Local color? Questions linger about the funding and inclusiveness of “Pocahontas” opera

By Lisa Steinmann (TC Daily Planet) | October 29, 2011

Earlier this month, Pocahontas—Woman of Two Worlds, a new opera composed by Minnesotan Linda Tutas Haugen, was performed at the Burnsville Performing Arts Center. After the show, over 100 community members—many of them protesters from the Native American community—shared their views during a sometimes heated discussion. While some of the emotions expressed that evening have cooled, questions about the funding of the production linger.Despite earnest efforts by the opera’s composer Linda Tutas Haugen and librettist Joan Vail Thorne to avoid the Disney pitfall of turning Pocahontas into what noted Native American historian Helen Rountree called “a buckskin-clad Barbie,” they walked right into the heart of the problem: whether it is opera or animation, the story of Pocahontas is still a story of conquest and oppression of Native Americans. Earlier this month, members of the local Native American community found reason to protest yet another retelling of this tale—paid for in part with money from the state’s legacy amendment arts fund.The composers of Pocahontas—Woman of Two Worlds consulted with Rountree and hewed closely to her historical description of Pocahontas’s life. “The story of a young woman firmly rooted in her own culture,” writes Rountree in an essay, “held hostage by bellicose newcomers, forcibly and then willingly assimilated into their own culture, killed by a mysterious disease, buried far from her homeland and ultimately used by the dominant society as a symbol for the oppression of her own people is not only an authentic account of Pocahontas’s experiences but is also emblematic of the histories of generations of Native people.”Despite the controversial history of the Pocahontas story, the Duluth Festival Opera received a $94,000 Arts Tour Minnesota grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board to take the show on a four-city tour this fall. Continue Reading