A Quarterly of Criticism and Review i^^^^^^^^fcEjfc $15

dismissal of Native spirituality, for instance.)Among Iroquois Fires's more original contributions(to non-Iroquois readers, atleast) is Dawendine's introduction into lateAnglo-Victorian poetic traditions—through the elegiac and rhythmicallycumulative commemoration of her mother,"Wild-Flower Petals Fall"—of what shedescribes as "the slowly developing ritualstyle of the Longhouse Condolence [which].. . begins in a conversational tone, increasingin length, until it again dies away inbrief closing chant." The collection isdiverse, including conventional poetry(making discreet and subtle use of rhymeand using the poetic line flexibly, but notnoticeably influenced by modernism),accounts of Iroquois rituals and seasons,explanatory narratives ("The DancingStars, or the Pleiades," for example), personalaccounts (reflections on a medicineman mask or memories of a maternallyheroic mouse), and historical chronicle, allframed by the issue of racial difference.Dawendine negotiates and deploys a rangeof ideologies in some tension with eachother. The traces of her shifting location("Indians were the lone inhabitants of theAmerican wilderness," "this so-called stoicalrace"; emphasis mine) reveal the challengeand complication of that negotiation.Drew Hayden Taylor's Only Drunks andChildren Tell the Truth recently played withcomic and poignant power under the aegisof Native Earth Performing Arts (Toronto).His Toronto at Dreamer's Rock andEducation is Our Right aie earlier ventures,produced in 1989 and 1990 respectively bythe De-Ba-Jeh-Mu-Jig Theatre Group(Manitoulin Island). Both display Taylor'strademark amalgam of political urgencyand self-deflating humour, ("My home, mypeople, my beer store"). Rusty in the firstplay, a somewhat aimless Odawa 16-yearold,is galvanized by his encounter with apre-contact young man from his tribe anda future counterpart, each throwing Rusty'spresent into negative (and occasionallypositive) relief. "We achieved self-governmentin the 2020s," boasts Michael. "Selfgovernment?"asks Keesic, "When did welose it?" Education is Our Right draws onthe structure and at times the melodramaof Dickens' A Christmas Carol (thewretched children Want and Hunger huddleat the feet of one of the spirits), asEbenezer Cadieux, Minister of IndianAffairs in charge of capping Native postsecondaryeducation, meets EducationPast, Present and Future. In both plays,Taylor utilizes theatre's capacity for confrontation,along with clever self-reflexiveironies, to ensure that over-statement (orover-seriousness) does not sap the impactof his dramas' conviction.The Colour of Resistance anthologizesNative women's poetry, fiction, and somenon-fiction prose, approximately half ofthe material being original to this volume.The writers are Canadian and USAmerican, with the latter predominatingslightly, and with a welcome representationof lesbian voices. How to convey the pleasuresof scores of divergent and eloquentvoices? The rhythms of Vickie Sears: "cushcush le toong/ripples the windtaken katydidsong." The powerful succinctness ofMarilyn Dumont, writing in "Helen BettyOsborne" of "a town with fewer Indians/than ideas about Indians." The poignantironies of Kimberly Blaeser's "Certificate ofLive Birth," where the speaker wonderswhether to correct her mother's checkmarksat "Father, Caucasian" and "Mother,Caucasian"— "It is my heritage more trulythan any account of bloodlines/ It tells thestory of a people's capture"—concluding,"And, Mother, this poem is the certificate ofour live birth." The visual effect of NicoleTanguay's "Half Breed":I fight I struggle to keep2 feet plantedin oneself.129