Monique Mojica as Caesar in "Death of a Chief," 2006. Photo courtesy Native Earth Performing Arts.

I joined the board of Native Earth Performing Arts, in Toronto’s Distillery District, several years ago, and quickly discovered the best perk of the office is watching a performance evolve through rehearsal. Seeing the actors figuring out their moves together, adjusting dialogue, and dissecting the meaning of the play, and then witnessing opening night when they fire the creation into life…is magic. No better word for it.

A case in point was the evolution of Death of a Chief, NEPA’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, in which Rome becomes “Rome, Ontario,” swords are exchanged for rocks, gender is reversed (Kuna-Rappahannock playwright Monique Mojica playing Caesar, and Cree actor Lorne Cardinal her husband Calpurnius), and soothsayers speak Ojibway. Death was seemingly a departure for Native Earth, whose whole purpose is to develop contemporary work by Aboriginal artists. But clearly this was not a bid to update Shakespeare, much less to do the play in “Indian dress.” And it was a great deal more than an adaptation. Besides the title and sex change, words were altered and scenes moved, all of it the result of a lengthy and deeply collaborative process spanning five years and including more than 30 artists guided by NEPA’s outgoing artistic director, Algonquin playwright Yvette Nolan. Rehearsals included study sessions where tables, chairs, and books were hauled out, and everyone delved into the script. The point of departure—the place where Western and indigenous could meet—was found in Brutus’s line “Th’abuse of greatness is when it disjoins / Remorse from power.” Like Emperor, like Chief, you could say. Chief gets elected, gets arrogant, gets ousted. It’s hard to think of a traditional story with more currency today, given events in North Africa. But it’s also an astonishing vehicle for taking on Band politics.

The play’s brilliance is in using the Western canon to talk about the corruption of power on reserves, thereby insinuating a non-Native side to the story. The great gift of Native theatre is this uncommon view of our shared history, very hard to come by otherwise. Its eternal challenge is communicating the Aboriginal world view to non-Aboriginal audiences. And I use the term “theatre” loosely, for the concept of drama is multidisciplinary and comes with dance and song, at times lacking dialogue. The job requires reconciling Western conventions with indigenous tradition, which, for example, communicates through gesture, rhythm, and silence, and eschews central characters. Always it forces the question: How far to go to fit into an alien art form?

The artists I came to know through Native Earth are multi-talented and constantly multi-tasking: bridging cultures, crossing genres, translating custom, melding perspectives. The work is, by definition, a continuous negotiation between cultures—among cultures, actually, for these creators are themselves a diverse lot, part of an urban community of Aboriginal artists who come from all over the Americas. I was also struck by how many are young.

“It’s amazing how slowly and how quickly things change,” Nolan says. “It feels like we have been struggling forever to have our stories heard, and nothing ever changes. Then I look around me, and I see the battalion of new, committed young artists.” Nolan’s successor is Ntlaka’pamux (or Thompson River Salish) playwright Tara Beagan, who is in her 30s, has written over 15 plays and has numerous collaborations under her belt.

Native Earth is Turtle Island’s eldest indigenous theatre company, has been around for 28 seasons, built up a repertoire, established an annual workshop for new work called Weesageechak, and pioneered a highly successful made-to-order program providing short plays and skits on designated topics. When West Hill Collegiate Institute in Toronto was debating the fate of its sports team name (the Warriors) and its feathered stereotype of a logo, it commissioned a piece from the theatre. Four actors were sent in for a day of performances and Q&As that both focused and heated up debate. The result was positive: the logo went. It is this kind of interchange I think of when considering the disaster that is Caledonia, and the chasm of ignorance that still exists between Native and non-Native Canada. So few places exist where any of us can hear Aboriginal voices live and unmediated; it seems strange to me Dalton McGuinty hasn’t called in Native Earth.

Next year the company will move into its own performance space at the Regent Park Arts and Cultural Centre. When that happens, Toronto will become the only major city in the country with a dedicated, Native-run centre for Aboriginal culture.

F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote “The rich are different from you and I,” to which everybody usually responds, “Yeah, they’ve got more money.” On a similar theme, it’s been my Ojibway-tainted observation over the years that “middle-class white people are different from you and I.” Yeah. They’re insane.

Much has been written over the years about the differences between native people and non-native people, and way they view life. I think there’s no better example of this admittedly broad opinion than in the peculiar world of outdoor recreational water sports and the death wish that inspires them.

