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...
... middle of paper ...
...y about the life of Native people to the audiences all over the world.
Works Cited
"A History of Residential Schools in Canada." CBCnews. Canadian Brodcasting Corporation, 07 Jan. 2014. Web. 26 Feb. 2014.
"Biography." Tomsonhighway.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Feb. 2014.
Cote, Margaret. "Language Reflects Culture." Language Reflects Culture. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Feb. 2014.
Highway, Tomson. “Tomson Highway: Native Voice.” Interview by Adrienne Clarkson. Adrienne Clarkson Present. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 1990. Web. 26 Feb. 2014.
Highway, Tomson. “Tomson Highway: Talks About the Cree Language.” Red Sky Performance. Red Sky Performance, n.d. Web. 26 Feb. 2014.
Highway, Tomson. Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing. Saskatoon: Fifth House, 1989. Print.
Methot, Suzanne. "The Universe of Tomson Highway." Quill & Quire. St. Joseph Media, Nov. 1998. Web. 26 Feb. 2014.
King, Thomas. “Let Me Entertain You. The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005. 61-89. Print.
The three main characters, Elijah, Xavier and Niska are losing their culture gradually throughout the novel. The Europeans tries to obliterate the Cree culture by setting up residential schools, which are schools that First Nations attend to learn the European culture and forget their own. All of the three main characters, Elijah, Xavier and Niska go through the residential school. At the school, children are not allowed to speak in their own tongue or they will be punished. As Niska describes, “When I was caught speaking my tongue, they'd for...
We see scenes where Mae is happily conversing with her mother in both English and Wampanoag in the car as they pass through a town of Wampanoag named streets. This visual imagery urges the viewer to wonder how these familiar representations of Indian words and sayings work to hide how the indigenous people live in modern times. With the lack of presence of local Native peoples in the forms of mass media, people have started to believe the myth of the disappearance of the Native peoples in places such as New England. The film also briefly gestures, through interviews, that people have started to dismiss Indians as being long gone from the world, and that non-Natives see them as “invisible people” in order to justify the Euroamerican absorption of indigenous regions. The film encourages us to understand that, even with the impact of history, Native peoples still live here, and that they are still connected to their native land, that their homeland is one of the most important relationships. Jessie explains, “I lost my land rights” Translated into Wampanoag is “I fall down onto the ground,” because “For Wampanoag people to lose one’s land, is to fall off your
In the 1950s and 1960s, the government began abolishing the compulsory residential school education among Aboriginal people. The government believed that Aboriginal children could receive a better education if they were integrated into the public school system (Hanson). However, residential schools were later deemed inappropriate because not only were the children taken away from their culture, their families and their people, but the majority of students were abus...
Thomson Highway’s, “The Rez Sisters”, is a play written about a group of sisters living on a reserve in Wasayachigan Hill, in Manitoulin Island, Ontario. During the course of the play, Thomson provides an exploration of ambitions, dreams and reality.
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.
...rs, '?was one of the most toughing exuberant, cleverly crafted and utterly entrancing plays?';(Cover The Rez Sisters.) Tomson Highway did a great job at giving the reader an idea of what reserve life is about. He gave us the opportunity to experience the hardships of native people and some insight to how they form their identity.
MacDougall, Brenda. One of the Family: Metis Culture in Nineteenth-Century Northwestern Saskatchewan. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2010.
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.
According to conservative conflict theory, society is a struggle for dominance among competing social groups defined by class, race, and gender. Conflict occurs when groups compete over power and resources. (Tepperman, Albanese & Curtis 2012. pg. 167) The dominant group will exploit the minority by creating rules for success in their society, while denying the minority opportunities for such success, thereby ensuring that they continue to monopolize power and privilege. (Crossman.n.d) This paradigm was well presented throughout the film. The European settlers in Canada viewed the natives as obstacles in their quest of expansion by conquering resources and land. They feared that the aboriginal practices and beliefs will disrupt the cohesion of their own society. The Canadian government adopted the method of residential schools for aboriginal children for in an attempt to assimilate the future generations. The children were stripped of their native culture,...
When a native author Greg Sams said that the reservations are just “red ghettos”, the author David disagree with that. He thinks there must be something else beyond that point. After his grandfather died, he somehow changed his mind. Because he could not think anything e...
Residential schools were first established in the 1880's to solve Canada's “Indian Problem”. Settlers in Canada thought of the First Nations people as savages, and the goal of the residential schools was to civilize them and integrate them in to white Canadian society. The first operators of residential schools thought of their forced integration as a benefit to native peoples. One of the overseers of residential schools wrote to the Sisters in charge of St. Joseph's Mission at Williams Lake that “It now remains for ...
Quinlan, Don, Doug Baldwin, Rick Mahoney, and Kevin Reed. The Canadian Challenge. N.p.: Oxford University Press, 2008.
The creation of the Residential Schools is now looked upon to be a regretful part of Canada’s past. The objective: to assimilate and to isolate First Nations and Aboriginal children so that they could be educated and integrated into Canadian society. However, under the image of morality, present day society views this assimilation as a deliberate form of cultural genocide. From the first school built in 1830 to the last one closed in 1996, Residential Schools were mandatory for First Nations or Aboriginal children and it was illegal for such children to attend any other educational institution. If there was any disobedience on the part of the parents, there would be monetary fines or in the worst case scenario, trouble with Indian Affairs.
Nina Raine’s Tribes tells the story of a deaf man named Billy who has returned home from college and is living with his hearing family. Tribes shows us how this modern London family grapples with miscommunication and the neediness of each character. Billy struggles to be a part of his hearing family and finds himself watching them interact from the sidelines, never involved in what they’re talking about. Billy meets Sylvia and is introduced to the vast world that is the Deaf community for the first time. Tribes follows Billy’s attempt to find his place between the two worlds in the Deaf community and with his family.