"The Strength of Indian Women"

Although it would be a truely painful and traumatic experience, I would love to see this performance...

--ryan


Female Cast Unearths Pain Natives Suffered at Boarding Schools -
May 9, 2005
By JODI RAVE of the Missoulian

It is April 18.
After a full day's work, the women retreat to a room in the Missoula Indian Center where they practice lines from a script. Although the play is new to them, the actors have developed a natural cadence with the dialogue.

The women are reading from Vera Manuel's script, "The Strength of Indian Women," a story recounting the Indian boarding school experience and its effect on generations of Native families.

On this day, Patty LaPlant's character, Mariah, reveals a repressed memory from her years at a Catholic boarding school.

Now an elderly woman, light-skinned Mariah feels guilty because the nuns and priests treated her better than her darker classmates. She regrets never speaking up for them.

In this scene, she talks about the day she saw a nun throw a "dirty savage Indian" girl down two flights of concrete stairs.

"My screams were silent and my agony all consumin'," says Mariah. "I saw murder done in that school, and when they wrapped that broken body and sent it home to the mother, tellin' her it was pneumonia that killed her little girl, she unwrapped her and runnin' her grievin' lovin' mother's hands across her bruised face, shoulders, legs and back, discovered the neck was broken, screamed out in agony, ‘Why? What happened to my baby?' and I said nothin'."

(Church bells ring.)

"I saw little girls taken in the night from their beds, I heard the moans and groans and sobbin'.

" ‘Shut up, shut up,' I said, glazed eyes ravaged and torn bodies returned in a frightened, huddled mass beneath the sheets, and I said nothin'."

(Bells ring again.)

" ‘You're a good girl,' " they often told me. " ‘These girls are bad. They need to be taught a lesson.'

"I saw a baby born one night to a mother who was little more than a child herself. I saw her frightened, dark eyes pleading with me to save her child, and later on, when the grave was dug and the baby lowered into the grave, I said nothin'."

It's a gritty scene, one of many that have raised feelings among the actors where they didn't expect them to exist.

"Remember the day I cried?" said Darcia North Wind to her fellow actors. "I didn't even know where that came from."

Manuel's play focuses on a group of Native women, each of whom had life-altering experiences in a Catholic boarding school. It's a melodic script, said Sarah d'Angelo, the Missoula Indian Center alcohol substance abuse prevention and cultural specialist who is directing the play.

While d'Angelo has a master of fine arts degree, the other women's theatrical experience is minimal to zero. Yet they could be apprentices of the Stanislavski school of method-acting, where performers are encouraged not to act, but to be themselves and react.

North Wind, d'Angelo, LaPlant, Marilyn Zimmerman and Thelma Yellow Kidney have all related to the script through tribal experiences or familial episodes. Even the youngest cast member, 14-year-old Brandy Salway, has not escaped the lingering pain caused by the boarding schools.

"I get so angry," said Salway, whose character helps bond the women. But the play, she said, also "helped me understand the hurt those little girls went through."

Experts describe that prevailing hurt as historical trauma, a pain sustained today by Native people, one owed to the loss of land, language, culture and children.

Government policies forced Native children into Christian-based boarding schools throughout Canada and the United States beginning more than a century ago. Although children are no longer forced from their homes, 66 boarding schools still exist in the United States, according to the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

The United Nations Convention on Genocide describes the loss of children n sending them out of the home to strip away their ethnic identity and religious beliefs n as an act of genocide.

Although Manuel's script was originally based in Canada, it mirrors the boarding school experience in the United States, where Native youth were subjected to emotional, sexual, physical and spiritual abuse.
Many Native families continue to bear the memories.

"I didn't make up the stories told in ‘Strength of Indian Women,' " Manuel said. "They came from pictures my mother painted for me with her words; words that helped me see her as a little girl for the first time. Each time we staged a performance of the play, I mourned the mother missing from my childhood ..."

As Manuel's story unfolds, she reveals how abuse affected the women, and how they coped with it as adults. The characters range from a peacemaker n whose daughter feels unloved n to a domestic-violence-battered antagonist to a prostitute-turned-activist to a guilt-ridden woman.

D'Angelo said the cast was chosen for their easy rapport with one another, a mix she felt was needed to tackle a script permeated with so much malice and mistreatment. Yet, the story also opens the door for bonding and healing among the characters, who unite for a granddaughter's coming-of-age ceremony.

As the women rehearsed over the last three weeks, they continued to strengthen the play's hidden nuances.

It is April 24.
On a Sunday afternoon, the actors move to the University Center Theatre for rehearsal. The venue was chosen so the movie screen can be used to flash historical photos of boarding schools behind the actors.

North Wind and Zimmerman move center stage for a scene saturated with memories of drinking and prostitution.

From the back of the theater, d'Angelo watches, coaching them through movement and dialogue.

"I'm asking you guys to be comfortable with the silence," she said. "Use the time to reassure. This is about solidarity when you bring her back. Does that make sense?"

Do it again, she tells them.

After several attempts, they hit the mark. "When you walked back, that was powerful," said the director.

Before they leave, d'Angelo reminds the women about memorizing their script. "Use Monday and Tuesday to start swallowing these lines down," she said, punctuating her request with a long, soft "Pleeeeease."

May 2.
The women have been rehearsing daily for at least three weeks, and there are only eight days remaining before their first performance. It's another Monday evening and the women continue to dig into the script as they rehearse in the basement of the Missoula Indian Center.
Salway, who plays 13-year-old "Suzie," is feeling uneasy about what she's learned about boarding schools. She wishes she had the power to rewrite history and rescue little girls.

"It makes me want to do something," she said. "I want to get up and chew all those nuns and priests ... I want to go back in time and change things."

Her reactions are normal.

But they are feelings people need to understand, said Zimmerman, a University of Montana student who is majoring in social work.

For those reasons, she sought to bring Manuel's play to an audience. They are the same reasons d'Angelo chose to direct it.

"My dream would be to take this to all the tribal colleges to establish a dialogue," she said.

While the play can help establish a dialogue, the larger intent is to move toward healing.

"The responsibility we hold in passing on these stories is to role model a healthy lifestyle for our children, who are always watching us for direction," according to Manuel. "When we share our life stories, we must create a safe place for those who come and listen, in order not to hurt ourselves or others."