Muscogee Nation marks McGirt anniversary with Oklahoma premiere of play 'On the Far End'

Although Mary Kathryn Nagle is an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation, the story of the late Muscogee activist Jean Hill Chaudhuri still resonates with her in a deeply personal way.

"I've been learning about my mother-in-law for years now, and just going through their house after my father-in-law passed away and reading her plays and her poems and her posters and pamphlets — just reading about all the things she did with her life — I really felt like the world needed to hear her story," Nagle told The Oklahoman.

An esteemed Native American playwright and attorney, Nagle not only tells her mother-in-law's remarkable life story but also portrays Chaudhuri in her new one-woman show "On the Far End."

The Oklahoma City native will perform the Oklahoma premiere of "On the Far End" at 5 p.m. July 9 at The Cove at River Spirit Casino Resort in Tulsa. The Muscogee Nation Cultural Center & Archives is presenting the performance July 9 in honor of Sovereignty Day, the Muscogee holiday that marks the anniversary of the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision McGirt v. Oklahoma.

In McGirt v. Oklahoma, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2020 that the Muscogee (Creek) Nation’s reservation was not officially terminated at Oklahoma statehood and affirmed its continued existence.

"When we look back on July 9, 2020, the Muscogee people look at that as our Fourth of July. We look at that as sort of our Independence Day," Jason Salsman, Muscogee Nation press secretary, told The Oklahoman.

"This play, 'On the Far End,' basically takes the life and advocacy work of one of our great matriarchs in the nation, Jean Hill Chaudhuri, and weaves the story of her life and experiences and how everything came full circle ... with the Supreme Court's decision in McGirt."

Who was Jean Hill Chaudhuri and how does her life connect to the McGirt decision?

Nagle took the title of her new play from the first line of Justice Neil Gorsuch’s majority opinion in McGirt v. Oklahoma: “On the far end of the Trail of Tears was a promise.”

"There's a reason the reservation is still here today, because of people like Jean Hill Chaudhuri that never gave up on their nation's sovereignty or continued existence, despite all the forms of oppression that were smacked down against them," Nagle said.

"If it wasn't for generations of ancestors like her and everyone that came before her, and even a little bit after her, the Creek Nation probably wouldn't have a reservation today."

Commissioned by the Round House Theatre in Washington, D.C., where Nagle performed the world-premiere run earlier this year, "On the Far End" spotlights Chaudhuri as she traces her family’s history from the Trail of Tears to her grandfather’s allotment on the Muscogee (or Mvskoke) Reservation.

In the one-woman play, Nagle shares Chaudhuri's first-person story, from her eight attempts to run away from the Eufaula Indian Boarding School to her marriage to a young Bengali scholar to the advocacy that became her life’s work.

Born in 1937 in Okemah, Chaudhuri spoke Creek as her first language. She met her husband, Joyotpaul Chaudhuri, who was born in India, when his academic career brought him to her home state. The couple had two sons, Joydev and Jonodev.

She was involved in an array of programs for Native Americans in Oklahoma, Florida and Arizona. The Chaudhuris moved in 1972 to Arizona, where she became the executive director of the Tucson Indian Center and director of the Traditional Indian Alliance. She received the Jefferson Award from the American Institute of Public Service in 1977.

She wrote and produced the musical comedy "Indians Discover Christopher Columbus" in 1992, and she and her husband co-wrote the book "A Sacred Path: The Way of the Muscogee Creeks," which he completed and published in 2001.

Chaudhuri died in 1997 at age 59. She was posthumously inducted into the Arizona Women's Hall of Fame in 2013.

"She wasn't perfect. She had her own life challenges, she had mental health challenges, she had addiction issues. She had depression, from real-life trauma that she carried with her, from the fact that her entire family was almost wiped out on the Trail of Tears, and then everything that happened to her in her lifetime, including that she was a survivor of boarding school," Nagle said.

"I think it helps remind us that you don't have to be perfect to accomplish great things. In fact, no one's perfect."

When Joyotpaul Chaudhuri died in 2020, Nagle and her husband, Muscogee Nation Ambassador Jonodev Chaudhuri, discovered a handwritten book the widower had penned about his wife that inspired the writing of "On the Far End."

"We're going to try to publish it, because it's an incredible book," Nagle said. "That pretty much cemented it, because it also had a lot of the stories in there that were really pretty incredible."

How did Mary Kathryn Nagle end up portraying her late mother-in-law in her new one-woman show?

One of the most produced Native playwrights working in the United States today, Nagle has penned about a dozen different plays. But "On the Far End" is the first one-woman show she has written.

"It has its challenges ... but there's a power that comes in the fact that Jean is the messenger, whether we're hearing from her dad or her grandpa or Sen. McCain or whoever it is on stage. It's from her. It's her story. It's her version, and there's a power to that. I really enjoyed writing it as a one-person play," Nagle said.

"She was such a powerful storyteller in her life, and she really did a lot of traditional Native storytelling, Muscogee storytelling. So, I was also wanting to honor that."

"On the Far End" marks Nagle's professional acting debut, too.

"We had a couple of casting issues where we cast very talented professional Native women actresses who had to cancel because of family reasons or getting cast in a TV show, which that happens a lot in live theater," Nagle said.

"We were a couple of weeks before opening, and we didn't have anyone. So, I stepped in, and that was stressful and crazy. ... I have an appreciation for what actors have to do, because it's a lot to memorize all that."

How did the playwright deal with the pressure of getting Jean Hill Chaudhuri's story right?

Working on historical shows, which Nagle does often, always brings a responsibility to get it right. But that responsibility feels even heavier when you're writing about a beloved historic figure who also happens to be your late mother-in-law, she said.

"Certainly, my husband has very strong feelings about it. There are times where he had strong opinions about it, I will just say that," Nagle said with a laugh. "I relied on a lot of his memories and stories in writing the play. ... And we're not divorced. He didn't decide I failed in writing the play about his mom."

Working on the show has helped the writer feel more connected to her mother-in-law, who died years before Nagle and her husband got married.

"I never got to meet her in real life ... and I think that, in some ways, doing this play was my way of meeting her. I feel like we have this intimate connection in a way that we probably would have never had, had I not written and performed a play about her," Nagle said.

"She still has a very powerful presence, even though she's not here walking on this Earth. And I think that I'm very blessed to have had this opportunity to get to know her."

'On the Far End'

When: 5 p.m. July 9.

Where: The Cove at River Spirit Casino, 8330 Riverside Parkway, Tulsa.

Tickets: https://tickets.riverspirittulsa.com.

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Native writer Mary Kathryn Nagle's play 'On the Far End' marks McGirt