Introduction

Cultural stories are deeply tied into the kinetic being, and responding to this being through contemporary artistic practices is a way of retrieving, rediscovering, and creating culture. Here I will discuss how embracing impulse and shaping it outside of our body through contemporary dance is an active form of culture making in Indigenous communities. In what follows, I write about how the Raven Spirit Dance company emerged out of my personal journey to learn and understand the traditional cultural practices of the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in First Nation (referred to as TH) community in the Yukon, and how it developed a unique voice to not only express and understand contemporary Indigenous identity, but manifested into an expression that represents a specific community.

The historical reality has shaped the contemporary culture and identity of the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in. This influenced the development of the work Raven Spirit Dance Company has done in relationship to this community. Contemporary dance techniques and methodologies used by Raven Spirit enabled the dance artists to connect with the kinetic being in order to uncover deep- rooted issues and understandings. Opening our kinetic beings to the ‘impulse’ that is held within our bodies speaks to ways of knowing and understanding not only ourselves, but also where we come from as Aboriginal artists. The work produced by these processes affects the community as a whole and indeed, these processes become not only artistic creative practices, but also practices of active culture making and identity shaping for the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in.

This article is based in the understanding that Aboriginal contemporary dance is dance that is deeply rooted in Aboriginal worldview and sensibilities. In the studio, I always ask myself and others to dive deep into muscle, bones and momentum to find the hidden stories, emotions, images, and ideas that are the construction of who we are as human beings. These moments are profound, exhausting and difficult. This is a journey that asks the question: What are the stories that are pulsing through us? How are these stories rooted in identity, culture and community?

A Historical Overview: Finding ‘Place’ and Creating ‘Space’

Personal Journey: Raven Spirit Dance Company

When I was in university, I came to the conclusion that I needed to come home and learn about my culture, my songs and dances. That didn’t work out the way I thought it would.

When I began to seek this knowledge, I realized that the questions I wanted so desperately to be answered by my community and my elders were actually the same questions they were asking themselves. I remember sitting in the Heritage office with my cousin, looking over old photos of a traditional Han dance and us ruminating what it meant and what the dancers were doing. There is such a huge gap between now and that moment captured in a photo. Residential school and colonization shaped these questions and created a vast distance between us and the answers we are seeking. We were asking: Who are we as TH people? What is our history? What is our living culture? So instead of just showing up and be given the answers, I realized I needed to join in the investigation my community was engaged in.

I brought to the table my skills as a contemporary choreographer and dancer and with these tools started my investigation of personal and community identity.

The idea of contemporary dance being used as a vehicle for rebuilding and reaffirming cultural identity was introduced to me at the Aboriginal Dance Program at the Banff Centre for the Arts. I attended the program in 1998 under the direction of Alejandro Roncería. In a book edited by dance scholars Anne Flynn and Lisa Doolittle, Marrie Mumford, artistic director of the Aboriginal Arts Program at the Banff Centre for the Arts, writes that the Aboriginal Arts Program was created to:

develop new forms of cultural practice within the principle of self-government in the arts. To create new forms without destroying the power of the old ways and to incorporate the old into the new without distorting the principles of ancient traditions. (Mumford 2000, 111)

At this program, I trained with other First Nations, Métis and Inuit dancers, traditional and contemporary dancers. I worked with choreographers from Mexico, Montreal, Toronto, and Inuvik. Every moment was a challenge, a new learning experience for me. What was so exciting about this dance work is that we were not trying to mimic an existing form, but to investigate a new form of dance that embodied Aboriginal worldview and identity. I also found my connection to spirit through this work. All the sudden, I was on stage performing, and it was undeniable that my ancestors were waiting in the wings, sitting in the empty seats. In the rehearsal room, they would be whispering in my ear, urging for a story to be told and song to be sung.

