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In the play, “The Rez Sisters” by Tomson Highway there are seven closely related Cree women who live on the Wasaychigan Hill Indian Reserve. Highway writes his play with lighthearted humor. Yet, Highway’s play has a serious meaning that pushes boundaries and gives the audience an insight into what life is like living on a reserve. Mainly, throughout the play there is a strong message of finding the women’s identity, and empowerment within the women. Initially, my essay will begin that Highway’s play is a view into what life on a reserve is like. For example, in the academic journal "Cultural collision and magical transformation: the plays of Tomson Highway." by Anne Nothof she says that “Wasaychigan means window in Ojibway [thus] the reserve …show more content…
functions ... as a metonym for Native communities across the country...” Additionally, Highway portrays this window into the life on a reserve through his play by displaying Cree culture, poverty, and an underdeveloped community.
Furthermore, I will be discussing the women’s loss of identity. The women believe that life outside of the reservation is better. For instance, the women believe that “the bingos ... are getting kind of boring...”(Tomson, 14) on the reserve. Therefore, the women believe that they should leave the reserve and go to Toronto for more opportunity. Also, the women feel that white men treat women better, however, the white men treat the women harshly too. After the feeling of lost identity for the women, the women begin to empower each other. Highway portrays a special bond between the women and shows that together they can achieve their goals of raising enough money and going to the bingo. Also, while the women are driving, the women empower each other when they share intimate stories with one another. Additionally, when Marie-Adele almost faints the other women are there to protect her and make sure Marie-Adele is okay. Thus, like in the research journal, “Constructing the Female Self-A Reading Of Tomson Highway’s The Rez Sisters.” by KS Reschmi
proclaims “[w]hen they need support, all are there for each other” because the women are able to empower each other. Following, I will discuss how the Cree culture still remains and has been with the women the entire time during their journey. For instance, the women end up back on the reserve where they started. Additionally, Nanabush is with the women the entire time, which portrays that wherever the women are, their Cree culture will always be with them. Overall, Marie-Adele’s death brings the women closer together, and more at ease with their lives. As well, the women's connections become stronger and the women feel complete and satisfied. Furthermore, the women learn that together they are able to complete a goal by supporting each other. Therefore, the women will be able to build a community and way of life and be proud of their Cree culture.
Examination of the female experience within indigenous culture advanced the previous perceptions of the native culture experience in different ways. This book's nineteen parts to a great extent comprise of stories from Pretty-Shield's
Lives for Native Americans on reservations have never quite been easy. There are many struggles that most outsiders are completely oblivious about. In her book The Roundhouse, Louise Erdrich brings those problems to light. She gives her readers a feel of what it is like to be Native American by illustrating the struggles through the life of Joe, a 13-year-old Native American boy living on a North Dakota reservation. This book explores an avenue of advocacy against social injustices. The most observable plight Joe suffers is figuring out how to deal with the injustice acted against his mother, which has caused strife within his entire family and within himself.
In the text “Seeing Red: American Indian Women Speaking about their Religious and Cultural Perspectives” by Inés Talamantez, the author discusses the role of ceremonies and ancestral spirituality in various Native American cultures, and elaborates on the injustices native women face because of their oppressors.
This book report deal with the Native American culture and how a girl named Taylor got away from what was expected of her as a part of her rural town in Pittman, Kentucky. She struggles along the way with her old beat up car and gets as far west as she can. Along the way she take care of an abandoned child which she found in the backseat of her car and decides to take care of her. She end up in a town outside Tucson and soon makes friends which she will consider family in the end.
It describes the many positive and memorable events shared there. These experiences allowed the woman to cherish and appreciate the revere and all it can naturally offer. The speaker also discusses the significance of the life on the reserve in regards to nature for aboriginal in contrast to how non-aboriginal views it.
