Playwright discusses biracialism

Posted in Articles, Identity Development/Psychology, Media Archive, Native Americans/First Nation, United States on 2011-11-09 02:18Z by Steven

Playwright discusses biracialism

The Dartmouth
2006-01-18

Ashley Zuzek, The Dartmouth Staff

William S. Yellow Robe, Jr., author of the play “Grandchildren of the Buffalo Soldiers,” discussed the psychology of racial duality during a Tuesday night discussion at the Hopkins Center and emphasized the need for Americans of mixed blood to identify with a single race rather than getting lost between the two.

Having mixed blood, Yellow Robe said, “has created a psychology that no one has dealt with. People go into this panic of being too native or not being native enough.”

Yellow Robe, who is both Native American and African American, described the difficulty of being biracial during his discussion, “Claiming Our Relations.”

While Yellow Robe identifies more with his Native American ancestry than his African American ancestry, he is not ashamed of his mixed race.

“I honor it and I never deny it,” he said. However, he cautioned that people of mixed race should not “straddle both paths,” and that he has never regretted identifying with his Native American side…

Read the entire article here.

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Grandchildren of the Buffalo Soldiers and Other Untold Stories

Posted in Books, History, Identity Development/Psychology, Monographs, Native Americans/First Nation, United States on 2011-11-09 02:05Z by Steven

Grandchildren of the Buffalo Soldiers and Other Untold Stories

UCLA American Indian Studies Center
2009
375 pages
10-digit ISBN: 0-935626-59-X
13-digit ISBN: 978-0-935626-59-9

William S. Yellow Robe Jr., Playwright, Director, Poet, Actor, Writer, and Educator

Edited by:

Margo Lukens, Associate Professor of English
University of Maine

Five Plays by William S. Yellow Robe Jr.

This collection of five plays portrays the complex issues that arise when mixed-blood American Indian characters come up against traditional Native beliefs. It shows how legislated and internalized racism has ravaged human relationships and created divisive struggles within Native American families and communities. The title play, Grandchildren of the Buffalo Soldiers, examines the lingering effects of colonial exploitation of tensions between African American and Native American people in the nineteenth century. All of Yellow Robe’s plays meditate on “the returning” to home, to community, and how the matter of belonging is a privilege.

Contents

  • Foreword
  • Introduction
  • A Stray Dog
  • Grandchildren of the Buffalo Soldiers
  • Mix Blood Seeds
  • Better-n-Indins
  • Pieces of Us: How the Lost Find Home
  • Biographies
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