“And you go out there in […] the Wild Rice Making Moon, and you put your prayers out, and you take your two sticks, your rice knockers and your partner and your pole and your canoe. And you go head out there into the lakes that your ancestors have been on for 10,000 years. And you go push out into the middle of the lake and you smell that fall.”
(Winona LaDuke).
In their first big movement between performance locations, the audience took the elevators from the atrium on the ground floor of the Library Building (LB) to the tenth floor, and after seeing sections two and three, Sky Woman and Family Stories, they travelled back down to the atrium and downstairs from there towards the underground. Throughout the performance we thought of these passages as an important part of the audience’s experience: a reminder of the formerly nomadic lifestyles of many of the Indigenous peoples on Turtle Island, of seasonal moves between hunting and harvesting grounds, of forced relocations, of flight and hardship brought on through the relentless processes of colonization and searches for new dwelling grounds.
Two pairs of students created small vignettes for these transitional moments that were performed in the elevators going up and down, Imagining Indians in the 25th Century, and Language Learning
Imagining Indians in the 25th Century – Witness a cosplay interpretation of Skawennati’s web-based piece Imagining Indians in the 25th Century, in which costumed actors will read excerpts from a young Kanien’kehá:ka woman’s time-travel journal.
Language Learning – inspired by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, members of the SenseLab team try to learn Indigenous languages.
CREDITS
Imagining Indians in the 25th Century
Performed by Anne-Marie St-Louis & Sara Flicht
Text by Skawennati
Language Learning
Performed by Jade Legault, Leni Krivy
Text/Idea: Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
