Kamloopa is an Indigenous artistic ceremony that follows two urban Indigenous sisters, Kilawna and Mikaya, and their new friend, Edith, as they struggle in their own ways to understand themselves and their cultures. As they each come to terms with what it means to reconnect with their homelands, ancestors, and one another, it becomes clear that this story is not a hero’s journey; it doesn’t follow the “typical” three act play in structure or story arc. The artistic ceremony focusses on kinship relations, rather than a central conflict: this is a journey between women, a journey that happens within, between, and outside of themselves. It’s a journey that happens on Indian time: existing now, bringing the past, and holding the future. As the three women move through the world, they face issues of assimilation, disconnection, and loss, and the audience is witness to every ignorant, painful, funny, and awkward moment of what it means to find your way home again.
The idea of centring Indigenous women didn’t stop at the show, it permeated into every aspect of the night. At the beginning of the performance, all the Indigenous matriarchs in the audience were asked to stand, giving them space and visibility. This continued in the talking circle, which happened after one of the shows, as the Indigenous women in the audience were given an opportunity for their voices to be heard. Settlers were asked to stay behind the circle, to be silent and witness.
The night was steeped in medicine the entire way through: the sweetgrass, the laughter, the space populated by women who were physically present and representing every one of their past and future ancestors, together holding space for thousands, resounding in Kilawna’s final line “We are never alone. Together with the ancestors. Somewhere between this world and the last.”
Kamloopa is showing until October 6th at The Cultch in Vancouver and from October 17-28 at Persephone Theatre in Saskatoon. In the following interview, poetry editor Jessica Johns discusses with Kamloopa Fire Creator (Playwright/Director) Kim Senklip Harvey about the complexity inherent in representing the urban Indigenous experience, the forms artistic ceremony can take, and what it means to create from a place of love.
There is so much I wanted to talk about with this, because I’m so thrilled about this show and I just can’t say it enough. But I am going to try and keep these questions as contained as much as I can. The things for me that really stood out were kinship relations, the matriarchal focus, the decolonial practices of implementing ceremony into the space, and the representation of the urban Indigenous experience.
First with representation, this show seems designed specifically for the displaced, disconnected, urban Indigenous woman. This is for those suffering diaspora. I haven’t seen a whole lot of theatre, but I have never seen this specific Indigenous experience spotlit, satirized, highlighted or given the time and space in this way. What was the reason behind writing this particular story?
The volume is turned up in many of these instances for many reasons. But I was very fortunate in that I got to visit my mom’s reserve almost every summer. So I was positioned in a more privileged experience than what I think these two sisters (Kilawna and Mikaya) were. In my story, I was very fortunate. I didn’t grow up close to my nations, but I did have relatives who lived there, so I feel like I even have some privilege for what that is. But it is so many people’s experience to feel displacement from their community, displacement to their spiritual self, displacement of positionality away from their people, and this is the epidemic. This is how colonization is still occuring. This is how oppression of our women is occuring. Because we’re so positioned away from our culture, and that really scares me.
Even Yolanda Bonnell (Edith) in a discussion after the September 27th show, talked about how even though someone grows up on their reserve and their homelands, which she did, doesn’t mean you grow up with your teachings and your culture, because of violent colonial structures still at work within those communities. So there’s a level of separation that can occur anywhere. Though for urban Indigenous folks, and urban Indigenous youth in particular, that is so apparent.
I think that positioned away from your land and positioned away from your culture are not binary or inextricable. They are two things that can happen at the same time. And that was really important for me for many reasons, which I didn’t need to get into in this play. I didn’t want to solve that for anyone, because I wanted everyone’s journey within their position to their own culture to be what was happening with these women.
For many reasons, which I think settlers and people can go do research on, people can be displaced and positioned away from their culture, and that is what is the heartbreaking thing for me. Because you can return to your territory, and there can be politics within your community, politics within your own spirituality, a disconnect with your own people and your own land. Even returning to your land is a whole spiritual thing that is a whole other show. And this is about that, but this show was about how these women have been positioned away from their culture and the complexities of what that actually is and means.
