism & pluralism / Narrative techniques / Native North Americans / Noncitizens / Plot (Narrative) / Political activism / Politics / Stereotypes / Taft, Lorado / Theater / Vizenor, Gerald