Ojibway (Ojibwe)

DraMétis is the first anthology to focus on the emerging discipline of Métis drama. The pieces have all been previously produced and highlight the diversity of Métis drama being written and performed in Canada.

In this collection of two plays about the process of children becoming adults, Drew Hayden Taylor works his delightfully comic and bitter-sweet magic on the denials, misunderstandings and preconceptions which persist between Native and Colonial culture in North America.

In “The Boy in the Treehouse,” Simon, the son of an Ojibway mother and a British father, climbs into his half-finished tree house on the vision-quest his books say is necessary forhim to reclaim his mother’s culture. “It’s a Native thing,” he informs his incredulous father (who tells him he’d never heard of such a thing from his wife): “Only boys do it. It’s part of becoming a man.” Of course, what with the threats of the police, the temptation of the barbeque next door, and the distractions of a persistent neighbourhood girl, Simon probably wouldn’t recognize a vision if he fell overit.

“Girl Who Loved Her Horses” is the Native name for the strange and quiet Danielle from the non-status community across the tracks, imbued with the mysterious power to draw the horse “every human being on the planet wanted but could never have.” She is and remains an enigma to the people of the reservation, but the power of her spirit remains strong. Years later, a huge image of her horse reappears, covering an entire side of a building in a blighted urban landscape of beggars and broken dreams. The eyes of her stallion, which once gleamed exhilaration and freedom, now glare with defiance and anger. Danielle has clearly been forced to grow up.

With these two plays, Taylor rediscovers an issue long forgotten in our “post-historical” age: the nature of, and the necessity for, these rites of passage in all cultures.

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160 pages | 5.50" x 8.50" | Paperback

The Baby Blues is Drew Hayden Taylor’s highly wrought farce of patrimony in a stifling, politically correct, post-colonial milieu of “fancy dancers” of every stripe on the powwow trail. In juxtaposing three generations of careless wandering hedonists, progenitors of a string of offspring from their six-night stands, with their erstwhile naïve women partners who are always left holding the bag, the “big questions” of heritage, family, cultural context and personal identity are ruthlessly stripped of their conventional meanings and become so much useless, embarrassing roadkill on the highway of life.

Cast of 3 women and 3 men.

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96 pages | 5.50" x 8.50" | Paperback

David Groulx’s latest collection offers his readers a handful of poems as cutting and brilliant as glass shards, offering glimpses of the anger, pain and lost beauties of his ancestors. These poems cut deep with their clear-eyed honesty, their stripped away pain and suffering. A subtle weaving of black humour and fleeting touches of beauty, as well at the careful craftsmanship of the writing make these poems iconic. This is a collection that should not be missed.

Reviews
"This collection of poetry is a passionate snapshot of poignant aspects of life on the rez depicted in simple scenes that are propelled forward with a sparse economy of language. It is little wonder that Groulx has won awards for his poetry and it has appeared globally in over one hundred periodicals." - Canadian Literature