Evolving cultures highlighted at big city festival

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Planet IndigenUs, a 10-day-long, multi-disciplinary festival celebrating Indigenous artistic expression, took over Toronto's Harbourfront Centre from Aug. 13 to 22. The festival, co-sponsored by Harbourfront and the Brantford-based Woodland Cultural Centre, featured more than 300 artists from every continent.

"This is a ground-breaking event," Harbourfront CEO William Boyle said. "This is going to bust the cliches people have about Indigenous peoples."

Planet IndigenUs was the largest event of its kind ever staged in North America, and most likely the world. The performing arts side of the festival included music, theatre, dance and literary readings, with performers hailing from Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Greenland, Norway (Lapland), Africa, Mexico and the United States.

The literary calendar included a book launch (Drew Hayden Taylor's Futile Observations of a Blue-Eyed Ojibway: Funny, You Don't Look Like One #4) and readings by Thomas King and Richard Van Camp. Theatre offerings included an Inuit mask dance and a reading of the play Frangipani Perfume, which was followed by a question and answer session with playwright Makerita Urale. There was also a 50-foot tipi on the site, which was used for storytelling sessions, song and dance demos, and children's theatre and dance workshops.

The range of music showed the evolution of Aboriginal culture: in addition to traditional Native music-everything from Metis jigs and reels to Iroquois social dance songs. Jazz, blues, country, folk, bluegrass, funk, rock, electronic, hiphop, and spoken-word were also featured.

The crowd was charmed by jazz singer Andrea Menard. The Saskatchewan-based Menard,who introduced herself as a "proud Metis woman," sang a mix of standards and originals. Menard had a sunny disposition, and her original songs were often delightfully wry.

Wolfpack, a tight blues-rock band from Six Nations, featured the nuanced vocals of lead vocalist Jason Martin. Winnipeg's Burnt, a six-piece funk outfit, demonstrated stellar guitar and trumpet work.

Juno Award winner Derek Miller mesmerized a late-night crowd with his guitar pyrotechnics. Songwriter and spoken-word artist Kinnie Starr's set balanced samples, beats, and melody to create intelligent political commentary and head-nodding grooves. Inuk thrash-rock specialist Lucie Idlout showed off a new buzzcut and several songs from her new album, Swagger, which will be released in 2005.

Yellowknife's Leela Gilday delivered a strong hour of narrative folk music, including the song Village of Widows, which is about uranium mines in her mother's community. And champion guitarist Don Ross had a capacity crowd eating out of his hand as a result of both his guitar playing and his hilarious stage banter (telling the crowd, for instance, that his Scottish and Mi'Kmaq heritage made him a "MacMicmac").

Agua was the standout dance performance. The site-specific piece was commissioned by the Planet IndigenUs festival for the artificial pond at Harbourfront Centre. Choreographed by Alejandro Ronceria, the hour-long dance that began at dusk and was lit by wooden torches featured live music and vocals and a cast of Aboriginal dancers from around the globe. Dancers performed in calf-deep water, using their bodies to create percussive effects and stunning visuals. Agua was a strange and compelling exploration of the relationship between water and sacred ritual.

"Our artists are our true leaders," said Six Nations chief Roberta Jamieson during the opening ceremonies. "They're brave. They show us what we need to deal with, whether we like it or not."