Kamloopa: An Indigenous Matriarch Story

By Kim Senklip Harvey

TIME: All.
SPACE: The Multiverse.
Come along for the ride to Kamloopa, the largest Powwow on the West Coast. This high-energy Indigenous matriarchal story follows two urban Indigenous sisters and a lawless Trickster who face our world head-on as they come to terms with what it means to honour who they are and where they come from. But how to go about discovering yourself when Christopher Columbus allegedly already did that? Bear witness to the courage of these women as they turn to their Ancestors for help in reclaiming their power in this ultimate transformation story.

In developing matriarchal relationships and shared Indigenous values, Kamloopa explores the fearless love and passion of two Indigenous women reconnecting with their homelands, Ancestors, and stories. Kim Senklip Harvey’s play is a boundary-blurring adventure that will remind you to always dance like the Ancestors are watching.

Kamloopa: An Indigenous Matriarch Story is the work of Kim Senklip Harvey, a proud Indigenous woman from the Syilx, Tsilhqot’in, Ktunaxa, and Dakelh First Nations, listed for the Gina Wilkinson Prize for her work as an emerging director and widely considered to be one of this land’s most original voices among the next generation of Indigenous artists.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Talonbooks
• Release date: Aug 7, 2020
• ISBN: 9781772012743

Kim Senklip Harvey

Kim Senklip Harvey is a proud Syilx, Tsilhqot’in, Ktunaxa, and Dakelh Nations womxn and is a Fire Creator (director / playwright / actor / community member) and Indigenous Cultural Evolutionist. Past acting highlights include: Rez Sisters, Ernestine Shuswap Gets Her Trout, The Laurier Memorial, Salmon Row, the Governor General’s Literary Award–winning play Where the Blood Mixes, the final show of Gordon Tootoosis’s Gordon Winter, and the world premiere of Children of God at the National Arts Centre / Centre national des Arts. In 2017, Kim participated in the residency Centering Ourselves: Writing in a Racialized Canada, which assembled twenty of Canada’s most exciting PoC writers at the Banff Centre. She recently completed her two-year residency with the National Theatre School of Canada / École nationale de théâtre du Canada in their inaugural Artistic Leadership Residency program. Kim has been shortlisted for the Ontario Arts Foundation’s Gina Wilkinson Prize for her work as a director and has participated in the Banff Playwrights Lab and the Rumble Theatre’s Directors Lab. In 2018, the play Kamloopa: An Indigenous Matriarch Story had a three-city world premiere. It won the 2019 Jessie Richardson Award for Significant Artistic Achievement – Outstanding Decolonizing Theatre Practices and Spaces, was the first Indigenous play in the Award’s history to win Best Production, and was the 2019 recipient of the Sydney J. Risk Prize for Outstanding Original Play by an Emerging Playwright. Kim is invested in community and youth engagement and has worked on the Mayor’s Task Force on Mental Health and Addiction and the City of Vancouver’s Urban Aboriginal Peoples’ Advisory Committee. As Youth Program manager at The Cultch, she created, spearheaded, and fundraised the Indigenous Youth Initiative which focused on increasing the artistic opportunities of young urban Indigenous people in Metro Vancouver. Kim’s passion for theatre lives within its transformational nature. She believes that storytelling is the most compelling medium to move us to a place where every community member is provided the opportunity to live peacefully.

Book preview

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Table of Contents

Foreword: Making Offers and Resonating Our Ancestors’ Dreams

Love Letters to Kamloopa

Production History

List of Characters

Place, Time, and Space

Storyteller’s Notes Note on the n̓səl̓xcin̓ Language

Kamloopa: An Indigenous Matriarch Story

The Land Breathes

In Search of

First Contact

In the Den

Smokescreens

Sisters

Den Mates

Ancestral Visit

Raven’s Landing

The Fire Is Calling

On the Land: Return of Senklip

Embodied Land

Landing Together

Facsimile Fire Zine! A Kamloopa Study Buddy,

Acknowledgments

Copyright

Page List

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Copyright

Guide

Cover

Title Page

Contents

The Land Breathes

Thank you for purchasing and reading Kamloopa: An Indigenous Matriarch Story.

