Tag: Jesse Archibald-Barber

26. Louise Bernice Halfe—Sky Dancer, wîhtamawik/Tell Them: On a Life of Inspiration

Louise Halfe is an important poet; the former Saskatchewan poet laureate and parliamentary poet laureate’s work reveals the truth of residential schools and colonialism more generally, and the difficult work of recovery and restoring balance to individuals and communities, in ways that would cause the scales to drop from the eyes of the most entrenched denialist. And wîhtamawik/Tell Them: On a Life of Inspiration, her new collection of short essays and poems, is also (not surprisingly) essential.

The subtitle, especially the word “inspiration,” is the key. Inspiration is related to respiration, and for Halfe, inspiration flows like breath, in and out, a cyclical rhythm that’s linked to other cycles (the round of the seasons, for instance) and the wind. The book’s first poem refers to the wind’s “plaintive breath,” and the last one concludes, “I will be one / with their breath.” Those lines are about “the Night Sky Dancers,” the “Great Mystery” that nourishes Halfe constantly.

So much has happened to interfere with those relationships, to block both breath and inspiration: residential schools, lateral violence, colonialism, cultural genocide. wîhtamawik traces possibilities of recovery from those ongoing harms, through language and ceremony and creative expression. It presents us with layered connections, between the cycles of our bodies and our lives, and the greater cycles of the world that sustain us. It shares ethical truths from Plains Cree or nêhiyaw culture, ideals we would all do well to try to follow. It emphasizes a holistic approach to life, one that brings together our minds, bodies, spirits, and the earth. There’s a lot to think about here, and that thinking can only open up new possibilities, perhaps ones that lead towards the decolonization Halfe urges.

I will be in conversation with Halfe and poet and scholar Jesse Archibald-Barber at Artesian in Regina on the evening of Tuesday, May 19, as part of the Cathedral Village Arts Festival. It promises to be a productive discussion; if you’re in or close to Regina, please join us.

16. Tomson Highway, The Rez Sisters

I reread Tomson Highway’s first hit play, The Rez Sisters, this morning. I needed to refresh my memory before teaching it this week. I’ve read it many times, mostly because I’ve taught it many times, although I’ve never seen a production; I did see the National Arts Centre’s production of Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing 35 years ago, and I’ve always been curious about what The Rez Sisters is like onstage.

Every time I reread something, I find something new in it. I don’t suppose that’s unusual. This time, I was focused on moments where Nanabush appears, and where Christianity is mentioned, mostly because Highway was interviewed in The Globe an Mail recently (here’s a link, but it’s paywalled), on the occasion of the NAC production of Rose, the final play in the Wasaychigan Hill trilogy, and during that conversation he talked a lot about the differences between Cree or Ojibway mythology (since Nanabush is also known, in Cree, as wîsahkîcahk, and the sacred stories about the two figures are similar), on one hand, and the Christian mythology, which he encountered first in residential school, on the other. Highway has been talking about those differences since The Rez Sisters opened in Toronto. They’re important in his recent book, Laughing with the Trickster: On Sex, Death, and Accordions, and they’re mentioned in every interview with him I’ve read. In The Globe and Mail interview, he says,

In non-Native culture, God is male. . . . Gender is the fulcrum on which rests the structure of patriarchal religion. In Christianity, God created man and forgot to create woman – woman was an afterthought. It’s her fault she ate the apple and submitted to temptation; it’s her fault we’re cursed as a species, that we were kicked out of the Garden of Eden.

By contrast, Cree and Ojibway mythology, and their culture hero, emphasizes the pleasure of eating: “You’re supposed to enjoy the fruit. One system of thinking treats the fruit as a curse; the other talks about a gift of pleasure, a gift of beauty.” The Christian God has no sense of humour, either, unlike Nanabush. “I have yet to hear him laugh,” Highway stated. “His principal weapon is this spiritual terrorism, where everything you do is forbidden.” Instead of that spiritual terrorism–a term which echoes Jo-Ann Episkenew’s description of colonialism, “psychological terrorism”–the mythology with Nanabush as its culture hero is centred on laughter. “God put us on this planet to laugh,” Highway told The Globe and Mail‘s interviewer, Aisling Murphy. “We’re here to have a good time, to laugh until we cry.” 

The contrast between the two belief systems helps me understand, once again, the horrific damage residential schools did by forcing children to reject the one they already knew, to feel terrible shame about it, and to adopt one that is so alien and, from Highway’s perspective, repellent. In the play, Nanabush is silly, mocking, and goofy; he’s (in this play, he takes a male form; in Dry Lips, she’s a woman) also serious, a link to the spirit world and a catalyst in the play’s cathartic resistance to The Biggest Bingo in the World, to which the characters travel and which they discover is a cheat. That game, Jesse Archibald-Barber argues, is a closed system without transcendence that offers economic or consumerist freedom while also being a trap. At the end of the play, Pelajia, who seems to be the most important member of the play’s ensemble, recognizes Nanabush’s importance instead of mourning his absence, and Nanabush himself, in the guise of a seagull, lands behind her, dancing “merrily and triumphantly,” according to the stage directions.

That’s pretty much the lecture I’m giving tomorrow. This is likely the last time I teach The Rez Sisters, and to be honest, I think I’ve finally figured it out. Better late than never.