 because this is a free and open space and everyone's moving in and out. I am actually going to do a little karakia, a prayer to start with. I will say it's to the Creator and Māori it would be to Atua, the God. It's whatever you want to believe in. So this is just to make this space sacred for us for now and to thank Ohoni and other people who've been here. So whoever you want to observe that, that's what we're going to do first, okay? So it goes like this. And Creator, please make the Wi-Fi work. So we are very lucky today. We're beaming in from Canada, Andy Moro and Tara Bagan because the technology is working so well right now. We're actually going to cut right to them because I'm really here to just do a shout out for as many indigenous artists activists who are doing their thing, right? So there they are. These guys on holiday and they took time off from their holiday. So a round of applause for them taking time off from their holiday. And they are the co-creators and makers of a company called Article 11. Why did you call yourselves Article 11? The 11th article of the... That's you. Oh, that sounds crazy. Okay, so the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People was adopted around the world when it was offered up in September 2007 by every nation except... United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand opted out. So everywhere where there are vocal and artistically vibrant indigenous peoples. And of course, we're everywhere, but there seem to be sort of more of a distinct and sidelined indigenous societies in those four countries was rejected. So in the 11th article of the UN DRIPS, it states that indigenous people have a right to their two-hour cultures, arts, history, artifacts, traditions, not only those that are existing, but also to move them into the contemporary and to our own way of practicing and to have the resources to be able to do so. So we felt like it would be an interesting thing to name our company after something that is such a basic human right. And it also opens up, we believe that the doorway into the conversation that is happening quite a bit in Canada, which is this notion of a term called cultural genocide. It's like qualifying the word rape, you know, brutal rape. When is it not? Genocide is genocide. When it's cultural, it's just a means to an end in a slightly more polite way. So yeah, our every waking moment is kind of about fighting the fight and making art that we feel like we can be proud of and that our ancestors can be proud of and these kids and my niece and nephew and all the ones to come will be proud of. And so that when they have to work, when they're doing their own work, it's not going to be as difficult for them. So what, tell us about some of the work you've been making. I think on Facebook you said you've worked on five to seven shows this year. You're flying across the nations all the time. So tell us about some of the work you're really proud of. Let me start with Reckoning. Well, the most recent thing we did was in Montreal, a piece called Reckoning, which Tara started writing a long time ago and sidelined it for a while because it was so personal for her. And then once we really kind of engender ourselves as Article 11 and started to have the resources to develop, we worked on a piece called Reckoning, which is about the very current and not just in Canada, but other parts of the world where there is a kind of a reconciliation process happening or attempted. So here there's this quite branded process begun by the government to sort of unearth the traumas of the period of time that many of you may know about, which is the residential school system and those children that were taken, literally plucked out of their communities and away from their families. Oftentimes families not even knowing where they went or for how long. And the kids certainly not knowing where they were and raised to be white basically. And it was an established policy of the Canadian government to, it was acknowledged by our first Prime Minister that despite all the education efforts, if a child remains with his or her family, they will therefore, they will thereby remain a savage. So that's why those residential schools were created to take the children away from their families and fully inculturate them to Christianity and sort of the way of living. So anyway, this piece is about a very current fallout from that process, the truth and reconciliation, which is acknowledging what the government did, but not necessarily taking care of those who have to relive that trauma and exist within the fallout in the community. So that's the most recent piece we did. We just had Montreal with a great group of artists. What do we do with that? So that's a, that's a triptych piece. It works with dance and it's scored two texts from official documents from the trip and reconciliation hearings adjudicators. So the people who worked and bore witness to these, the tellings of these heinous crimes that were perpetrated against children. So that the first piece is a dance to that, to that text. That one is very realistic two-hander. And the third is a monologue scored with video. So it's a by nature is multi-disciplinary. And I think that's, you know, this conversation comes up often like, what is Canadian theater? What is Indigenous theater? And I think when it comes to Indigenous theater, I think it is a desire and a proficiency with multiple disciplines that necessarily get woven together to tell stories that are very specific, but that also branch out to be used to other people. And hopefully people who inhabit Indigenous life. So that was just adding to what you said. So we've been bound up. Go ahead, David. I was just saying, we're talking to dramaturgs here. So when it comes to Indigenous dramaturgy, I know you actually coined the term Andy, design to you as well. Do you have a kind of way that you work that you could share or a way that people who are non-Indigenous can work with Indigenous artists as dramaturgs? Can you start that? Yeah, it's, we really appreciate that. For sure the rehearsal standards and the way that funding is supporting the rehearsal standards in Canada is contrary to what we believe is really effective, which is being able to be up in space and on our feet as soon as possible and asking the actress to get as familiar with the text as they can as soon as possible, working with design from day one. So for me as a playwright, which is probably how I spend most of my time when I'm working, is writing. My writing became more possible when I saw Andy's work as a designer. So when I'm conceiving of a piece, I'm right away considering the reality that nobody's going to say that this is impossible or this can't be done, or we could never have the budget to do that because Andy's skill and capabilities are such that it feels like I can just write whatever I want and imagine it all into being and then you will make it so. So I'm pretty lucky that way. So what we do is, for example, I guess the most recent play that I wrote, I wrote a play in February that I've been, it's been steeping for a long time, but I actually typed it out in February at the BAMP colony. I don't know if Brian's there, but hi Brian, hi Jenna, I feel there. Brian is here, Brian is in the house. Yay! So I was writing not at all what I was invited to write there, but Brian was very supportive of that. It's a vengeance play called Dear Woman and it's basically an ode to survivors of some of you may not know that in Canada there is a real epidemic of our indigenous women and girls being murdered, abducted and trafficked. The works, it's in a bad way and it's quite contrary to the we're so polite, oh gosh, we're pretty nice A reputation that Canada likes to propagate. So we try to talk about that as much as we can. This piece was, it's a solo performer piece and Andy and I immediately started speaking about, if it's called Dear Woman and we picture very clearly this strong, frankly large-bodied indigenous woman with the presence of antlers everywhere. So if we're seeing a female human talking about feeling like she has antlers, what does that mean? If the male of the deer is the one who has antlers, what does it mean when a woman feels she has antlers? So we quickly realize that the character is too spirited and that there will be a presence that is probably mostly encircling her through projection that shifts as she speaks the story and the more she reveals her weapons that she butchers a man with, the more those weapons kind of weed into the video scape of antlers. So right away Andy and I talk about what the piece might look like and usually early on we know if it's an article 11 show or not and we feel like this one is. So as soon