Hiawatha Performances and the Garden River First Nation

In August of 1900, several members of the Longfellow family travelled to Desbarats, Ontario, where they had been invited to attend the first performance of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem Hiawatha put on by members of the Garden River First Nation. These productions, which spread throughout Indigenous communities across Western Ontario and Northern Michigan in the years that followed, featured largely Native actors and were performed in the Anishinaabe language. Analyzing these Hiawatha performances offers a window to explore how Native people reappropriated Western representations to insist on the survival of their own peoples and traditions.

This event will feature two talks about the August 1900 performance based on research done in the collections held by the Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters’ National Historic Site. The first, by Professor Karl Hele, will describe the context and circumstances of the performance. The second, by Professor Alan Corbiere, will look at the use of the Anishinaabe language in the performances and in the material created for the Longfellow family.

Alan Corbiere, Bne wedoodemid (Ruffed Grouse clan), is an Anishinaabe from M'Chigeeng First Nation on Manitoulin Island. He is an assistant professor of history and Canada Research Chair in Indigenous History of North America at York University. His research focuses on Anishinaabe language, oral traditions, and material culture. He has published in the journals Museum Anthropology, the Algonquian Papers, and others, as well as in the edited collection Afterlives of Indigenous Archives: Essays in Honor of the Occom Circle. He has also served as the the Executive Director at the Ojibwe Cultural Foundation and the Anishinaabemowin Revitalization Program Coordinator at Lakeview School, both in M’Chigeeng First Nation.

Karl S. Hele, a member of Garden River First Nation, is a full professor and current Director of Canadian and Indigenous Studies at Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick. A specialist in Indigenous Studies, he focuses on First Nations history, politics, and law. He is the author of numerous articles and editor of several edited collections, including Engaging Indigenous Communities: Resources, Rebellions, and Resurgence (Aboriginal Issues Press, 2021), This is Indian Land: The Robinson Treaties of 1850 (Aboriginal Issues Press, 2016), and The Nature of Empires and the Empires of Nature: Indigenous Peoples and the Great Lakes Environment (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2013).

This program is made possible by the Mellon Humanities Fellowship Program and Friends of the Longfellow House-Washington's Headquarters, Inc.

Fees

This event is free to attend.

Location

Latitude and Longitude 42.377416, -71.126390

Schedule

Event Type

• Partner Program
• Talk
• Virtual/Digital