NOW YOU KNOW…..
This page offers insight into some of the topics broadly highlighted in Yvette Nolan’s The Birds. Nolan masters the art of beading the threads of the past with translucent allusions to stories that are yet to be told. By doing so, she perhaps endeavors to allocate remembrance and witnessing to us, audience members. In that sense, remembrance and witnessing become a shared responsibility.
“The Condo Association”
Grandin House is the tradename of a condominium. It is a close knit community with only ten units and are located on a prominent street in the heart of Edmonton’s downtown core.
The Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, which provides a historical account of Canada’s residential schools system from its 19th-century origins up until 1939, contains background information about bishop Grandin’s motivations for championing residential schools. According to the report, Grandin, a bishop, was “convinced that Aboriginal people faced extinction, and doubtful that adult hunters and trappers could be transformed successfully into farmers.” The report states Grandin implored Langevin that for Indigenous children “to become civilized they should be taken with the consent of their parents and made to lead a life different from their parents and cause them to forget the customs, habits and language of their ancestors.”
“The Iroquois Creation Story”
There are different versions of the Iroquois creation myth. The following brief excerpt relies on the accounts of elder Amos Christjohn shared through the Oneida Indian Nation records.
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In an ancient realm of water and sky, a forbidden act leads a woman to fall from the celestial Sky World. The woman desired the roots and bark of the sacred tree. The husband, succumbing to his pregnant wife’s need, began to dig, but disaster struck as the ground collapsed beneath him, leaving a gaping hole in its wake. The woman peered into the void left by her husband's failed endeavor, only to lose her footing and plummet into the depths below. Saved by birds and aquatic beings, she lands on a turtle's back. Seeking dirt to blend with sacred tree roots, she sends a muskrat on a quest. After a perilous journey, the muskrat returns with soil, sparking life on the turtle's shell. The woman gives birth to a daughter, raising her amidst flourishing flora. As the daughter matures, she encounters a mysterious man and bears twins. Tragically, childbirth claims the woman's life, igniting discord between her sons. One, accused of causing their mother's death, is banished, while the other becomes Earth's creator. The exiled twin, Flint, survives and establishes his own domain across the ocean. Thus, the tale unfolds, marked by sacrifice, creation, and the enduring resilience of life.
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Learn more: Creation story told by Amos Christjohn, George Mason University (Iroquois Myth, 1816)
Video Link: The Iroquois Creation Myth of Turtle Island
“Thompson Heights || David Thompson”
David Thompson is an explorer, mapmaker, and fur trader. Known to be “the greatest land geographer who ever lived,” Thompson spent one of his winters in a tent of an 80-year-old elder named Saukamappee, who told him stories about the Plains Indigenous peoples as the fire burned to keep them warm. Saukamappee described the Piikani’s encounter with smallpox, which killed hundreds. He learned to speak several Indigenous languages and was an acute and sympathetic observer at a time when most Europeans still saw Indigenous people as savages. He predicted the changes that would come to the west, that it would become farmland and Indigenous peoples would be pushed from their land. As the one who mapped it, he was aware that he was contributing to that future.
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Learn more: David Thompson
“Agent”
The U.S. Indian Agency was supervised by an Indian agent, a civilian appointed by the president of the United States to serve as an ambassador to Native American nations living in the region. Agents were responsible for being the eyes, ears, and mouth of the US Bureau of Indian Affairs to Native communities.
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Learn more: The U.S. Indian Agency
“Deadwood”
Deadwood is a famous western town in South Dakota that gained notoriety for several reasons. It was founded after gold was discovered in 1874 in the Black Hills. The town quickly grew to an unofficial population of 5,000, but Deadwood’s birth as a town and outpost was, in fact, illegal: the land had been granted to American Indians in the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie. […] Deadwood had already attained a lawless reputation when Wild Bill Hickok arrived there in 1876 to gamble. As he sat at a table, playing poker in one of the town’s saloons, he was shot in the back of the head by Jack McCall, who said he did so to avenge his brother’s death. He claimed that Hickok had killed his sibling. Because Deadwood had no law in place at the time, a group of miners held a trial in the McDaniel’s Theatre where McCall was found innocent then quickly skipped town. His trial was later determined to be illegal and he was re-tried in Yankton, the capital of Dakota Territory, where he was found guilty and hanged in 1877.
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Learn more: Deadwood, South Dakota: Truth and Legend
Timeline Deadwood Timeline
“Ovid’s Procne and Philomela”
Tereus, a Thracian king, marries Procne, an Athenian princess, and brings her to live with him in Thrace. After a while, Procne begins to miss her beloved sister, Philomela. Procne begs her husband to bring her sister to Thrace. When Tereus agrees, he travels to Athens, only to fall in deep lust for Philomela. Tereus is able to convince the father to let Philomela travel back to Thrace with him to see Procne. However, once Tereus and Philomela’s voyage is over, Tereus takes Philomela into the woods and rapes her. Philomela threatens to tell the world of his unforgivable act so Tereus cuts out her tongue, rapes her again, and leaves her imprisoned in a cabin in the woods. Since she is unable to speak, Philomela weaves the story into a tapestry. She sends the tapestry to her sister, revealing the crime through the woven word. Procne finds her sister and brings her back to the palace to plot revenge against Tereus. Procne kills their son, Itys, and puts the pieces of his dismembered body in Tereus’ dinner. While eating, Tereus asks to see his son, but Procne tells him that his son is in his stomach. Philomela enters the room with the severed head of Itys. Then Philomela and Procne flee in fear of Tereus’s rage and are transformed into a nightingale and a swallow, respectively, while the enraged Tereus is transformed into a hoopoe. (Metamorphoses 6.438-674).
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More info: Ovid and the censored voice, Ovid’s story of Procne and Philomela (original text translated by Charles Martin)