Edmonton Rubaboo First Nations Festival

Tazeen Hasan
EDMONTON, Canada --On January 30th, 2017 at La Cité Francophone, an elegant building in the heart of Edmonton’s French quarter, Eighth Rubaboo Indigenous Arts Festival opened with food, Canada’s national anthem, and prayers in Cree, an aboriginal language, from First Nations Elder Jerry Saddleback.

There were about forty individuals in the opening ceremony, both from Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities,  which took place in the entrance gallery of La Cité, the walls throughout decorated with different forms of Aboriginal Arts and First Nation scenes.

Rubaboo as a festival was started by Workshop West Playwrights Theatre under the former Artistic Director, Michael Clark, in 2009, said Christine Sokaymoh Frederick, Rubaboo’s Artistic Director who is programming Rubaboo for eight years.

“It has since become a vivid expression of renaissance and revival for indigenous arts and features Indigenous theater, music, dance, food, and traditional crafts,” said Frederick.

Frederick said artists in the beginning were unfamiliar with each others’ work but that they are now collaborating and seeking out partnerships both within and outside the indigenous communities.

The only show of the first day was NeoIndigenA, a solo dance-centered performance, created by Tekaronhiáhkhwa Santee Smith, an Indigenous dancer/choreographer from Kaha:wi Dance Theatre, Ontario.

Smith, from the Mohawk First Nation and the Turtle clan,  appeared on a dimly lit stage, bare except for an array of animal bones and a huge wooden antler sculpture hanging over the back curtains. Constant cacophonous animalistic howls in the background further created an atmosphere of wild nature for the audience.  Her occasional sigh like shrieks punctuated the background soundscape.

Another major performance of the festival was ‘Wide Awake for 30 Years’ to be staged the next day. “[It] uses poetry, song and prose to share moments from my journey as an indigenous artist and cultural worker,” said Anna Marie Sewell, a Mi'gmaq aboriginal race artist, and former Poet Laureate of Edmonton.

Sewell’s said her performance title referred to First Nations leader Louis Reil’s prophecy: ’My people will sleep for one hundred years. When they awake, it will be the artists that give them back their spirit.’  She said she arrived in Edmonton exactly 100 years after the prophecy and worked for more than 30 years as an Indigenous arts and culture worker.

“If you are visiting Rubaboo,” said Sewell, “it’s important to understand you are seeing art made by people whose cultures and religions were outlawed for generations.”

Indigenous people have been jailed for dancing, or practicing ceremonies such as Sun Dance and Potlatch. Meanwhile, many non-indigenous Canadians never learned that these things happened, she added.

"There were times during colonization when people went into hiding to preserve their culture.” said Elder Saddleback, who is also the Dean of the Aboriginal College of Arts in the nearby Maskwacis Reserve.

“Indigenous people are usually portrayed in media as a victimized community...But there are lots of good things happening in the community," said Shivani Saini, the publicity manager for Rubaboo. “Cultural revival through festivals is one of them,” she added.

“If you are visiting Rubaboo,” said Sewell, “it’s important to understand you are seeing art made by people whose cultures and religions were outlawed for generations,”