as I came close to a draft, we had a long bribe and I read the whole thing to him and then we spoke about what we saw, what we felt, what we heard, why we agreed that we feel like somehow the stage moves if you don't know to what degree. So right off the get go we work with the space that the storyteller, the actor will be telling the story with the rest of us and how do we make that happen and even as kind of gross as it seems thinking about how we will frame that in grant applications so that people don't think we're doing something extraordinary luxurious but that it's actually something that will enrich the work from the beginning so that it's a stronger piece that can get to its realization early. Okay so one of the big things they have here we're talking about art and activism like as a cross section between those things do you even see that there is two different things or do when you say an article 11 show or not and lumping into that the celebrating of Canada 150 I saw your article on spiderweb show with the upside down maple leaf so how do you frame activism in your art? Yeah I want to quote Jesse on that. So you know we did a piece that we called declaration which is a performative installation piece that you know one of the biggest shortcuts we have to that what we're sort of defining as design and energy and that collaborative way of working and what makes it indigenous is that we make sure that we're in an indigenous environment and that we are speaking to each other I mean we're sort of the shortcut is when you can create a team or assemble a team that already knows the base language which isn't English or physical or anything it's just like we know what the we know how to approach story already so yeah Tara and I have an advantage in terms of spending every second of our time together but when you create a team that has that common understanding of what story is that's a way that all of the elements can come into the room simultaneously and I'm talking physical and metaphysical layers that you can just grab together so the reason I said that is because we did a piece called declaration or it's a recurring piece that molds itself to wherever we are whatever territory we're in and whatever artists we're working with and one of them we did with a great thinker and theorist and cultural commentator named Jesse Wenty and he was addressing the fact that one of the people we were working with had to deal with somebody's question which was why is your work always so political you know as indigenous First Nations work why is it always so political and you know Jesse Wenty framed that in a way that we are all so grateful for which was that by nature of our existence the work that we create is political and we didn't make it political it's colonialism that made what we do political we were creating work and making culture and singing and dancing before anybody else was here so it's the arrival of that kind of thought and that imposed structure that makes our very existence political so in that way art and activism are inseparable just by virtue of the fact that we're here and we're making it we still pine for the time when you know indigenous performers can be doctors and cops and teachers without being prostitutes and drug addicts and abusers you know so we're waiting for that to happen that's another side of how work becomes politicized but in terms of the creation of it it is by its nature political whether we want to write a musical about peanut butter or talk about people having this that is because the phone is actually balancing on a peanut butter jar right now just so you know so we want to start conversations I wonder if anyone has any questions for them if anyone's got any questions because we are going to do some other things in this session does anyone have any questions that like to ask your hand is going up Vivian okay hi my name is Vivian Chase and I'm a non-binary dramaturg from the east coast hello good a lot of my work is focused on the dramaturgy of direct action and other similar political interventions and I understand that performativity and theater is a major part of indigenous organizing in Canada and I'm interested if you might talk about your experience in a way those things are integrated and how the sort of performative culture of a lot of the nations for example influences the theater community and what that relationship is oh my god we could only kind of catch every other word of that is there some way can somebody maybe type the question the mic was just cutting in and out or even David seemed to hear David better maybe he can paraphrase you are talking about non-binary things and two spirited theater as well and also pipeline sorry I'm having trouble I would say just put the mic closer hey sorry about that can you hear me better now is this better no it's still not working guys are those two different mics it's no we can't sorry sorry it's so awful it's terrible we want to hear the relationship between performative culture and political organizing that is the question performative culture and political organizing I don't have any more I don't have any great thoughts about that except that recently Andy always does this thing where when he comes out of the shower he has these big thoughts so sometimes when he showers I just go in there and sit and hang out and listen to him say things but anyway about a week ago that's a secret everyone about a week ago when we were still in Montreal and he came out of the shower and he said do you believe that thoughts and intentions can actually change the world in a larger scale which of course is what we ask ourselves all the time during this work and in history it was a good reminder because we were very tired as we all always are we're fucking underfunded as we all always are and we were just feeling really weighted by that and fortunately Andy came out with this lovely shower thought and it made me realize that yes of course like I do believe that intention and speaking a thing and the more that people hear the thing the more that you will affect change it's slow as hell but I think that if we are if in our performance we for example Jonathan Fisher in Reckoning we've created this piece specifically for this brilliant actor Jonathan Fisher and he stands up there and he speaks to he's videoing a suicide message to his community and he takes a moment and speaks how he believes because of residential school none of his goodness could live inside his body and thrive and he believes that he put that his goodness into his nephew and in there he could see what was good about him and nurture that and he believed that that goodness will carry through in his nephew's life and there there are many nations including mind and look at my people who believe that the abuncular relationship is important and more so than sometimes a fatherly one because you can't guarantee that you're related to your nephew but you can't guarantee that your son is yours right so as funny as that is an uncle is in many ways I mean an uncle is closer to you in some ways so the truth in that and the sending that feeling out into the world and ourselves having a nephew whose father isn't able to be present the way that maybe he should be maybe that message will go out and there will be children who feel and understand that the direct father mother relationship thing doesn't have to be the be all and end all it can be your uncle who's also your auntie or it can be your uncle who feels like a mother to you or whatever that is the creativity in what immediate family can be I think is something that through the arts can affect that change I don't know if this is all addressing your question I'm so sorry but it's just the thing that haunted to my mind but I feel like if we speak these things is there a clarifying remark? I don't see any other questions but I was going to say on the performative aspect about I don't know more when I went back and it was researching political activism and I adorn on me again how powerful I don't know more was and they're just going on to the streets with your drum and marching really made a difference and changed people's minds and also galvanized political action for the future so I'm just wondering what your thoughts are on that my thinking is that I think in many ways it started it started to spread an understanding of non-indigenous indigenous people that indigenous cultures and stories are relevant to them and also include them because it wasn't a case of choosing to go to a pow or choosing to go to ceremony it was there when you were running out to the mall after work or whatever it was so the kind of I guess ubiquity of indigenous voices at that time I think strengthened understanding