Renowned playwright Drew Hayden Taylor delivered a lecture titled 'A Coming of Age: Indigenous Literature' as the 37th Munro Beattie speaker.
This year's Munro Beattie Lecture was delivered by Drew Hayden Taylor, a dynamic and versatile playwright, novelist and documentarian from the Curve Lake First Nations celebrated for his blend of humoristic and deeply insightful storytelling. Taylor's lecture offered a captivating glimpse into the multifaceted world and perspectives of one of Canada's great authors.
Taylor took the stage at the Carleton Dominion-Chalmers Centre on Saturday, Nov. 4.
Taylor’s lecture marked the 37th year of the Munro Beattie lectures, a series dedicated to honouring the English department’s founding chair. Serving as chair for over two decades, from 1953 to 1969, Beattie is remembered as a brilliant conversationalist known for his wit and passion. This lecture series continues to celebrate and uphold the values he characterized.
Taylor's talk, titled A Coming of Age: Indigenous Literature, explored what he calls the "contemporary Native Literary Renaissance." He defines this renaissance as a powerful eruption of Indigenous Literature across various genres that started in the late 1980s and continues today.
In conversation with FASS writer Emily Putnam, Taylor discusses the ever-evolving world of storytelling, the transformative utility of humour, and what the dexterous creator hopes to work on next.
EP: Your speaker event is called 'A Coming of Age: Indigenous Literature'. Is Indigenous Literature coming of age?
DT: That's the $64,000 question. I think it is. In fact, some may argue it already has. In my lecture, I like to refer to what I think of as the contemporary Native Literary Renaissance, which began in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. And that's when there was this explosion of Native Literature, prose, plays, poetry, etc. where before, there had been very little of which that the dominant culture was aware of. And since then, there have been dozens and dozens and dozens and hundreds of books released. In fact, I'd have to say in the last five to ten years, when they do the annual awards, the Governor General's, the Writers' Trust, etc. It's fairly common to have one to two finalists in there, if not actual winners. There has been this coming of age. But what's been really happening in the last five to ten years is that the books coming out of the First Nations community have greatly expanded their genres. We're now doing science fiction, horror, things like that. So yeah, I think it has come of age and is continuing to come of age.
EP: Can you speak to the power of storytelling? Does it have the ability to bring communities together?
DT: Storytelling is universal, I don't think there's a culture anywhere on earth that hasn't had stories or a storyteller. The power of stories is the fact that in pre-literate times, they contained history, philosophy, and ethics – all different types of things that are covered by so many different fields today, and that was the way they passed on the culture. It was a self-generating system of knowledge. I think those stories, and most of them range from scary stories, which we all love, to historical stories, to stories that basically try to explain the natural world. So, I think everybody has an innate interest and innate ability to appreciate and welcome stories. Nowadays, you've got all these movies and things which have special effects and stuff like that. But the best special effects, the best interpreter of stories, is basically your imagination. I think storytelling will always be there. It's just constantly morphing into different ways of telling that story.
EP: How is humour an effective storytelling tool for you when confronting complex issues?
DT: Well, I think everybody likes to laugh; it releases endorphins. It's a wonderful, amazing feeling. And it also has an interesting way of delivering the message. I've had conversations with people, and it's like, you have somebody angry on the side of the street, screaming out the wrongs of the world, and people will stop, they'll listen for a few seconds, and then move on. And they'll completely dismiss everything you had to say. But if you pick up that story, and you wrap it in humour, they'll stop, they'll listen, they'll laugh, and they will take that bit of what you're trying to tell them home with them and share it. I think humour is an excellent and innovative way of telling a story or improving the story, because what humour does is it takes something, turns it inside out, and then releases it in a whole new form. It's like A plus B equals D.
EP: What compels you to pursue stories, and what draws you in to stories that make you feel like you have to tell them?
DT: I mean, the stories come to me, or I think them up. I guess it's either what fascinates me, or what hasn't been told before and what I think will intrigue people. When I write something, I try to entertain, I try to educate, and I try to illuminate. When I come up with something that includes all three of those, I've got a story there that is a ‘winner’ for lack of a better term. Literally, it's a strike of lightning that inspires you, and then you have to take that inspiration and make it work. I mean, what is it, 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration in terms of writing, in terms of genius, all of that. I tend to agree, sometimes the difficult thing is coming up with that original idea. The rest of it is just gritting your teeth and making that idea work.
EP: When you choose to pursue a story, how do you make the decision to place yourself within it – which you’re known for – or to tell the story as the narrator behind the curtain?
DT: I work in so many different fields. I write novels, I write plays, I write documentaries, creative nonfiction, television shows, etc, etc. And I have a friend who is a journalist for the CBC, and I did numerous articles for newspapers, magazines, and radio. In fact, I had an article in Saturday's Globe and Mail. And my friend tells me that I'm a very poor journalist. And, I said, why? He says, because you use the words I and me, and no journalist uses the term I or me in what they write, yet I find that instrumental to any type of journalism I do because I am the observer. I am the viewer that wants to share what I see, because I know it's filtered through my consciousness. When I'm telling a story, like a novel or a play, it’s again filtered through my consciousness where I am telling the story. I see it as it comes out of me. And that's why I don't try to write like other people. That's why I do not teach, because I can only teach people how to write like I write. And that will not work for all people.
EP: You’ve done everything from scriptwriting for The Beachcombers and North of 60 to novel writing and present-day documentarian work with APTN and the CBC. Can you speak to your evolution as a storyteller, and do you have any plans for what’s next for you? Is there something new you want to try?
DT: I originally started out writing for television, which was unexpected and delightful. But the cliche is it's great work when you can get it, and I wasn't getting a lot of it. Through a series of bizarre circumstances, I was offered the chance to be a writer-in-residence for Native Earth Performing Arts, one of the leading indigenous theatre companies in the country, and I needed the money. So, I signed on. And I learned the wonders of theatre, not just theatre, the practice itself, but the philosophies behind it. So, I went from television writer to writing for theatre. Along the way I started writing articles and essays because I'd come across an idea, or something I wanted to explore that was not worth a two-hour play, or it wouldn't work in a television show. I would just write these one-offs about something usually funny, and they developed a following. I would do one occasionally, and then as I became more well-known as an artist, I began to get more and more requests. I started doing more and more articles, and then from there, I started doing the odd short story. From there, I was asked to write a novel, and then so on and so on. Today, I think I have done practically everything I want to do. I've done theatre pieces, I did one made-for-TV movie, I had a sitcom on HVTN called Mixed Blessings. I'd love to do a feature film somewhere along the line. I've got my fingers and toes crossed, and I'm always waiting to hear what's going to happen.
EP: Do you have a favourite artistic medium to create in?
DT: They all have benefits. It's hard to say which is my favourite. I mean, I came to fruition as an artist and as a playwright, and I've got a soft spot in my heart for the theatre. But television, you can reach more people with one episode than you can with all the plays that I have produced. And it's a fascinating industry, which I really like. Same with movies. With novels, it's literally you and your computer, and you create the entire universe. The response, too, I think in the social hierarchy, you have playwrights and novelists at the top of the literary hierarchy. And the fact that you sit down and can read a novel, I can crawl into it. Plays are meant to be seen, not so much read. So that sort of limits the kind of inspiration that it has out there, because very few people are walking down the street saying, jeez, I feel like buying a play to read.
More Information about this year’s Munro Beattie Lecture