Native playwright speaks to Belleville audience

Native playwright Drew Hayden Taylor spoke to an audience in Belleville about the importance of humour in native survival. Photo by Ashliegh Gehl

By Ashliegh Gehl

Humour has allowed aboriginals to survive 500 years of colonization, says native playwright Drew Hayden Taylor.

Taylor spoke Thursday to more than 40 people who celebrated National Aboriginal Day at the Belleville Public Library. He explained the importance of humour in native culture and how, in the early stages of theatre, native playwrights wrote depressing plays.

“When oppressed people get their voices back, there’s a good chance they’re going to write about being oppressed,” said Taylor.

He quoted writer Tomson Highway, saying poison needs to surface before healing can occur.

“In the early stages of native theatre, the poison was being exposed.”

He read from his newest novel Motorcycles and Sweetgrass, a book that was nominated for the 2010 Governor General Award.

Taylor’s been writing from more than 20 years and has 23 books under his belt

Unlike Highway and Thomas King, two native writers Taylor is often compared to, he doesn’t have university training in theatre or literature.

“I woke up one morning and I was a playwright,” said Taylor.

To him, theatre is a different form of oral storytelling.

Jennifer Davies, an English teacher at Bayside Secondary School, teaches Aboriginal Voices, a Grade 11 course focused on aboriginal authors.

“Most of my students have read Drew Hayden Taylor’s plays, and so seeing him here tonight is amazing,” said Davies. “He’s just as funny as we found him to be in class, but very approachable.”

Taylor’s humour weaves around contentious topics like the residential school system.

“He does just want he says he does,” said Davies. “He tells the truth, but in stories with humour. I think if you ask any of my students if they understand the residential picture, they know the alienation, they know the stories of kids who were taken from their homes put into white homes.”

It’s through Taylor’s plays that Davies helps educate her students on native issues.

“They know it from a humorous point of view, which is wonderful because it’s hard for kids to just focus, as he said, on the negative,” said Davies. “The history sinks in, and they understand the pathos behind the humour.”

The Library’s National Aboriginal Day ceremony opened with a traditional thanksgiving prayer given by Nikki Auten, one of six Mohawk Territory singers.  “It’s what we’re supposed to say every morning to give thanks to creation,” said Auten.

Auten said National Aboriginal Day isn’t about focusing on the issues.

“It’s to celebrate who we are as a people,” said Auten. “In celebrating who we are, we always have to look at what we’ve gone through to get to where we are. It’s not necessarily about let’s go through all of that again. Our people are constantly healing from the stuff that they’ve gone through. But now is the time to celebrate with the world who we are.”