Tomson Highway is a playwright of Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kaspukasing. The play is based on the real life of Highway as he was born as a full-blood Cree, lived in a Native community that takes place in Wasaychigan Hill, and registered as a member of the Barren Lands First Nation (“Biography”). Native people have their own culture and beliefs; unique language and mythology. Most of his plays use Cree and Ojib language and show the issue of the women power in the community. As the period changes, the Canadian government tries to implement a new system to ensure that native people can cope and adapt with the world that keeps changing. The government tries to assimilate Christianity and Western culture by forcing the kids to go to the residential schools. They are not allowed to speak their own language, Cree, and stay with their parents so that they have less time spend on having a normal family life. As one of the ways to preserve Native cultures and beliefs, Highway uses the play as a medium to express their hardship in facing social challenges by the government. Tomson Highway explain the uniqueness of Cree language, the value of women in Native community and how the government’s strategy on modernizing Native people leads to the destruction of Native cultures.
Highway uses Cree and Ojib language in Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kaspukasing because they are very similar and the fictional reserve of Wasaychigan Hill has a mixture of both Cree and Ojibway residents (Highway 11). In the article by Susanne Methot, Highway mentions that Cree language is different from English in three ways; “the humour, the workings of the spirit world, the Cree language has no gender” (para 12). Language and culture are two things that relate with each oth...
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...people really gives scars and impacts on him.
Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing is the second play written by Tomson Highway that tells us about Native people who lives in Wasaychigan Hill after The Rev Sisters. Highway uses play as a medium to explain to the readers that Native people has their own culture that needs to be preserved and the impact that has occurred after the colonization by Western culture. According to CBC website, the Canadian government assume that aboriginal culture was unable to cope with the rapidly modernization which lead them to take action on helping them but everything goes wrong when the government prevent them to have normal family life. Tomson Highway receives two awards; Dora Mavor Moore Award and Floyd S. Chalmers Award for the play Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing because he manages to convey about the life of Native people.
The books intent is to challenge written histories and to reinterpret early Mi’kmaq-French relations, particularly religious history among the Mi’kmaq. Using both Mi’kmaq and Euro history/knowledge to do so. Through the revitalization of Mi’kmaq histories, culture, and spirituality the text both bridges non-Aboriginal peoples to new understandings of Canadian history, as well as bridging Mi’kmaq youth to their elders and culture (11).
...to identity with at least one of the countries predominate languages, English or French, dictated the degree in which they could participate in Canadian life. According to the Commission, this participation was real under two conditions: “that both societies, the French-speaking as well as the English-speaking, accept[ed] newcomers much more rapidly than they have done in the past; and that the two societies willingly allow other groups to preserve and enrich, if they so desire, the cultural values they prize[d]” (RCBB Book 1 xxv). It creates an interesting take on the acceptance of those “othered” groups, as change was necessary not only on the part of the minorities but also from Canada’s French and English-speakers. The Commissions work remains focused on language and culture, more so than ethnicity amongst a bilingual, bicultural and “othered” Canadian society.
Shostak, out of all the women in the tribe had made close connections with a fifty year old woman with the name of Nisa. The woman, Nisa, is what the book is about. The book is written in Nisa’s point of view of her life experiences while growing up in that type of society. Nisa’s willingness to speak in the interviews about her childhood and her life gave Shostak a solid basis on what to write her book on. Nisa’s life was filled with tragedies. She had gone through certain situations where Nisa loses two of her children as infants and two as adults. She had also lost her husband soon after the birth of one of their children. According to Shostak, “None of the women had experiences as much tragedy as Nisa…” (Shostak, 351).
The goal of this paper is to provide an examination of the book “The History of the Ojibway People” by William W. Warren as well as express some of what I learned about the book, the author and the Ojibway people. William W. Warren, born of a white father and Ojibway mother, used his fluent familiarity with the Ojibway language and his tremendous popularity with both whites and Indians to document the traditions and oral statements of the Ojibway people at a time when the future of their existence was in jeopardy.
Holism is present and the importance of nature and the maintenance of a traditional life-style (stick four). Through McLeod’s (2007) work we see a bond between landscape and other beings. “Through ceremonies, prayers, and songs, the Nehiyawak were able to communicate with other beings and the powers of the land around them, the Atayohkanak, the spiritual grandfathers and grandmothers” (p. 26). McLeod goes on to state that the power of ceremonies in a relationship is not limited to a human-to-human relationship. For example, “[t]he pipe stem is significant for the Nehiiyawak, the Dene and other Indigenous nations as a way of concluding arrangements… [it] was more than… a way of sealing political arrangements… it was a way of making and affirming relationships with the land, of honouring the spiritual powers who dwelt where the people were living.” (McLeod, 2007, p. 27) As well, language is a reoccurring theme. McLeod (2007) attributes much of the continuity of the Cree people to maintaining language which is often through the elders (in his instance, his
I will compare the sisters background briefly to show their temperament before coming to Canada. I will discuss how choices made shaped both the sisters initial success and failure to Upper Canada. Finally, I will compare the differences in the sisters attitudes and how it is reflected in both their books.