that we're responsible for each other and maybe started to just kind of grow empathy and non-indigenous people for the reality that indigenous history is everybody's who lives here I think that that helped there's something connected David I'm not sure exactly how directly but there's something about the way that for us and for indigenous nations everywhere performance isn't as inclusive as it is in the western world and the way it's so closely related to religion or the architecture of a church or that environment where there are spectators and spectated we know that our histories include a much more inclusive kind of performative storytelling experiential relationship so in a lot of ways the desperation of movements like I don't know more is the purest way that we can bring that kind of storytelling into this society just because it has to happen right now so you get out there with the tools you have and you tell that story you know so I think that's the interesting game that we play with trying to work the way we do and have this kind of performative dramaturgical politicization in a medium that is very western you know how do we push those boundaries internally into how we create the work and then how it is communicated and received in a way that doesn't become for lack of a better term a menstrual show you know and that's the challenge in terms of making work that is inherently indigenous in a nature of performative relationship that isn't that to me is a big part of why I don't know more and I will strive to create in how we do the work we do in that instance okay I think we might leave you guys but you can stay online and maybe join in the discussion after or you can go back to your holiday it's your choice so can we have a big round of applause for Andy and Tara thank you David I love you okay so now we are going to can we put that on the full screen please indigenous art activism so due to the lights I don't know if you can see that we don't cross your borders one of the things I was trying to do when I put this together was that we don't really think about Canada and America so much we think about our nations that have been there for 10,000 years and longer the other thing was I thought I put a totem pole up there because most of you know what that is right next slide and one of the things I can do to try and say what activism is I would say this guy Dylan Robinson wrote a really great thing on welcoming sovereignty which was when you come to a totem pole think of it like a border station think about you are crossing into someone else's land think about all the things that would happen to you when you went from the US to the Canadian border they would say what is your intention why are you coming here what's in your bags have you got anything dangerous how long are you coming for are you coming on holiday or are you coming to live what are you going to do when you come here to contribute right that is a really different way to think about a totem pole right I've created for many different reasons but this guy really made me go oh that's a really different way to make your brain think something new right from something that we often just go oh it's a totem pole they get reduced to toothpick holders right souvenirs from Canada next screen I'm going to go through the PowerPoint I had very quickly because I want you to be able to have some questions and this is someone I would have liked to Skype in his name is Ty Defoe he is a really amazing artist and a prayer of motion was something he talked about in dance and he does the hoop dance and if we had time we would go to his link where he talks about it but here there is actually a two-spirited pow wow so you could all go to that people are saying oh how can we get indigenous people into the theatre how about we start going out and going what are they making what can we enter into it's a very open thing and it's very new ok so next slide the other thing I do want to do was say that a lot of people have honoured the nations we're on we're here I actually found a documentary made about the Ohoni nation and it talked about the shell mounds which are just down here and the mall that was built on top of them the bodies that were dug up there was a whole lot of bars there there was a paint factory eventually they said well yeah but a mall is more important so that is what is built there I don't know what the banquet marina was built on but when you come to a new nation like I say you think about the place that you're going and you do some research into the local people and if you remember in Vancouver we actually got someone from the nation to welcome us to the place so I'm not saying it was easy to find someone but that would be the start of a relationship with the people who were here ok so next slide can you read that so I teach indigenous screenwriting in the Kapilano University in Vancouver and one of the things I do and I teach non-indigenous students too I use this film Real Engine by Neil Diamond how many people have seen this film it's a fantastic film for locating how the stereotypes are made by Hollywood you can't really talk about theatre without talking about film because film created all the stereotypes and this is actually a really good research paper too it's a very well done he has an objective to work out how the Hollywood Indian was created he goes on a journey, he uses different methodologies to work out he does some ethnographic research, he does an experiment and then he comes to a conclusion and one of the big conclusions is that Zacharias Kunig and director of the Ardoringer class runner is the way we should be making film he is one of the most prominent film directors and I thought I'd put Moana up there for Ken I love Moana and it passes the Bechdel test so Moana is a great response to Pocahontas because there was a lot of activism about what Pocahontas was and wasn't and I actually brought along The Inconvenient Indian by Thomas King okay so this is the set text he actually does this great thing he actually researches John Smith and Pocahontas John Smith actually made up that story three times about three different places he went to that he was befriended by a local girl that they wanted to kill him and that she saved his life he actually told that story three times before he told it here he didn't meet Pocahontas until he was in England probably and he was a lot older but it's a story that pervades and he was sexualized and she needs him so next slide so Haka was standing rock if you're on Facebook you should like this page when people ask me about what Amari doing what the Dakota Sioux did was they said we want the indigenous people of the world to support us and they particularly asked Amari so a guy Timohawa Shane Nakora went on Facebook to Haka in which you will probably translate and I could translate it as a war challenge but this was a political challenge and he said do it however you like so not many people actually did it but they created their own Haka and they put them on YouTube so there's a ton of these and there's all over Amari all over the world put them and posted them and here are some people on a beach in New Zealand doing one across to the standing rock and they actually just broke the world record in New Zealand 7700 people doing the Haka together after a rugby game that's one of our most powerful things when I was doing this dancing actually was the thing that I was going oh actually dance comes more natural to indigenous people I think because we just do it from when we were kids okay next slide Children of God has been talked about yesterday I wanted to just do a shout out to the NAC for programming it but also Kevin Loring is the figure in the front he just became the creative director for the indigenous theater which has just started at DIC I would show you the link but we haven't got time so we're just going to race through these now I wanted to include a bit of sport because there is a big performative element for indigenous people in sport because we often end up playing sport because we're big and strong and we end up playing rugby or you end up playing different sports this guy on the left is Adam Goods he won Australia in the year he's an Aboriginal he was playing a game in Australia and a girl in the stand called him an ape so he stopped the game and he got kicked out of the stadium next time he started playing people started booing him and so he did an Aboriginal war dance during the game which caused an enormous amount of controversy you can look at the link and I thought I'd put up Colin Kaepernick too because that is a ritual performance that he did while everyone else was going on the stand up he took a knee he actually just made a