Terri gave me this large stone when we met up in 2022 at the\u00a0Conference on Iroquois Research (Figure 1).1<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0That year it was held on\u00a0Seneca Nation<\/a>\u00a0territory. Terri had driven to the casino from her home 12 miles away. I had travelled 130 miles from my parents\u2019 home in Rochester, after flying up from Atlanta earlier that week.<\/p>\n \u201cHere\u2019s something I brought you from the Quaker Bridge Boat Ramp. I found it during our\u00a0Remember the Removal walk<\/a> last month,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n The size and weight of the rock were remarkable. Too big to put into a pocket. Heavy enough to be dangerous. It was beautifully smooth and rounded. Dark veins formed a large X across it.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThis is beautiful, thank you,\u201d I said as we slipped into our seats for the conference opening. We didn\u2019t talk more about the stone.<\/p>\n Quaker Bridge was an On\u00f6ndowa\u2019ga:\u2019 (Seneca) village before it was destroyed by flooding in the 1960s after the U.S. government built the massive Kinzua Dam, despite intense resistance from the Seneca Nation.\u00a0Nine On\u00f6ndowa\u2019ga:\u2019 (Seneca) villages were destroyed and over 700 Seneca people were forced to relocate<\/a>. 10,000 acres of the On\u00f6ndowa\u2019ga:\u2019 Ohi:yo\u2019 Territory were lost. Just under 16 square miles were flooded and\u00a0forcibly dispossessed<\/a>\u00a0from sovereign On\u00f6ndowa\u2019ga:\u2019 jurisdiction. Stolen. A breach of the\u00a0Treaty of Canandaigua<\/a>, signed in 1794 by the United States government and\u00a0the\u00a0Haudenosaunee Confederacy<\/a>\u00a0(also known\u00a0as\u00a0the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy), the political alliance of the Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, Mohawk and Tuscarora Nations.2<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n The Kinzua Dam was built to protect the downstream city of Pittsburgh from being flooded by\u00a0the Ohi:yo\u2019 (Allegheny River).3<\/a><\/sup> And crucially, to generate hydroelectric power for Pittsburgh during a time when the region was\u00a0producing approximately 41% of the nation\u2019s steel<\/a>. And,\u00a0to enhance the recreation areas of New York\u2019s\u00a0Allegany State Park, \u201cThe Wilderness Playground of Western New York<\/a>,\u201d\u00a0with a large lake.\u00a0All done through executive order by U.S. President John F. Kennedy.\u00a0<\/p>\n The\u00a0violence, displacement, and trauma unleashed by the creation of Kinzua Dam<\/a>\u00a0is considered the most devastating series of events in 20th<\/sup>\u00a0century Seneca history.\u00a0The destruction of ancestral lands, family homes, community structures, and village life \u2013 coupled with the loss of farming, language, and elders strained to withstand the move \u2013 continues to weigh heavily into the present.4<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n Terri did not say any of that. She just gave me the rock. She knew that I knew. We had first met five years earlier, at the 2017 Remember the Removal (RTR). There, she had approached me, eager to connect and guide. Me, a visitor, learner, settler, and stranger.<\/p>\n Every year the RTR route is different. Every year the theme is different. In 2022 it was \u201cProtecting All of Our Relations.\u201d I wasn\u2019t able to go in 2022. That walk started at the former site of the\u00a0Quaker Bridge village<\/a>. At least, as best as one could be at the former village without being in the water. It\u2019s now under the vast Allegheny Reservoir, a 27 mile long,\u00a012,000 acre body of water backed up behind the Kinzua Dam. The giant lake \u201cplayground.\u201d<\/p>\n Terri was born and raised\u00a0in Quaker Bridge, also called Tunesassa (\u201cWhere There is Fine Sand\u201d or \u201cFine Sand There\u201d).5<\/a><\/sup> She was a child during removal.\u00a0Figure 2 is a tourist postcard from a time when\u00a0Tunesassa was known as \u201cThe Gateway to Allegany State Park,\u201d because of its river bridge leading to the park\u2019s entrance.<\/p>\n The boat ramp is part of the state park (Figure 3). So Terri found the stone there. Maybe it was a grinding stone? Maybe for corn?