Tomson Highway – Playwright
Tomson Highway was born on his father’s trap-line in northern Manitoba on December 6, 1951, 100 miles north of the reserve that he belongs to called Brochet, Manitoba. His father, Joe Highway, was a trapper and fisherman, and a legendary dog sled racer.
Tomson is the eleventh of twelve children, five boys and seven girls. For the first six years of his life he lived a traditional nomadic lifestyle in the remote forests and lakes of northwestern Manitoba. Cree was the only language spoken among his family, and he only became fluent in English in his late teens. He was sent to a Roman Catholic boarding school at the age of six. He stayed there until age fifteen, and then was sent to Churchill high school in Winnipeg, where he stayed with a number of white foster families. He graduated in 1970.
After high school Tomson spent two years at the University of Manitoba Faculty of Music studying piano, which he had picked up at the age of thirteen. He then went to London, England where he studied to be a concert pianist with William Aide. After a year he returned to the University of Manitoba for a year and then went on to the University of Western Ontario where he graduated with a Bachelor of Music in May 1975. He stayed another year to complete English courses required for a Bachelor of Arts degree. During this period in his life he met and worked with poet/playwright James Reaney and saw his first Michel Tremblay play.
After University, he went to work with Native groups in Ontario and across Canada for seven years. When he turned thirty, he brought these experiences together and began to write plays. His plays were performed mostly on reserves and at urban Native community centres. He also worked with various native theatre companies as an actor, director and music director.
Also at this time, he decided to describe what he saw and felt: that being that the theatre had traditions that were similar to the aboriginal cultural experience (oral history). His fifth work, The Rez Sisters, which catapulted him into renown, was performed across the country (including in French by the Théâtre Populaire du Québec). It won him a Dora Mavor Moore Award as did his next play, Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing which also won the Chalmers Award.
He served on the faculty of the Native Theatre School and, from 1986 to 1992 he was Artistic Director of Native Earth Performing Arts.
Director’s Notes – David Ross
When Ron Ignace first handed me the Laurier Memorial a number of years ago, I was intrigued by the document, but not sure what to do with it. Perhaps it was a short film, in which Ron and his cousin Manny Jules, both Shuswap Nation chief’s at that time, would play their great grandfathers, and I would narrate the document much as James Teit, the Scottish Trader and secretary to the chiefs of the Shuswap, Okanagan, and Thompson Indians, had done a hundred years before.
While that idea was slowly gestating, John Dormer called one day to suggest a meeting with Robert Simon of the Secwepemc Cultural Education Society. Over coffee at the Grind, where a lot of ‘interesting’ ideas are born, Robert explained to Lori Marchand and I the SCES interest in the Laurier Memorial, and the idea of a co-commission began to take shape. Tomson Highway and I had met at the Banff Playwright’s Colony some years before when his play ROSE was being workshopped, and over more coffee we all agreed to approach Tomson.
The resulting script is what happens when an exceptional playwright turns his attention to fascinating material. What makes the Laurier Memorial fascinating are the revelations it offers regarding Aboriginal concepts of land ownership, kinship, and basic hospitality. What makes Tomson’s work exceptional is his ability to give shape to these principles through a day in the lives of four ‘ordinary’ women.
What makes being part of the Canadian Theatre world at this time so rich and rewarding is the support that we all give each other when real potential reveals itself. Bob White of Alberta Theatre Projects, Glynis Leyshon of the Vancouver Playhouse, and John Murrell of the Banff Playwright’s Colony have supported this project for several years now with workshops and residencies. In June 2003, we were invited by Marti Maraden of the National Arts Centre to present a reading of the play at the On The Verge Festival, which led to other theatres expressing their interest in the project, particularly Mary Vingoe of the Magnetic North Festival, who scheduled the play for inclusion in the 2004 Festival in Edmonton.
The bedrock upon which Tomson’s play rests is the Aboriginal concept of land ‘ownership’. The Douglas Claim of the Kamloops Indian Band is one very specific example to which the Laurier Memorial is relevant. It is our hope that this play will make some contribution to a resolution of the land claim issues that have plagued British Columbia for more than a century.