If you came across this ebook by some other means, feel free to purchase it and support our hard work. It is available through most major online ebook retailers and on our website. The print edition is also available.

Talonbooks is a small, independent, Canadian book publishing company. We have been publishing works of the highest literary merit since the 1960s. With more than 500 books in print, we offer drama, poetry, fiction, and non-fiction by local playwrights, poets, and authors from the mainstream and margins of Canada’s three founding nations, as well as both visible and invisible minorities within Canada’s cultural mosaic. Learn more about us or about the author, Kim Senklip Harvey .

KAMLOOPA

KAMLOOPA

AN INDIGENOUS MATRIARCH STORY

PLAY BY KIM SENKLIP HARVEY

with

the Fire Company:

Cris Derksen

Yolanda Bonnell

Daniela Masellis

Lindsay Lachance

Jessica Schacht

Michelle Chabassol

Samantha Brown

Emily Soussana

Madison Henry

Kaitlyn Yott

Samantha McCue

Talonbooks

Logo for Talonbooks

LOVE LETTERS TO KAMLOOPA

Kamloopa,

Thank you for voicing the thoughts and feelings I could never convey on my own. You have embodied and represented us all: every facet, and every strand of our interlacing, complicatedly beautiful, individual beadwork … And as these three powerful Indigenous women go on their journeys of self-discovery and reclamation, I am moved to embrace my own journey. Like Kilawna, Mikaya, and Edith, I grew up removed from my Indigenous heritage. I do not know how to introduce myself in my Ancestors’ language, and I do not have an Elder to teach me the stories and traditions of my people. But I yearn for that knowledge. Every day. I am starting to reclaim the lost parts of my heritage … Kamloopa, you made me laugh. You made me cry. You made me laugh, and laugh again. Wela’lin & merci.

—MEREWYN COMEAU, ACADIENNE-MÉTISSE

Dear Kamloopa,

Ĩsniyés! Thank you for inviting and welcoming me to bear witness to your ceremony. I felt empowered by these beautiful, strong, and resilient women. I want to give thanks to all the Matriarchs that took part in making ceremony happen, to the beautiful grandmothers that were there to bear witness, our strong, resilient Indigenous women that helped carry the ceremony: we hold the fire together! … Dohã pina maač, with love, warmth, and many blessings!

—DARYLINA POWDERFACE, NAKODA SIOUX AND BLACKFOOT

Kamloopa is a next-gen Smoke Signals. The Fire Carriers – Indian Friend Number 1, Kilawna, and Mikaya – all offer up some of the most genuine portrayals of what it means to be an Indigenous femme: the struggles of institutionalized colonial studies of Indigenous and settler ideologies, and how little they help; the desperation, torment, and desire for connection; the bits and pieces we bring together to find that connection and the bonds we make along the way. Kamloopa walks the razor's edge between the dead serious and the deadly humorous. This ceremony does not hold back … This show is FIRE.

—RAVEN JOHN, TWO-SPIRIT TRICKSTER

From Vancouverplays.com, solicited from Indigenous womxn in lieu of critical reviews.

An open bag of potato chips lying on the ground, a few spilling out

CONTENTS

Foreword: Making Offers and Resonating

Our Ancestors’ Dreams, by Lindsay Lachance

Production History

List of Characters

Place, Time, and Space

Storyteller’s Notes Note on the n̓səl̓xcin̓ Language

Kamloopa: An Indigenous Matriarch Story

The Land Breathes

In Search of

First Contact

In the Den

Smokescreens

Sisters

Den Mates

Ancestral Visit

Raven’s Landing

The Fire Is Calling

On the Land: Return of Senklip

Embodied Land

Landing Together

Facsimile "FIRE ZINE!

A Kamloopa Study Buddy," by Kimi Clark

Acknowledgments

FOREWORD

Making Offers and Resonating Our Ancestors’ Dreams

by Lindsay Lachance

I’m floating. In the river. The river of my homelands. I inhale and acknowledge the Ancestors standing