huge statement on Twitter about the police state he donated $50,000 to Standing Rock Health Clinic so that's one of the big things about access is that we actually need money to make things happen and we need people to stand up okay next this is Toma Iti this is actually his Twitter handle Toma Iti is a two boy who he noticed many things activist, artist, terrorist and cyclist living in the heart of two boy nation we were having a treaty settlement ceremony in New Zealand and he shot the New Zealand flag with a shotgun he wasn't charged he was warned about firearms things he is a prominent artist he's a very big language advocate he was then a few years after that rounded up in a terrorist raid and he ended up going to prison for nine months so he is the kind of a face of Maori activism that you could look up some people in Maori don't think he goes too far but he's definitely out there doing it okay next slide I wanted to conclude this one just to acknowledge all the nations that are here and all the different languages because I wanted to move on to language next how many people know what the Welsh not is often people think that colonial powers suppressing language was just something that happened to indigenous people the Welsh not was given to someone who spoke Welsh when the British said don't and it was handed to the next person who spoke Welsh during the day you just kept on handing it on until it landed on you and then you got beat up that's how they stopped people speaking Welsh they translated that over to any indigenous community they found next slide you can't read that that's a lot of the figures about language things let's keep going because it's impossible to read this one you can vaguely read often people talk about extinct animals in indigenous communities we often talk about languages being extinct it's actually on those 40% of the indigenous languages of the world are endangered as opposed to other animals so a lot of indigenous activism is about trying to get language retained next slide I was going to talk about drama too German word I often go what is another way of phrasing that in the indigenous world I call myself a story shape shifter next slide and can you read that so I'm going to ask you now to think about all the things you can do witness, honour advocate and become allies but not it should say not appropriate not no appropriate relationships, practice, responsibility adapt Sherman Alexi like I was thinking what could a non-indigenous drama do well you have amazing non-indigenous writers whose work is waiting to be translated to the stage Sherman Alexi is just like outstanding right so why not as a dramaturg go I want to enter into a project where we adapt his work to the stage and we take it to reservations or reserves right access for people who live on reserve reservations they don't get to theater it's too far next please and when I'm working with indigenous drama I practice the land acknowledgement smudging is a big thing trying to make a space indigenous even if you're not being able to go to somewhere else how many people know what smudging is like there's a big debate in Canada about that because theaters got worried about it and said you can't smoke dope in there it's not we're not smoking dope right we're doing a sacred ceremony so then this thing of education um engaging elders is something that I think every organization should be trying to do universities, LMDA we need to honor the idea that our elders have wisdom and that we can learn from conversations with them I'm going to the F word now next so can you see that Jimmy Hendrix up there doing feedback we should have David Mamet down the corner going fuck you no feedback but we've talked a lot about feedback sessions right that's what's hard for a lot of indigenous audiences I think is that they're not in a conversation they're being kept in the dark for two hours and then ask to turn on their cell phones and then tweet right people want to come and have a conversation and that is why theater designed around having conversations can be more powerful next slide okay so I put on a whole lot of artists how much time have we got almost an hour left wow this is great because we'll be able to break out and we'll be able to do some of this okay okay so I also looked at fine artists can you see that this guy Brian Youngen actually made totem poles out of golf bags and he made traditional, traditional modern masks out of Air Nikes next one these guys are fish farmers next one and I wanted to showcase a woman called Rebecca Belmore how many people have heard of Rebecca Belmore so she has done a lot of great activism art in Canada next slide she also did a piece with Paul Wong called Vigil 5.4 and I'm not sure do you think this would play okay so we're going to try and play this because I think in terms of so just a short piece but it's pretty powerful and it's based on the murder of missing women and for Canadians this is one of the big educations that is very powerful and unsettling that it's not all Mounties and maple syrup in fact the Mounties are the ones who've been looking the wrong way sometimes and sometimes participating in it so this has been a very tough way to start a conversation but she is an amazing artist that I would say check out we're going to show you a couple more of her pieces so you can just scroll through these are some stills from the piece keep going and she wrote the names of missing women on her arm there you can see and she yells them out in the performance next one and if you want a great image for 150 years of Canada there it is oh that one's hard to see she's hanging upside down and this would be another one that speaks to residential school next okay so this is actually a play that I was the drama took for during some of the iterations of it it's called Red Patch it's actually based in the First World War it's about an Indigenous soldier going to fight for the Canadian Army to do that you would actually lose your status and sometimes if you came back the white soldiers would get land and they would find and as a native soldier you would get nothing you would find that the guys you were fighting with would have got your land so that's a very tough thing to happen and Race Calvert and Sean Oliver young writers and one of the things I was particularly strong with them was that they needed to go back to the nation that Race came from and spend time there and actually find people who could guide him through it so my job as a drama took was actually to try and channel him in the right direction he was very frightened possibly because they might say no you can't do that you don't know enough in fact they opened their arms to him they said thank god yes we would love you to put our language in the play we would love to teach it to we've been waiting so long for someone to listen to us and that was a very powerful thing for him as a young artist to go oh people have been waiting a long time for someone to say I want to help I want to listen to you and I want to help tell your story next one and one of the things again that I would say in my indigenous drama we talked about was trying to get traditional forms into modern and this was particularly with masks because the northwest pacific coast has a lot of amazing masks if you go to Vancouver the airport there's transformation masks and dancing using masks so it was to try and put masks into the show in whatever form that was to do lots of research about masks and some are sacred you can't use them of course in some dances you can't use but how can we modernize a traditional form ok next ah this one Laurel knows about where's Laurel come up here Laurel Laurel is helping me with this presentation and I wanted to say that education was one of the biggest things that has changed in Canada the new curriculum is quite strongly indigenous orientated like I'm really happy about that and there are theater companies doing really amazing work so maybe you'd like to talk about this I'm talking about this as an enthusiast audience member and supporter of this project I was not involved with it directly but it has impacted my community so I am living in Calgary which is Treaty 7 territory and there was a piece created called Making Treaty 7 that was about the signing of the land rights to that territory it was a project that brought together community artists with professional artists and I think the most astounding achievement is just the indigenous artists that it's put on the radar for all of us in Calgary and now those artists are starting to work on stages across Canada recently Making Treaty 7 which has formed its own cultural society and is continuing to create work partnered with Quest Theater which