Conception of the Production
In August of 2000, Western Canada Theatre and the Secwepemc Cultural Education Society jointly commissioned Tomson Highway to create a play looking at the approximately 100 years from first contact between the Whites and the First Nations of this area to the time of the visit by Sir Wilfrid Laurier to Kamloops in 1910. As a starting point, Tomson was provided with a historical document referred to as the Laurier Memorial, a document that was dictated by the Chiefs of the Shuswap, Okanagan, and Thompson Nations to a Scottish secretary, James A. Teit. Teit translated the chief’s words into English, and the document was presented to Sir Wilfrid Laurier on August 25, 1910.
The decision to commission the play was soon followed by the application from the Kamloops Art Gallery and the University College of the Cariboo (UCC) to a program called the Community-University Research Alliance (CURA) funded by the federal government’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. The play was an ideal project to include in the application (which by the way, was successful) because of the historical component provided by the Laurier Memorial, and the fact that the development and research for the work would take place in a non-traditional, creative environment. Artists, researchers, and the local First Nations and national theatre community have all been involved in the creation of the play.
Development of the Production - Involvement with Banff Centre, CURA and Development of the Documentary Video
The development process began with an initial workshop in Kamloops, followed by a series of re-writes, and two subsequent workshops, one at the Banff Centre, and a subsequent reading in Kamloops. These workshops, attended by a dramaturge (in this case David Ross), actors and playwright, provided the opportunity for the playwright to hear his work out loud, and to benefit from the actors’ interpretation of the characters. Based on the strength of the initial workshop in Banff, David Ross and Tomson Highway received the Fletch Award – a two week residency with a cast, designers, technicians and a theatre to get the show “on its feet” at the Banff Centre in April, 2003. This aspect of the play’s development proved to be of interest to a documentary film company, Getaway Films Inc. Because the filming of the workshop tied in with CURA’s objective of documenting the research and creative process of a significant work of art in a small city, the CURA provided funding for the project
Thus in April of 2003 Artistic Producer David Ross brought four women actors, a lighting designer, a sound designer, along with Tomson Highway, to work further on the script and to mount a partial production/partial reading of the play for an invited audience of theatrical colleagues and the Banff community at the end of the two weeks. Also in constant attendance were a camera and sound recordist who began work on the documentary video.
Further readings of the production occurred at the Vancouver Playhouse’s Voices of the Americas new play Festival and the National Art’s Centre’s On The Verge Festival.
The CURA sponsored video documentary was completed after the opening of the production at the Sagebrush Theatre in Kamloops. The documentary has been confirmed for broadcast on the Bravo Network in 2004 with interest also being shown by APTN and the Knowledge Network.
Synopsis of the Production
In Ernestine Shuswap Gets Her Trout we spend time (a day) with four women in the process of preparing a banquet for the arrival of Sir Wilfrid Laurier. Tomson plays with time and with the scope of the tasks in such a way that 100 years (from first contact with the First Nations people to the time of Sir Wilfrid’s arrival) are condensed into the time frame of a day. This is no ordinary day as it is the day of the arrival of the Great Big Kahoona of Canada for which everything must be perfect, including the saskatoon pies, the stuffed beaver, the white muslin tablecloths and Ernestine Shuswap’s trout. As the day progresses, the women move through a world in transition. Fences and signs are erected in traditional berry picking territory, cows are moved from their pastures, and there is no more fishing in the river. New laws imposed by the whites create a dreadful chasm between the two communities directly affecting Delilah Rose Johnson who is married to a white man and carrying his child.
Tomson Highway, in his inimical way, juxtaposes humour with tragedy, base instincts with profound action, in four real, recognizable, fully developed female characters.
The language spoken by the women in this play, it must be stressed, is not English. Simply put, the Native people of the Thompson River Valley at the time here depicted (the early twentieth century) did not know the tongue. Rather, they spoke Shuswap, Okanagan, Thompson (or Couteau, as the latter “Nation” is otherwise known), and other native languages. In this play, they speak Shuswap, a tongue that works according to principles, and impulses, different entirely from those that underlie, that “motor”, the English language. For instance, because the principle that “motors” the Shuswap language is, in essence, a “laughing deity” (i.e. the Trickster), it is hysterical, comic to the point where its “spill-over” into horrifying tragedy is a thing quite normal, utterly organic. That is to say, as in most languages of Native North America (that I know of anyway), the “laughing god” becomes a “crying god” becomes a “laughing god”, all in one swift impulse.