<\/p>\n I kept the stone on the conference room table for a bit, and then put it in my backpack along with a yellow post-it note containing Terri\u2019s handwritten description. She\u2019s a meticulous researcher and documentarian. An accompanying note was crucial.\u00a0<\/p>\n The next morning I woke up with Covid. After dodging it for 2 \u00bd years. I texted Terri right away. Luckily we had been wearing masks the day before. Too sick to return to the conference, or even Zoom in, I rested in the casino hotel room. The view was stunning (Figure 4).\u00a0<\/p>\n Terri and I checked in by phone, but I didn\u2019t go back to the conference. Even though it was right downstairs. Sort of. I would have needed to go down a whole bunch of elevator floors and pass by gamblers and smokers, honeymooners, and retirees to get to the meeting rooms where the\u00a077th<\/sup>\u00a0Edition of the Conference on Iroquois Research<\/a>\u00a0was taking place. It has been happening every year since 1945.<\/p>\n We said goodbyes, til the next time. I held a worry that I might have brought Covid to folks at Seneca Nation. To elders like Terri and indirectly to her cousin Anna, a dynamo and one of the few people who know the Seneca language. I would be lying if I said that the thought of foreign invaders bringing devastating diseases to Indigenous nations didn\u2019t cross my mind.<\/p>\n Life continued. Terri and Anna stayed strong.<\/p>\n I didn\u2019t think much about the stone until this May. I was sent a prompt by the organizers of an performance workshop at an upcoming\u00a0Society for Cultural Anthropology (un)conference<\/a>\u00a0in the Hudson Valley:<\/p>\n \u201c[T]hink about your research in relation to some of the themes we\u2019ll explore together: keeping company, conviviality, solidarities, connections among strangers, and other forms of relating . . . Drawing from your field notes and memories, please pick a particular encounter, experience, or story . . . related to either extraordinary or ordinary forms of coming together. Bring with you something related to your fleeting or more quotidian moment of connection. This can be in any form . . .\u201d6<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n Terri\u2019s stone was the first thing that I thought of. The stone was in Atlanta. I was already in New York State. So I had to carry it in my mind to the Hudson Valley.\u00a0<\/p>\n Over time the stone\u2019s meaning expanded, emerged, landed. The stone was a gift, yes, one in a long series of gifts that Terri and I exchange every time we visit: A hummingbird magnet, a beaded pin (Figure 5), a pot for plants, a small water prayer sign in the Seneca language, a t-shirt, a bar of handmade soap, food, and good stories.\u00a0<\/p>\n The stone was weightier. Its connections spiraled out in every direction. The stone represented the endurance of Seneca sovereignty in the wake of my government\u2019s violation of a treaty with the Seneca Nation. Terri did not say that. She just gave me the stone.\u00a0<\/p>\n The stone represented Terri\u2019s home. And the devastation of that home.<\/p>\n It called me to witness. It represented my responsibility.\u00a0<\/p>\n None of those things landed when Terri gave me the stone. In 2022, the Conference on Iroquois Research was beginning, we sat down, the opening Thanksgiving Address was given, I got Covid, drove to Rochester while still recovering, flew back to Atlanta, returned to a flurry of home and work activities, the swirl of holidays flying into 2023, my uncle passing, my mother\u2019s illness worsening, many more visits to New York State and to Seneca territories including the 2023 powwow and a stay at Terri\u2019s home, continued toxicity in my department, new ethnographic theater projects on light themes such as\u00a0Planetary Life & Death, The End of the World, Generations, and Ancestors,\u00a0and life was just busy and full in general.\u00a0<\/p>\n But there I was in New York, moved by the email call from Meghan Rose and Valentina. The stone-as-a-gift-from-Terri spoke to me.7<\/a><\/sup> Three years in waiting. That\u2019s when I was ready to hear.