And I’ll still hear stories about what that is. Everyone has their own metrics, some people think it’s language, some people think it’s regalia, then there’s this whole metric system which I think is still colonial violence about being Indigenous and what that actually means. Like, you get a gold star once you dance in a pow wow and know your language and can make a drum. What is that about? Why do we feel that way? And that’s super complicated.
I love how that complication is represented in the relationship between the sisters. Their is so much love between them, but their relationship is fraught, there is conflict there. Because lateral violences within communities can and do happen as well. A lot of the time because colonial damage runs so deep.
That’s the big thing about internalized racism and internalized sexism in the patriarchal society and a colonial state society, that even the questions about doing this work are patriarchal sometimes. They can sometimes come from not understanding the deep level of racism that I deal with everyday. That it’s my biggest journey to extract these things so if I ever have kids, I don’t pass this down to them, and then knowing I probably will and that will be a journey with them. They say it took seven generations for this to happen, and it’ll take seven generations for us to extract the damage that they’ve done in impacting our DNA, that intergenerational trauma. I work very hard to consciously understand how colonialism makes me feel not like a human. Makes me not feel whole. And that’s to me my biggest battle because if I can do more and more of this work, that to me is the healing and that’s the medicine. This has been a healing journey for us and for me.
I wake up more and more and feel like an Indigenous woman refusing the colonial systems more often than before I did this show and the feedback from the three women is the same thing. We feel the healing, we feel the activation in ourselves because that’s a really hard journey. It’s a long one, but it’s the most important one we can do. Because there are days when I don’t feel it. There are days when I feel like I’m losing to the patriarchy and being oppressed by the colonial constructs, but even if I sit for a moment by myself around the fire in ceremony, I’m reclaiming my ability to be who I am. And Kamloopa is an offering to the community to reclaim the power we all have right now by being exactly who we are. That these women go on a very long journey to activate the power that has always lived inside of them. And that’s the message I want people to live with Kamloopa.
What was great about the journey these women go on is the reminder that no matter how lost they ever are, how hard they’re struggling, even when they lose hope of reconnection, their animals and their ancestors were with them the whole time.
One thing we were excited to do was to track three worlds: there was the matriarch world which was sort of us and this lived, colonial world. Then there was the ancestral world, because they shift into the ancestors as well. Then there’s the animal world, where (the women) shift into the coyote, the bear, and the raven. And these things are real and happening all the time. It’s not fake and it’s not like “they’re like their animal,” no we all have animals who live inside of us all of the time. So that’s what I wanted to get into like, when a coyote and a bear fight, what does it look like? And when a raven lands on a bear what does it look like? And all of these worlds colliding, the precensing of the women, this play we hope lives between where the transition and the transcendence is.
So how did this play out with your approach to theatre in general? Because this show, even in it’s language, seems like a practice in decolonization. The new definitions for Indigenous theatre for example: Fire Creator (yourself as the playwright), Fire Tenders (playwright, directors, producers, dramaturg), and Fire Holders (actors, technicians), just to name a few.
Yes, there was the reframing our roles. The Fire Company, the Fire Creator, the Fire Igniters, the Fire Holders. Indigenizing it for my nationhood and my protocols and ceremony of fire was extremely important to me. I found it very strange in Canadian theatre that predominantly stage managers are women and they are really not allowed to speak in the room about the art. Because these are women who have been in the room, who have so much experience, are the matriarchs and the caretakers, and they’re not allowed to put their hand up and contribute to the conversation? That’s not Indigenous. For me, that violates what matriarchal protocol is. Everyone gets a voice. Maybe we reframe what it looks like, but when the Fire Igniters, which was the design team, myself, met, I would always asl Maddi (Madison Henry) what do you think? What are you seeing from your end? Because if we’re all sitting around a fire, where I’m looking is different to what could be happening on the other side that I don’t see. And it’s so important that everyone who has eyes on this also gets a voice.
