In this creatively written play, Yolanda Bonnell tells the story of Miskozi, a young adult Two-Spirit Anishinaabe woman who grew up in the 1980s, struggling with her feelings around missing something in their life. Loosely based on the author’s own life experiences, this story uses humour as the plot spirals around memories, dreams, and a familiar game show. A second character, Waabishkizi, plays Miskozi’s inner White self, while the third character, Ziibi, is the life form of an ancestral river. This story reflects the confusion and complex journey many Indigenous individuals face as they attempt to understand their identities as Indigenous People within a colonial world that privileges whiteness, especially when Indigenous Ancestors were forced to hide their cultures and languages in the recent past. Bonnell creatively interweaves Anishinaabemowin (Ojibwe language) throughout the pages, adding to the journey towards reclamation, resiliency, and resurgence.

Cautions / Content Warnings: Some profanity and sexual content.
Other End Matter: Notes by director and author, messages from other actors, poem by author
Images: b&w photographs
Contributor Affiliation: Author Yolanda Bonnell (Anishinaabe-Ojibwe), Photographers Bliss Thompson (Ojibwe), Dahlia Katz, Jeremy Mimnagh, Rihkee Strapp (Métis)
Bibliography: No
Index: No

Source: Books BC - Indigenous Books for Schools

Yolanda Bonnell (She/They) is a Bi/Queer 2 Spirit Anishinaabe-Ojibwe, South Asian mixed performer, playwright and multidisciplinary creator/facilitator. From Fort William First Nation in Thunder Bay, Ontario (Superior Robinson Treaty territory), her arts practice is now based in Tkarón:to. In February 2020, Yolanda's four-time Dora-nominated solo show bug was remounted at Theatre Passe Muraille while the published book was shortlisted for a Governor General's Literary Award. In 2022, her play White Girls in Moccasins was produced at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre in Toronto and at the frank theatre in Vancouver. Yolanda was the Indigenous artist recipient of the Jayu Arts for Human Rights Award for her work and won the PGC Tom Hendry Drama Award for her play My Sister's Rage. Yolanda has facilitated at schools like York University and Sheridan College and proudly bases her practice in land-based creation, drawing on energy and inspiration from the earth and her ancestors.

Yolanda Bonnell's profile page

"Of all the productions I've seen in the staggered theatre reopenings during the pandemic, this is the show that has best understood the possibilities and the potential of the art form. This is theatre as ceremony, as ritual." Glenn Sumi, Now Magazine, NNNN

"Bonnell's storytelling feels audacious in the best ways: She shows stories that most First Nation, Metis and Inuit people experience in one way or another but don't often speak publicly about. It's an unusual way to see ourselves and be seen. For me, it's as if I were watching my own story. The cultural touchstones were those of my childhood, as well as the way in which I unquestioningly absorbed Eurocentric standards of beauty and defined myself in relation to them, and subsequently, like Miskozi, had to unlearn and replace them with love and acceptance. For those of us not there yet, Bonnell shows what a road map to loving oneself without judgment might look like." Robyn Grant-Moran, Globe and Mail