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We Are All Treaty People: Indigenous–Settler Relations, Story and Young Audiences

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2020

HEATHER M. FITZSIMMONS FREY
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Abstract

We Are All Treaty People is a Canadian play for young audiences (ages eight to twelve) that addresses difficult knowledge, Elders’ story sharing, and contemporary and historical Indigenous–settler relations. This article discusses the contemporary and historical political context of the play and its production, the creation process and its narrative anchors. It argues that through a respectful, Indigenous-led creation process, and structural techniques, the play has the potential to offer hope and healing, and encourage relationships based on knowledge.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 45 , Issue 1 , March 2020 , pp. 37 - 54
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 2020

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Footnotes

I had the privilege of exploring some of these ideas at the ITYARN (International Theatre for Young Audiences Research Network) symposium at ASSITEJ, Cape Town, 2017, and at the CATR (Canadian Association for Theatre Research) conference, Toronto, 2017. I would like to thank Jill Carter, Jenn Cole, Roxanne Tootoosis, Terri Suntjens, Geesche Wartemann and the many artists who generously shared their time and ideas with me, to help me better understand these issues.

References

Notes

2 My observations refer to performances in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, at Capitol Hill School, on 6 April 2017.

3 The word ‘unsettle’ refers to Tuck and Yang's efforts to remind readers ‘what is unsettling about decolonization – what is unsettling and what should be unsettling’. Tuck, Eve and Yang, K. Wayne, ‘Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor’, Decolonization, Indigeneity Education & Society, 1, 1 (2012), pp. 1–40Google Scholar, here p. 3.

4 Christine Sokaymoh Frederick and Chelsea Vowel are among those who complicate the assertion that ‘we are all treaty people’ and that we are all either settler or Indigenous. Frederick notes that while it is a beautiful idea, treaties are political; many Métis people do not see themselves as Treaty people. While some of Alberta's black pioneers see themselves as settlers, Vowel suggests that descendants of black slaves should never be seen as settlers, and argues that non-European-descended people are different from settler colonials. Christine Frederick, ‘Aboriginal–Indigenous Terms’, Huffington Post, 28 February 2018, at www.huffingtonpost.ca/2018/02/28/aboriginal-Indigenous-terms_a_23373261, accessed 11 February 2019; Chelsea Vowel, Indigenous Writes: A Guide to First Nations, Métis and Inuit Issues in Canada (Winnipeg: Highwater Press, 2016), p. 23.

5 Smith, Gregg C., ‘Foreword’, in Treaty 7 Elders Walter Hildebrant and Dorothy First Rider with Sarah Carter, True Spirit and Intent of Treaty 7 (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1997), p. viiGoogle Scholar.

6 Ibid., p. vii.

7 Margaret Kovach notes that the Canadian Supreme Court acknowledged oral testimony as historical documentation in its 1997 ruling for Delgamuukw v. British Columbia. The Supreme Court also accepted oral testimony in 2019 for a court ruling concerning Treaty 7 that may see significant compensation for losses for the Blood Tribe. See Kovach, Margaret, ‘A Story in the Telling’, LEARNing Landscapes, 11, 2 (2018), pp. 49–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here p. 51. For more details see Megan Grant, ‘Blood Tribe Wins Massive Land Claim Battle in Federal Court’, CBC News, 12 June 2019. Also see Reid Southwick, ‘Blood Tribe Seeks Massive Land Claim in Federal Court’, CBC News, 24 June 2018.

8 Kovach, ‘A Story in the Telling’, p. 51.

9 Thanks to Cheryl Chagnon-Greyeyes of the University of Calgary Native Centre who provided me with the Acknowledgement of Traditional Indigenous Territories, Treaty 7 (southern Alberta).

10 Observations about the performance of We Are All Treaty People refer to the performance at Capitol Hill School, Calgary, 6 April 2017.

11 Making Treaty 7 Society and Quest Theatre, ‘We Are All Treaty People: School Tour 2017’, unpublished draft 10, 31 March 2017, p. 4.

12 We Are All Treaty People has its roots in Making Treaty 7, a show for general or adult audiences. Imajyn Cardinal and Arielle Curtis both perform in Making Treaty 7 and they were part of later stages of the creative collaboration process; they were aged fifteen and seventeen, respectively when they contributed the ‘To Be or Not to Be Friends’ dialogue, and that inspired the structure of We Are All Treaty People. Making Treaty 7 Society and Quest Theatre, ‘We Are All Treaty People’, p. 4

13 Betty Bastien, Blackfoot Ways of Knowing (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2004), p. 88.

14 Thomas King, The Truth about Stories: A Native Narrative (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005), p. 2.

15 Jill Carter, ‘The Physics of the Mola: (W)riting Indigenous Resurgence on the Contemporary Stage’, Modern Drama, 59, 1 (2016), pp. 1–25, here p. 2.

