‘As long as we Dance and Sing we Will Stay Alive.’: Indigenous North American Resistance against Assimilation through Song and Dance

ABSTRACT In Indigenous American culture singing and dancing hold a central position within the passing on of cultural knowledge from generation to generation. The beat links the people to the earth, the sound to the surroundings. Song and dance express commonly shared emotions and connect the people in the present to the past and to the future. This article focuses on how the colonisation of North America by the settlers has been mirrored, articulated and dealt with through a system of „singing memory“ by its original peoples. Contemporary Indigenous musicians are using a combination of present and traditional expressions for voicing out their way of dealing with that impact. The article addresses first aspects of the traditional characteristics of North American Indigenous ways of translating cultural knowledge through song and dance; second draws a historical overview of how changes have been interpreted through this way of expression and under the impact of paradoxical interest by the settlers; and third presents some contemporary musical examples of articulating these experiences. The information is mainly based on personal fieldwork and interviews with contemporary North American Indigenous musicians, reflecting the orally transmitted Indigenous historical perspectives of the issue, as well as on archival research documenting mainly the settler perspective of the question.