Also, I would like to clarify that beaver was a staple of the Native diet here in North America for thousands upon thousands of years, as it is still in many regions of northern and western Canada (in Cree, my Native tongue, we call the animal, or dish, “amisk”). Hey, it’s not our fault if the English language came along and “appropriated” the term so that it now means something else completely and something completely, some might even say, inappropriate. We still eat it. It’s delish! Try it. You may just like it!
- Tomson Highway
Kim Nielsen – Set and Costume Designer
In discussions with the Director a set was required which would allow the audience to focus on the characters and their stories yet have the versatility of suggesting various settings. The set helps delineate the various pathways and roads the characters travel. As the locale is Kamloops the neutrality of the set is broken with a representational backdrop of Mount Peter and Paul.
The costumes worn by the women are period circa 1910. The style of the time was long dark coloured skirts with light coloured high collared blouses.
Memorial to Sir Wilfrid Laurier
“Dear Sir and Father,
We take this opportunity of your visiting Kamloops to speak a few words to you. We welcome you here, and we are glad we have met you in our country. We want you to be interested in us, and to understand more fully the conditions under which we live. We expect much of you, as the head of this great Canadian Nation, and feel confident that you will see that we receive fair and honourable treatment. Our confidence in you has increased since we have noted of late the attitude of your government towards the Indian rights movement if this country and we hope that with your help our wrongs may at last be righted. We speak to you the more freely because you are a member of the white race with whom we first became acquainted, and which we call in our tongue “real whites”.
One hundred years next year they came amongst us here at Kamloops and erected a trading post. After the other whites came to this country in 1858 we differentiated them from the first whites as their manners were so much different, and we applied the term “real whites” to the latter (the fur-traders of the Northwest and Hudson Bay companies. As the great majority of the company’s employees were French speaking, the term latterly became applied by us as a designation for the whole French race). The “real whites” we found were good people. We could depend on their word, and we trusted and respected them. They did not interfere with us, nor attempt to break up our tribal organizations, laws and customs. They did not try to force their conceptions of thins on us to our harm. Nor did they stop us from catching fish, hunting, etc. They never tried to steal or appropriate our country, nor take our food and life from us. The acknowledged our ownership of the country, and treated our chiefs as men. They never asked them to come here, but nevertheless we treated them kindly and hospitably and helped them all we could. They have made themselves (as it were) our guests.”
We treated them as such, and then waited to see what they would do. As we found they did us no harm our friendship with them became lasting. Because of this we have a ‘warm heart to the French at the present day’. We expect good from Canada.
When they first came amongst us there were only Indians here. They found the people of each tribe supreme in their own territory, and having tribal boundaries known and recognized by all. The country of each tribe was just the same as a very large farm or ranch (belonging to all the people of the tribe) from which they gathered their food and clothing; fish which they got in plenty for food, grass and vegetation on which their horses grazed and the game lived, and much of which furnished materials for manufactures; stone which furnished pipes, utensils and tools; trees which furnished firewood, materials for houses and utensils; plants, roots, seeds, nuts and berries which grew abundantly and were gathered in their season just the same as the crops on the ranch, and used for food; minerals, shells, etc. which were used for ornament and for plants; water which was free to all. Thus, fire, water, food, clothing and all the necessities of life were obtained in abundance from the lands of each tribe, and all the people had equal rights of access to everything they required. You will see the ranch of each tribe was the same as its life, and without it, the people could not have lived.
Just 52 years ago the other whites came to this country. They found us just the same as the other “real whites” had found us, only we had larger bands of horses, had some cattle, and in many places we cultivated the land. They found us happy, healthy, strong and numerous. Each tribe was still living in its own “house” or in other words on its own “ranch’. No one interfered with our rights or disputed our possession of our own “house’ and “ranches”, that is our home and lives. We were friendly and helped these whites also, for had we not learned the “first whites” had done us no harm? Only when some of them killed us, we revenged on them. Then we thought there are some bad ones among them, but surely on the whole they must be good. Besides they are the Queen’s people.
