American Theatre: Skeleton Canoe – Indigenous Futurity in Theatre
Beneath teh towering buildings at the intersection of Columbus and Lincoln Avenues in New York City last December, I found myself thinking about scale: of structures, institutions, and time.
Inside Lincoln Center, one of america’s most prized performance spaces, Mark Denning (Oneida Nation), the cultural consultant and dramaturg for Skeleton Canoe, asked the audience in a pre-show speech to measure time not in years, but in inches. He added that if Indigenous peoples’ time on this land now called America were counted in inches, it would stretch the length of three football fields.
As an Anishinaabe woman, I felt the weight of Denning’s question as something physical I coudl walk on and feel under my feet while watching the show for the second time. The first was when this full-scale iteration of Skeleton Canoe premiered at the Chicago International Puppet Festival in January 2025. Whether on the Council of Three Fires (Ojibwe, Odawa, Potawatomi) land in Chicago or on lenape land in New York City, hearing the same story while feeling diffrent land under my feet showed me that Indigenous people and stories can survive distance measured in either years or inches.
Written and performed by Ty Defoe (Ojibwe and Oneida) and the All My Relations Collective, Skeleton Crew is an Anishinaabe (Ojibwe, Potawatomi, Odawa) centered show told through puppetry, dance, song, and story. It was performed in the Clark Studio Theater black box at lincoln Center, which provided the intimacy it requires.Before the show, audience members had the opportunity to participate in a preshow “touch tour” where we got to engage with the show’s main puppets, designed and built by Chicago Puppet Studio. This experience, according to Defoe, was “intentionally designed with blind and Deaf community experiences in mind.” With an eager smile on my face, I petted the kingfisher bird puppet we would see later in the show, and felt the smooth head of the turtle puppet, held out to me by production stage manager Amanda Sayed (Cherokee/Choctaw). We got to see the puppet’s mechanisms up close, another manifestation of the intimacy that Skeleton Canoe invited us into.
Each of the six performances on that chilly December weekend invited audience members of all abilities and access needs to be involved in this story. At the show I attended, along with the preshow touch tour, the performance included an audio description of the show that played through audience headphones upon request. Other performances offered closed captioning,a relaxed performance,large-print programs,ASL interpretation,and culturally specific individual accommodations to ensure meaningful access for diverse communities.
In short, accessibility is not an afterthought in Skeleton Canoe, but part of its design and inviting nature. These choices align with All My Relations Collective’s broader commitment to non-prescriptive process and relational care through Indigenous storytelling. In a later interview, Defoe told me, ”All My Relations works through true collaboration, and Skeleton Canoe is very much the result of collective authorship in practice. While I am the primary author of the piece-I wrote the text, shaped the story, and held the narrative arc-every decision was made in relationship. My process with collaborators is rooted in listening and responding.”
At the heart of Skeleton Canoe is Nawbin, whose name means “to gaze into wonderment.” A curious anishinaabe child navigating loss, respon
damage. Instead,he offers reassurance to Nawbin: You can always carve a new oar. This ideology extends across the design. Katherine Freer’s multimedia work, Olivia Shortt’s original composition and sound design, and Emma Deane’s lighting collaborate to create a world that feels responsive rather than fixed. The white drum becomes a moon, a river flows at the front of the stage with pieces of litter stuck in its flow, and toward the end of the performance, Nawbin crashes Jiimaan in a storm made visibly from black garbage bags and tarp as Defoe becomes the eye of the storm with moving debris around him. Nawbin is scared, but the storm passes, as they all do, and Nawbin is reminded to have courage. Nawbin returns home to his family, who reassure him that he belongs with lines like, “Just as we were angry doesn’t mean we don’t love you.”
After this reconciliation, Skeleton Canoe ends the circle where it began. The white hand drum returns, playing the same beat that we learned an hour prior. Defoe echoes Jiimaan, reminding us that when things break, we can always carve something new.
Making this point literal, the show’s audience was invited to a birchbark carving workshop after the show.Members from the Great Lakes Lifeways Institute taught us to peel birchbark and transform it into a turtle pin or jiimaan ornament. The teacher told us traditional stories while we carved, in a truly joyous moment of Native and non-Native people coming together to create and listen.
When asked what he hopes audiences take away from this piece, Defoe said, “For young people, I want the piece to say clearly: There is wisdom waiting for you, and there are medicine bundles you have yet to unwrap. Everyone carries a gift. Everyone has something to offer. When I look beyond this production, I imagine Nawbin and Jiimaan continuing on—still learning, still listening, still reminding us that awe, care, and responsibility are practices we return to again and again.”
Leaving Lincoln Center, I thought again about Mark Denning’s metaphor of inches representing the years we’ve been here, and the three football fields’ worth of time my ancestors and other Indigenous peoples’ ancestors embody in this expansive metaphor. Ty Defoe and All My Relations’ Skeleton Canoe teaches us that Indigenous presence persists, and that we continue to grow metaphorical “inches,” not because we are uninterrupted, but because we adapt, repair, and persevere. Skeleton Canoe does not argue for Indigenous futurity; it practices it, reminding us that when things break, the work is not to mourn forever, but to carve again.
Sierra Rosetta is an Ojibwe dramaturg, playwright, and arts journalist currently completing a PhD in Theatre and Native American Studies at northwestern University.