<\/p>\n Driving from Rochester to the (un)conference, the stone in my mind was traveling with me to the region where my Dutch ancestors first settled in North America, in Haudenosaunee territories nearly 400 years ago. It was one more marker of\u00a0my calling into the Two Row Treaty relationship<\/a>, forged between Haudenosaunee and Dutch in 1613.8<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n The blossoming of the gift \u2013 and the stone\u2019s reverberations \u2013 continued as I engaged in the performance workshop activities. Organizers Meghan Rose and Valentina invited us to create body statue tableaux to express what we had selected in response to their written prompts about \u201cconnection.\u201d I enlisted six workshop participants and built this (Figure 6):<\/p>\n We had been instructed to build without words. Tapping AJ first, I indicated her placement as lake shoreline. I gestured for Monica and Victoria to lay beside her, to widen the lake. I set Anand reaching under AJ\u2019s armpit, digging. Lauren was then placed against Anand\u2019s back, reaching back towards him and forward to the final person placed in the scene, Kamela, the recipient. No words or visible stones were used. It was a frozen still life.<\/p>\n The story of the stone. And its weight.\u00a0<\/p>\n The story of Kinzua Dam.<\/p>\n The story of Terri and me. In Fall 2022. And in a spiral of reverberating history.<\/p>\n As an ethnographic theater theorist, director, instructor, and practitioner, I have facilitated these kinds of tableaux creation exercises hundreds of times with hundreds of participants since starting this work in 2010. I\u2019ve published on the alchemy of ensembled-based tableaux creation and the way that anthropological knowledge and theory can be co-produced through these embodied forms of communication (Vidali 2020, 2023a, 2023b; see Shankar 2016).\u00a0<\/p>\n And stretching back to 2016, I brought tableau making activities into an earlier Society for Cultural Anthropology (SCA) conference \u2013 probably a first for SCA (Vidali 2020). At the time, one of the SCA leaders gushed to another, \u201cThis is like a\u00a0Writing Culture<\/em><\/a>\u00a0moment!\u201d9<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0And yes, over the years, I\u2019ve co-created dozens of body statue still lifes with other participants in workshops facilitated by mentors and luminaries such as Ken Hornbeck, Julian Boal, and Michael Rohd. Those are the folks I learned from.\u00a0<\/p>\n But I don\u2019t think I ever sculpted my own tableau to tell a personal story, like the story of the stone.\u00a0<\/p>\n As the frozen scene was \u201cread\u201d by workshop participants, as their voices processed what they saw, the weight of their responses nearly crushed me. Their consensus was to name it \u201cSorrow.\u201d They saw the face down bodies as dead souls. They didn\u2019t see a village flooded. Or a lake. Or a stone being retrieved. Or a witness\/recipient. That\u2019s fine. The visual of death was palpable, overpowering.<\/p>\n I started to cry. Then Meghan Rose asked me to share my title. I named it \u201cRecovery.\u201d<\/p>\n I couldn\u2019t talk about how I also carried the weight of my mother\u2019s recent passing into that workshop moment. About how I had been feeling unsettled over the thought of Mother\u2019s Day, which happened to be the next day.<\/p>\n I couldn\u2019t talk about how the last time that I had been at an SCA conference, in 2016, I was with my mother. This was a first for us. A mother and daughter team. She joined my workshop session as I introduced ethnographic tableaux creation to the conference participants. I guided folks to respond to what was calling us at that moment, related to the conference\u2019s theme, \u201cCollaboration.\u201d My mother took photos; some appear in Vidali 2020.\u00a0<\/p>\n There\u2019s more to say about the story of the stone, how my workshop still life was processed and narrated by others, how my mother stayed with me constantly that weekend, and how I had been trying to reach Terri for a couple of months to no avail. I speculated that either she had either changed her phone number or was ill. We\u2019re back in touch now. She did change her number. And she\u2019s fine. Running around with 95 year old cousin Anna as usual.