Who remembers, jingles with the buzz; if you hear 1981, do you see those small tables? jostled round by young sophisticates, and here, one northern bush kid, easy tan of metis (years before capital M and definitions that don’t matter in the shimmer of the music). This girl is 16, down in The City to visit her sister…
Tag: indigenous women
Keep on Dancing
Today, I’m watching this film: Dancing Around the Table My aim was just to show my kid her grandpa, there among the indigenous delegations; but of course, start watching, and it is remarkably clear that, despite what the champions of derivative, tragedy porn works like ‘Secret Path’ would have us believe, the truth has been…
Transit of Alexandra
Fuckin they’re on Native Time. I ain’t scared Ma, I’m mad. Fuckin chicken shit! I’m shaking cause I’m mad, Ma, that’s how mad I am! Two sets of footsteps, one a halfbeat behind. She catches up to Ma as they pass me, raging about white cunts on stolen land they’s just borrowing this place we…
April 5: Landing
for Catherine Sewell, who walked on at 39, or else would have been 55 this day would she have laughed? i met our old colleague in Superstore talk turned to landing kids so as to break that trope of Indian comes to City and skids out of control into alcohol, crime and life as a…
2010: Olympic
it’s 2010 i go to the olympic edition of talking stick festival in vancouver, i walk this is how to learn a city walk from dorothy’s up on coal harbour down to cambie to the roundhouse to the show i will never be a headliner i will never be on the podium i am…
2007: Metaphor
it’s 2007 and our city has fielded a committee which has won a competition we will have our year as canada’s cultural capital with all the project money this entails. since, she said, the committee couldn’t find any indigenous artists they went ahead and decided what to write, since they all agreed your community had…
2001: Honour Song
it’s may in montreal an indigenous arts gathering peers mentors innovators politics of identity the sick thrashing whale of cultural appropriation i find i stand with those who say, we are remaking theatre in our images because we need to appropriating a tool so it does not become us to play cultural purist…
2000: On the Line
2000, a new millennium. my savvy board mentor says where i’ve gone wrong is paying myself no more than anyone else. i sit with that uncomfortable thread running through my work is it that simple? i sit with that when i hire an actor who for all his masks, can’t hide that he chafes at…
Tawatinâ Bridge Song
Recently, i was asked to present poetry at a workshop for the shortlisted artists in line for a major city commission – art for the Tawatinâ* Bridge, which will bring a new LRT line across our river and down through the Millwoods community. If you know Edmonton, you know how big this connection is; if you…
Day 30: Because Blossoms
did i mention i came to the city suspicious? after all every indian of a certain age (yes, indian, to frame this) knows that cities eat indians. of course, there’s the trick. i am anishinabekwe, lnuskw also, and polish by matrilineage. i came looking for some fabled southland that sang to me in dreams all…
Day 14: Politics and the Hardware Store
nobody knows anyone our secret power lines and the larger lines underwriting over-arching, architecture of the power mad. the young women warriors yell at me, not knowing i’ve been yelled at all my life and i see it passing by. i was young when people hid native ancestry and my family refused that. it was…
Day 2: sun, belatedly
So, having decided to do 30 in 30, i was immediately sidetracked by the sun. Day 2: Vancouver Sun we are the improbable light of the future. would my father see us that way? his grand daughters on the path ahead of me, hazel and blonde we’ve been here ten days and no rain every…
Prairiepomes 