Kainai youth to perform on New York stage

The Leth­bridge Her­ald
Fri­day, August 22, 2008, p. a1

Ramona Big Head writes script about Baker Mas­sacre which will be mounted at Per­form­ing the World in New York City

By SHERRI GALLANT

A south­ern Alberta woman is bring­ing a for­got­ten piece of North Amer­i­can his­tory to the stage in New York City this fall, with a cast of 24 young­sters from the Blood Reserve.

Ramona Big Head, a teacher at Kainai High School, has writ­ten a play about the Baker Mas­sacre — also known as the Marias Mas­sacre — in which some 200 Black­feet women, chil­dren and elders were slaugh­tered by Major Eugene Baker and his troops in north­ern Mon­tana at dawn, Jan. 23, 1870.

At the urg­ing of her super­vi­sor at the Uni­ver­sity of Leth­bridge, where she’s work­ing on her Mas­ters degree in edu­ca­tion, she sub­mit­ted the script for “Strike Them Hard! Baker Mas­sacre Awak­en­ing” to Per­form­ing the World, a New York City fes­ti­val of per­for­mances, work­shops, panel dis­cus­sions, lec­tures, com­mu­nity tours and impro­vi­sa­tion. It brings together activists, artists, edu­ca­tors, young peo­ple, prac­ti­tion­ers and schol­ars from dozens of coun­tries, all of whom are involved in the emer­gence of per­for­mance as a new way of relat­ing to, under­stand­ing and chang­ing the world. The play was accepted and is sched­uled to pre­miere there Oct. 4.

“I first heard the story eight years ago from my cousin, Nar­cisse Blood,” said Big Head. “And Nar­cisse told me, ‘one of our ances­tors sur­vived this, her name was Holy Bear Woman.’ I went home and looked at my geneal­ogy and there she was. I had done my geneal­ogy before that and she had always been there, Holy Bear Woman, but now her named jumped out. She was my great, great grandmother.”

Big Head found her­self wrestling at first with great anger at the knowl­edge, anger that’s some­times referred to as unre­solved his­tor­i­cal trauma.

“Why don’t peo­ple know about it? I blame the board­ing schools, for their attempts to wipe every­thing away,” said Big Head, who was forced to attend St. Paul’s res­i­den­tial school on the Blood Reserve for many years, start­ing when she was five.

She went to the mas­sacre site, about 16 kilo­me­tres east of what’s now Shelby, Mont., and has taken her stu­dents there as well. She said the heav­i­ness of so much death and anguish could be felt. It was pal­pa­ble; hov­er­ing over the place that is called, in the Black­foot lan­guage, “where they were burned.”

Then in Octo­ber of 2006, Big Head’s daugh­ter, Galina Brave Rock, com­mit­ted sui­cide, despon­dent over the trou­bles in her young life and leav­ing two young chil­dren behind. The loss of her daugh­ter sapped her strength and she began to won­der if Galina might have had a stronger sense of hope if she had pos­sessed a bet­ter under­stand­ing of her people’s abil­ity to endure.

“This story is to let our chil­dren know how strong our peo­ple are. That we’ve come through so much and we’re still here. The play is ded­i­cated to her and it’s a plea on behalf of all moth­ers who’ve lost a child to sui­cide, to never give up. It’s another way of healing.

“The only way I know how to tell a story is to put it on the stage,” she said. “But it was really hard to write.”

Big Head has used the voices of the chil­dren to tell the tale, since most of the sur­vivors were young­sters (Holy Bear Woman was 12). The play was selected from nearly 200 pro­pos­als from more than 30 coun­tries and is believed to be the first sub­mis­sion to be accepted from a native group in North Amer­ica. The cast and crew are all chil­dren from Kainai and Pikuni, age six to 18 years.

Her research included numer­ous wit­ness accounts that were recorded to ensure the mas­sacre would not be for­got­ten. One sur­vivor, a man named Big Bear, gave his story to author J.W. Schultz for his book “Black­feet and Buf­falo”, say­ing he wanted it immor­tal­ized so white men would never for­get what they had done to his people.

“Yet some­how it did get for­got­ten,” Big Head said. “Very few of our peo­ple knew about this event.”

Rehearsals began in June and will resume in Sep­tem­ber, but some fund­ing is still needed. Big Head is wait­ing to hear from the Alberta Lot­tery Foun­da­tion and other agen­cies, but would wel­come any pub­lic or cor­po­rate dona­tions. Per­form­ing the World orga­niz­ers have arranged for the group to be bil­leted for four nights, but they’ll require hotel accom­mo­da­tions for three more.

To con­tribute, dona­tions can be made to the Kainai High School account, at any loca­tion of Alberta Trea­sury Branch.