(solemn music) (birds chirping) - [Girl] Abuela was living in Minnesota, and her behavior had become unacceptable.

She embarrassed her granddaughter and frowned more than she smiled.

(whistling) The Star Council convened to discuss the matter.

This was not an isolated incident.

- My name is Magdalena Colusa.

I use they/them pronouns.

I was born in downtown Minneapolis, and grew up in the Phillips neighborhood of South Minneapolis.

I am a mixed race person, my dad is from Guatemala, (speaking foreign language) I'm wearing a (speaking foreign language) right now, from his hometown.

I'm a youth worker, an organizer, right now I'm working around housing justice.

Poet, cook, a gardener, many other things.

One of the things I do is puppetry, and I've been doing puppetry with Rebekah.

(speaking foreign language) - My name is Rebekah Trisante Debarra, I'm a interdisciplinary artist here in the twin cities.

I'm also a mixed-race person enrolled tribal citizen of the Maya Lenca people of Central America, as well as Norwegian, Salvadorian, and all of the things that we carry with us as mixed-race people and descendants of immigrant and indigenous lineages.

- When Rebekah says playwright, one of the projects that she wrote was this play.

We co-wrote it together with the support of mentor, colleague, and director Rhiana Yazzie of New Native Theater.

This is a show called "Star Girl Clan," and it's the story of an immigrant grandmother from Central America, with indigenous roots, who has internalized racism.

And she expresses that to her granddaughter.

Right out here on Lake Street, at the bus stop that she mistreats a indigenous person out there.

Her granddaughter thinks something is amiss and at that moment, her grandmother, she's hit by a bus, metro transit, don't worry, she doesn't get hurt.

But in Mayan cosmology the metro transit symbol happens to also be the glyph for (speaking in foreign language) or wind.

And so the winds carry her, they transport her to the spirit world.

And the play takes her through many different interactions with spirit animals, where she learns about herself, her history, her people, and she's able to bring that back to her granddaughter here in South Minneapolis.

- We created a play that we wanted for ourselves, that we can pass on to the next generation.

That is hopefully inspiring grandparents to pass on, even if they have one little nugget of traditional teaching to pass it on, because it's so important to keep those chains of traditions of knowledge passed on.

And care for the earth, the stars, and the different themes that we have in the play.

(wind blowing) And we brought in some local musicians of the band Curandero.

So a mix of global house and traditional indigenous instruments.

(solemn music) (clicking) It's part play, it's part storytelling, it's interactive with the audience.

It's a teaching for the kids who are on stage and the kids who are at the front of the stage, but it's also organic.

Its an element of ceremony like most indigenous storytelling is.

- For me it has been profoundly transformative to work on this.

And I just feel so grateful that I've gotten to do this with Rebekah.

I've gotten to know Gustavo through it, who was playing music for us earlier today.

And Balaman, another of the musicians.

Inish and Sochi are actors.

Rhiana Yazzie who is our director, it just has been such a gift.

(uptempo music) - And we hope that this play is awakening just a little bit of inspiration in the audience to not just watch the play, but to have conversation.

That's the real goal is to have dialogue and ceremony with one another and build community.

- And we set the play on Lake Street because Lake Street is a place of many cultures intersecting.

And we we do see the animosity between, for example, the poorest communities which include immigrant communities, African-American communities, indigenous communities in this country are pitted against each other.

And we wanted this play to be something to potentially build solidarity, And Lake Street is a place of many intersecting cultures, and so our hope was we could bring different communities together and they could start to share stories.

- My daughter started playing the grandmother, the lead role when she was nine.

She's playing a version of my grandma and her internalized racism.

And my-- What you don't see is in the background, me interviewing my grandma and trying to tease out all of these gemstones of knowledge.

I don't think the kids yet realize the gift that they're getting just by having a little bit of community.

- My grandpa's brother changed their last name from K'iech to Caballeros because they wanted to seem less indigenous.

And then my dad didn't learn K'iche'.

He knows phrases but can't speak it fluently, and so I have had that very recently stripped away in my family's history, and this play is a way for me to reclaim that.

- What I'm seeing that we're hoping to build through this play is solidarity for when communities need each other, so like in native communities up north along the pipeline, there's a lot of need for support and resistance efforts around the pipeline and especially around missing and murdered indigenous women, making communities safe.

At the same time, immigrants, when their ICE raids need support.

And so we're hoping we can use this play as a way to build dialogue and trust between indigenous peoples north and south who are living within the same rural communities.

So they can have each other's back when we all really need it.

(solemn music)