16 Alanna Onespot, interview, 6 April 2017.

17 Paulina Johnson, ‘The Nêhiyawak Nation through Âcimowina: Experiencing Plains Cree Knowledge through Oral Narratives’, Totem: The University of Western Ontario Journal of Anthropology, 23, 1 (2015), pp. 70–81, here p. 71.

18 Anders Hunter, email, 9 March 2017.

19 King, The Truth about Stories, pp. 2, 9, 10.

20 Kovach, ‘A Story in the Telling’, p. 51. Italics in original.

21 Margaret Kovach, Indigenous Methodologies: Characteristics, Conversations and Contexts. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), p. 94.

22 Betty Bastien, Blackfoot Ways of Knowing (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2004), p. 140.

23 Kaaahsinnoon quoted in ibid., p. 118.

24 Making Treaty 7 Society and Quest Theatre, ‘We Are All Treaty People’, p. 2.

25 See Leif Fitzsimmons Frey, ‘“Heartless Robotic Apologies”: Indigenizing Toronto Education’, in:cite journal, 1 (2018), pp. 62–75.

26 When I attended the school shows Anders Hunter prayed in the afternoon. He told me that prayers could be said in many ways. ‘It's about what you would want. Help. Health. Some good luck. Etc. … I'm asking Creator to have pity on all of our poor souls. I ask for forgiveness of us. I ask for help. Guidance. Strength for Mother Earth. Strength so we can walk this earth with good heart, mind, body, soul and intentions. I ask Creator to help these kids understand to love and to have good intentions in their paths. I ask for our homefires to be safe while we're home or not home. I ask for blessings to continue in a good way and say forever grateful for life and all its wonderful gifts.’ Anders Hunter, interview, 26 June 2017. Onespot told me that each person's prayer is different, but that she prays for the young audience members, for them to be healed if they are hurting, and for guidance in a good way. She prays because of the sacredness of the stories that they are telling, and acknowledges the power of what they share, praying that their work also be done in a good way. Alanna Onespot, interview, 28 June 2017.

27 Making Treaty 7 Society and Quest Theatre, ‘We Are All Treaty People’, p. 3.

28 On a snowy day in February 2015, while driving to Saskatchewan to share the creation process of Making Treaty 7 with artists there, Narcisse Blood, Michael Green and two other artists involved in the project (Lacy Morin-Desjarlais and Michele Sereda) were killed in a car accident. Losing these visionary leaders had a significant impact on the project and on each of the artists I interviewed. Not only are they grieving, but without these leaders it has been difficult to move the project forward. Nevertheless, after the accident the ‘To Be or Not to Be Friends’ dialogue was written and all of the We Are All Treaty People workshops took place. For one example of how Blood approached these issues see Cynthia M. Chambers and Narcisse J. Blood, ‘Love Thy Neighbour: Repatriating Precarious Blackfoot Sites’, International Journal of Canadian Studies, 39–40 (2009), pp. 253–79.

29 Andy Curtis interview, 17 February 2017. Curtis was probably referencing David Garneau's discussion of ‘conciliation’ versus ‘reconciliation’, which was published as ‘Imaginary Spaces of Conciliation and Reconciliation’ in West Coast Line #74: Reconcile This!, 46, 2 (Summer 2012), pp. 28–38, here p. 35.

30 Kovach, ‘A Story in the Telling’, p. 51.

31 Kovach, Indigenous Methodologies, p. 56.

32 Michelle Thrush, interview, 29 March 2017.

33 Bastien, Blackfoot Ways of Knowing, p. 118.

34 I saw a shorter version of Making Treaty 7 at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa on 20 June 2017. For an account of a longer performance of Making Treaty 7 see Susan Bennett, ‘“We Are All Treaty People”: The Making Treaty 7 Project’, Canadian Theatre Review, 166 (Spring 2016), pp. 106–8.

35 Thrush, interview, 29 March 2017.

36 Dylan Robinson, ‘Acts of Defiance in Indigenous Theatre: A Conversation with Lisa C. Ravensbergen’, in Dylan Robinson and Keavy Martin, eds., Arts of Engagement: Taking Aesthetic Action in and beyond the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2016), pp. 181–92, here p. 192.

37 Belarie Zatzman, ‘Difficult Knowledge in Theatre for Young Audiences: Remembering and Representing the Holocaust’, in Art Babayants and Heather Fitzsimmons Frey, eds., Theatre and Learning (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2015), pp. 23–49, here p. 23.