And we had already heard great things about the Queen from the “real whites”. We expected her subjects would do us no harm, but rather improve us by giving us knowledge, and enabling us to do some of the wonderful things they could do. At first they looked only for gold. We knew the latter was our property, but as we did not use it much, not need it to live by, we did not object to their searching for it. They told us, “your country is rich and you will be made wealthy by our coming. We wish just to pass over your lands in quest of gold”. Soon they saw the country was good, and some of them made up their mind to settle it.
They commenced to take up pieces of land here and there. They told us they wanted only the use of these pieces of land for a few years, and then would hand them back to us in an improved condition; meanwhile they would give us some of the products they raised for the loan of our land. Thus they commenced to enter our “houses”, “or live on our” “ranches”. With us when a person enters our house he becomes our guest, and we must treat him hospitably as long as he shows no hostile intentions.
At the same time we expect him to return to us an equal treatment for what he receives. Some of our Chiefs said, “These people wish to be partners with us in our country. We must, therefore, be the same as brothers to them, and live as one family. We will share equally in everything - half and half- in land, water, timber, etc. What is ours will be theirs, and what is theirs will be ours. We will help each other to be great and good.”
The whites made a government in Victoria - perhaps the Queen made it. We have heard it stated both ways. Their chiefs dwelt there. At this time they did not deny the Indian tribes owned the whole country and everything in it. They told us we did. We Indians were hopeful. We trusted the whites and waited patiently for their chiefs to declare their intentions toward us and our lands. We knew what had been done in the neighbouring states, and we remembered what we had heard about the Queen being so good to the Indians, and that her laws carried out by her chiefs were always just, and better than the American laws.
Presently chiefs (government officials etc,) commenced to visit us, and had talks with some of our chiefs. They told us to have no fear, the Queen’s law would prevail in this country, and everything would be well for the Indians here. They said a very large reservation would be staked off for us (southern interior tribes) and the tribal lands outside of this reservation, the government would buy from us for white settlement. They let us think this would be done soon, and meanwhile, until this reserve was set apart, and our lands settled for, they assured us we would have perfect freedom of travelling, and camping, and the same liberties as from time immemorial to hunt, fish, graze and gather our food supplies where we desired; also that all trails, land water, timber, etc. would be as free of access to us as formerly.
Our chiefs were agreeable to these propositions, so we waited for treaties to be made, and everything settled. We had never known white chiefs to break their word so we trusted. In the meanwhile white settlement progressed. Our chiefs held us in check. They said, “Do nothing against the whites. Something we did not understand retards them from keeping their promise. They will do the square thing by us in the end.”
What have we received for our good faith? Gradually as the whites of this country become more and more powerful, and we less and less powerful, they little by little changed their policy towards us, and commenced to put restrictions on us. Their government of chiefs have taken every advantage of our friendliness, weakness and ignorance to impose on us in every way. They treat us as subjects without any agreement to that effect, and force their laws on us without our consent, and irrespective of whether they are good for us or not.
They say they have authority over us. They have broken down our old laws and customs (no matter how good) by which we regulated ourselves. They laugh at our chiefs and brush them aside. Minor affairs amongst ourselves, which do not affect them in the least, and which we can easily settle better than they can, they drag into their courts. They enforce their own laws one way for the rich white man, one way for the poor white, and yet another for the Indian. They have knocked down (the same as) the posts of all the Indian tribes.
They say there are no lines, except what they make. They have taken possession of all the Indian country and claim it as their own. Just the same as taking the “house” or “ranch” and, therefore, the life of every Indian tribe into their possession. They have never consulted us in any of these matters, nor made any agreement. “Nor” signed “any” papers with us. They ‘have stolen our lands and everything on them’ and continue to use ‘same’ for their ‘own’ purposes.
They treat us as less than children and allow us ‘no say’ in anything. They say the Indians know nothing, and own nothing, yet their power and wealth has come from our belongings. The Queens law which we believe guaranteed us our rights, the B.C. government has trampled underfoot. This is how our guests have treated, used - the brothers we received hospitably in our house.
