How this play furthered my understanding about the Native Peoples of Canada!

This play really did open my eyes and made me more curious to more of these Native stories. What “Dead White Writer on the Floor” really taught be about Native Peoples of Canada is how Canadians were taught to hold prejudices against Indigenous people and how Canadians were influenced to treat Natives unfairly. I believe that the Natives in Canada sometimes try to change their lives in order to fit in with other Canadians. They begin to lose their culture and identity. In the play, when the characters realize that changing doesn’t do much for you when it comes to associating a Native in the eyes of a Canadian, Bill says that “Nothing has changed, we exchanged one pair of moccasins for another. Things didn’t get better”. In the end of the play the characters realized that this whole time they have been blaming the White writer, or the “Canadian” in this case, of all their problems, when no one is to blame for their change, but themselves. They are the ones who put matters into their own hands and decided to try and loose all their Native culture and change who they are because they wanted to feel like they fit in. Despite the way Native Americans are portrayed in books and their stereotypes in current Canadian society, people often forget that Native Peoples have hopes and aspirations beyond what is expected from them.  

Indigenous culture in the play!

The Indigenous culture revealed in this play explores the different stereotypes people see in Native Americans. Most of the stereotypes are one sided representations of Indigenous culture. Some of people’s assumptions of Native people include them being alcoholics. Drew Hayden Taylor presents one of his characters as having an alcohol problem to show a Canadian’s stereotypical view on Indigenous people. I also believe that all the characters respected Old Lodge Skins very much, which is truly something Native’s should be proud to be represented by. Respect for the elders is a very big part of Indigenous culture that has been proven very clearly throughout this play. In this culture, people have a very strong tie to relationships, nature, and the love between family members. Once the community around them changed, Indigenous people felt forced to change as well in order to “fit in”. This is because the diversity around them is not very accepting to those who are different than the usual. Moral of the play is to stay loyal to your culture and never be ashamed or feel forced to change for anybody. 

Themes of identity, relationships, challenges, and sovereignty in the play!

The four themes connected to the grade eleven Native English I am currently taking are the themes of identity, relationships, challenges, and sovereignty.  I believe that the entire play was mainly on the theme of identity and challenges. The six characters struggle to accept the people they have been their whole lives, and to accept their identity. Throughout the book these characters try to find a way to change their identity for they are embarrassed and hated because of it. They discovery challenges, when indeed they do change in act 2, which help them realize they should not change their identity or who they are. As the six characters are trapped in the room together a lot of character relationships developed. Through talking with one another, we, as readers, are able to find out more and more about each character. Every single one of them treated each other, depending on their moods, either with anger, fear, or love. Sovereignty in this play was shown when Old Lodge Skins used the example that by blockading Tim Hortons, it shows a righteous political act that demonstrates their sovereignty against a symbol of Canadian imperialism. To the rest of the characters being Indigenous was not more important than fitting in, and Old Lodge Skins helps them realize that changing their identity is not the way to go. 

What i didn't like about the play!

Although the play was a very funny and interesting piece of literature, there is something I did not like as much. What I didn’t really like about this book is how in act 2 all the characters change all their names and left it up to the readers to sort of guess which ones which. Some characters were easier to point out than others such as, Pocahontas turns into Sally. It was obvious because she is the only female mentioned in the book. Or when Old Lodge Skins turns into John, it was obvious because John, in act 2, was saying how he waited his whole life to be young again. Therefore meaning that he was always the eldest, which lead to me guessing that John must have been Old Lodge Skins in act 1. I also think that there could have been a better ending to the play because in the closing scene it becomes quite clear that another change is going to happen. The lights go out and with the dead white writer, maybe still alive, everything could be changed again. But the writing failed to leave the readers with much curiosity as to what new characters will become of them this time.  I believe it is because when the characters changed the first time it wasn’t much of an exciting moment in the book. 

What i liked about the play!

I really enjoyed reading this play and would recommend this book to others. What I really liked in particular about this play is the style of the writing and the humorous tone. Drew Hayden Taylor writes in such a funny way and makes fun about indigenous people by putting stereotyped individuals of different backgrounds together to let them discover that they are all different characters. I liked the way every character had completely different: noble, innocent, ignorant, fearless, wise and gay. None of these characters know how the writer had died. They try to find out if one of the six did kill him. The different characters in the book make it really amusing. Sometimes it seems to be that they didn’t fit together and they wanted to kill each other. Then other times they fight together to find the murder of the white writer. While reading the play in act 1, there are some monologues each character presents. The one that impressed me the most was Pocahontas’. Usually she is the small Indian girl, that doesn’t like violence or fighting. But in this scene she jumps out of her daily life role and gets really angry. I was laughing really hard when I first read it.