Indigenous arts movement in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside

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The Weaving Reconciliation: Our Way

Overview

The Weaving Reconciliation: Our Way is a theatre project produced by Vancouver Moving Theatre in partnerships with multiple indigenous organizations in and outside of Vancouver.[1] 'The Weaving Reconciliation: Our Way' refers to both the name of the Indigenous arts project and the title of the theatre play produced by the project team.

Based in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, the project took an a national tour to present multi-layered community engagement activities as well as one-act theatrical play from May to June 2018.[1] Starting in Vancouver/Coast Salish Territories on May 17th, 2018, the production team took on a national theatre, performing its project in Penticton/Sylix Territory, Toronto/Treaty 13 Territory and Winnipeg/Treaty 1 and Metis Homelands.[2]

The story of the play comes from the people living in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside (DTES). The story of seeking reconciliation with the impacts of Residential School aims to give voice to those who have been "impacted the Indian Act and Canada’s long shadow of colonialism.”[3][4]

The Play

Link to the teaser video

The play is presented in a one-act theatrical style that is accompanied by live music, projected images and pre-recorded sound. Set on Coast Salish Territory in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, the play surfaces the history of residential schools and its legacy. [5] The story tells a journey of a character named Old One (Jonathan Fisher) and his family to reconciliation.[1] Over the course of his journey, Old One revisits his traumatizing memories, such as his shame in not raising his daughter, the fishing industry's decline, his missing spouse, and his experience in residential school.[2]

Throughout the performance, the audience is treated as ‘witnesses to the sharing of cultural practice, oral history and lived experience.’ [6] Old One seeks reconciliation through improvised theatre with another character 'Trickster' as well as youth participants from the territory where the play is performed. By doing so, the project team hopes to share the play about the Downtown Eastside (DTES) 'a bigger community of Canada'.[3] The play is preceded by pre-show activities, workshops, cultural demonstrations and exhibitions. [1]

The Production Team

The Weaving Reconciliation: Our Way is written, directed and performed mainly by Aboriginal elders and artists who are based in Vancouver Downtown Eastside. [1]

The Leadership

  • Director: Renae Morriseau (Saulteaux Cree)
  • Lead Writer: Renae Morriseau (Saulteaux Cree)
  • Co-writer: Rosemary Georgeson (Coast Salish/Sahtu Dene) and Savannah Walling
  • Producer: Terry Hunter
  • Dramaturge: Kathleen Flaherty [1] [2]

The Cast

The cast of The Weaving Reconciliation: Our way is expressed below in order of the actor's name and role.

  • Trickster: Sam Bob (Tulkweemult of the Snaw-Naw-us)
  • Darryl-with-a-Chip-on-his-Shoulder: Vern Bevis
  • Muriel: Tania Carter
  • Old One: Jonathan Fisher
  • Nicole: Tai Amy Grauman
  • Steve: Stephen Lytton
  • Mom: Sophie Merasty
  • Woody: Latash Maurice Nahanee
  • Rosemary: Tracey Nepinak
  • Marge: Dalgum’ha – Delhia Nahanee [1] [2]
“I think sharing Weaving Reconciliation: Our Way will help people shed the tears, but also help ease the pain of letting go. And letting go is a must... As indigenous people, are we truly ready to share what we want to share? Yes – we are. We are doing this – because we must." [7]

- Stephen Lytton, actor

The Weaving Reconciliation and Multilayered Community Engagement Projects

"Reconciliation is not just an Aboriginal story. Culturally diverse citizens all across Canada are in need of reconciliation within ourselves, within our families and communities, within our nation, and in our relationship with the land and waters on which we depend."

- Savannah Walling, Artistic Director[1]

Besides the performance, the project team carries out community engagement projects that aim to create opportunities and advance the well-being of marginalized communities in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside (DTES), many of whom are Indigenous.[8] [9]

The Weaving Reconciliation's multilayered community engagement projects involve followings:

Pre-show Activities and Workshops

The play 'Weaving Reconciliation: Our Way' contains pre-show workshops and activities to engage the host community and interested community members, especially youth and knowledge keepers. By doing so, the project team engages local youth and ‘knowledge-keepers’ from the territory where the play is performed.

