Residential schools take centre stage in new musical production
'It's about the students who got sick and passed away and who were buried in unmarked graves,' says composer
Support workers will be on hand to help audience members — if they need it — during the Vancouver run of the musical, Children of God, which tells the story of an Ojibway-Cree family whose children were seized and taken to a residential school in Northern Ontario.
The play, which follows the siblings who were forced into residential school, and their mother who tries to visit but never makes it beyond the school's gates, comes with a trigger warning.
"It's about the students who needed to run. It's about the students who got sick and passed away and who were buried in unmarked graves at the end of the fields," said Corey Payette, the play's writer and director.
The volunteer support workers on hand to help audience members have experience working with Indigenous communities and have backgrounds in issues of colonization and residential schools, said Tanyss Knowles, who is coordinating that support.
"Some people will have a very emotional response to this show," said Knowles, a master's student in social work at the University of British Columbia.
Beyond words
Payette is a musicial theatre composer whose father and grandmother are Ojibway-Cree. Growing up in Northern Ontario, he said his family didn't talk much about residential schools nor was it taught in schools. But as he got older, Payette began to think of the issue more and wanted to tell the story.
"I really felt like it was my responsibility to create work that looked to bring light to stories that were often silenced."
Payette began writing the musical seven years ago, attempting to blend elements of traditional Ojibway-Cree music, such as drumming, with contemporary musical theatre.
"When I was writing these drumming songs and vocals and music that people would identify as being First Nations or Indigenous started to emerge out of the musical theatre writing," he said.
Shows resiliance of families
"It was almost that this Ojibway language was bursting from within it."
He said he thinks musicals work best when they are are used to express deeply felt emotions "that are beyond words."
"In Indigenous cultures there's a circle: you cannot tell a story without that story having a song, and that song having a dance, and that dance telling a story," he told host of CBC's The Early Edition, Rick Cluff.
Despite the seriousness of the topic, the story is also about showing the strength and resiliency of the affected families, said Payette.
"It's not to say that we can't necessarily move through it, but in order to move through it, we need to have this time of honouring and acknowledging these survivors and their families," he said.
Not so long ago
Roughly, 150,000 First Nations, Inuit and Métis children were forced to attend residential schools, with the last one closing in 1996.
Former prime minister Stephen Harper made an official apology to survivors and their families in 2008. That same year, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission began examining the legacy of Canada's residential school system. Its final report, issued two years ago, made 94 recommendations.
Payette said he learned about the abuse and horrors that took place in residential schools alongside the rest of Canada.
"It wasn't something that was talked about in my community, it wasn't something we were taught in schools, it wasn't something that was talked about in my family," he said.
"These are aunties and uncles, these are our grandparents, our brothers and sisters. It's not that far in our past."
With files from CBC Radio One's The Early Edition