I also didn’t like the hierarchy of what Canadian theatre was, so, for me, I think that there was a little bit of different leadership. Ultimately the decisions were made around safety, around clarity, and around wellness, not around who is in charge. Some artistic decisions, yes, because a part of it was a part of me, but that was also the matriarchs respecting that, that I was also the person composing this, that I was also the person writing it, that it was deeply embedded in my protocol. So of course they were respectful of that. The women knew, they knew when they needed to speak up, they knew when we needed to discuss something.
And the thing is still alive right now, that was also something that was really different. For me, storytelling is alive. When my Elders, my aunties, my uncles, my Indigenous community members tell me stories, they tell me those stories knowing me, knowing the values and teachings I need to hear. They would never tell me a verbatim story. Ever. That’s just not who we are. That’s not how we tell stories because that’s a presumption of thinking I know you better than you, and I need to tell you what you need to know right now. That’s just not how I experience storytelling. Or how I know it to be it’s most powerful.
We present some ideas, we present some values, we offer a bunch, we really work in that offering way, where Kamloopa is an offering to the community, and people are going to extract what they need from it. I don’t like using right or wrong or good or bad. To me, it’s “does it bring peace? Does it bring respect? Does it elicit love? Is it full of wisdom?” Even the binary concept of good and bad, on many levels I’m trying to eradicate from my way of living. Does it bring me peace? Does it bring my people power? Does it bring my people love? But really I always say that my one job is to ensure that everyone is provided the opportunity to live peacefully. That is a basic human dignity that is being denied. I don’t care whether they’re making good or bad choices, peace and a life filled with dignity is how I make decisions.
So someone asked me if it could be told in a Canadian format, and I said no. I think once I really got digging into it, I knew that we needed to contain it in a different way. What we’re calling it is Indigenous Matriarchal Theatre. Indigenous theatre creation based. But also knowing that it’s highly my teachings. That if you were to create a story, when Kaitlyn (Yott) creates a story, she’s going to create a Haida-Japanese Indigenous methodology that’s going to be amazing and exactly what she needs for hers. And I think that’s what the biggest shakeup is here. Is that we’re providing an offering to the community that’s saying “this is not how you create all Indigenous theatre. This is how I’ve decided to create Indigenous theatre. What I hope you can take from the offering is that you and your ancestors and your culture and your protocol are going to create something that you need for your work.” So that it’s a moving offering of a structure to approach creating storytelling in a contemporary form.
And in what other aspects of the creation process did this emerge?
Well little things, like normally you kind of just pick a team, you have your script, you start one day, you come in, say your hello’s and start rehearsing the script. And you’d get right in it, you’d dive in. And there’s this concept in theatre where you leave your shit at the door. That no matter what is happening in your life, that you’re a professional, and that you have to enter into that space to be a professional. And as a performer for fifteen years and talking with my peers, I recognized that this was not working for our community members.
Kevin Loring, who was a mentor of mine, called it having to dislocate your shoulder in order to sit at the table. So we were being asked as Indigenous peoples to remove who we are to actually sit at a table. And as I was sitting looking at the walking wounded around the table who were all trying to be good actors and I thought “this is wrong.” This is not who we are, this is not an Indigenous value. When we see someone, we honour who they are entirely. And if we can’t, we ask them how we can.
My mom and father have instilled very intense levels of welcoming and having people in your home and hosting, and making people feel safe and comfortable. So for me, I knew if I was ever going to direct, that was going to be something that occured. So when I met with Dr. Lindsay Lachance, who works in Indigenous relational dramaturgy, she talked about this idea of presencing, which is where art and people collide.
So when Mikaya (Kaitlyn Yott) sees the coyote, it’s not just artistically happening. In those moments of those cosmologies pushing and breaking each other, it’s a presencing of an Indigenous value that’s not fake, it’s not “magic realism,” it’s really actually happening for us, and has happened for us. There’s an Indigenous experience and presencing that occurs.
So we explored that as much as we could. And with both of us young in this field and taking on leadership positions, we were thinking about what that means. We were sitting in the JJ Bean on Commercial Drive, and I said for me it’s also about a respect thing. I never feel like our women are really respected in the room, there’s been a lack of acknowledgment about what that even takes. So I thought we need to stop asking people to break their bones and dislocate themselves just to get to the table, let’s celebrate what it actually took for us to be here.
For me, it was like when our people used to meet. Our journeys were important. It was like “how long did it take you to get here, here’s some food, here’s some water, here’s some spiritual space” and we’d take care of eachother. Even for our worst enemies, we’d go over the war terms first. We even treated our worst enemies with dignity. We’d sing war songs as we were coming to forewarn them that we were coming. That’s how we treated each other.
So I said, okay if those are my Indigenous values, how does that intersect? How does that presence itself within the art? So one of the things we did was we had a wellness table that turned into a wellness room, which was a space that had Indigenous books like Leanne Simpson’s Islands of Decolonial Love, books about Syilx Okanagan and the Flathead Indians, which is where I come from, our community engagement Laura Michelle brought in Sen’klip stories which are children’s stories we could just peruse. We had essential oils, sprays, vitamins, drums, medicines, our smudge. Just a place that we knew we’d really be inviting in the women. We’d really be inviting in the whole entity of what it was, including the people’s ancestors, because when you are here I see you and all of your ancestors around you. All of my ancestors are here. It’s impossible for us to extract us from that. So not only did I feel compelled to invite them and to make sure that we felt good, but that I was also honouring their ancestors. I didn’t want to harm them. I didn’t want to put them in positions I’ve been in before where I felt alone, not taken care of, that I was left to my own devices, that I was leaving with broken legs and broken shoulders, spiritual brokenness. So the wellness table and wellness room for something for the Fire Igniters to really use because I really wanted to embody that. Allow people to take a moment, allow people to centre themselves, allow people to bring their whole selves.
We also started each day with a talking circle and ended with a talking circle. As a young director and not having a lot of time, that really concerned me. Some days it’d be upwards of an hour in the morning, and ones in the afternoon would be less because people needed to unpack less, but we found that people starting the day really needed to check in: how did I sleep? What was percolating from yesterday? We were trying to negotiate okay, how do we do this? So this sometimes took an hour or two out of our day. And then with an hour lunch and break, sometimes we ended up with only a five hour work day.
But here’s where I said, we’re going to get in out of this. We’re going to get through what hiccups a lot of shows when they don’t allow people to show fully up. And we ended up actually being really successful with time. Normally you want to get two to three full runs before tech, and we got four.
So what was working for me was that the women were coming and were able to actually bring their full selves and actually just be really efficient with the work. And then we could take it off in the evening, and it worked that way.
The other thing that people were pretty shocked about was that usually you read the script right away, you dig in, because everyone is like “there’s no time, there’s no time.” And I said, “I think we have time. I think we have to have time to let people arrive.” Sam Brown (Kilawna) was coming from Nish territory with Yolanda Bonnell (Edith), and Kaitlyn Yott (Mikaya) whose ancestors were coming in from Coast Salish, Haida people. My people were coming in from a long ways away too.
So with this idea of letting people arrive, we actually didn’t read the script until day three. Which, again, I’ve never heard of that happening in a process before. And it worked. I feel like it worked. The feedback I got and, of course, we’ll only really know over a lifetime whether or not it worked to see, but if we’re using the metric of “did you get to tech, did you get to opening” we absolutely did.
We spent those first days feasting, smudging, doing talking circles, singing songs. I asked the actors and performers to bring a momento that we could keep in the room about something where they truly felt themselves for the first time. So we spent a few hours outside talking about that, hanging out with the dragonflies, which for us means transformation. We literally felt like our ancestors in all forms were coming around us.
And then at the end of day two, I looked to the Fire Company and I said “do you think we’re ready to start reading the script?” and they were all said “I think so” and I said “okay do we want to do it here, do we want to do it outside?” And we were planning a trip to the arbour at the pow wow and Emily Soussana who is the projectionist said “why don’t we do it at the arbour?” And I was like “Yes! Of course!” Of course, let’s do it for the ancestors. A first read is so special, so we did it there. And it was powerful.