is a TYA theater company in Calgary that tours to classrooms across Alberta and tied to some support from the new curriculum as David mentioned they partnered with Treaty 7 to create a show that became a touring TYA module of the Treaty 7 story and so it was a collaboration between artists from the Making Treaty 7 cultural society and artists from Quest Theater and when I saw the play in a school gym what impressed and excited me the most was how it did not at any point sugarcoat the story of the colonizing of the land in southern Alberta and the problematic signing of this treaty but it did in fact center the story around a friendship between two 11 year old girls one indigenous and one white and posit that as a place for hope and future so the group of kids who were watching this show in the school gym and this show toured I think over 50 places just in the last 6 months alone were just part of this story in a way that felt very powerful and educational and really really empowering while also being scary and lightning and revealing and not holding back on those truths so I had shared this project with David as an example of things happening in my region that had really been quite inspiring to watch so after that thanks David thank you next slide so a lot about truth and reconciliation the big word that I hear from indigenous artists and people is reconciliation like let's actually do something in New Zealand for Maori the word is hui that's meeting so we often say there's too much hui and not enough dui and just this Murray Sinclair said education got us into this mess and education can get us out and I think that is one of the things I would say that as indigenous people and non-indigenous we are trying to get education going and I wanted to actually ask Lisa who was here to talk about she's actually done a course with Jill Carter so I thought we'd talk about opportunities to train so much for giving me this chance to talk up Jill Carter so I took Dr. Jill Carter's class a couple of years ago it was called this is your land where are your stories in place based drama curging and it was a course on indigenous drama curging not so much a how to for drama curbs to work in and with indigenous communities as much as an exploration of how reading and centering indigenous work can really help non-indigenous people question what they value as knowledge and what they value as a set structure so I just wanted to put her name in the room and say that if you are interested I've found her to be a very generous person a very generous educator she's is cross-appointed at indigenous studies and the transitional year program at the University of Toronto so you can find her bio and contact on any one of those web pages also through the indigenous performing arts alliance webpage and she has some lovely suggestions about plays to add to your curriculum if you are an educator that really helps place land and knowledge of land as a central knowledge in a play text which is not something a lot of work can do very well that you usually study it's a great way at least I've found to encourage students like myself to question what we see as knowledge and what we see as knowledge that needs to be shared and really question the idea that not everybody has a relationship with land and really foreground how we do have a relationship with land and this might not be paying attention to it thank you we've got to go to the smoking gun theater at lunchtime what a great relationship with the land having a solar powered theater okay next slide please so one of the things that I like my reconciliation action I was going to go to the elementary school of my children who are 8 and 10 we have a thing in Canada called orange shirt day a girl called Phyllis who was at a residential school she went to school with the orange shirt on and they said get that off now and they put her into the uniform and she never saw the orange shirt again that is the story it's printed on a little piece of paper I gave it to the teacher I said this is the day and kids will be encouraged to wear orange t-shirts and he replied really it could be a bit depressing that was his response right so yesterday we talked about unsettling people that's what you have so actually I said well I could come in and do it I don't mind he was like oh no I'll do it it's okay but overall I would say our elementary school they I get asked to come in and I say look I'm in a tricky position I'm not even indigenous to this land right I'm indigenous from New Zealand I'm also in Natipakia I'm English, Scottish, Irish Mongol, Canadian, New Zealander Maori right I can help someone come in and talk about this I can facilitate an elder but I would rather pass the mic to someone else to do it I'll tell you a story about what happened in this elementary school when I brought the elder in he was wearing his eagle headdress but he was wearing like clothes just like you he sat down he was talking away like this and his cell phone went off and he went sorry kids oh actually I'm doing a presentation to some school kids yeah I'll talk to you soon thank you bye and he proceeded he told a lot of great stories afterwards he had left and the students had a feedback and one of them put up his hand and said I've got a question how come he's like a chief and he's got a mobile phone and that was the question and a lot of other kids went yeah that's right how come they just do not see indigenous people and that is one of the strongest stereotypes that you need to fight from Hollywood is that they exist in this past how many people have seen Wonder Woman what do you think of the Indian character right all the great things Wonder Woman is doing awesome the Indian character and if you're Scottish right jeepers drinking okay anyway so it's a slow journey we're kind of unsettled people a little bit at a time right okay next slide I wanted to talk about a show like what I do know a reasonable amount is the Maori theatre in New Zealand and taking shows out to the people I think is one this is actually my friend Rob Mokoraka he wrote a show called Shot Bro the story of Rob is pretty amazing he was never diagnosed with depression he just one day rang out the police and said there is a guy outside in the street with a knife I'm really worried he then went into the kitchen and got a knife and ran out into the street the police turned up he threatened them and they shot him he had a massive operation he was charged with I think attempted murder of a policeman he went to court he had been diagnosed by that stage they plead his case and he never actually went to prison and he created a show from it and he takes that show wherever he can to talk about depression and the word that you won't understand there is koha that means whatever you want to pay that's a gift right it's free you just go to the local town hall the local gallery or a marae where you are and you see the show because especially for Maori guys it's very hard to talk about your feelings it happens in a lot of cultures particularly in cultures where the guys feel that they are not strong it's even like the image of Maori is very strong you think of people strong powerful haka guys that's your image or Maori from Moana huge the rock he's Patsamoan he's Polynesian he's that kind of guy they watch and get away with it almost so yeah next slide I talked about Sakurai so I think we'll move on and how many people have actually seen this film so that would be again a model of indigenous work the transfer to the theatre that would be useful in terms of Maori ones I would shout out for Taika Waititi who made a film called Boy he's part of Flight of the Concords he made Hunter the Wilder people he's actually just directed Thor, Ragnarok he is very interesting because he does not like people saying you're Maori first he just says I'm an artist I'm a filmmaker I happen to be Jewish and Maori from New Zealand right he doesn't like being identified that way first because it puts him in a pigeonhole you're going to make some angry thing right he makes Superbowl ads like in terms of evolution of Maori activist art a lot of people would be saying well let's just be human right let's not try and label us that's one of the strongest things you'll get from that film Real Engine 2 is that at the bottom line Graham Greene, Adam Beach they just say we'd like to do human stories we don't want to just be the Indian right or the Indian with the problem or the noble Indian or the wise Indian ok next anyone ever heard of this game I thought I'd introduce one person two yes great so a person to really follow is a woman called Dr Elizabeth Leponse I'm going to put her name I'm going to give this powerpoint to anyone who wants it by the way