38 Ibid., p. 42.

39 Ibid., p. 25.

40 Ibid., pp. 23–49.

41 Making Treaty 7 for general audiences has sold out numerous performances. Other recent plays address treaties signed in Canada such as Treaty 9 (see Sasha Kovacs, ‘Performance as Treatment in the James Bay Treaty No. 9’, Canadian Theatre Review, 161, 2 (Winter 2015), pp. 43–7), or the Jumblies Community Theatre, Toronto's production Talking Treaties. There are also performances for young audiences, such as Mistatim (Red Sky Performance, Toronto), The Mush Hole (Kaha:wi Dance Theatre) and Raven Meets the Monkey King (Axis Theatre, Vancouver), that confront the legacy of residential schools in Canada. Prior to these recent productions, the majority of Canadian Theatre for Young Audiences (TYA) with Indigenous content focused on what might be called ‘traditional’ stories: for example, Raven Stole the Sun (Drew Hayden Taylor and Red Sky Performance), Jumping Mouse (Columpa Bobb and Marion deVries), Th'owxiya: The Hungry Feast Dish (Joseph A. Dandurand and Axis Theatre), Story before Time (Drew Hayden Taylor and Kaha:wi Dance Theatre) and Medicine Bear (Santee Smith and Kaha:wi Dance Theatre). TYA plays about contemporary Indigenous young people are more unusual: Drew Hayden Taylor collaborated with Debajamajig to create Toronto at Dreamer's Rock (1989) and A Girl Who Loved Her Horses (1995), and with Roseneath Theatre to create Spirit Horse (2007); recently, Alberta Aboriginal Arts produced Christine Sokaymoh Frederick's play Minosis Gathers Hope (2018).

42 Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada: Calls to Action, 2015, p. 331.

43 The term ‘survivance’ was coined by Gerald Vizenor, and in Jill Carter's discussions of Indigenous performances of grief, she explains that survivance is the antidote to fictions suggesting Indigenous peoples are vanished/ing. Instead, through survivance (and Carter's concept of performative and active ‘survivance-intervention’), Indigenous people can declare and imagine present existence and, also, themselves and their nations in the future. Carter, Jill, ‘Discarding Sympathy, Disrupting Catharsis: The Mortification of Indigenous Flesh as Survivance-Intervention’, Theatre Journal, 67, 3 (2015), pp. 413–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here p. 419. Also see Vizenor, Gerald, Manifest Manners: Narratives on Postindian Survivance (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999), p. viiGoogle Scholar.

44 Thrush, interview, 29 March 2017.

45 Making Treaty 7 Society and Quest Theatre, ‘We Are All Treaty People’, p. 5.

46 Baldy, Cutcha Risling, ‘Coyote Is Not a Metaphor: On Decolonizing, (Re)claiming and (Re)naming Coyote’, Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 4, 1 (2015), pp. 1–20Google Scholar, here p. 2.

47 Flowers, Rachel, ‘Refusal to Forgive: Indigenous Women's Love and Rage’, Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 4, 2 (2015), pp. 32–49Google Scholar, here p. 47.

48 Nolan, Yvette, Medicine Shows: Indigenous Performance Culture (Toronto: Playwrights Canada Press, 2015), p. 106Google Scholar.

49 Making Treaty 7 Society and Quest Theatre, ‘We Are All Treaty People’, p. 20.

50 Nikki Loach, interview, 6 April 2017.

51 Robinson, ‘Acts of Defiance’, p. 189.

52 Hunter, email, 9 March 2017.

53 Nolan, Medicine Shows, p. 31.

54 Making Treaty 7 Society and Quest Theatre, ‘We Are All Treaty People’, p. 21.

55 Troy Emery Twigg, interview, 14 February 2017.

56 Hunter, email, 28 June 2017.

57 I discuss language use onstage using We Are All Treaty People and several other Indigenous TYA productions in Canada in ‘Sitting with Truth, Language, Fences and Healing: The Truth and Reconciliation Commission Calls to Action and TYA in Canada’, Youth Theatre Journal, 32, 2 (2018), pp. 147–63, here pp. 153–5.

58 Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Dancing on Our Turtle's Back: Stories of Nishnaabeg Re-creation, Resurgence, and a New Emergence (Winnipeg: Arbeiter Ring Press, 2011); Simpson in Naomi Klein, ‘Dancing the World into Being: A Conversation with Idle No More's Leanne Simpson’, Yes Magazine, 5 March 2013; Simpson in Michael Rancic, ‘Leanne Betasamosake Takes Up Residency at Ryerson’, Now Magazine, 26 April 2017, https://nowtoronto.com/lifestyle/class-action/leanne-betasamosake-simpson-ryerson, accessed 27 February 2019.

59 Hunter, email, 9 March 2017.

60 Bastien, Blackfoot Ways of Knowing, p. 140.

61 Ibid.

62 Lukin-Linklater, Tanya, ‘Slow Scrape’, Dance Research Journal, 48, 1 (April 2016), pp. 24–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here p. 24.

63 Ibid.

64 Garret Smith, interview, 6 April 2017.

65 Dolan, Jill, ‘Performance, Utopia, and the “Utopian Performative”’, Theatre Journal, 53, 3 (2001), pp. 455–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar.