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Showing 1 - 10 of 10 matches in All Departments
A forgotten Haudenosaunee social song beams into the cosmos like a homing beacon for interstellar visitors. A computer learns to feel sadness and grief from the history of atrocities committed against First Nations. A young Native man discovers the secret to time travel in ancient petroglyphs. Drawing inspiration from science fiction legends like Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov and Ray Bradbury, Drew Hayden Taylor frames classic science-fiction tropes in an Aboriginal perspective. The nine stories in this collection span all traditional topics of science fiction--from peaceful aliens to hostile invaders; from space travel to time travel; from government conspiracies to connections across generations. Yet Taylor's First Nations perspective draws fresh parallels, likening the cultural implications of alien contact to those of the arrival of Europeans in the Americas, or highlighting the impossibility of remaining a "good Native" in such an unnatural situation as a space mission. Infused with Native stories and variously mysterious, magical and humorous, Take Us to Your Chief is the perfect mesh of nostalgically 1950s-esque science fiction with modern First Nations discourse.
"Only Drunks and Children Tell the Truth" is the emotional story of a woman's struggle to acknowledge her birth family. Grace, a Native girl adopted by a White family, is asked by her birth sister to return to the Reserve for their mother's funeral. Afraid of opening old wounds, Grace must find a place where the culture of her past can feed the truth of her present.
"Dead White Writer on the Floor" uses two literary
conventions--theatre of the absurd and mystery novels--to create
one of the funniest and thought-provoking plays ever about identity
politics. In Act One, six "savages"; noble, innocent, ignorant,
fearless, wise and gay, respectively; find themselves in a locked
room with the body of a white writer, which they stash in a closet.
None of them can figure out how he died or which of them might have
killed him. They realize as they point fingers at each other,
however, that they are all profoundly unhappy with their lives as
they've been constructed over the past four hundred years: Old
Lodge Skins wants to know what it feels like to be a young man;
Billy Jack wonders what spreading healing rather than pain would
feel like; Injun Joe is desperate for an education; Kills Many
Enemies is exhausted by his deadly seriousness and yearns for a
sense of humour; Pocahontas seeks to feel respected as a woman
rather than lusted after as a child sex object; and Tonto wants to
"come out of the canyon" and be the one wearing the mask for a
change. Gradually, they figure out that the latest iteration of
Gutenberg's invention buzzing like a beehive on the dead writer's
desk is actually a dream-catcher, which they can use to rewrite
their lives in the image of their own inner beings.
"A sleepy native reservation. A troubled teen girl. A vampire returns home." Nothing ever happens on the Otter Lake reservation. But when 16-year-old Tiffany discovers her father is renting out "her" room, she's deeply upset. Sure, their guest is polite and keeps to himself. But he's also a little creepy. Little do Tiffany, her father or even her astute Granny Ruth suspect the truth. The mysterious Pierre L'Errant is actually a vampire, returning to his tribal home after centuries spent in Europe. But Tiffany has other things on her mind: her new boyfriend is acting weird, disputes with her father are escalating, and her estranged mother is starting a new life with somebody else. Fed up and heartsick, Tiffany threatens drastic measures and flees into the bush. There, in the midnight woods, a chilling encounter with L'Errant changes everything... for both of them. A mesmerizing blend of Gothic thriller and modern coming-of-age novel, The Night Wanderer is unlike any other vampire story.
A very liberal contemporary couple--Angel, an urban Native science
fiction writer, and Colleen, a "non-practising" Jewish intellectual
who teaches Native literature--hosts a dinner party. The guests at
this little "sitcom" soiree are couples that represent what by now
have become the cliched extremes of both societies: Angel's former
radical Native activist buddies and Colleen's environmentally
concerned vegetarian / veterinarian friends. The menu is, of
course, the hosts' respectful attempt at shorthand for the
irreconcilable cultural differences about to come to a head during
the evening: moose roast and vegetarian lasagna.
400 Kilometres is the third play in Drew Hayden Taylor's hilarious and heart-wrenching identity-politics trilogy. Janice Wirth, a thirty-something urban professional, having discovered her roots as the Ojibway orphan Grace Wabung in Someday, and having visited her birth family on the Otter Lake Reserve in Only Drunks and Children Tell the Truth, is pregnant, and must now come to grips with the question of her  true identity." Her adoptive parents have just retired, and are about to sell their house to embark on a quest for their own identity by  returning" to England. Meanwhile, the Native father of her child-to-be is attempting to convince Janice/Grace that their new generation's future lies with their  own people" at Otter Lake.Which path for the future is Janice/Grace to choose, for herself, her families and her child, having spent a lifetime caught between the questions of  what I am" and  who I am"?Cast of 3 women and 2 men.
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