This program changed the course of my whole career and allowed me to dig deep inside myself and find a passion that is still driving my art today. It embraced the two worlds that were separate, my culture and my contemporary dance training. It merged these two things together for me and set me on a path that has led me to the heart of my own practice that has spilled out of the rehearsal room and work that I have done at the cultural centre and in dance venues throughout the world today.

While I was engaged in my training and building my company, that little theatre space way up North was still waiting. Programming fell into the hands of Glenda Bolt, who planted the seed of the dance in the space and watered it profusely until it grew into the successful partnership between the centre and Raven Spirit Dance. In 2000, Glenda Bolt commissioned Kimberly Tuson and myself to create a new dance work for the Centre. This was the birth of Songs of Shar Cho. Songs of Shar Cho is a multi-media contemporary dance work that explores the life and history of the TH people. It explores the physical landscape and history and how it carved the lives of the people but is also explores the emotional landscape that exists in such an isolated and beautiful part of the world.

The cross-cultural dialogue and process developed during this time has evolved into a way of working. Songs of Shär Cho will be performed for a long time to come. I created and performed contemporary dance work at the Dänojà Zho Cultural Centre every summer. The dance piece was performed daily for visitors and community members. It is very rare for a dance company in North America to have a run of shows to the extent we did. Our first few summers we performed a minimum of 35 shows at the same venue. We had the opportunity to perform at the centre for over ten years and perform for thousands of people. I am quite proud of this, but more importantly beneath the work that is done and performed, there is something profound in the work that is being done. I am embraced by something huge, something that is defining my life’s work as well as my community. The work that is performed is a valid contribution to the identity of the community. It offers up a mirror to the community to reflect on who they are and rebuild that sense of identity by what we share on the stage. At first, I was not sure at all how the community would embrace this contemporary expression as a valid element of a cultural centre, but the work that we are doing has taken root, and was woven into the fabric of cultural expression, into the community. I have a memory of an audience member, a TH citizen, after one of our performances. I was heading out of the theatre after one of my shows and she was outside the doors being held by one of the staff of the centre. She was crying and crying. . . . .and saying that we are so beautiful, that our culture is so beautiful. It was deeply moving to see her response and to know that the work can affirm the beauty that lies within us as a community. Being propelled by this moment, I continue to find a deep well inside of myself that feeds my work, profound images, moments, stories that are defining my work as an artist and offer that mirror to myself and to others that reveal truths.

Finding the ‘Impulse’ through Contemporary Dance Techniques

Contemporary practices that are based on accessing kinetic impulse, trying to hone down to the first impulse and contemporary practices that support the idea that the body if a container from which our personal, cultural and ancestral history spills out from. The body carries everything,images, impulse, stories that are the foundation of my life. I have found these contemporary dance techniques help me dig deeper into my practice and work. These are outlined below.

