Ep. 51: Conversatorio on the making of Treaty 9
April 14, 2021
“We’re all treaty people. I do believe that, because all of our ancestors signed this agreement together. So it’s our responsibility, it’s not a one sided-agreement, to learn about the treaties and to be able to speak about them.”
– Falen Johnson
In this Conversatorio, we present a discussion on performance, interpretation, and making treaty from the 2014 RUTAS International Multi-Arts Festival. Originally part of a festival conference event called Re-staging Treaty: Embodied Memories, Written Records, and Living Archives, the event started with a reading of a new play commission by Falen Johnson on the subject of Treaty 9, and was followed by this panel discussion.
In order of voices you will hear, the panelists are:
Sasha Kovacs – artist, performance scholar, core/founding member of Ars Mechanica, and Ph.D. candidate at University of Toronto.
Reverend Grafton Anton – Wolf Clan from the Onaida of the Thames First Nation, former Elder in Residence at the University of Toronto’s First Nation House, Onaida language teacher, and retired reverend at United Church of Toronto’s Urban Native Ministry.
Falen Johnson – Mohawk and Tuscarora from Six Nations Grand River Territory, awriter, dramaturg, actor, co-host of CBC Podcasts’ The Secret Life of Canada with Leah Simone Bowen, and guest-host of CBC Radio’s UNRESERVED.
John Long – the author of Treaty No. 9: Making the Agreement to Share the Land in Far Northern Ontario in 1905, and at the time of this discussion, professor at the Schulich School of Education in North Bay. This episode is dedicated to his memory.
Murray Klippenstein – over 25 years of a broad social justice practice in the fields of Native rights, environmental law, housing and employment law, and civil rights with Klippensteins law firm. Murray has represented the Mushkegowuk First Nation in James Bay for over 15 years.
SHOW NOTES:
- Diana Taylor’s work on living archive and her book The Archive and the Repertoire. Taylor founded the Hemispheric Institute at the NYU, which was a big inspiration for the the RUTAS Festival.
- Falen spoke with Erika Iserhoff and Rosary Spence in her process of creating her piece.
- Fort Albany, spoken of here as a fort and an important Hudson’s Bay Company trading post in 1905. Today it is better known as Fort Albany First Nation.
- John Long’s book, Treaty No. 9: Making the Agreement to Share the Land in Far Northern Ontario in 1905
- The diary of treaty commissioner Daniel G. MacMartin has been an important piece of current disputes about Treaty 9
- The Ring of Fire development area in the James Bay lowlands of northern Ontario.
- Mushkegowuk Cree First Nation
- Since 1997, the Canadian Supreme Court has allowed oral testimony to be used as evidence in court.
- Further resources: Trick or Treaty? a 2014 film on Treaty 9, and a Canadian Heritage minute featuring Rosary Spence.
All Merendiando episodes are in Spanglish, English, or Spanish. New episodes of Radio Aluna Theatre are released on Wednesdays. Follow and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, and wherever else you get your podcasts.
Radio Aluna Teatro is produced by Aluna Theatre with support from the Toronto Arts Council, The Ontario Arts Council, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Department of Canadian Heritage, the Metcalf Foundation and TD Bank.
Aluna Theatre is Beatriz Pizano & Trevor Schwellnus, with Sue Balint; Radio Aluna Theatre is produced by Monica Garrido and Camila Diaz-Varela.
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