Aboriginal peoples of the Americas are known primarily through stories of tragedy, dismal statistics and romantic photography of their pre-colonial cultures. What is less commonly known is the story of colonialism itself, and the stories that are behind the traumas that make up colonialism’s continued legacy.
In her new play, The Edward Curtis Project: A Modern Picture Story, B.C.-based Métis playwright Marie Clements creates a unique and layered drama around the trauma of silence on colonialism.
The main character is Angeline, a reporter on aboriginal subjects. Angeline is writing a factual news story about a man who walked out of his home in the middle of a very cold northern night with his little girls in tow, looking for help for his sick child. Along the way, he passes out and loses his children. After waking from his drunken slumber, he finds his children frozen to death. Haunted by the image of frozen bodies and her own reportage, Angeline...
Wanda Nanibush is the Executive Director of ANDPVA, the oldest Indigenous arts organization. She is also a curator whose work re-contextualizes indigenous time-based media and performance art in terms of its philosophical complexity and rethinks how culture is framed. Her shows have included Mapping Resistances, Post Colonial Stress Disorder, Rez-Erection and Chronotopic Village. Her recent writing appears in FUSE and This is an Honour Song: Twenty Years Since the Blockades.
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