• River: River work is the main staple of my creative process. David MacMurray Smith first introduced me to this work when I was in the Full Circle First Nations Ensemble. David is full of experience from his years of training and performance in dance, theatre, and clown. He founded Fantastic Space Enterprises in 1991 and his special-interest is in how memory moves and patterns itself in our bodies and in how this affects our perceptions, behavior, and communication (http://www.fantasticspace.com/about.htm). The technique he introduced to us was a branch of the work of Linda Putnam, the founder and artistic director of Evergreen Theater and School in the United States. A river is a contracted time (for example 30 minutes) that the participant agrees to, and it can either have an overall theme or can be open-ended. The participant begins in a neutral state, sitting or lying down and opens themselves to the possibilities of kinetic impulse, movement, image and text. Once these body and thought impulses come to the surface, the participant engages with and embodies these impulses. It is a bit of a rabbit hole one falls into, and is caught in a web of memory, images, emotion and movement. When the contracted time is over, the participant assesses the river, and notes any moments/themes that are resonate and significant. In this place, I have retrieved a traditional story as well as stumbled across themes of ancestral history and identity.
• The Moment Before the Moment After: This exercise is based on the spine. The dancer creates a shape that has inherent potential for movement within the spine. This shape is held, and the dancer must discover the next moment that is inherently connected through the spine. Then the dancer must find the next moment, and the next moment. This process allows the dancer to create from the body not the mind, and allows the body to make its own decisions based on gravity, spinal rotation, connection of core to distal and head and tail connection. What allows you to dig even deeper is retrograding this exercise. Finding the moment before and the moment before that really allows the dancer to let go of expectations and find new meanings that come from the body.
• Traditional Dance Gestures—Abstraction: This exploration examines the physical and metaphorical roots and extensions of traditional dance gestures. A basic dance gesture is explored through action. The gesture’s relationship of the spine, eye focus, body stance, patterns in space and intention are noted. Then the extension of the gesture is explored. If the gesture were to be fuller, larger in space, how would that look and would it hold the same intention? A simple hand gesture that is close to the body can reach far into space when abstracted and it can carve through space differently than the original source. It is about expanding the spatial tensions inherent in a shape/movement and accentuating the qualities that are held within that shape. After dissecting the inner and outer life of traditional dance gestures, the creator has on the table various elements/pieces of the gesture/expression that can be mix and matched. Through this reconfiguring of gesture, staying true to form and abstraction of the form, a hybrid of expression is achieved based on traditional dance. For me, what makes the new work have integrity is if it still embraces the same intention or trajectory of the traditional dance. It could be noted to, the roots of the gesture may open up a new understanding of what the intention is. I saw a work by Rulan Tangen that was a stunning example of this kind of hybridity. I saw this piece at the Sherman Indian High School as a part of the Red Rhythms: Contemporary Methodologies in American Indian Dance Indigenous Choreographer’s conference at the University of California, Riverside in 2004. The piece was called Thunderstomp and it was a dance piece for four dancers, and the theme was based on coming to know oneself and one’s power through warrior spirit. The movement was a blend of break dancing, capoeira, and men’s fancy dance. These forms did not stand apart from each other but melded into one expression. It was such a successful work because all these dance forms shared the same physical roots and their extensions weaved in and out of each other. As well, the piece and all its components strived to understand the physical and spiritual warrior, so all the elements were bound by intention.

Through these dance techniques, I have discovered that cultural stories are deeply tied into the kinetic being, and responding to this being through contemporary artistic practices is a way of retrieving, rediscovering and creating culture.

The Story That Lives Inside: The Caribou Woman and the Songs of Shar Cho

An example of this occurred when Kimberly Tuson and I were in the midst of remounting Songs of Shär Cho. As a part of this remount, we were interested in developing a new section of the piece dedicated to caribou and winter. Our busy schedules did not allow us to go to the Yukon to develop the piece further so we rented a studio downtown Vancouver and started our work. Through contemporary artistic practices such as river work and choreographic craft techniques with a whole lot of faith and intuition, we developed a story and choreography about an old woman who was left by her community. At her deepest moment of despair, a caribou came to her, embraced her as their own and the woman travelled north to the calving grounds. When she returned, she was a caribou herself.

I must say that Kimberly and I were so pleased that we ‘invented’ such a fabulous story. After the first show, a community member asked where we had heard that story. We informed her that we made it up. She told us the story is an old story from the community.

This moment was a turning point for me. By delving into my body as a contemporary practitioner, I am able to retrieve something that was old and of my culture. So, like an archaeologist who digs in the earth to uncover objects of a culture community, I can uncover stories, elements of tradition and culture by using the tools of dreams, intuition and kinetic impulse. In this moment I transformed from victim to visionary . Liberating and terrifying, it is my quest to find these moments in my work.

In Songs of Shär Cho there is an old woman who is abandoned by her community. This character sits deep with me because it speaks to the moments of my own loneliness and isolation that I feel far away from the things that I should have known or known. The work is a personal exploration; it digs deep to find answers to my questions about identity and community. It tugs on a common thread that my community faces, the revitalization and of culture and the reconstruction of identity.