After a time they say that our patience might get exhausted and that we night cause trouble if we thought all the land was to be occupied by whites, they set aside many small reservations for us here and there over the country. This was there proposal, not ours, and we never accepted these reservations as settlement for anything, nor did we sign any papers or make any treaties about same. They thought we would be satisfied with this, but we never have been satisfied and never will be until we get our rights.
We thought the setting apart of these reservations was the commencement of some scheme they had evolved for our benefit, and that they would now continue until they had more than fulfilled their promises but although we have waited long, we have been disappointed. We have always felt the injustice done us, but we did not know how to obtain redress. We knew it was useless to go to war. What could we do? Even your government at Ottawa, into whose charge we have been handed by the B.C. government, gave us no enlightenment.
We have no powerful friends. The Indian agents and Indian office at Victoria appeared to neglect us. Some offers of help in the way of agricultural implements, schools, medical attendance, aid to the aged, etc. from the Indian department were at first refused by many of our chiefs or were never partitioned for, because for a time we thought the Ottawa and Victoria governments were the same as one, and these things would be charged against us and rated as payment for our land. Thus we got along the best way we could and asked for nothing. For a time we did not feel the stealing of our lands very heavily.
As the country was scarcely settled we still had considerable liberty in the way of hunting, fishing, grazing, over by far the most of it. However, owing to increased settlement. etc. In late years this was become changed, and we are being more and more restricted to our reservations, which in most places are unfit or inadequate to maintain us.
Except we can get fair play we can see we will go to the wall, and most of us be reduced to beggary or to continuous wage slavery. We have also learned lately that the British Columbia Government claims absolute ownership of our reservations, which means that we are practically landless. We only have a loan of these reserves in life rent, or at the option of the B.C. government. Thus we find ourselves without any real home in this our own country.
In a petition signed by fourteen of our chiefs and sent to your Indian department, July, 1908, we pointed out the disabilities under which we labour owing to the inadequacy of most of our reservations, some having hardly any good land, others no irrigation water, etc., our limitations re gardening lands for stock owing to fencing of so-called government lands by whites; the severe restriction put on us lately by the government re gardening and fishing; the depletion of salmon by over fishing of the whites, and other matters affecting us.
In many places we are debarred from camping, travelling, gathering roots and obtaining wood and water as heretofore. Our people are fined and imprisoned for breaking the game and fish laws, and using the same game and fish which we were told would always be ours for food, Gradually, we are becoming regarded as trespassers over a large portion of this, our country. Our old people say, “How are we to live. If the government takes our food from us they must give us other food in its place.”
Condition of living have been thrust on us which we did not expect, and which we consider in great measure, unnecessary and injurious, We have no grudge against the white race as a whole, nor against the settlers, but we want to have an equal chance with them of making a living. We welcome them to this country. It is not in most cases their fault. They have taken up and improved and paid for their lands in good faith. It is their government which is to blame by heaping up injustice on us. But it is also their duty to see their government does right by us, and gives us a square deal.
We condemn the whole policy of the B.C. government towards the Indian tribes of this country as utterly unjust, shameful and blundering in every way. We denounce same as being the main cause OT the unsatisfactory condition of Indian affairs in this country and the animosity and friction with the whites. So long as what we consider justice is withheld from us, so long will dissatisfaction and unrest exist among us, and we will continue to struggle to better ourselves. For the accomplishment of this end we and other Indian tribes of this country are now uniting and we ask the help of yourself and government in this fight for our rights.
We believe it is not the desire, nor policy of your government that these conditions should exist. We demanded that our land question be settled and ask that treaties be made between the government and each of our tribes, in the same manner as accomplished with the Indian tribes of the other provinces of Canada, and in the neighbouring parts of the United States. We desire that every matter if importance to each tribe be a subject of treaty, so we may have a definite understanding with the government on all questions of moment between us and them. In a declaration made last month, and signed by twenty-four of our chiefs (a copy of which has been sent to your Indian department) we have stated our position on these matters.
Now we sincerely hope you will carefully consider everything we have herewith brought before you and that you will recognize the disadvantages we labour under, and the darkness of the outlook for us if these questions are not speedily settled. Hoping you have had a pleasant sojourn in this country, and wishing you a good journey home, we remain