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Articles

Volume 20, Number 2 (1995)

Cultural Collision and Magical Transformation: The Plays of Tomson Highway

  • Anne Nothof
Submitted
May 22, 2008
Published
1995-06-06

Abstract

In Tomson Highway's The Rez Sisters and Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing, the cultural and spiritual values of Native and non-Native Canadians collide. The negative and positive consequences of cultural collision on characters leads, in some cases, to magical transformations. Nanabush, a central trickster figure in Native culture, aids in these transformations. Another area of cultural collision, the white audiences' reception of these plays, also transforms the response to Native culture.