Making Culture through Movement

When speaking of dance, especially contemporary Indigenous dance, it is easy to run into words and ideas such as cultural performance, cultural embodiment, cultural translation, cultural memory, and culture making. I will touch briefly on all of these aspects and how they relate to my work as a dancer, and my work as a community member. I will particularly focus on the idea of culture making, and how the utilization of contemporary dance techniques in an act of culture making within my community.

To begin, however, it is essential to have an understanding of the word ‘culture.’ While this term has numerous definitions, so many so that it is said to be “one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language” (Williams, 1976, quoted in Buckland, 1999). Recognizing that ‘culture’ is a complex term is important. As an artist, I see culture as is a living and breathing entity and it is our heart; with its impulses and electricity, it is what guides our imagination and dreaming. As a community, because of the break from of our ‘traditional’ ways, we often turn to old anthropological texts to understand what we were ‘like’. I know that this historical understanding is important in some contexts, but the dominant cultural lens (i.e., white male) of this history can cut the most important aspects out of who and what we are and turn our culture into an object that sits behind a museum glass. In From ‘Primitive’ to Contemporary: A Story of Kanak Art in New Caledonia, Caroline Graille noted it is important to promote “a living and dynamic Indigenous culture,” and that one way of showing and experiencing this is through contemporary Indigenous art (Graille 2001, 3). Culture is empowering because it is within in us and the more we can come to the present moment with honesty and integrity and try to see the moment for what it is and to see ourselves for who we are, stories, dreams, values will spill out of us and become a part of the fabric of our communities and our sense of identity.

Central to the Raven Spirit Dance were the summer-long performances at the cultural centre in my community of Dawson City, Yukon. Our shows became a part of what one might call ‘cultural performance’. It was shown free to community members; however, the majority of the patrons are visitors to the town. It became an important part of the tourism that Dawson City is so dependent on. While the majority of the tourist activities revolve around the Gold Rush, the cultural centre and its dance performances became a welcome addition to the town’s attractions. In this way, it is viewed as both a cultural performance, as well as a cultural translation of our culture and community experience. I must admit my proudest moment is when the elders from the community would come in to watch my shows. They would say, “I like your hunting moves” or simply that it was a good show. It would mean the world to me that they appreciate what I was doing and they recognized that I was reflecting back an image of themselves and an image of their culture.

Dance is a form of cultural memory expressed in time and space, an ephemeral expression of what has been imprinted on us from the generations. Not only is the “longevity of human memory . . . publicly enacted” through Indigenous dance, “the continuity of human experience” is re-enacted as “successive generations re-present the dancing,” as dance scholar Theresa Buckland writes (2001, 1–16). Through the use of contemporary techniques, we can uncover cultural memories within ourselves that we did not know existed. The example of this has been shown above in the Caribou woman story. The cultural transference is important to note too. Our biggest fans of the work was the TH daycare. Those kids ages three to six came to our show every week. After one of our shows, we were delighted to see the children on the front lawn re-enacting the piece, caribou and hunters. It was so beautiful for them to take in and transfer this story to their own sense of play and expression.

When speaking of culture making, it is important to recognize that we are only one piece, or one link, in this process. As scholar Trinh T. Minh-Ha explains:

. . . in this chain and continuum, I am but one link. the story is me, neither me nor mine. It does not really belong to me, and while I feel greatly responsible for it, I also enjoy the irresponsibility of the pleasure obtained through the process of transferring. Pleasure in the copy, pleasure in the reproduction. No repetition can ever be identical, but my story carries with it their stories, their history and our story repeats itself endlessly despite our persistence in denying it. (1994, quoted in Cooper Albright 1997)

Culture making is also acknowledging past ways of life. By continuing to know how to drive a boat on the river, to know how to cut fish and dry fish, to pick berries, to know the land, this is a part of the process. The dance performances also attempt to depict the importance of knowing and using the land. Through the use of multi-media film and photos of the land, the land and our ancestors become a part of the performance, a part of this link, and a part of the articulation of our cultural identity.

