Festival participation doubles over last year

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The second annual Wataybugaw Aboriginal Thanksgiving festival at Toronto's Harbourfront Centre was a huge success, with attendance double that of 2002. The two-day festival takes place on Sunday and Monday of the Thanksgiving holiday long weekend. This year, Harbourfront officials estimated that 1,500 people attended the festival on Sunday alone. Monday was even busier, with 2,500 to 3,000 attendees.

Victoria Jakowenko and Harvey Manning, the owner-operators of We Got Game, were kept busy serving hungry festival-goers from their booth in the World Cafe. There were long lineups for their buffalo burgers, buffalo sausage, venison sausage, and venison stew all weekend.

Jakowenko and Manning introduced a new dish on Monday to meet the demand-shaved venison with gravy on a bun-and still couldn't feed everyone. On Monday afternoon, they had to turn people away.

"We've sold out of everything," Manning, a Chippewa originally from Kettle and Stoney Point, said. "It has been extremely busy."

Although Harbourfront has always programmed a Thanksgiving festival, the first Wataybugaw was a trial run, and there was no guarantee the Aboriginal-themed festival would return. But it did return-and with a wider vision. This year's festival incorporated new elements, such as film screenings and demonstration dances into the existing framework of drumming, dancing, music, food, and a marketplace.

"The popularity and success of the festival last year inspired us to expand the concept and invite additional Aboriginal arts and cultural partners to the table," Harbourfront Centre artistic associate Kristine Germann said.

This year's Wataybugaw was co-produced by Harbourfront Centre and several Aboriginal arts organizations, including the Association for Native Development in the Performing and Visual Arts, Native Women in the Arts, the Buffalo Jump Artists' Collective, the imagineNATIVE Film and Media Arts Festival, and Aboriginal Voices Radio.

According to Germann, who was the liaison between Harbourfront and the co-producers, all the parties contributed financial support and human resources, although Germann said Harbourfront Centre's contribution was "generous."

Wataybugaw, which means "changing colours" in Ojibwe, was better organized this year, and offered more to do.

The five children's activity centres offered children-and quite a few artistically inclined parents-the opportunity to draw a winter count calendar, make a necklace using dried corn, design clay coil pottery, make corn-husk dolls, and create talking sticks using coloured feathers, ribbons and beads.

In the Lakeside Terrace, Derrick Bressette (Ojibwe), Louise Profeit-LeBlanc (Tutchone), and Bea Shawanda (Odawa) told stories and sang songs in separate sessions. Bressette gave teachings and took questions from the audience, which included both children and adults. (With adults, Bressette joked about an alternative use for sweetgrass: it can apparently be used in vehicles to guard against speeding tickets).

One of this year's new elements, a series of animated films produced in Edmonton, played in the Studio Theatre. Although created for children, these teaching stories were also suitable for adults, because of their sophisticated mix of live-action wildlife footage and digital and traditional animation in a colourful Norval Morrisseau-inspired style. The 20-minute, two-part films were narrated by Gordon Tootoosis (North of 60) and Tantoo Cardinal (Dances With Wolves) and featured the adventures of the trickster Wesakechak and stories told by a wolf mother to her cubs. For Plains Cree people living in Toronto, these films were a little slice of home, because they featured Cree words and cultural references instead of the Ojibwe or Mohawk most often heard in southern Ontario.

Although Wataybugaw featured a Thanksgiving opening address on Sunday-delivered by Jacqui Lavalley and language activist Amos Key-this year's festival seemed more informal, and as a result, mre accessible and more inclusive for non-Native people.

During the twice-daily mini-powwows with Toronto-based drum groups Morningstar River, Tall Pine Singers, and Eagleheart, emcee Bressette offered explanations for those unfamiliar with Native customs, while dancers such as Joe Myran, a grass dancer originally from the Birdtail Sioux First Nation in Manitoba, performed solo demonstration dances for an eager audience of Native and non-Native people.

Festival visitors were also introduced to traditional Cayuga songs from the Old Mush Singers from Six Nations, the country-folk of singer-songwriter ElizaBeth Hill, and the folk-rock stylings of singer Tamara Podemski.

Hill, a two-time Juno Award nominee and winner of two Canadian Aboriginal Music Awards, is currently finishing a CD of songs in Mohawk that she hopes to release by Christmas. She's also heading back to the recording studio this winter to record her third English-language CD, which she says will be "retro country."

"I like it when these [Aboriginal-themed] events are held at major venues like Harbourfront," Hill said after her Monday performance. "It's informative, educational, and fun.

"It's good for Toronto, and good for our people."