The Hoop of Many Hoops : The Integration of Lakota Ancestral Knowledge and Bahá'í Teachings in the Performative Practices of Kevin Locke

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This dissertation takes the reader on a journey through the inner corridors of the conceptual and experiential integration of Lakota ancestral knowledge and Bahá'í teachings in the music and dance of National Endowment for the Arts Heritage Fellow Tokaheya Inajin (Kevin Locke) -- the Lakota singer, flute player, and hoop dancer whose life work is the focus of this study. As is true of the traveler who, with map in hand, embarks on a journey with logistic and temporal limitations, and a keen interest in treading new paths, the reader is taken on several side-trips during these peregrinations -- sojourns offering deeper insight into the complementary roles of ethnographer and performer, into the deeper layers of the two paths informing Kevin Locke's trans-local performative practices. A Thunder Song opens Chapter One, which discusses concepts of the sacred, the intersection of time, place, song, and experience, of motion and stillness, in relation to the Lakota Sun Dance circle in Standing Rock Nation and the Arc on Mount Carmel in Haifa Israel. Chapter Two introduces the ancestors who have shaped Kevin Locke's life-work, and the sacred figure/s whose teachings he turns to for interpretive guidance -- Ptehincala Ska Win and Bahá'u'lláh. Chapters Three and Four discuss the multi-sited methodological and theoretical approaches taken, while Chapter Five presents the theoretical framework that developed out of the fieldwork—a framework designed to document the process involved in translating a song or performance from localized archival document, to translocal performative action, to media-based product through the lens of sacred site. Chapters Six and Seven give voice to Kevin Locke's interpretation of the archival documents -- ledger paintings, artifacts, songs, recordings, oral texts, sounds, and instruments -- linked to his rendering of the songs of White Buffalo Calf Maiden and his translation of those into performative action. Chapter Eight looks at the intersecting pathways of tradition and modernity in Kevin Locke's translation of the teachings embedded in these songs into Hoop Dance form. In closing, Chapter Nine brings the reader full circle, back to the intersection of local and global -- the hoop of many hoops -- through the Thunder Song that opened this dissertation, but in a collaborative intercontinental Nepalese context. This dissertation includes a CD that is compound (contains both a paper copy and a CD as part of the dissertation).