\u00a0<\/p>\n Maybe another time I will say more about the next step in Valentina and Meghan Rose\u2019s workshop where we were grouped with other participants. I worked with Emily and David. We shared the stories behind our individually created scenes. We listened with deep compassion and care. And then we built a new silent scene.<\/p>\n Shifting the weight, lightening the weight, deepening the weight, expanding the weighted spirals.<\/p>\n Acknowledgements\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Thank you to Mom, Terri, Anna, the stone, Meghan Rose, and Valentina. Thank you to tableau volunteers AJ, Anand, Kamela, Lauren, Monica, and Victoria, and to scene partners Emily and David Si. Thank you to David Sy. for feedback on an earlier draft.<\/p>\n Image Credits and Descriptions<\/strong><\/p>\n Featured image and Figures 4, and 5 are photos\u00a0by Debra Vidali.\u00a0<\/p>\n Figure 2\u00a0is a postcard image,\u00a0courtesy of\u00a0Terri John, posted October 12 2024 on the\u00a0Facebook public group,\u00a0CONSTRUCTION of the KINZUA DAM<\/a>.<\/p>\n Figure 3 is an image of the\u00a0Allegany\u00a0State Park Quaker Area<\/a>, featured on the New York State Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation website.<\/p>\n Figure 6 is a photo by\u00a0Valentina Zagaria, used with permission.<\/p>\n Figure 7 is a photo taken by a friend at Meyers Restaurant in 2018\u00a0(l to r: Debra, Anna, Terri).<\/p>\n Note on Spelling and Orthography<\/strong><\/p>\n This essay uses standard On\u00f6ndowa\u2019ga:\u2019\u00a0Gaw\u00eb:n\u00f6<\/em>\u2019 (Seneca Language) spelling and orthography from the\u00a0Seneca Nation Language Department<\/a>. Nasalized vowels are represented with two dots over a vowel (as in\u00a0\u00f6). Long vowels are represented with a colon after them (as in a:). Glottal stops are represented with single quote marks (as in the mark that follows the vowel a, in\u00a0a\u2019). The autonym\u00a0On\u00f6ndowa\u2019ga:\u2019 (meaning \u201cPeople of the Great Hill\u201d) is variably spelled as On\u00f6ndowa\u2019ga:\u2019 and On\u00f6dowa\u2019ga:\u2019.\u00a0<\/p>\n Notes<\/strong><\/p>\n References\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Treaty of Canandaigua, 1794\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n Two Row Wampum \u2013 Gasw\u00e9\u00f1dah<\/a><\/p>\n Lake of Betrayal: The Story of Kinzua Dam<\/em><\/a>. 2017. By\u00a0Scott Sackett, Paul Lamont, and Caleb Abrams.\u00a0Vision Maker Media.<\/p>\n Boal, Augusto. (1992)\u00a02002.\u00a0Games for Actors and Non-Actors.\u00a0<\/em>Second edition.\u00a0New York, NY: Routledge.<\/p>\n Chin, Elizabeth, ed. 2014.\u00a0Katherine<\/em>\u00a0Dunham: Recovering an Anthropological legacy, Choreographing Ethnographic Futures<\/em>. Santa Fe:\u00a0School for Advanced Research Press.<\/p>\n Shankar, Arjun. 2016.\u00a0What\u2019s in the Room?<\/em>\u00a0<\/a>with\u00a0Debra Vidali,\u00a0Mariam Durrani, and Tali Ziv. (video, 8:44)<\/p>\n Tinker, George \u201cTink\u201d. 2004. The Stones Shall Cry Out: Consciousness, Rocks, and Indians.\u00a0Wicazo Sa Review<\/em>\u00a019(2):105-125.\u00a0http:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/1409501<\/a><\/p>\n Vidali, Debra. 2024. Two Row Repair: A Trilogy.\u00a0Anthropology and Humanism\u00a0<\/em>49:57-62.\u00a0<\/em>DOI:\u00a010.1111\/anhu.12514<\/a><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/allegralaboratory.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Vidali-Weight-FIGURE-3-Postcard-USE-1080x673.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/allegralaboratory.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Vidali-Weight-FIGURE-2-Park-USE.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/allegralaboratory.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Vidali-Weight-FIGURE-4-Casino-view-USE-923x1080.jpeg\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/allegralaboratory.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Vidali-Weight-FIGURE-5-Beaded-Pin-USE-867x1080.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/allegralaboratory.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Vidali-Weight-FIGURE-6-SCA-Tableau-USE-1080x810.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/allegralaboratory.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Vidali-Weight-FIGURE-7-Anna-Terri-Debra-USE-1080x810.jpeg\")
\n
\n