Event

The Carlisle Project

The Carlisle Project, written by Ronee Penoi (music/lyrics) and Annalisa Dias (lyrics), unravels the complicated legacy and trauma of Indian boarding schools in an expressive song cycle. The project uses song, satire and ceremony to tell the harrowing history of the Carlisle Indian School and the brutal assimilation enforced under its motto, Kill the Indian, Save the Man. In this musical song cycle, Indigenous descendants separated by time, place and experience grapple with the generational trauma and erasure that the Carlisle Indian School caused and explore what it means to be Native American now.

In their lecture, Penoi and Dias discuss how The Carlisle Project is an act of decolonization and a restorying of our past, while offering a view of an Indigenous future.

This event is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Center on the Future of Native Peoples, Hubbard Hall Center for the Arts and Education (Cambridge, N.Y.) and Dickinson's Department of Theatre & Dance and Center for Civic Learning & Action.