you don't have to write everything down isn't that the moment in the classroom where everyone just switches off right oh shit I've been writing notes all this time and now he's just going to give me the power fuck paying attention ok so never alone let's try and play it because gaming culture in terms of access a whole lot more indigenous people have access to gaming culture than they do the theatre generally and that's where they're getting their stories from consultation I think we need to be aware of the stories that are going on in the gaming world it was a very long time where indigenous characters didn't appear Assassin's Creed 3 had mohawk in it but how many people have heard of Custer's revenge so there is a game where Custer got his revenge by tying a Native American woman to a tree and raping her that was how you won the game that was your prize the gamer gate culture attacked Elizabeth Leponse for saying that no one should be reviving Custer's revenge because someone wanted to revive it that is the kind of activism that she's involved in right and that's why we celebrate it when a game like Never Alone turns up because we can go hey you love gaming here's another game I can give to my nephew my niece my son I can play myself or I can play with my children and I get a positive indigenous story right okay next these are just some scenes from I'm sorry about the light it's amazingly beautiful game and we'll skip this this is Sherman Alexi on the Indian novel skip skip okay so if you're looking to buy a book this is one that I am in but I would also like to shout out well these names you may know some of them Tara is Evette Nolan has worked with LMDA for a long time and she was actually one of the people who started one of the most powerful things that's happened in Canada in recent times which was study no summit study repast and we'll talk about that in a little while the article I wrote in this is actually called my reconciliation includes Just Dance does anyone know the game Just Dance I was doing Rihanna shine like a diamond on New Year's Eve and I went why do I like doing this so much and when can we get some indigenous songs into this and I actually don't know me that it is for indigenous people it's dance can seem a lot more natural thing to go towards and I think that's why in the musical that Corey wrote too actual singing and dancing feels traditional and that is actually something we have done for a long long time about the land for the land with the land and so musicals and dance actually feel very organically right okay so that is the book that's the plug next and I also wrote an article last time I was at LMDA in New York I was with the Canadian thing and spiderweb show and I said hey we've got to do stuff about truth and reconciliation so Michael Wheeler turned around and said okay you do it so I wrote an article and I used Queens of the Stone Age for those who know, 10 feel good truth and reconciliation hits for the summer and I just wrote down the things that I thought you could do very simple things watch APTN go to a power well, read these books join the round dance and I have a chance we might go back to this but this is actually a drum making workshop that I went to this guy in the middle is Phil Herondale and he actually used the medicine wheel as a way of teaching so are people familiar with the medicine wheel so there is a movement in Canada now to use the medicine wheel as an educational tool to actually bring it into the curriculum and it would be a great challenge to bring it in for drama tubes as well if you take the medicine wheel and work how can those work together if we consider art as healing and the medicine wheel is healing where is the connections between those things okay next okay so we got to JK Rowling Adam Sandler and I don't believe in cultural appropriation I've put a lot on this one how many people will remember Ridiculous Six it's just gone right the news of Ridiculous Six kind of just came and said oh that's terrible it goes right it doesn't go for indigenous people we remember that Adam Sandler made that movie that he created he worked on a show that had a character called Beaver Breath that he had an indigenous woman smoking a piece of pipe and urinating right and I hear he's very good in a movie at Cannes and now that Daniel Day Lewis is retired he probably feels he's going to get way more roles but the people who walked off that movie there were other indigenous actors who said they'd do the parts right that was the economic reality some weird yeah I'm not doing this and I'm telling the world about this movie other actors when I need the money the second one how many people know the controversy about JK Rowling so here was a chance for someone who was one of the most famous authors in the world to actually consult with indigenous people about what a skinwalker was right and she was challenged on it she just walked away she just kind of went it was a thing that I found and I it's not really what you guys are actually it is and there was a lot of people on the internet saying I'll read it for you I'm uncomfortable with a white woman from Britain writing about skinwalkers or indigenous magic were there any consultants and she got a big silence back right so it happens and we notice cultural appropriation a lot but it becomes normalized and the other one is actually what happened in Canada just recently with Wright magazine where the editor got a whole lot of indigenous people to write articles and then wrote it as editorial that he didn't believe in cultural appropriation and then qualified it later that it was a swifty and kind of satire and he got a lot of feedback and he resigned so cultural appropriation is a big controversy ongoing that we constantly monitor okay next I'm actually going to ask Brian Quirt to get a mic could you get a mic Brian? Thanks David so the National Arts Centre in Ottawa for those of you who don't know is a Lincoln Centre-like Kennedy Centre-like national institution across the disciplines in the English theatre department several years ago they committed to study exploration of the indigenous body of work by indigenous performance makers in Canada and it took three units of time over three years two and a half years really the summit which I was able to attend at their invitation and then a double barreled one called the study and then the repass the summit took place over three days at the Bamp Centre in Calgary on the territory of the Blackfoot between Nakota and the Chitina nations it was three days about 30 and 40 people organized by the National Arts Centre but ultimately organized by members of the indigenous performance community particularly by Edette Nolan representing those communities and Sarah Stanley representing the National Arts Centre, Sarah Stanley was the board member of the LNBA and the goal was to explore and voice the fullest possible extent of the indigenous body of creation of the last 30, 40, 50 plus years to name them to list them to catalog them to acknowledge them to discuss them and through that process to discuss the breadth of indigenous performance in Canada historically to honor those who had created work to adapt to the process what the organizers did was in addition to a group of indigenous artists across the country they invited a group of witnesses and I was in that individuals who either led or were part of large organizations or organizations that were allies or institutions or part of these communities but were not indigenous themselves the invitation was to attend to be a witness to this process this set of conversations over these three days but to not speak all of the full day discussions and sessions happened with everyone there in a circle there was smudging in the morning there was a ritual or a ceremony at the beginning of each day with music and then a series of discussions exploring this body of work the privilege of being there was really quite extraordinary I can't speak for the impact of the indigenous participants and what it was like for them of course to have us there but be silent and imagine it was a huge relief full about it on many levels with that they could have had that conversation and they were tempted to have that conversation without a conversation but also the other components of it very thoroughly, very effective low voices but from a witness's point of view that the power of it was multi-leveled and David asked me to reflect on it it urged us and made me listen better and hear more enabled me to hear new voices amongst those who are gathered from the indigenous communities very clearly it enabled me to hear the voices of many long-term colleagues in the indigenous communities hear their voices fresh