Redpath Museum Auditorium
Tomson Highway is the son of legendary caribou hunter and world championship dogsled racer, Joe Highway. Born in a tent pitched in a snow bank - in December! - just south of the Manitoba/Nunavut border (near Saskatchewan), he now, for a living, writes novels, plays, and music.
Of the many works he has written to date, his best known are the plays, "THE REZ SISTERS," "DRY LIPS OUGHTA MOVE TO KAPUSKASING," "ROSE," "ERNESTINE SHUSWAP GETS HER TROUT," and the best-selling novel, "KISS OF THE FUR QUEEN."
For many years, he ran Canada's premiere Native theatre company, Native Earth Performing Arts (out of Toronto), out of which has emerged an entire generation of professional Native theatre artists (actors, playwrights, etc.). He has, as well, three children's books to his credit, all written bilingually in Cree (his mother tongue) and English. He divides his year equally between a cottage in northern Ontario (near Sudbury) and an apartment in the south of France, at both of which locales he is currently at work on his second novel.
"Here/Now: Contemporary First Nations Media and Culture" is a planned series of 3 events over the course of the fall 2009, bringing together cultural producers from the fields of cinema, theatre, new media and literature to discuss the place of First Nations cultural productions in the contemporary artistic scene. OPEN TO THE PUBLIC!
We would like to thank the following for co-sponsoring this event: Department of Art History & Communications, Department of English, Institute for Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies, The McGill Institute for the Study of Canada, Media @ McGill.