As Mother’s Day approaches, writer Penny Rudge salutes “Matriarchs [who] come in different guises but are instantly recognizable: forceful women, some well-intentioned, others less so, but all exerting an unstoppable authority over their clan” (Penny Rudge), thereby revealing the immense presence of women in the American family unit. A powerful example of a mother’s influence is illustrated in Native American society whereby women are called upon to confront daily problems associated with reservation life. The instinct for survival occurs almost at birth resulting in the development of women who transcend a culture predicated on gender bias. In Love Medicine, a twentieth century novel about two families who reside on the Indian reservation, Louise Erdrich tells the story of Marie Lazarre and Lulu Lamartine, two female characters quite different in nature, who are connected by their love and lust for Nector Kashpaw, head of the Chippewa tribe. Marie is a member of a family shunned by the residents of the reservation, and copes with the problems that arise as a result of a “childhood, / the antithesis of a Norman Rockwell-style Anglo-American idyll”(Susan Castillo), prompting her to search for stability and adopt a life of piety. Marie marries Nector Kashpaw, a one-time love interest of Lulu Lamartine, who relies on her sexual prowess to persevere, resulting in many liaisons with tribal council members that lead to the birth of her sons. Although each female character possibly hates and resents the other, Erdrich avoids the inevitable storyline by focusing on the different attributes of these characters, who unite and form a force that evidences the significance of survival, and the power of the feminine bond in Native Americ...
The story depicts the injustices experienced by both women of the land owning class and the indigenous people.
Fitts, Alexandra. "Sandra Cisneros's modern Malinche: a reconsideration of feminine archetypes in Woman Hollering Creek." International Fiction Review 29.1-2 (2002): 11+. Academic OneFile. Web. Mar. 2014.
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.
The play The Rez Sisters is written by one of Canada's most celebrated playwrights, Tomson Highway. Highway was born in 1951 in northwestern Manitoba. He went on to study at the University of Manitoba and graduated from the University of Western Ontario, with honors in Music and English. Native Literature is inspired by 'contemporary social problems facing native Canadians today; alcohol and drug abuse, suicide, wife battering, family violence, the racism of the justice system, loneliness, rejection, youth awareness, as well as modern-day environmental issues.';(P. 172 Native Literature in Canada.) Highway once said, 'We grew up with myths. They're the core of our identity as people.';(P. 172 Native Literature in Canada.) I am going to focus on the image and identity of Native people as seen through the play The Rez Sisters.
... However, through the narrators partial freedom she more importantly finds a new compassionate/humane path on her journey to womanhood. Also, this new path in itself acts as a sort of self-healing for the grief experienced by the narrator. Though only partial freedom was found and cultural boundaries were not shattered, simply battered, the narrator’s path was much preferable to that of her sisters (those who conformed to cultural boundaries).
In American Indian Stories, University of Nebraska Press Lincoln and London edition, the author, Zitkala-Sa, tries to tell stories that depicted life growing up on a reservation. Her stories showed how Native Americans reacted to the white man’s ways of running the land and changing the life of Indians. “Zitkala-Sa was one of the early Indian writers to record tribal legends and tales from oral tradition” (back cover) is a great way to show that the author’s stories were based upon actual events in her life as a Dakota Sioux Indian. This essay will describe and analyze Native American life as described by Zitkala-Sa’s American Indian Stories, it will relate to Native Americans and their interactions with American societies, it will discuss the major themes of the book and why the author wrote it, it will describe Native American society, its values and its beliefs and how they changed and it will show how Native Americans views other non-Natives.
Spirituality is universal to human beings in the sense that each individual searches for a meaning to their life by taking a look at the bigger picture. The Cree author, Tomson Highway, displays the importance of Aboriginal spirituality in his play, The Rez Sisters. In particular, an Aboriginal sacred figure, called Nanabush (Gadacz), attempts to restore lost morality to a reserve known as Wasychigan Hill. Similarly, a Canadian author, Joseph Boyden, introduces a bringer of Christian spirituality named Christophe “Crow”, to a tribe of Huron, in his novel called The Orenda. In The Rez Sisters, Nanabush focuses to return Aboriginal culture to
Leslie Marmon Silko, a Laguna writer, uses Storyteller as a way to express and bridge the gap between oral tradition and writing. Silko connects the past with the present and details the unique way Native Americans have experienced the world. Through these stories, we see the Native American struggle to maintain identity and independence as white culture infiltrates society and attempts to destroy tribal identity. It becomes clear that the Laguna people reject the danger of uniformity and thus use stories to maintain legacy, seek out identity, and as a powerful weapon against assimilation and colonialism.
This novel shows the struggle of two women suffering against the Taliban society. Their similar suffering leads to the mother-daughter bond they created later in the book. The quote, "Women like us. We endure. It's all we have", can be used to exemplify the importance of hope, strength, and courage. Everyday, Mariam and Laila faced oppression and injustice, yet the book ended with a sense of pleasure. Mariam's mother believes that women have no choice but to be tough and survive.