Labriola Center announces 2025 National Book Award winner

A groundbreaking book examining the overlooked legacy of "redface" in American theater is being recognized for its contributions to Indigenous scholarship.

“Redface: Race, Performance, and Indigeneity” by Bethany Hughes and published by NYU Press, has been awarded the Labriola National American Indian Data Center 2025 National Book Award.

Founded in 2008, the Labriola Center National Book Award is a national competition that aims to elevate contemporary works by Indigenous scholars that impact Native American peoples and nations.

Hughes will be recognized during a visit to the ASU Tempe campus in October, where she will join the center at Hayden Library for an event to discuss her book with the ASU community.

“I am honored that my work on Native American representation in American theater history has been recognized by the Labriola Center and am eager to be in conversation with the ASU community on how best to understand Indigenous peoples' unique experiences and to advocate for representation that reflects the vibrancy and diversity within our community.”

Using case studies in law and civic life, Hughes’ book brings attention to the racial and political impact of the “stage Indian” character in American theater history. She initially expressed surprise when she learned that her book was being honored.

“As someone who studies and writes about theater and performance, and in particular 19th-century performance in this book, I often expect to have to convince people that what I do matters in ‘real life.’ Receiving this award is a sign that the book compellingly explains how something made a long time ago for amusement, like theater, is a space where impactful and relevant cultural processes and knowledge-making takes place,” Hughes said. 

Hughes, a member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, is an assistant professor of Native American Studies at the University of Michigan in the Department of American Culture and a core faculty member in the Native American Studies Program. As a performance scholar and cultural historian, her work explores Native American representation, performance studies, and race and identity.

Hughes challenges readers to think critically about how redface matters to Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities, and how it still persists in American culture today.

“I would like readers to take away a clear sense of the techniques used to depict Native Americans, such as makeup and character development, and also how those techniques reveal the underlying motivations and ideologies that constrain Native people into an ‘Indian’ shaped box. I also want them to understand their own complicity in racializing Indigenous people and also have a taste of what it could be like to work in a different direction, to an end point where Indigenous people are not defined or measured by stereotypical expectations of Indianness built to erase us,” Hughes said.

This year’s award committee comprised scholars and leaders who are all ASU alumni. Elise Boxer, director of the Institute for American Indian Studies and associate professor in the Department of History at the University of South Dakota, is an enrolled Dakota citizen (Sisseton and Wahpeton Bands) of the Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes. She received her PhD from ASU in 2009.

“Speaking on behalf of the committee, ‘Redface’ is a visually beautiful, clearly written and structurally inventive document that disrupts the typical structure of an academic monograph by taking ‘hinushi inla’ (a different path),” Boxer said. “Hughes’ book draws from and meaningfully builds on previous scholarship, and has all the potential to make a similar impact on the field for future students and scholars. Hughes challenges readers to co-construct the ‘stage Indian’ through its unique structure and invitation to play with and revisit the content. The committee is honored to award ‘Redface’ with this year’s Labriola Center National Book Award.”

In addition to Boxer, the committee included Travis Franks, assistant professor of English at Utah State University, and Waquin Preston (Diné), the tribal state policy director for the National Indian Education Association. 

An honorable mention was awarded to “Refusing Settler Domesticity: Native Women's Labor and Resistance in the Bay Area Outing Program” by Caitlin Keliiaa and published by University of Washington Press. Keliiaa is an assistant professor of history at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

When Hughes visits ASU this fall, it will be a time to celebrate and connect with ASU’s Indigenous community.

“I look forward to learning about the exciting projects and thinking related to Indigenous peoples, nations and scholarship that's happening at ASU,” Hughes said. “The energy connected to Native playwrights and theater there is something I'm eager to hear more about. I'm also looking forward to meeting the Native community and learning more about their experiences on campus and off.”