{"id":522,"date":"2023-05-22T10:01:14","date_gmt":"2023-05-22T10:01:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/27\/?p=522"},"modified":"2023-05-31T16:52:56","modified_gmt":"2023-05-31T16:52:56","slug":"talking-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/27\/talking-back\/","title":{"rendered":"Talking Back"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Patricia Keeney<\/strong>*<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Land Acknowledgement.<\/em> Written and performed by Cliff Cardinal. Directed by Chris Abraham. Produced in Toronto by Crow\u2019s Theatre (2021) and Mirvish Productions (2023).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Canada, the US and many other \u201cwoke\u201d countries, we have become all too familiar with land acknowledgements, speeches preceding public events of every kind, to acknowledge that we in the twenty-first century are standing on the territory of Indigenous peoples who lived in this place before us and whose descendants still share it with us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But what about a land acknowledgement as a one-man show of 90 minutes delivered by an Indigenous actor and a playwright, a land acknowledgement with attitude, one that is funny, nasty, trenchant, mocking and angry?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cliff Cardinal and director Chris Abraham of Toronto\u2019s innovative Crow\u2019s Theatre\u2014where the piece originated in 2021\u2014create a rich take on these public land acknowledgements that are fast becoming almost perfunctory and meaningless. The show recently sold out under the auspices of Toronto\u2019s commercial Mirvish Productions in the CAA Theatre, its largest venue to date.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Indigenous actor and playwright Chris Cardinal grins with insults, killing us kindly. Photo: Dahlia Katz<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Onstage, in front of a bright red curtain, Cardinal is mercurial, a puckish presence smiling fraternally, while zinging deadly one-liners at his audience. He prances and gesticulates through raucous anecdotes. He eyeballs the crowd, grins with insults, killing us kindly. Irresistibly, he draws us into a confessional and accusatory conversation. Indeed, we all know what this is about. No one is innocent here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Laughing at himself, at us and with us, he speaks of the standard land acknowledgements, delivered by \u201cthe head of a multi-million-dollar institution. . . with this far-off look in his eye like he\u2019s the last safe house on the Underground Railroad.\u201d What do these endless acknowledgements accomplish, he asks, other than white self-congratulations? Cardinal jauntily concedes that we\u2019re spreading awareness like excess suntan lotion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He is hard on stereotypes, both Indigenous and White especially those around the environment: \u201cI don\u2019t think our ancestors were concerned. . . [about] living in equilibrium with nature,\u201d he says. \u201cWhen Crazy Horse drove hundreds of bison over the face of a cliff. . . was it really to regulate CO2 emissions?\u201d Hardly! \u201cWe\u2019ll see movement on climate change when forest fires rip though mansions,\u201d he grins, ripping through assumptions of money and privilege about white people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His biting humour is leavened by the genuinely poetic. He speaks of how Indigenous people are truly<\/em> linked to the environmental movement, how their stories and their history live in the land, in a wild blueberry patch or an old mine where somebody died or the spot where \u201cwe got a moose one year when we needed one.\u201d These places pull stories out of his people who revisit them. If the land is lost, he tells us passionately, so is our history. That\u2019s what he really wants acknowledged.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Chris Cardinal\u2019s constant pacing back and forth across the stage is flip and funny and sarcastic. Photo: Dahlia Katz<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

There are moments that feel unfair. Like an accusation that the wealthy and privileged non-Indigenes of his country have not worked as hard as his strawberry-picking, beaver-hide-tanning ancestors. But this imbalance is nothing compared to the abuse his people have suffered at the hands of \u201csettlers,\u201d a term Cardinal rejects because it sugar-coats racism. He scrutinizes language constantly, inviting his audience to be a \u201cfriend\u201d not an \u201cally\u201d because \u201cally\u201d sounds \u201clike you\u2019re fighting the Nazis in World War II. And you\u2019re not. You\u2019re fighting for Like<\/em>s on Facebook.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tongue planted firmly in cheek, he tests the team spirit of his audience. A show of hands please if you know the names of any Indigenous activists, authors, filmmakers, musicians. Audience response satisfies him enough that he won\u2019t \u2018cancel\u2019 us. Yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cardinal is touchy about Indigenous people doing land acknowledgements because he hates the idea of publicly declaring victimhood. He shares a secret with us. \u201cLand acknowledgements didn\u2019t begin as left-wing academic sloganeering. They began as whispers around the kitchen table in the seventies. . . as a dare.