Tekaronhiáhkhwa Santee Smith, an award winning Onkwehon:we dance artist and choreographer from the Kahnyen’kehàka (Mohawk) Nation, Turtle Clan from Six Nations of the Grand River, Ontario, brings her powerful work The Mush Hole to Halifax as part of the 10th Annual Prismatic Arts Festival.
The Mush Hole was the nickname given to the Mohawk Institute Residential School, Canada’s first Residential School, which was opened in 1832 by the Anglican Church in what is now known as Brantford, Ontario. The role of the schools was to indoctrinate Indigenous children with “Christian values” and English language and customs, and to violently disconnect them from their own culture, heritage, language and identity, and from anyone in their lives who could have rooted them back into their community. Schools like the Mush Hole sought to assimilate Indigenous peoples so thoroughly that Indigenous peoples no longer existed. They also sought to make Indigenous people feel so ashamed and full of self-loathing that they came to hate their own culture and aspired, instead, toward whiteness. The Mohawk Institute Residential School was in operation until June of 1970.
Smith uses dance and movement in The Mush Hole to evoke the intense emotions two generations of Residential School survivors experience, both during their time in the school and in its aftermath. The work is deeply grounded in research and much of the choreography is inspired by stories of trauma that were shared in interviews with survivors of the school. Smith does an exceptional job of using dance to convey both extremely specific stories clearly and also a more general world of complex wounds, struggles and reactions to pain that allow us to make our own connections and to see multiple layers of meaning in single gestures.
The work is a powerful ensemble piece featuring the talents of Smith, Jonathan Fisher, Semiah Smith, Montana Summers, and Julianne Blackbird. Smith and Fisher play the parents, themselves survivors of the Mush Hole, who were robbed of the nurturing care of their own parents, and so we see them struggle in their attempts to show love to one another and to their children. As parents they are forced by the Canadian government to surrender their children to the school, and as survivors they know what pain, trauma and abuse are waiting for them there. We see clearly and heartbreakingly the cycles of abuse inflicted on these individuals, and their community, ones that not only indoctrinate children, but also breed hatred and guilt, alienation and shame between family members, while also creating the perfect opportunity for violence and addiction after survivors have left the school. Semiah Smith, Montana Summers and Julianne Blackbird play the children of the next generation still attending the school. Like the victims of the Holocaust Residential School “students” were dehumanized to the point of being referred to by numbers instead of names. Semiah Smith and Montana Summers portray siblings who are not allowed any contact with one another, despite attending the same school. Summers does a tragic dance in the boiler room, inspired by a real survivor’s story of rape. As Santee Smith stressed in her opening remarks, there was no one at the school to protect these children, who ranged in age from two to sixteen years old. Julianne Blackbird’s character, Eleven, doesn’t have a name because it’s been lost to history. She dances a glorious freedom dance when she escapes, but, like so many of the Indigenous children who went missing, she dies, alone in the snow, unable to find her way home.
The subject matter of The Mush Hole is dark, but it’s also truthful. In portraying the devastating impacts of genocide through dance, Smith is able to convey the depths of the emotions in the spirits of these children, both those who survived and those who were lost, without focusing on the graphic details of these atrocities. It’s powerful that we never see the perpetrators of the crimes against these students. They’re not the focus. It’s also poignant that most of what is said is done through the body and not the voice- for, until very recently, the voices of most of these children (both those who grew up and those who never did) have been lost, and many lost the ability to communicate in their own voices. Jonathan Fisher’s character tries to remember how to sing one of his traditional songs, piecing it together, and then after a time Smith’s character turns on the radio to Patsy Cline singing “Just a Closer Walk With Thee.” It’s an important reminder that when one culture seeks to violently assimilate another even music becomes a means of oppression.
The Mush Hole is an amazing example of how much can not only be conveyed, but also how much can be taught, without the use of words. Words can feel didactic sometimes, but this piece connects straight to the heart. In the program notes for the show it is written that The Mush Hole “is about survival, resilience, and is an embodied way to say: ‘Enskwakhwahshón:rien – we will feed your hunger, kwè:iahre – we remember you, kwanorónhkhwa – we love you.’” The love and deep respect that went into the creation of this piece is palpable. It was an honour to be a witness to The Mush Hole today. If you are able to go to the Spatz Theatre tonight at 6:00pm for the only public performance in Halifax, I could not recommend it more heart-fully. This truth is important. The power of art is infinite here.
The Mush Hole by Santee Smith plays at the Spatz Theatre (1855 Trollope Street, K’jipuktuk (Halifax))) at 6:00pm tonight, September 14th, 2018. Tickets are $22.00 (student/senior/underwaged) or $25.00. They are available HERE.
Click HERE to find out about the other shows and events happening this week at Prismatic.
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