  • Seeking Voices Workshop: In each host community they visit on their theatre tour, the production team aims to engage local youth in their pre-show activities. One example is to engage local youth in co-facilitating the pre-show activities. Local youth and community members participate in pre-show workshops where they co-curate the images and music playlist that mirror and support ‘the current and traditional pulse of Aboriginal thought and heart’ as well as ‘the people, land, and waters of their territory’ with Rose Georgeson, one of the co-writers of the play.[10]

Other Activities and Workshops

Beyond pre-show activities, the project team implements its multilayered projects through workshops, cultural demonstrations, exhibitions and documentation of Indigenous-related resources.

  • Fostering Vancouver's Downtown Eastside (DTES) Artists: The project team seeks to recognize indigenous artists living in the DTES area through purchasing their artworks and crafts and giving the purchased artworks and crafts as gifts to each host community they visit on their tour. The compensation is funded by donors.
  • Education: The multilayered community engagement projects also include publishing educational resources, such as school study guide and legacy program guide, organizing and hosting Reconciliation workshops to discuss on what reconciliation means to each individual, and compiling Indigenous-related resources in its online platforms. [1]

Historical Context of the Weaving Conciliation

Vancouver's Downtown Eastside (DTES)

Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside area (DTES) is considered to be bordered by Clark Drive to the east, Cambie to the west, the Waterfront to the north and Venables Street/ Prior Avenue to the South. Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (DTES) encompasses what we now calls suburban areas of Vancouver, including Chinatown, Gastown, Strathcona, Victory’s square, Thornton Park, and Industrial area. The areas were previously occupied by the Coast Salish peoples for over 10,000 years [11] [12]

History of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside (DTES)

During and after colonial period

What we now call Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside area served as the commercial and transportation hub of British Columbia during the colonial period. [13] The Downtown Eastside (DTES) was deemed central to imperial expansion and industrial activities, with launching of the Carnegie Community Centre, the Hasting Sawmill and the Canadian Pacific Railway, and the single room occupancy (SRO) hotels providing labor and housing. [14]

The DTES, however began to deteriorate as the downtown core shifted west. The decline of jobs in the primary sector led to an increase in aging and unemployed workers.[14] The DTES lost its functionality as the hub and transformed into an ‘increasingly chaotic street environment’ where its residents were exposed to poverty, drug use, and housing issues. The DTES area has faced an increasing visibility of homelessness, service agencies, open drug use and sex work. Such history pushed the DTES areas into what describes ‘a perfect storm of social dysfunction.[13][8]

The problems of poverty and cultural dislocation have further marginalized low-income residents of the DTES, including those who identify themselves as of Aboriginal origin. Along with the aforementioned issues, the ‘Not In My BackYard (NIMPY)’ phenomenon emerged and contributed to the stigmatization of DTES. [15]

Gentrification in the DTES

Often described as urban regeneration, the process of gentrification commonly includes the displacement and alienation of low-income or working class residents in an neighbourhood of low values [16].  While gentrification is promoted in the name of urban regeneration, Gentrification and neoliberal urbanism are perpetuated by “the public hegemony of creative economics and cultural politics,” which ultimately results in income equalities and social exclusion.[17] [18]

Previous movements towards gentrification in the DTES include the displacement of impoverished residents as well as symbolic elimination of the drug use and street crime. Current processes of gentrification in the DTES not only includes the displacement of its low-income and marginalized residents, but also the commodification of their poverty.[14] The DTES is recently transforming into a site of ‘poverty tourism,’ where newly built restaurants and cafes promote the undesirable features of the area, including poverty, to make appeal to their customers.[14] Such history of place making accompanies the idea of otherness and stigmatization, establishing the DTES residents are “other” and commodifying their poverty. [19]

Social Activism

Contesting the representation of the Downtown Eastside area as the damaged, impoverished neighborhood is the Indigenous-led social activism that has emerged. [14] The DTES residents have strived to maintain and create community despite the conditions that marginalized them. [11] In particular, Indigenous residents in the Downtown Eastside areas are viewed as an ‘activist as well as active’ neighborhood’ which take initiatives and provide support through social activism.[13]