by either my own witnesses and me as an individual to see and hear the nuances of those communities they represented communities across the country they are not all the same they are not all in agreement the nuances of how the various indigenous communities across the disciplines work together or do not work together and to be able to be an observer and a witness to how they was really quite remarkable the other day in terms of listening in a conversation and what it did when over three days being asked not to speak did part of what you would or addressed part of what you were speaking to Dan was we were as a result we got out of the habit of framing my response your presence and not your voice is something that we will all benefit from you were able to partake of an experience like that because our presence is valuable but our voices are often exactly the problem us to not show off not show how much we knew not articulate that we had knowledge that should impress them presence mattered to them on the final day they did have one session at the very end where those who were witnesses if they so wish were invited to speak and reflect on the experience if they wanted to and part of what was fascinating is that most did not that the invitation to be there is witness carried through right to the end several people did absolutely and they often voiced reflections very similar to what I'm doing right now but what was the experience of listening deeply to voices that aren't listened to enough thanks David 242 we talked about reconciliation quite a bit there was a if we just have the next slide I think we talked about Kevin Loring yesterday so we might this will be on the PowerPoint keep going and we did Tara the pipeline project I wanted to highlight a few projects this was a really interesting play obviously one of the biggest things people think colonialism oh yeah it happened way back in the 1800s the pipelines are the new colonialism right the pipelines are going everywhere and we're fighting them all the time so the pipeline project was Kevin Sebastian and Columbia Sparrow all creating it was kind of a political skit show but at the end they actually had an expert come and speak and it was great and the audiences hung around and they really wanted to know what the expert experts said there were first nations experts there were scientists there were politicians it was a great way to get debates going okay next one so Home by David Diamond and Renee Morris I was another great show that I saw this year in Vancouver and this was like a half hour show but forum theatre and then they did the show again and the audience could jump up and be in the show and take over parts in moments of conflict I'm not sure how many people have seen that kind of theatre but it was scary right extremely scary and that's why it was booked out during the season but they had to at the end of the show say please tell people to come because lots of people have found out what this show is and they're not turning up they do not want to be confronted with you could be in the show but the amazing thing that happened on the night that I was there was a young first nations woman wanted to be in the show so much she got up twice to be in these moments one was a story of a child who had been scooped and brought up in a white family and another was a business one it was a really powerful engaging form of theatre so I wanted to shout out to them and David Diamond also did a great thing he said everybody's talking about truth and reconciliation as though it's one thing it means a whole lot of different things but he said there's one thing that happens is that white settler societies have to have a reconciliation of their own about what happens and if you think about a film like Spotlight there's a thing where the church and the government and the cops and everybody has to work out a reconciliation of what happened there indigenous people have their own things going on there was a hell of a lot of lateral violence in indigenous communities abuse it is tough to be in that society at times if you've seen a movie the Maori film Once Were Warriors it addresses that thing we have to have reconciliation but it happens within indigenous communities it's just for indigenous communities then there is a third sort which is between the two so that was a really kind of mind opening thing for me to go actually you can break it into a whole lot of different forms this is just the many fingers and Brian Solomon I wanted to do a shout out for them because these guys dancers theater guys and they both are missing fingers on their hands they were both born like that they're two spirited without hand and indigenous and their show is hysterically funny and they talk about when they were kids how they did jokes like during shop when they got a substitute teacher they got the ketchup poured all over their hand and they're made out as though they've got these fingers sort of just to freak the substitute teacher out and they actually for part of their research they recorded their mothers to go what was it like to have a child who was born and then realize they weren't perfect that they were missing parts and their mothers did these amazing monologues that they thought they would use as research but when they played them in the room they went that's the soundtrack of the show it was about how much their mothers loved them and something that Brad was talking about they allowed you to stare and then they stared back and it was like look at me just see me here I am this is how I am this is my hand or not and it's a very very powerful activist show but it's done in a beautiful dance way and the night that I was there they got tripped up on the bike so it had an extra trickster quality next and reality TV right you don't really think about it in terms of activism Michael? we talked about reality TV I said next time we have a conference I am talking about it because that is something people have access to right this is a show on Aboriginal people's television network it's called moose meter marmalade it is a British chef Dan Hayes and a Cree bush chef called Art Napoleon he's an amazing musician Cree covers of like Credence Clearwater Revival and bands like that and he gets it gets a lot of good political stuff out there in a way that people can handle it because it's a cooking show right and that is one of the subtle interesting things about our indigenous side it's the trickster right we managed to fit things in where you didn't quite see them so I thought I'd do a shout out for that you can watch it on demand I think next this is another show that I've been involved in it's called Rezo and I put up I Am Married to a River George Bellamo and Janice Baudes working at UBC they're not indigenous but one of the big problems is I'm sure you're aware is water and one of the people who went to Standing Rock said to me don't ever call me a protester right we are protectors of water water is sacred and one of the big problems around the world is for engineering is that they have the designs that they can plonk into a community that will make the water clean but they don't have people who can deal with the nation to tell them how to use it and do it in a respectful cultural way so that it keeps getting used properly right so they went to the communities to actually get stories about water and actually go what is water to you how can we make this part of your culture to have a water purifying system or a filter in there and my story was I Am Married to a River because I lost my wedding ring in a river and my wife's still crying about that okay next I was going to do a whole lot of shout outs Thomas King got mentioned yesterday if you want to find out more about indigenous artists IPAA has a lot Darryl Dennis is a great writer who an actor he's got peace pipe dreams Eleanor are you here you work at Native Voices at the Autry don't you so I'm going to now ask you who would you like to talk you don't have to yeah I know I want you to I only just found out today the voices which is at the Autry Museum of the yeah a little Autry Museum of the American West which is in Los Angeles and for those of you who don't know about this project every year they have a festival that supports and develops the work of Native American playwrights they normally have about three work during development and each playwright and play gets assigned a director, a dramaturg and a company of performers as well as designer and we have a retreat 10 day intensive retreat we all come down and work on the work on the script and at the end there is a semi-stage reading for the public both at the Autry and this year is also at La Jolla and so I was one of three dramaturgs