Culture Making as Quilting

Quilts are a conglomeration of colours and patterns: they comfort, they tell a story, they are with you at your most intimate and vulnerable time, sleep, they protect, they give warmth, and they are made by women’s hands. If there was a quilt made before colonization came to the Yukon, it would tell a story of salmon and caribou, about harsh winters, and about the deep knowing of a harsh and beautiful land from deep within your belly. It is to remember the taste of sweet and sour berries, and the sounds of songs and stories and ceremonies that went deep into the night.

Events started to unravel the quilt. The Gold Rush and relocation started to pull the seams apart. Residential school and alcohol tore at the seams with abandon, leaving little pieces everywhere. While working in the studio, I came across one of these pieces. I picked it up and thought, what is this? And a deep desire to return home.

Through intuition and determination, we have all found ourselves and the missing pieces, and we are sewing together the new pieces and the old, the quilt of our community. In the sewing circle, we sit with fear and hope, we witness and we build our community.

Culture making is like building a community quilt. Each of us brings our own fabric, frayed or new, and sews it together and from there, culture continues.

Conclusions: Finding Loss and Hope and a Changing Community

Loss is a word that everyone knows. In our communities, we know this word too intimately: loss of culture, loss of tradition, loss of language, loss of grandmother and grandfather, mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers. Residential school, the foster care system, addiction, and colonization swept up the things we held sacred. There are things that I know, that I may never learn to speak my language or that I will never get to see my grandmother again. I get so overwhelmed with the loss and how things should have been.

However, I know there is hope. Hope is a word with so much freedom and vision, a word that has wings. This word is my guide through the mess that has been the last hundred years. The mess that has severed my connection to my grandmother by her early death, that has taken me farther away from myself and my community. I have found that dancing and creating is what gives me this hope, and I now realize that my dancing and creating has given hope to others in our community as well.

Many moments over the past ten years have affected me deeply and have confirmed my place and action within my community: but one stands out the most.

There is a traditional song we sing in the dance piece Luk Täga Näche: the grandmother song. Since seeing our show, a mother shared that she sings this song to her three-year-old daughter before she goes to sleep. Every night that little girl hears what she is entitled to hear, she hears the sounds of her culture, lulling her to sleep and lulling her into her dreams. It is a song that is carried with persistence and hope.

On Reflection

Looking at these words I wrote so many years ago and seeing how they framed a thought and then articulated my process, has been revealing and confirming. I am on the path I am meant to be, doing this work. I can feel a bit ragged and unsure by running a non-profit. One can lose sight amongst all the paperwork. So it has been refreshing to come back to these words and feel renewed.

Through continuing to do this work, I have found a community of many Indigenous colleagues across Canada and around the world. The work that binds us together is about rediscovering identity and asserting identity and confirming the rituals and ceremonies deep in our blood and bones. It is about pulling ourselves out of the dominant narrative and trying to decolonize the body. There are a lot of questions and many “why’s,” and years later I am starting to understand that holding the question is a large part of the work, potentially without the reward of an answer. So this work, this life, is a cumulative pile of questions and responding to these questions with “I don’t know” is not really an option. Yvette Nolan’s mother, Helen Thundercloud, had the best response to this: try to know.

It sums up what we do as artists, we try to know.

Notes

1. For more information about the Gold Rush, see https://dawsoncity.ca/discover-dawson/klondike-gold-rush/ or Pierre Berton, Klondike; the Last Great Gold Rush, 1896–1899, rev. ed. (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1972).

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2. Aboriginal (Chinook jargon) term for ‘non-native,’ ‘white person,’ ‘newcomer.’

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Bibliography

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2. Berton, Pierre. 1972. Klondike; the Last Great Gold Rush, 1896–1899. Rev. ed. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart.

3. Buckland, Theresa Jill. 2001. “Dance, Authenticity and Cultural Memory: The Politics of Embodiment.” Yearbook for Traditional Music 33:1–16.

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