Ongoing Issues in the DTES

According to City of Vancouver’s 2018 report of Aboriginal Health, Healing and Wellness in the DTES, it has been identified that the DTES lacks funding for and recognition of Aboriginal-based health services as well as prevention and wellness programs, especially for Aboriginal youth.[20] [21] The City of Vancouver Report in 2018 has pointed out that the health, wellbeing and wellness of the DTES residents needs to be improved. Furthermore, increasing accessibility to culturally specific services remains an unresolved task. [22] Poverty and social issues continue to influence the DTES residents, including urban Indigenous communities in the DTES.

Directing a focus solely on urban experiences of space may neglect the positive impacts of reserve life on Indigenous lives and their resistance against colonialism.

Works Cited

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 "The Weaving Conciliation: Our Way Website".
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 "Weaving Reconcilation: A Vancouver Moving Theatre Production". Native Earth Performing Arts.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Morriseau, Renae (2018). "Director Interview". Lantern Films.
  4. ↑ Reynolds, John, The Long Shadow of Colonialism: The Origins of the Doctrine of Emergency in International Human Rights Law (June 15, 2010). Osgoode CLPE Research Paper No. 19/2010. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1625395 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1625395
  5. ↑ Dickson, Courtney (May 2018). "'We are healing': New Vancouver-based play explores trauma and reconciliation". CBC.
  6. ↑ Morriseau, Renae (June 13, 2018). "Director Interview with Global News". Global News. CBC News. Retrieved Nov 13, 2018.
  7. ↑ Siedlanowska, Julia (May 2018). "Stephen Lytton Interview". Soundcloud.
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 Robertson, Leslie (Oct 2007). "Taming Space: Drug Use, HIV, and Homemaking in Downtown Eastside Vancouver". Gender, Place & Culture. 14.5: 527–549.
  9. ↑ "The Project". Weaving Reconciliation: Our Way.
  10. ↑ "Seeking Voice: Weaving Reconciliation and Geography with Rosemary Georgeson". Greenest City.
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 Culhane, Dara (2003). "Their spirits live within us: Aboriginal women in downtown eastside Vancouver emerging into visibility". The American Indian Quarterly. 27(3): 593–606.
  12. ↑ Blomley, Nicholas. "Property, pluralism and the gentrification frontier". Canadian Journal of Law and Society. 12(2): 187–218.
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 Schatz, Donna. Unsettling the Politics of Exclusion: Aboriginal Activism and the Vancouver Downtown East Side. The Canadian Political Science Association, 2010, pp. 1–25, Unsettling the Politics of Exclusion: Aboriginal Activism and the Vancouver Downtown East Side.
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 14.2 14.3 14.4 Burnett, Katherine (Dec 2013). "Commodifying poverty: gentrification and consumption in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside". Urban Geography – via Taylor and Francis Online.
  15. ↑ Takahashi, Lois (1997). "The Socio-Spatial Stigmatization of Homelessness and HIV/AIDS". Social Science and Medicine. 45: 903–915.
  16. ↑ Smith, Neil (1996). The new urban frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist city. New York: Routledge.
  17. ↑ Smith, Neil (2002). "New globalism, new urbanism: Gentrification as global urban strategy". Antipode. 34(3): 427–459.
  18. ↑ Keil, R. (2002). "The urban politics of roll-with-it neoliberalization". City.
  19. ↑ Sommers, Jeff; Blomley, Nick (2002). "The worst block in Vancouver". In Douglas, Stan (ed.). In Every Building on 100 West Hastings. Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp. pp. 18–58.
  20. ↑ "Aboriginal Health, Healing, and Wellness in the DTES Study : Final Report" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2018.
  21. ↑ https://www.deslibris.ca/ID/10095636
  22. ↑ Andersen, Chris; Peters, Evelyn (2013). Indigenous in the City: Contemporary Identities and Cultural Innovation. UBC Press. pp. 1–21.
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