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this is a mixture of my lazy academic reviews and personal moments as a mama going through academia, and it is all my own opinion, and has absolutely no affiliation with anybody else

writings & ramblings

Annie Mae’s Movement – Yvette Nolan

This is play written about the happenings and the what could have been in the real-life story of Annie May Aquash, an active member of AIM who was murdered.

We are first introduced to Annie Mae, who mentions her fighting in the AIM, even though the men didn’t want her there. She got it from her Mama, who used to fight with the Indian Agent. We then transition to our first sighting of the Rugaru. The Rugaru is a shadowy figure who is around when Annie Mae’s life gets stressed, or tense, or sh mis being hunted by the men/FBI/AIM in her life. We follow Annie as she goes through the patriarchal system of at first marrying a man in Traditional Ceremony, then having an affair with a leader of AIM, even though she is friends with his wife. She is shown wondering about where the money comes from, about a random man who questions her position and is later shown to be a crook and an FBI informant, and about how she was travelling with when and sending letters to her daughters as she was hunted down.

There are plenty of moments in this pay that made me sit up and take note, or give me chills, but the relentless disregard for her beliefs or actions or wants by the men in charge left a sour taste. From wanting to sell ribbon shirts make some money for the cause, and having to fight her man on whether or not he should pay. From being told that they cannot run this war on women’s feelings. From slowly being shifted away from the men leaders as she was knowing too much. From wondering why there were so many miscarriages and birth defects and having no one take that seriously. There feels a sense of hopelessness throughout the play – as if she is pushing against walls and is being disregarded from every turn – and the last scene where she is being murdered, she says “you cannot kill us all,” and names her sisters, her daughters. That her story lives on, that we live on.

And it’s powerful. It’s true. It’s a reckoning.

find the book: Annie Mae’s Movement – Yvette Nolan 

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