Lynn Riggs and the Art of Citizenship.

This article focuses on Lynn Riggs, a gay Cherokee dramatist born in 1899 who navigated the complexities of Indigenous identity and belonging amid the dissolution of the Cherokee Nation’s government following Oklahoma statehood. Riggs forged a translocal artistic community across the United States and Mexico, emphasizing collaborative, aspirational citizenship outside traditional tribal or state frameworks. His work and life illustrate alternative Indigenous spatial relations and forms of belonging that resist erasure by US statehood and citizenship, engaging with broader themes of Indigenous and Black exclusion, cultural survival, and creative solidarity. Riggs’s career spanned poetry, theater, and film, and he maintained extensive networks of artists and activists, embodying a deterritorialized, multinational community grounded in shared artistic and political commitments.