working on one of the plays I am non-indigenous so there are lots of questions that come up with my presence on a project like that and that's something I'd actually really love to address a little further but I don't know if we have time you can address it right now yeah it was a question that you actually rated at the beginning which was about non-indigenous dramaturgs working on indigenous projects you raised that didn't you so what was I doing on this project should I have even been on the project I mean I have that question myself I'm not sure I'm not sure how to answer that did I support the development of the play yes I did was I the best dramaturg for that project I'm not sure about that I'm not sure if that's something I should continue to do in the future so it's a very complicated question I think it's a case by case thing for me but maybe it's a question for the playwright as well to respond to unfortunately he is not here but it is a thought question I wonder if there are any dramaturgs non-indigenous in the room who yes was how little I know tell us what we're counting right so the not knowing question comes up again the dramaturg is the one who he doesn't know and you know in this particular experience that I had I was constantly in a position of having to play catch up with the rest of the members of the company trying to educate myself in this project so I I needed them to wait for me very often and to very gratefully put up with my not knowing and trying to educate myself so it was a very delicate dance but yes it's the not knowing and being okay with not knowing and have everyone in the room being okay with you not knowing I think sometimes happened to be there for a multitude I just wanted to echo my agreement of the last two speakers I produced a Native American theater festival some years ago and found myself in the role of dramaturg and I agree that entering into an indigenous project as a non-indigenous person the amount first of all the objectives of our festival of course at university were largely cultural and educational and so that framework I think is a little more forgiving perhaps I cannot tell you the amount of learning that every single non-indigenous person who experienced this festival had really is one of my most extraordinary experiences in the theater we through the organization Amarinda in New York City we connected with two indigenous playwrights from the Haudenosaunee group of tribes Eric Gansworth and Vicky Ramirez for the playwrights Steve Elm was the director as part of the festival we brought in the spider woman theater and Gloria Miguel performed one woman piece that she had been writing one of her sisters came we brought in a couple of indigenous actors to work with our undergraduate students the learning was extraordinary they smugged with our students they danced with them the traditions were extraordinary I've never learned more and I think just being sensitive, respectful and sort of I served as host more than dramaturg I felt that I was really the liaison for this experience and as long as I understood that and they understood that it was an amazing experience oh should I go ahead? I don't know can you hear me? okay hi I'm Leslie Ishi she's her hers I've been working with Alaska Natives first I have to start out I say that as a very humble self-educating ally and I feel that my purpose in the arts to be an ally so I do ally building wherever I can whenever I can and so in working with Alaska Natives and with the Perseverance Theater and then also being brought on to dramaturg a piece this coming season at Oregon Shakespeare Festival I absolutely see myself as a diversity inclusion equity liaison where I'm urging and my new boss here is getting that I am insisting on protocol and that practice and that when we go to meet and have a relationship building moment to ask for mission I have found in my past experience with the Hopi Nation that I am not there to convince them of my artistic choices I'm there to listen and I am there to basically absorb in a very humble way a deep transmission of cultural exchange and it's actually really helping me to learn what a true collaborative process is so I just encourage you to keep learning about protocol and whatever I can do to support the indigenous artists to have and honor their way of life I'm not there to interrupt this I'm there to support way of life and our collaboration great, catch hey y'all so a couple of things I guess some of the things that have already been said I just came off of residency at the Kimmel working with a black and native woman playwright so this is something that's been on my mind and I just want to say that leading with listening is so important and then yes it is the role of the dramaturg to ask questions right something that we do to be able to ask really pointed specific questions that further the work but I think it's also really important to make the distinction between questions that we're asking for ourselves and questions that we're asking for the playwright and in service of the story that they're telling so is this a question that we need to go to the library do some self education or kind of aggregate okay I don't know about this I don't know about that I don't know about this and of course recognizing that the person that we're working with who may be outside of our experience is a body of knowledge as well and has a certain expertise and so maybe it's holding those questions and then doing some minitergy in your mind and kind of figuring out what is the big question that I need to ask that will point me in the direction to continue that education on my own time versus stopping for every little thing that one doesn't get I think is really important I also just want to throw into the mix that in many indigenous cultures you know as a Latina myself and my father being from Nicaragua many indigenous communities have a completely different conception of time you know experience you know just literally everything about the way the world works and how we walk through it and so just not having a Western understanding of all of those things because what seems confusing or murky for us as Westerners may be highly intentional on you know their part and lastly I'll say that in approaching a work or a writer again anyone who falls outside of the experience especially when we're talking about minoritarians to anticipate to welcome resistance I think is really important you know everything is context we don't live in a vacuum and to be able to check our own privilege and say you know it might be me but it's also bigger than me to depersonalize parts of the process and I can't I can't even be mad ain't nobody got time for that so just to really respect and empathize along side of the people that we're working with okay thank you very much I'm gonna have to finish the session can I I'm gonna invoke a bit of protocol we're gonna make a circle to end with so if everyone comes out of this chairs and make a circle around the chairs we're gonna have a final ceiling of the deal Haka so form a circle around all the chairs Carrie thank you very much you're gonna put the Haka up if you look at the screen coming up oh the side cover you reach no no no no go back to the power point and keep going keep going keep going keep going keep going keep going and back up back up back up back up there stop okay that guy the chief next one we're gonna do to Rappraha's Haka that's the one you see the all blacks do that was appropriated by the New Zealand rugby team from a chief the court of appeal would not allow the Nati Toa to take it back and own it they said it belonged to all of New Zealand so the tribe said okay but you're gonna do it properly okay so there he is I can tell you some more about him but we'll go to the words next Carrie so the words the next page sorry so all you have to remember is say that and don't worry about the next part because I'll say it the next part you will do so he was trapped underground because he was running for his life and he hid in a pit trying to die then the people above him said go I think we can save your life and the man who saved him was a hairy man a chief and that meant he thought he would live again so the translation is who brought the sun and caused it to shine a step up another step up a step up another the sun shines and I see that for indigenous people as being a metaphor for we've suffered in the dark a long time but now we're stepping towards the light okay so now I'm going to drop the mic not really I invite I invite everyone to just stay in the circle for a minute for a few more announcements I know we have had some new people come join us today so my name is Ken Trinilia he and his I am president of