So, to me, those are all things that I’ve never experienced in a creation based production before, and that’s a part of what Indigenizing what storytelling is for us in and Indigenous contemporary theatrical world.
Another great thing that was said at the talking circle, you said that at the core of this was starting from a place of love. And of course that’s going to look different from whoever creates it, and in how you’re telling a story.
That was a big question for Kamloopa too. We talk about at the start of the show in the protocol what embodying Syilx women means. Because I also think Canadian theatre and some storytelling just assume that because actors embody any other thing, they just can and it’s okay. And it’s really not, for me. Again, because I’ve been asked to play so many Indigenous women. Inserting protocol and embedding ceremony into everything that we do was vitally important because, again, that’s how I was raised.
When you step into someone else’s house, when you step into someone else’s long lodge, there’s respect, honour, and protocol to those people and who they are. And you learn their protocols while you’re a guest in their territory. And it’s so complicated because someone asked me “well how is it ceremony if you’re charging money?” and I said “well this is the system we’re embedded in. Are you also asking me to solve capitalism?” We’re trying to negotiate this, but this is what I have. And my eventual goal is that we don’t charge for tickets, that it is outside, and that people bring offerings. And that’s already started to happen on this show. Yolanda has been gifted with a scarf, people have been giving us fish, an eagle feather, medicine. Our people get it.
So if I keep building these things, I think eventually we’ll get to a place where maybe instead of purchasing a ticket, maybe you exchange article space, maybe you exchange human resources for the company we’re working for, maybe you offer a moving van for the production, so it’s not monetary but we go back to the trading and barter system. Maybe we’ll go to a system where we refuse capitalism, refuse patriarchy. But I’m not able to do all of this on my first show.
Well this really challenges preconceived notions of what protocol is. And what theatre protocol is. Which again goes back to the decolonial aspect of creating this. Because, like you’ve been talking about, how hard it is to work within colonial structures that were designed to keep us out. They were built to not work for us. So we have to rebuild, we have to develop our own structures. And this felt like a rebuilding to me.
Well it’s kind of saying you have a container, you have a theatre, organization, institution, resources because you’ve repressed a bunch of people and you stand on the backs of us. So we’ll take the container, but we’ll decide what occurs on the inside. But it’s really interesting to have settlers say, “well you are still working in theatre.” Even allies, friends of mine are like “well you’re still using a theatre,” and it’s like “well, we’ve been positioned that way.” So I also wish our allies would stop expecting us to do all of that work. And it’s my response when people say like “well it wasn’t me, it was our predecessors.” My response always is “okay, if you’re so disassociated with it, if you’re so not a part of it, then we’ll take all the resources and opportunity back. If you are so not a part of it, if you so didn’t benefit from it, we’ll take your land, we’ll take your jobs, we’ll take the theatres back.” And that scares people, because it’s not true. They’ve been positioned, they’ve been promoted, they’ve had doors opened faster, they’ve all benefited from it. It’s just a really oppressive and violent statement. It’s just not something that I appreciate. But, that’s fine. We’ll do our own thing. This is what we’re trying to do here.
And Lindsay came up with the good example: weddings are ceremonies. So settlers get to recreate ceremony all the time. And so why are we denied that, why are our ceremonies questioned? Actually, no Indigenous person has questioned me about this yet. It’s only been settlers. As a team, we wanted to do our best to have integrity and do our due diligence, that we’ve thought about the traditionalists, that we’ve thought about the youth, but not one Indigenous person has said to me “you can’t create an artistic ceremony.”
It’s interesting too, that a wedding ceremony has been allowed to evolve and change over time. Tradition isn’t something that is set in the past, tradition is active and moving and alive.
