Day of Remembrance Honoring Boarding School Survivors, and Bowwow Powwow on Stage

Transcript

[Music: Minnesota Native News Theme]

Travis Zimmerman: For Minnesota Native News, I'm Travis Zimmerman. This week, the community gathers to honor boarding school survivors and a popular children's book debuts as a play. First, reporter Laurie Stern pays a visit to the Day of Remembrance, an event to remember and commemorate those who attended Indian boarding schools.

Laurie Stern: The emphasis was on healing and educating. And that meant talking about what happened.

Rachel Dionne-Thunder: All of my aunties were sent to residential schools. And they still won't talk about it to this day.

Laurie Stern: But Rachel Dionne-Thunder is speaking on their behalf. She remembers growing up on Canada's Treaty 8 lands afraid to play outside, afraid of being taken from her family. She spoke at a gathering September 30th at Powderhorn Park. It was hosted by the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, or NABS.

Rachel Dionne-Thunder: The intention in these schools was to silence us, was to assimilate us, was to kill us. And so every act that we do together is a testament that they were not successful.

Laurie Stern: More than 100 people came to testify or to listen. Among them were students from Nay Ah Shing School at Mille Lacs. This is their principal, Mike Gadbois.

Mike Gadbois: Exposing youth, any youth, to seeing what advocacy looks like, what groups and organizers and leaders look like in action, it gets in their minds, you know, that I can do this. I should do this.

Rachel Dionne-Thunder: So how we're gonna do this is we are going to sing a song to honor our boarding school survivors who are here.

Laurie Stern: Toward the end of the evening, four boarding school survivors took chairs of honor and everyone lined up for a handshake or an embrace. Their testimony and the activism of their children and grandchildren are a promise that healing will happen and that the life ways the schools try to erase will live on. For Minnesota Native News, I'm Laurie Stern.

Travis Zimmerman: Next, Deanna StandingCloud talks with Mni Giizhik Theatre Ensemble Founder, Sarah Pillatzki-Warzeha, about bringing Bowwow Powwow to life on stage.

Deanna StandingCloud: Cool shades of blue lights dance behind the glowing cast of Bowwow Powwow. The story, now on tour on stages across the state, follows Wendy Girl and company on their way to the powwow, where everyone seems to turn into dogs.

Sara Pillatzki-Warzeha: Bowwow Powwow has been a dream for a minute. And, it was one of the first, I think, Native children's books that we bought my son.

Deanna StandingCloud: Sara Pillatzki-Warzeha is from the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate in South Dakota. She's one of the Co-Founders of Mni Giizhik, a Minnesota-based Native theater company and Director of the new production, Bowwow Powwow.

Sara Pillatzki-Warzeha: We started this company because it felt like there were so many stories, so many indigenous stories to tell. We were living our dream and just telling the stories from here, up here, with the people from here, and that feels really good.

Deanna StandingCloud: Brenda Child is a citizen of the Red Lake Nation of Ojibwe and the author of the children's book that inspired Mini Gijik to adapt the story for theater by Brenda's own daughter, Bene McNamara. The Ojibwe language is used in both the book and on stage.

Sara Pillatzki-Warzeha: Using our language on stage is also really important and it is incredibly powerful, especially, I think, for young people to see their language spoken out loud.

Deanna StandingCloud: The Stages Theatre Company partnered with Minnie Gizik to run the production. A companion educational guide provides several language learning resources available on the Stages Theatre website.

Sara Pillatzki-Warzeha: Anytime we do language, anytime we do a theater that affirms our language or culture or whatever, we're fighting that sort of seed of the settler colonialism that told us you don't get to be that. Bowwow Powwow, like all Native theater, is a big like, we're going to do it whether you wanted us to or not. We are affirming ourselves.

Deanna StandingCloud: To learn more about future indigenous-led Minnesota-based productions, follow Mni Giizhik on Facebook, spelled M-N-I-G-I-I-Z-H-I-K. For Minnesota Native News, I'm Deanna Standing Cloud.

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Travis Zimmerman: Minnesota Native News is produced by AMPERS. Minnesota's community radio stations made possible by funding from the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.