“Little Ones,” a comedic opera telling the story of Indigenous youth at Intermountain Indian School, is in its beginning stages of development but gave a glimpse of what’s to come with the launch of its community listening tour at the Center for Native Arts and Cultures.
On a rainy Sunday in mid-November, a group of eight actors sat in a half circle in the Center for Native Arts and Cultures’ old top-floor ballroom, facing a captivated audience of a few dozen people. The acoustics carried their voices as they read a script laced with teen angst, sexual tension, worry and Native humor.
Audience members laughed along with the actors, who were performing a script reading of the first half of the comedic opera, “Little Ones.” The show, presented by Renegade Opera, is still in the beginning stages of development.
“I was amazed at how receptive the Native community, singers and actors were to the idea of a new opera,” Rhiana Yazzie, Navajo, who is co-director and wrote the libretto for the opera, told Underscore Native News + ICT. “I saw how excited the Portland community was to see the story of boarding schools told in this form.”
Co-writing an opera
“Little Ones” tells the story of four Native teenagers at Intermountain Indian School, following the announcement that the school would be closing in 1984. The students begin to stress as they wonder where they will go next and feel the weight of time ticking down.
Yazzie was approached by Danielle Jagelski, citizen of the Oneida Nation/Red Cliff Band of Ojibwe, to write the libretto. Jagelski and Yazzie first met each other in February 2023 when Yazzie was working as the stage director and Jagelski as the assistant conductor of a piece called “Missing” at the Anchorage Opera.
The idea for “Little Ones” initially came to Jagelski in 2016 and percolated for years before she reached out to Yazzie about collaborating.
“I was like, ‘Rhiana, want to write an opera with me?’” Jagelski said. “We should apply for this grant. And she was like, ‘Okay!’”
After agreeing to work on the opera together, the pair immediately began to apply for funding. Kicking it off came a grant from the Oregon Community Foundation.
Jagelski, who is writing the opera’s music, and Yazzie bring different but complementary skills to the table.
Co-founder and artistic director of Renegade Opera, Jagelski is a composer, conductor and creative producer. She is also a producer for First Nations Performing Arts, an associate conductor of PROTESTRA and faculty at the Manhattan School of Music Precollege.
Yazzie is an award-winning playwright, filmmaker, director and producer. She is also the founder and artistic director of New Native Theater in the Twin Cities, which she began in 2009.
“I feel like the arts is the way we will grow and change and see ourselves differently, because you need stories told to you,” Yazzie said. “That’s the thing that I feel like was most majorly disrupted in the whole colonization process. Personally, I just really fell in love with playwriting. I just absolutely love creating characters.”
Last year, Yazzie directed her first opera, the one in Anchorage that she worked on with Jagelski. “Little Ones” is the first opera for which she has ever written the libretto, or script. Jagelski will then fold the music into the libretto.
“Rhiana built this world of character, and I’m living in it,” Jagelski said. “My job now is to create the setting of it, to color it, to animate it.”
Intermountain Indian School
Both Jagelski and Yazzie’s parents attended boarding school as young kids. Jagelski’s mom, auntie and uncle all went to Intermountain Indian School between 1977 to 1981.
Much of the script follows the students as they wrestle with teenage emotions, trying to understand themselves and their place in the world in the context of an uncertain future as the school is set to close. It’s even more complicated given the history of the school.
“When it’s all completely done, I think it’s going to be a really interesting, complicated piece of work,” Yazzie said.
The Intermountain Indian School opened its doors in January 1950, bringing in 500 Navajo students, according to information from The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition. The school was located in what had been Bushnell Hospital in Brigham City, Utah. The school was documented as a nonreservation boarding school with a goal of teaching students English and “basic academic disciplines.” Boarding schools across North America served to force Indigenous children to assimilate and stripped them from family and culture.
At its peak, Intermountain Indian School was called the “world’s largest boarding school.” In the fall of 1974, the school was renamed the Inter-Tribal School as it enrolled youth from 26 other Native nations across the country.
In 1971, six students from the school who were part of the National Indian Youth Council IIS Chapter filed a lawsuit against school administrators and the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Among other concerns, the lawsuit outlined illegal and harmful practices that included the use of thorazine on intoxicated students; censorship of mail; undue religious influence; physical abuse; racial segregation; and the goal to “facilitate the destruction and replacement of the Navajo cultural heritage.”
In May 1984, the school ultimately closed its doors. By that time, families were more involved with the school, which had begun to implement more culturally specific programming. “Little Ones” is set during the final year that Intermountain Indian School was open.
“So they lose funding, and the kids want to keep the school open,” Yazzie said. “It’s complicated why the kids want to keep the school open. I don’t think in 1984 boarding schools were perfect by then, and no school is.”
What’s next?
At the script reading, a mix of professional and first-time actors helped bring the story to life.
“I was so happy to see how the Native folks who participated as artists, audience members, crew, and vendors were so generous with their personal thoughts and experiences,” Jagelski said. “I am so excited to continue this amazing work with all our collaborators, and to deepen the new relationships we built with the Portland community.”
Amber K. Ball, citizen of the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians, served as assistant director and read the part of Ruby the lunchlady. Ball, a program specialist at the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation, has a background in directing and playwriting, having studied theater and Native American Studies at the University of Oregon.
Jagelski and Yazzie, who have placed emphasis on including Indigenous artists from Native nations in the region, approached Ball about serving as assistant director. The opportunity to serve as assistant director, and act for one of the first times, meant a lot to Ball.
“It was just so amazing to be literally a fly on the wall,” Ball said of getting to work with and learn from Yazzie and Jagelski. “I mean, they’re both two highly esteemed artists. Danielle, who’s an amazing composer, who’s worked regionally, internationally. And Rhiana, who’s an amazing director, playwright and writer.”
As Ruby, Ball plays the lunchlady who created a special bond with the students, endearingly calling them “little ones” as she helped break the news that the school would in fact be closing.
Performing the libretto for community members in Portland, Ball was struck by how incredible it was to watch a Native woman sing a piece of opera, teasing two songs that Jagelski is composing.
“This is my first experience with Native opera, Native people singing opera,” Ball said. “I was telling Danielle, ‘This has completely expanded my mind and blown me away how talented our people are.’”
Michelle Lafferty, Tłı̨chǫ Nation Northwest Territories, is an Indigenous Canadian mezzo-soprano. A classically trained opera singer, she read the part of Marigold, one of the students, during the libretto reading in Portland. She also sang two pieces of music, one solo and another with Madeline Ross, who played the part of Mrs. Ross, a teacher at the school.
“Opera is all about dramatic storytelling, and Indigenous communities have been also sharing stories and creating theatrics in their own communities,” Lafferty said. “Dance, big house and powwow [are] not far off the operatic practice, and as an Indigenous artist I am planning on bringing these stories to the stage because all these skills have been with all our people just as long or even longer than opera itself.”
Still early on in the process of writing and creating “Little Ones,” the reading at the Center for Native Arts and Cultures also served as a community talk-back as Jagelski and Yazzie invited audience members to share their reflections and honest feedback.
“The sweetness of the play, between the characters, that vulnerability is like this little shelter for me,” one audience member shared. “Because there is so much being taken and there is so much that has been taken.”
The ultimate goal is that, once fully finished, “Little Ones” will be picked up on the big stage and make its rounds across Turtle Island and perhaps beyond.
For now, the next stop will be a community reading and talk-back in New York.
“I’d like the audience to walk away with an open perspective into the boarding school experience, because it’s so important for us as Native folks to understand the different dimensions of it and how complicated it got,” Yazzie said.