Yes! It’s alive, reflective, nimble, all of those things. And that’s all we’re trying to say with this, is that storytelling is the same thing. And that’s why I keep going back to, when I get scared and I do, about calling it artistic ceremony, I think that’s what our ancestors lived for. My people were decimated by smallpox. I think of that a lot. I think about how our populations are reduced, like it is a miracle that any of us are here. And within that teaching and within that honouring, within that stewardship of my ancestors, they are literally waiting for us to start creating the way they did. Our people are the most innovative, the most creative, and the most powerful, systemic gamechangers. That’s how we lived for tens of thousands of years! We were so attuned to what was happening.
This, to me, was work towards me becoming what my ancestors were. Great inventors and great innovators, and great attuners to our environment. So we talk about being in the thick of things, a big part of my work is creating space for deep work. I’m really loving being present in this, but knowing that I have about a year or at least ten months of deep down work and reflective time. I went on like a five hour walk yesterday, just by myself. To start thinking about things and making sure that I was being present, and making sure that I was making the right decisions still. Because on these journeys, it’s like the ball is going and I don’t want to get caught in that. I want to make sure I’m really here, and that’s a lot too.
And for these women as well, because they’re predominantly holding the fire. Like they’re over there warming up, they’re out there putting themselves out here, and it’s really important to make sure that when I see them that I’m bringing wood to the fire. That they have time to make sure that they can sit, that they’re nourished, that they’re okay.
We turned down a second sold out high school matinee because it was too exhausting. This show is a lot, it’s an emotional journey of really large proportions. And that has also informed the way that I will work in the future. I don’t think I’ll work on an eight hour day ever again. It’s like going for a light workout compared to going for a really heavy workout where you’re exhausted, that’s what Indigenous theatre feels like all the time. So we might be working an “eight-hour day” but the intensity and labour of the spiritual and cultural work feels like much more. So I wanted to make sure, I mean I release them early a lot, and if we need longer breaks, I give that, because we’re not doing The Importance of Being Earnest, here. We’re not doing Mary Poppins. We’re doing very intense, deeply spiritually tapping work where we’re calling our ancestors and that’s laborious and I wanted to really acknowledge that. And that was also part of the Indigenous theatrical reform. We experience time differently, our journey differently, our spirituality differently, so I wanted to reflect that.
And the labour of doing all of these things simultaneously is expansive and worthy of that acknowledgment and care.
And that was really important to us because that was something I craved in Canadian theatre that I didn’t really get. The acknowledgment of the labour and time and effort that these women were doing before and after rehearsals. I don’t think any actor works an eight hour day, they work ten-twelve hour days all the time.
Also creating a thing that wasn’t just for consumption. Indigenous women and two spirit/queer bodies, bodies of land and water, have for so long been used for consumption and extraction. All settler colonial systems do is take and take and take. So the fact that this is a space where settlers are tasked with the responsibility of a knowledge keeper.
Yes and that was really important too because I’ve wanted theatre for Indigenous peoples way more. This was for Indigenous women to receive and love and fully for them to enjoy. It was for settlers to be activated to do work.
We started off with more traditional protocol but we also wanted to end it in a contemporary way where the actors can just dance it out. So they didn’t have to leave the space and go and hoot and holler backstage. All the love and huge moments of intimacy are shown because it is hard to be out there. And there are moments backstage that are hidden and I really wanted people to see this is how Indigenous women love, this is how Indigenous women relate, this is how Indigenous women position themselves to help one another. And I think it’s important for people to see all of that labour that they also do as well. So it was important, the protocol at the beginning, but also the activation of the witnesses. That this was not was regular Canadian theatre is.
In it’s provocations, most art you don’t leave at one place. So for this one, not only do you not leave it and it’s just for your own internal enjoyment but that when you see Indigenous women being treated or mistreated or oppressed, you now have that knowledge that is now activated in you and you have a responsibility to do something about it. To me, that’s the difference in the protocol. That’s the witnessing. I did a treaty on my next show and we have witnesses on that, and Lori Marchand is there to hold me account. She was my witness. She was also there to hold everyone else account. Witnessing is a really important and deeply immense and full responsibility. And we’ll see how people actually relate. But I think even just offering that and saying that, I think people will think differently, read things differently, and I hope people will leave feeling a little bit more brave.
Photos by Tim Matheson.