What is Stephen Harper Reading?

Dedication:

To Stephen Harper,
Prime Minister of Canada,
From a Canadian writer,
With best wishes,
Yann Martel

Letter:

The Right Honourable Stephen Harper
Prime Minister of Canada
80 Wellington Street
Ottawa ON  K1A 0A2

Dear Mr. Harper,

So far, if there is one thing that your administration has done that will stand the test of time, it is the formal apology to the victims of the Canadian Government’s Native residential school system. Policies come and go, are changed and forgotten, but an apology stands. An apology changes the course of history. It is the first step in true healing and reconciliation. I congratulate you on this important symbolic gesture.

Since your mind was recently on Canada’s original inhabitants—and since National Aboriginal Day was just two days ago—it’s appropriate that I should send you Tomson Highway’s play The Rez Sisters. It too is of historical importance. Of the author, there’s an unusually long bio at the start of the book, a full four pages, so you can read there about the life of Tomson Highway, at least until 1988, when the play was published.

What is not mentioned in the bio is the synergy that developed in the Aboriginal cultural world in Toronto in the mid-1980s. Suddenly then—the time was right—some Natives came together and did what they had hardly done until then: they spoke. The production company Native Earth Performing Arts was founded in 1982 to give voice to Aboriginal theatre, dance and music. Before that, with the exception of Inuit prints and sculptures and Maria Campbell’s memoir Half-Breed, the Canadian cultural scene was practically bare of Native expression. That would change with Native Earth. Along with Tomson Highway, the company fostered the careers of such writers as Daniel David Moses and Drew Hayden Taylor.

When The Rez Sisters opened in November 1986, the cast had to go out into the streets and beg passers-by to come in and see the play. Well, those first people liked what they saw and word-of-mouth did the rest. The Rez Sisters became a hit. It drew large audiences, toured the country, was produced at the Edinburgh Theatre Festival.

Like your last book, Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, the force of The Rez Sisters lies with its characters. Seven women—Pelajia Patchnose, Philomena Moosetail, Marie-Adele Starblanket, Annie Cook, Emily Dictionary, Veronique St. Pierre and Zhaboonigan Peterson—live on the Wasaychigan Hill Indian Reserve, on Manitoulin Island. Life there is as life is everywhere, with its ups and downs. But then comes momentous news: THE BIGGEST BINGO IN THE WORLD is being organized in Toronto. And do you know what kind of a jackpot THE BIGGEST BINGO IN THE WORLD would have? Something BIG. The dreams that winning that jackpot might fulfil is at the heart of the play. It’s a comedy, the kind that makes you laugh while also delivering a fair load of sadness. Stereotypes are set up and then mocked, but it’s not an overtly political play, hence its universal resonance. We may not be Native women on a reserve, we may not be bingo aficionados, but we all have dreams and worries.

There is a last character in the play who must be mentioned. Nanabush, in his various incarnations, is as important in Native mythology as Christ is in the Christian world. But there’s a playful element to Nanabush that is absent in our portrayal of Christ. In The Rez Sisters, he appears in the guise of a seagull or a nighthawk. He dances and prances and pesters. Marie-Adele, who has cancer, and Zhaboonigan, who was brutally raped, are the only ones who explicitly interact with him. He is the angel of death, but also the spirit of life. He hovers over much of the play.

Yours truly,

Yann Martel

encl: one inscribed paperback

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