Hiawatha Play and Pageants, Garden River First Nation, 1901-1969

The Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery hosts a workshop led by Karl Hele, Director of and Associate Professor, First Peoples Studies Program at Concordia University on questions of resistance, resilience and representation found within the history of the Hiawatha Pageant and Play as performed by people from Garden River First Nation.

Since 1901 to the current day members of Garden River First Nation have staged various plays to non-Native and Native audiences in Canada, the United States and Europe. From 1901 to 1969, the community annually staged a version of the Hiawatha play, which it based on Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “The Song of Hiawatha.” During the same period community members also performed a variety of plays that celebrated their history and culture. These dramas concentrated on the historical and ‘mythical’ Ojibwa past, which ended when civilization arrived. While these dramatic narratives appear to represent the rise and fall of Indigenous traditions, the undertones carry different messages.

The idea of Hiawatha, beginning with the poem’s release in 1854, also captured Western imaginations leading to multiple stagings of the play by various non-Indigenous peoples as well as the creation of a plethora of cultural artifacts. Moreover each performance of Hiawatha by the Ojibwa delivered a message to the audience concerning colonialism and Indigenous peoples. As such, these performances represent a multifaceted dialogue with the colonizer and a unique window on how history performed can carry several meanings. Specifically, this workshop will examine issues of appropriation and re-appropriation as well as how the Anishinaabeg adopted and adapted European assumptions concerning ‘Indians’. This session will seek to address the questions surrounding agency, colonialism, (re)appropriations, and understandings through visual imagery and written texts by examining a range of materials associated with the Hiawatha plays (pictures, post cards, play books, films, newspaper reports, musical scores, etc) drawn from my personal collection and some archival records shared by Chicago Film Archives.

Karl Hele is a member of the Garden River First Nation (Anishinaabeg/Chippewa), as well as the Director of and Associate Professor in First Peoples Studies Program at Concordia University. He completed his Ph.D. in History from McGill University in 2003, titled “‘By the Rapids’: The Anishinabeg-Missionary Encounter at Bawating (Sault Ste. Marie), c.1821 -1871.” Additionally, Dr. Hele has published 13 articles, edited four collections of papers, co-edited three editions of the Algonquian Society proceedings, and wrote two monographs about the alienation of his reserve’s land as well as reviewed books for Urban History Review, Canadian Journal of Native Studies, and H-AMINDIAN.

Dr. Hele has also acted as a peer reviewer for Social Science and Humanities Research Council grants and journals such as the Canadian Historical Review, Journal of the Canadian Church Historical Society, Canadian Journal of Native Studies and the Journal of Mennonite Studies. Dr. Hele has presented his research at numerous academic conferences and given several invited lectures in Canada, United States, Mexico and Poland. He is also a member of the Great Lakes Research Alliance for the Study of Aboriginal Arts and Cultures and co-founder of the Center for the Study of Indigenous Border Issues.

Space for this event is limited
PLEASE RSVP
robin.simpson@concordia.ca

This workshop is part of Local Records, a program that pairs exhibitions with relevant archival holdings in Montreal. Animated by a guest researcher, each seminar coordinates encounters and discussions around a selection of primary documents, offering a local lens through which to consider the exhibition and a point of departure for new research.