Humorous host chooses laughs over lectures

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This article was published 01/05/2021 (1809 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It couldn’t happen at a better time.

Next week, the TV network APTN will première the first season of Going Native, a documentary series hosted by Anishinaabe humorist and playwright Drew Hayden Taylor.

The premise of the 13-episode, half-hour series is a look at how Indigenous Peoples have changed the world, and are reshaping culture in the 21st century.

Evidently, that lesson is sorely needed following a recent noxious speech by CNN Republican political commentator Rick Santorum, who told a gathering of young conservative Americans that settlers essentially created American culture on their own.

“We came here and created a blank slate. We birthed a nation from nothing,” Santorum said. “I mean, there was nothing here. I mean, yes we have Native Americans but candidly there isn’t much Native American culture in American culture.”

“It’s no shock how little the public realize Indigenous people contributed to so-called American and Canadian culture,” responds Taylor. “The origins of the name Canada, just to begin with. And in America, their Constitution was based on Haudenosaunee political structure.

“Colonization provides very effective blinders.”

Produced by Winnipeg’s Ice River Films, Going Native, which has already begun shooting its second season, is a playful and light-hearted look at the interplay of Indigenous and mainstream cultures, touching on an A-to-Z of topics, from architecture (in its second episode) to zombies (in its third).

Taylor, who was in Winnipeg two weeks ago shooting new episodes, is a playwright, novelist, journalist and filmmaker from the Curve Lake First Nation in Ontario. In his latest series-related adventures, he talked comic books and graphic novels with Free Press columnist and comics author Niigaan Sinclair.

“I have a graphic novel out, so I’m somewhat familiar with the genre,” says the author of The Night Wanderer in a Zoom interview. “Also, we went to the new Inuit art museum (Qaumajuq).

“And then we went two hours outside of Winnipeg and spent the day with a Métis trapper, and we had an absolutely marvellous traditional lunch of muskrat, beaver, a deer stew, wild rice sautéed on the stove with wild mushrooms and some bannock. You can’t get a more traditional meal than that “

The series has allowed Taylor the opportunity to have some serious fun travelling to around 50 Indigenous communities across North America.

“I’ve been to places I’ve never thought I’d go. I have done things I never thought I would’ve had the opportunity to do,” he says, counting, for example, satisfying his inner “Indige-nerd” talking zombies with Jeff Barnaby, the Canadian director of the zombie thriller Blood Quantum, or exploring southwest Colorado’s Mesa Verde National Park and its 800-year-old Pueblo cave dwellings.

“When I get old and grey and I’m sitting in my wheelchair somewhere, I’ll be able to look back on this fondly and remember,” he says. “It is indeed a dream job.”

It’s also a job in which he visibly takes delight. The subject of Indigenous culture can spark some fury, especially in the face of people like Santorum. But Taylor’s approach is unerringly light and bright. Watch, for example, episode 3 on pop culture, which sees Taylor fall in mock-terror from an Indigenous artist in full zombie makeup.

“An elder from the Blood Reserve once told me that, in his opinion, humour is the WD-40 of healing,” Taylor says. “I really, really like that so I’m trying to be much more positive with my explorations of the Indigenous community.

“Speaking personally, as a writer, I’ve always believed in the power of positive thinking,” he says. “I think a lot of Indigenous literature and the dominant media tend to focus on the dysfunctional aspect of the native community — the oppressed/depressed/suppressed aspect of Native culture — where I like to be much more positive in my look at Indigenous life.”

 

Going Native airs on all APTN channels starting May 8 at 8:30 p.m.

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @FreepKing