New Blood show brings healing and reconciliation

Laureen F. Guenther
Times Contributor

 

The glee, dance and Blackfoot classes of Strathmore High School have joined with drummers from Siksika Nation to create and perform New Blood, the story of Siksika Chief Vincent Yellow Old Woman.
Creation of the show began early in the school year, when teacher Deanne Bertsch invited her dance students to work with students from the Blackfoot class to devise a show based on Peter Gabriel’s New Blood soundtrack. They invited parents of the Blackfoot students to give input, and to perform traditional music and dances in the program.
The program took focus when they received two poems – Words to a Grandchild by Chief Dan George, and The Indian in Me, by the current chief of the Siksika Nation, Vincent Yellow Old Woman, whose grandson Hayden attends Strathmore High School.
The Indian in Me is about the chief’s experience in residential schools, and the students focused the show on telling that story, with Hayden Cutter Yellow Old Woman playing the part of his grandfather, telling his story in a way that other residential school survivors connect with their own experience.
How the show grew from there is “amazing,” Bertsch says.
“It feels kind of divine,” which fits, she says, because, “The whole show is a prayer. The show starts with the Blackfoot Prayer that’s really important to the Blackfoot people … Words to a Grandchild is kind of a prayer too.”
“Our biggest hope was that we would honour the Blackfoot people and the First Nations people.”
She felt that’s exactly what happened when they gave their first performance in Strathmore.
“The parents and grandparents and all the people that came from Siksika … were just kind of blown away by their kids and by the show and by the story they were telling,” she says. “They were really moved and they said that it was bringing about healing for their people.”
Vincent Yellow Old Woman himself was in the audience, and “he was really happy,” Bertsch says. “He said he didn’t expect (the show) to have the power that it had.”
They were invited to perform New Blood on the Siksika Nation, and more invitations began flowing in. They performed in Drumheller in January, and this month, they’ll take it to the University of Lethbridge and Big Secret Theatre in Calgary.
Bertsch says the show also brings greater understanding and compassion to non-native audiences. Audience members keep saying “they want so badly for Hayden’s character to overcome all these trials,” she says, and it’s all the more powerful because these trials aren’t fiction. “Those are real trials that so many First Nations people had to live with.”
The story and its telling have affected Bertsch and the students just as deeply. She considers it a huge gift that she’s had the opportunity to develop friendships with parents of Blackfoot students.
“Even more important,” she says, is “the way that it has brought our students together, because even in Strathmore High School where kids from Siksika have gone for years and years, there’s still such separation. But now I’m seeing my dance class students becoming friends with the Blackfoot students.”
Seeing the response of those who lived this story originally has had the strongest impact on them.
“For all of us, the students and myself,” Bertsch says, “just seeing the elders, especially when we performed at Siksika, with tears flowing down their faces and embracing those kids and saying ‘thank you, thank you for doing this,’ and showing the kids how much it meant to them – that was pretty powerful.
“The students and I think that this is the most important show we’ve ever done and probably will ever do because it has the power to heal. It’s an important story that everyone should hear and see.”
New Blood performs at the Big Secret Theatre in Calgary on March 14 at 7:30 p.m., or March 15 at 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. For tickets call 403-294-9494 or go to www.artscommons.ca.