George Ryga's "Hail Mary" and Tomson Highway's Nanabush: Two Paradigms of Religion and Theatre in Canada (Critical Essay‪)‬

In 1967 George Ryga wrote The Ecstasy of Rita Joe, ironically celebrating Canada's centennial with the first Canadian play to portray the tragedy of our aboriginal peoples; it subsequently became a canonical staple of Canadian theatre. Depicting the martyrdom of a Native girl on the streets of Vancouver, it was a powerful consciousness-raising experience for its white, middleclass audiences. Nevertheless, the play simplistically sentimentalised the aboriginal plight as the victimisation of passive children by irresponsible white parents: a Eurocentric, patriarchal paradigm that reflected the Department of Indian Affairs' assimilationist policies. Almost twenty years later, Tomson Highway's The Rez Sisters dramatised the paradigm of Native writers telling their own stories. A comedic revisioning of Native tragedy, it portrays seven Manitoulin Island "rez sisters" who raise money to attend THE BIGGEST BINGO IN THE WORLD; it foregrounds matriarchal empowerment and valorises Native spirituality through the omnipresence of Nanabush, the Ojibway Trickster. Although both plays end with a death, the hopeless inadequacy of the priest's requiem for Rita Joe, "Hail Mary, Mother of God ... pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death," has been replaced by Nanabush's final dance, "merrily and triumphantly" celebrating a vibrant Native culture.