Page 12
July 24, 2019
Native Play
C ontinued from P age 5
tually was. And it was fascinating to
wonder how the white audience mem-
bers—who largely do seem to find the
show funny—are absorbing what is
happening. Will they be able to hang
with it when the laughs are done?
Probably not in many cases—but I
also know that humor like this holds
the potential of working like hypnosis
does; it gives your brain something to
work on even if you aren’t aware that
is happening.
In recent years I have been increas-
ingly curious about how relentlessly
white Europeans sought to and, to
some extent, did wipe out indigenous
ways of knowing all over the globe.
How much wisdom got lost in those
countless murderous exchanges?
Could it be recovered? The 1491s—
whose very name nods to the year
before Christopher Columbus arrived
with other white European coloniz-
ers intent on executing their visions
of Manifest Destiny—wrestle with
just those questions in this play, from
a vantage point of Native people de-
fining themselves in powerful ways
that contrast dramatically with the
dominant culture depictions that have
so diminished them in our eyes. The
play closes with a comically insightful
envisioning of how human evolution
might rapidly advance if colonizers
suddenly disappeared. “So long, white
people,” they invite the audience to
sing, an anthem that rings with comic,
literal, and even spiritual significance.
Humor borne of such clarity is the best
of the reasons I know for audiences to
head to OSF before the season closes
in October.
Darleen Ortega is a judge on the
Oregon Court of Appeals and the first
woman of color to serve in that capac-
ity. Her film review column Opinion-
ated Judge appears regularly in The
Portland Observer.