Across Canada and the United States there are many First Nations languages which are a part of the Algonquian language family, all of which with varying states of health. Although these languages share many characteristics of the Algonquian language family, the cultures, systems of beliefs, and geographic location of their respective Nations differentiate them. In being shaped by the landscape, cultures, and spirituality of the First Nations, the language brings the speakers closer to their land and traditions while reaffirming their identity as First Peoples. Using the Blackfoot Nation to further explore this concept, this paper will show that while language threads together First Nations culture, spirituality, traditions and land, as well as their identity, each of these essential components also maintain and revitalize the language.
In The Rez Sisters by Cree playwright Tomson Highway, the family road trip promotes each woman’s understanding of their relationships by creating an environment for personal growth and discovery. The road trip, with the help of Nanabush, helps reconnect the sisters and strengthen their bond so they are prepared for Marie-Adele's death. The inter-family conflicts show how the sisters encourage each other to be better people, survive the struggles of living on the rez, and support each other through hard times.
Reed, Kevin, Natasha Beeds, and Barbara Filion. Aboriginal Peoples in Canada. Toronto: Pearson Canada, 2011. Print.
In a desperate attempt to discover his true identity, the narrator decides to go back to Wisconsin. He was finally breaking free from captivity. The narrator was filling excitement and joy on his journey back home. He remembers every town and every stop. Additionally, he admires the natural beauty that fills the scenery. In contrast to the “beauty of captivity” (320), he felt on campus, this felt like freedom. No doubt, that the narrator is more in touch with nature and his Native American roots than the white civilized culture. Nevertheless, as he gets closer to home he feels afraid of not being accepted, he says “… afraid of being looked on as a stranger by my own people” (323). He felt like he would have to prove himself all over again, only this time it was to his own people. The closer the narrator got to his home, the happier he was feeling. “Everything seems to say, “Be happy! You are home now—you are free” (323). Although he felt as though he had found his true identity, he questioned it once more on the way to the lodge. The narrator thought, “If I am white I will not believe that story; if I am Indian, I will know that there is an old woman under the ice” (323). The moment he believed, there was a woman under the ice; He realized he had found his true identity, it was Native American. At that moment nothing but that night mattered, “[he], try hard to forget school and white people, and be one of these—my people.” (323). He
Paton is able to convey the idea of racial injustice and tension thoroughly throughout the novel as he writes about the tragedy of “Christian reconciliation” of the races in the face of almost unforgivable sin in which the whites treat the blacks unjustly and in return the blacks create chaos leaving both sides uneasy with one another. The whites push the natives down because they do no want to pay or educate them, for they fear “ a better-paid labor will also read more, think more, ask more, and will not be conten...
life in the mid to late twentieth century and the strains of society on African Americans. Set in a small neighborhood of a big city, this play holds much conflict between a father, Troy Maxson, and his two sons, Lyons and Cory. By analyzing the sources of this conflict, one can better appreciate and understand the way the conflict contributes to the meaning of the work.
In the 1964 play Dutchman by Amiri Baraka, formally known as Le Roi Jones, an enigma of themes and racial conflicts are blatantly exemplified within the short duration of the play. Baraka attacks the issue of racial stereotype symbolically through the relationship of the play’s only subjects, Lula and Clay. Baraka uses theatricality and dynamic characters as a metaphor to portray an honest representation of racist stereotypes in America through both physical and psychological acts of discrimination. Dutchman shows Clay, an innocent African-American man enraged after he is tormented by the representation of an insane, illogical and explicit ideal of white supremacy known as Lula. Their encounter turns from sexual to lethal as the two along with others are all confined inside of one urban subway cart. Baraka uses character traits, symbolism and metaphor to exhibit the legacy of racial tension in America.
...the characters show how loosing their write to vote and therefore express their opinion, and especially having to carry an identity booklet all the time (just because of the colour of their skin) can generate an inside crisis on one's identity. Is our identity determined by our name? Can we change name and be able to keep a stable identity? This play also raises the issue of being actors, just to survive in the society they lived in. Not being able to show their feelings and their disappointment at any time, obliged them to smile, sing, and fake.
The actions of the characters also add to the effect of the detail presented by Berendt. The people of Savannah are far from the proverbial "norm." They are a strange yet interesting group. Savannah is a very tranquil town that loves visitors as much as it loves parties; but it hates invaders. Many people have tried to come to Savannah and industrialize the city, or make it corporate in one way or another. They have always been immediately, though still politely, turned away. Even the driving in Savannah is kept tranquil. In fact, the citizens of Savannah have no choice about this. Traffic is not allowed in the squares that populate the town. Drivers have no choice but to go around. "So traffic is obliged to flow at a leisurely rate, " says Miss Harty. "The squares are our little oases of tranquillity"