London gets first festival of First Nations voices

Canadian theatre groups and filmmakers are front and centre at the first festival of First Nations art to be organized in London.

The Origins Festival of First Nations features indigenous artists from New Zealand, Australia, Canada, the U.S. and Pacific Islands and is being organized by intercultural theatre company Border Crossings of London.

Canadian participants include:

• Filmmaker Alanis Obamsawin, speaking and screening three of her films.
• Twelve NFB films, including an opening night presentation of Elisapie Isaac's If the Weather Permits.
• Toronto-based theatre company Native Earth, presenting the play Almighty Voice & His Wife.
• Huron-Wendat theatre-maker Yves Sioui Durand and Catherine Joncas of Quebec, offering a workshop.

Native Earth artistic director Yvette Nolan said she was surprised the festival was the first of its kind in London.

"Isn't it amazing, after all this time," she said, adding that she had doubts when she was approached by Border Crossings' Michael Walling about bringing Almighty Voice & His Wife to London.

"I was not that interested, for a number of reasons. I'm a little leery of being exoticized. I'm leery of having to interpret our culture for the mainstream," Nolan told CBC News.

Almighty Voice & His Wife, a play by Kingston, Ont.-based Daniel David Moses, tells the story of a 19th-century Cree called Almighty Voice who unintentionally becomes a martyr in Saskatchewan.

The play, written in 1991, was produced this year by Native Earth. That production, starring Cara Gee and Derek Garza, moved on to the London stage.

"It's a complex play — it's not at all simple," Nolan said, explaining the first half is a love story between Almighty Voice and White Girl and the second, taking place in the afterlife, is more like vaudeville.

But she said London audiences came out of the play discussing white guilt. Many are followers of Border Crossings, which has a commitment to multicultural work.

Nolan was also impressed by a blog post in the Guardian newspaper that acknowledged the experience of "watching this theatre while being the colonizer."

'Awesome parallels'

The festival, which runs until May 17, was also an opportunity to work with other First Nations groups, most of whom Native Earth has worked with before.

"There are awesome parallels in their lives. It's always interesting to hear what they are thinking about," Nolan said.

"But the discussion here was different. We are used to being indigenous people meeting in the place where our land is and greeting that culture."

Native Earth has toured with the Yirra Yaakin Theatre of Perth, Australia, which brought the play Windmill Baby to London and also knew members of New Zealand's Taki Rua theatre company. That group sold out its performance of Strange Resting Places, about Maori war veterans.

NFB filmmaker Obomsawin, who was recently honoured at the Hot Docs festival in Toronto, screened three films about the aboriginal experience: Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance, Gene Boy Came Home and Sigwan.

Origins also featured six short films from Wapikoni Mobile, a travelling training and production studio, as well as NFB co-productions such as Mohawk Girls by Tracey Deer and Inuit film Qallunaat! Why White People Are Funny, directed by Mark Sandiford.

Border Crossings has plans to mount another First Nations festival in London, possibly in three years to give the groups time to create and test new work, Nolan said.