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then he gets even more conspiratorial. \u201cWhat if we told them. . . walked right into their house. Said it, right to their face: all this shit. . . You stole it. . . Your family lied, cheated, extorted, stole, and laughed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ironic and compassionate, he attempts to mollify his audience. History has been unkind to us all. The Irish. The Jews. The Irish Jews. And a list of peoples from Palestinians to Rohingya Muslims. But history has not been unkind to the rich, he points out, over-simplifying to illustrate deeply entrenched injustice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His constant pacing back and forth across the stage\u2014natural and inspired, flip and funny and sarcastic\u2014deepens as the show progresses. Delivering one knockout punch after another to the self-esteem of the mostly white audience, he lists abuses suffered by his people. Inexperienced white teachers dining out on \u201ctragedy porn\u201d after their two-year stint on the rez. Mercury in the water, murder by police, a housing shortage, a suicide epidemic. \u201cWe\u2019re in a one-hundred-fifty-year toxic relationship,\u201d he declares. \u201cBut Creator loves us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How does he know this? Because \u201cyou\u2019ve tried to kill us so many times.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLet\u2019s talk fur,\u201d he suggests, \u201cthe economy that this country was founded upon.\u201d The difficult work of tanning a hide was made possible by generations of Indigenous women. \u201cHow,\u201d he asks, \u201chas that most divine act of generosity been acknowledged? With over four thousand murdered and missing Indigenous women and girls.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He follows this with a report on the gravest genocide atrocity: \u201cThe bodies of over seven thousand residential school children have turned up in unmarked graves across the country.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These staggering statistics, only recently brought to light hang over us as the show continues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cardinal\u2019s interrogation of residential schools run by the Catholic Church is lethal: How were the burial sites chosen? Was there evidence of Catholic ritual? Who actually buried these kids? How did they die? Starvation? Freezing? Sexual assault? Cardinal admits he didn\u2019t attend residential school because \u201cmy generation was the first to have parents as parents.\u201d The schools were camps, he declares. Not concentration camps \u201cbecause the showers sprayed water. . . [they were] rape camps. Kids were sent to have their culture raped from them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cardinal now opens the red curtain to show boxes and reams of paper representing the ongoing inquiry into these assaults on women and children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He shoots a pointed question at us. \u201cYou think it was a different time? No, it was only three weeks ago. Where\u2019s our Nuremburg?\u201d he demands, calling out by name \u201cthe Catholic pedophile cult\u201d behind it all. \u201cThe Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate who ran so many of these rape camps. . . are still skulking around developing nations like Kenya and Rwanda.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He tells us finally he has tried to keep his real anger out of the room, \u201cdo my little Indian dance and. . . hope they like me.\u201d He ends with the story of two women in his own family, Nita and Carly, in-house disciplinarians who roll by cousin Tiffany\u2019s place and find her small daughter cooking over a hot stove while the mother\u2014blasted on drugs\u2014makes out with her boyfriend in the next room. Nita and Carley administer physical <\/em>justice, he tells us, mimed with great glee by Cardinal whose conclusion is: \u201cThat\u2019s what I call a community-led safety solution.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cardinal leaves us with a strong idea of family. That tough love. \u201cWe\u2019re all related,\u201d he says. Let\u2019s act that way.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This powerful one-man performance exemplifies what theatre can do best when it cuts with its most basic tool: words to change hearts and minds. <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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*<\/a>Patricia Keeney<\/strong> is an award-winning Canadian literary and theatre critic as well as a widely published and translated poet and novelist. Her most recent books are the novel One Man Dancing<\/em> (Inanna) based on the history of Uganda\u2019s legendary Abafumi theatre company and a collection of poetry and contemporary dialogues called Orpheus in Our World <\/em>(NeoPoiesis) based on the earliest Greek hymns. Available through Amazon and other independent booksellers. Keeney is a longtime professor of Literature, Humanities and Creative Writing at Toronto\u2019s York University. Website: wapitiwords.ca<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Copyright \u00a9<\/strong> 2023 Patricia Keeney
Critical Stages\/Sc\u00e8nes critiques<\/em> e-ISSN:2409-7411<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Creative<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

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