Ernestine Shuswap gets her trout :

"Based on a deposition signed by fourteen Chiefs of the Thompson River basin in the occasion of a visit to their lands by Canadian Prime Minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier in 1910, Ernestine Shuswap Gets Her Trout is a ritualized retelling of how the Native Peoples of British Columbia lost their fishing, hunting and grazing rights, their lands, and finally their language without their agreement or consent, and without any treaties ever having been signed. It is one of the most compellingly traffic cases of cultural genocide to emerge from the history of colonialism, enacted by four women whose stories follow each other like the cyclical seasons they represent. Written in the spirit of Shuswap, a 'Trickster language' within which the hysterically comic spills over into the unutterably tragic and back, this play is haunted by the blood of the dead spreading over the landscape like a red mist of mourning." - Provided by Publisher

Call Number: 
PS8565 .I53 E75 2005
Title Responsibility: 
Tomson Highway.
Author Information: 
Tomson Highway is an internationally renowned Nehiyawak (Cree) writer and musician. He is the son of legendary caribou hunter and world championship dogsled racer, Joe Highway, and a registered member of the Barren Lands First Nation. He holds a Bachelor of Music Honours (1975) and the equivalent of a Bachelor of Arts (1976) from Western University. Subsequently, for seven years, he worked in the field of Native social work on reserves and in urban centres across Ontario and Canada. In 1981, at the age of 30, Highway started writing music, plays, and, later, novels. He is best known for his plays, The Rez Sisters and Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing, both of which won him the Dora Mavor Moore Award and the Floyd S. Chalmers Award. He also has the distinction of being the librettist of the first Cree language opera, The Journey or Pimooteewin. From 1986 to 1992, he was Artistic Director of Native Earth Performing Arts, Toronto's only (at the time) professional Native theatre company, out of which, over the years, have emerged some of Canada's most accomplished and celebrated Native theatre and film artists, as well as other professional Native theatre companies. He is the recipient of numerous awards, and holds ten honorary doctorates, including from Carleton University (Ottawa) and the University of Toronto.
Production Place: 
Vancouver :
Producer: 
Talonbooks,
Production Date: 
2005
Band Tribe Geography Time: 
Shuswap; Tk’emlúps
Reviews: 

Morrow, Martin. "Ernestine Shuswap Gets Her Trout." Books In Canada, Sept. 2006, p. 38. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A154327545/BRIP?u=utoronto_main&sid=B....

Mundel, Ingrid. "Troubling Visions." Canadian Literature, no. 192, 2007, p. 164+. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A167912524/BRIP?u=utoronto_main&sid=B....

Catalogue Key: 
5610669