As a member of Canada’s Indigenous population, I’ve cast a suspicious glance at all these waterlogged enthusiasts for several reasons. The principal one is the now familiar concept of cultural appropriation—this time of our methods of water transportation. On any given weekend, Canadian rivers are jam-packed with plastic and fibreglass kayaks and canoes, hardly of them filled with authentic Inuit or First Nations people, all looking to taunt death using an aboriginal calling card.

Historically, kayaks and canoes were the life’s blood of Inuit and native communities. They were vital means of transportation and survival, not toys to amuse bored weekend warriors. To add insult to injury and further illustrate my point, there is a brand of gloves used by kayakers to protect their hands from developing calluses. They are called Nootkas. To the best of my knowledge, the real Nootka, a West Coast First Nation, neither kayaked nor wore gloves.

Perhaps my argument can best be articulated with an example of the different ways these two cultural groups react to a single visual stimulus. A group of native people and white people sit in two separate canoes before a long stretch of roaring rapids—with large pointy rocks and lots and lots of turbulent white water. Watch the different reactions.

Granted, I’m generalizing, but I think I can safely say the vast majority of native people, based on thousands of years of travelling the rivers of this great country of ours, would probably go home and order a pizza. Or possibly put the canoe in their Ford pickup and drive downstream to a more suitable and safe location. And pick up pizza on the way. Usually, the only white water native people enjoy is in their showers. Hurtling toward potential death and certain injury tends to go against many traditional native beliefs. Contrary to popular assumption, “portage” is not a French word—it is Ojibway for “Are you crazy? I’m not going through that! Do you know how much I paid for this canoe?”

Now you put some sunburned Caucasian canoeists in the same position, their natural inclination is to aim directly for the rapids paddling as fast as they can toward the white water. I heard a rumour once that Columbus was aiming his three ships directly at a raging hurricane when he discovered the Bahamas. I believe I have made my point.

I make these observations based on personal experience. Recently, for purely anthropological reasons, I risked my life to explore the unique subcultures of white water canoeing and sea kayaking. There is also a sport known as white water kayaking, but I have yet to put that particular bullet in my gun. So for three days, I found myself in the middle of Georgian Bay, during a storm, testing my abilities at sea kayaking. I, along with a former Olympic rower, a Quebecois lawyer who consulted on the Russian constitution, one of Canada’s leading diabetes specialists, and a six-foot-seven ex-Mormon who could perform exorcisms, bonded over four-foot swells and lightning. All in all, I think a pretty normal crosscut of average Canadians. The higher the waves, the more exciting they found the experience.

Still, I often find these outings to be oddly patriotic in their own way. I cannot tell you the number of times I’ve seen people wringing out their drenched shirts, showing an array of tan lines, usually a combination of sunburned red skin and fishbelly-white stomachs. It reminds me of the red-and-white motif on the Canadian flag. Maybe that’s where the federal government got its inspiration back in the 1960s for our national emblem.

But this is only one of several sports originated by various Indigenous populations that have been corrupted and marketed as something fun to do when not sitting behind a desk in a high-rise office building. The Scandinavian Sami, otherwise known as Laplanders, were instrumental in the development of skiing. Though I doubt climbing to the top of a mountain and hurling themselves down as fast as gravity and snow would allow was a culturally ingrained activity. The same could be said of bungee jumping. Originally a coming-of-age ritual in the South Pacific, young boys would build platforms, tie vines to their legs and leap off to show their bravery and passage into adulthood. I doubt the same motivation still pervades the sport, if it can be called a sport.

I have brought up the issue of recreational cultural appropriation many times with a friend who organizes these outdoor adventures. The irony is she works at a hospital. And she chews me out for not wearing a helmet while biking. She says there is no appropriation. If anything, her enthusiasm for the sports is a sign of respect and gratefulness.

That is why I think people should pay a royalty of sorts every time they try to kill themselves using one of our cultural legacies. I’m not sure if any aboriginal group has ever sought a patent or copyright protection for kayaks or canoes—that probably was not part of the treaty negotiations. But somebody should definitely investigate the possibility. Or better yet, every time a non-native person white water canoes down the Madawaska River, or goes kayaking off Tobermory, they should first take an aboriginal person to lunch. That is a better way of showing respect and gratefulness. And it involves much less paperwork.