Award-winning writer discusses Art of Reconciliation

By Rick Garrick

THUNDER BAY—Curve Lake’s Drew Hayden Taylor says the term reconciliation is “a Rorschach name” during his Nov. 30 talk on The Art of Reconciliation at Confederation College.

“It means different things to different people,” says Taylor, an award-winning playwright, author, columnist, filmmaker, and lecturer. “To me, as I jokingly said in my speech, it’s a variation of do unto others as you would have them do unto me and also a certain amount of acknowledgement and fessing up of perhaps improper things that have been done in the past.”

Taylor says “complete healing” from the reconciliation process includes an acceptance of what has happened, having it dealt with, and a moving on.

“The problem right now is a lot of what has happened has not been dealt with by the dominant culture, by the government, by a lot of people that were directly or indirectly a part of everything that has happened,” Taylor says. “So there is still movement to go; there is still a bit of a journey to be completed.”

Taylor says there is a saying in the First Nations community about reconciliation.

“Before the healing can take place, the poison must be exposed,” Taylor says. “Part of the TRC’s [Truth and Reconciliation Commission] function was to expose that poison. And that is also one of the functions of art.”

Taylor says the contemporary Native literary renaissance began in 1986 with the premiere of The Rez Sisters, by Cree playwright Tomson Highway, in downtown Toronto.

“[It] revolutionized the larger Canadian theatrical community and blew the doors off it and basically allowed [Indigenous] people to tell their stories through writing,” Taylor says. “For the first 17 years of that renaissance, there was a flood of [Indigenous] plays and stories.”

Taylor says theatre became the venue of choice for a lot of First Nations people because they came from an oral culture.

“Theatre is the next logical progression of storytelling,” Taylor says. “It’s taking audiences on a journey using your voice, your body and your imagination. So writing a play, a dialogue, was not really that different from telling a really good and intricate story.”

Taylor says most of the plays produced during those 17 years were dark, bleak, sad and depressing.

“And that’s primarily because when an oppressed people get their voice back, chances are they are going to write about being oppressed,” Taylor says. “It’s a cathartic thing. Remember me mentioning that saying: ‘For the healing to take place, the poison must be exposed.’ That was what was happening during that period.”

Taylor says reconciliation will likely be “an ongoing process” for years to come.

“I think we will still be dealing with it for the next 10 to 20 years, all its different permutations, all its different environments,” Taylor says. “Where it’s going to be down the road is difficult to say because it’s still hard to define what it actually is and because it is hard to define, it’s hard to say how it is going to change in the next 10 years.”

During his visit to Confederation College, Taylor also posted a message on the college’s Path to Reconciliation wall.

“I felt honoured to be asked to do that,” Taylor says. “I tried to put something poignant, respectful and funny down.”

Taylor is currently working on a new play — Crees in the Caribbean — which he describes as ‘essentially an Elders’ love story.’

“It’s about a Cree couple who are going to a resort in Mexico for their 35th wedding anniversary,” Taylor says. “They have never been out of Saskatchewan before in their life, but their kids pool their money and send them to a resort.”