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KRISZTINA Kopó
ghost is Education Future: a man dressed in a three-piece suit, looking very
business-like and full of self-esteem, very much the Indian yuppie figure, who
first shows an image of a Native woman, as one example and conseguence
of the issue, who cannot study medicine because of Cadieux’s decision. As a
final confrontation, Cadieux is the teacher explaining “the Cadieux tragedy”
to his students with three projected versions (stereotypes) of aboriginal life:
“a dirty looking Indian,” “a bum, tramp, alcoholic, national disgrace”; then
the “Reserve Indian,” whereby “Reserves today are seriously overpopulated
by neurotic and socially dysfunctional people.”** And the third image is a
nicely dressed young woman, “the Integrator,” the “outcast,” who “started
out telling people she was Spanish or Hawaiian. Now she has everything
she wants. Except her people.” These images reflect reality and the effects of
white colonization, which points toward an identity crisis. One of the major
questions is whether the survival of the Native Peoples is possible at all with
the odds stacked against them. With the cap on post-secondary education, any
possibility of educating their people is now strictly limited, predicting a bleak
and pessimistic future for the Aboriginal population. Nevertheless, Taylor
ends his play on an optimistic note, in the words of the ghost of Education
Future: “everybody chooses their own future” In Dickens’ story Scrooge
undergoes a definite change, willing to open his heart to his environment,
and to extend his hand to those in need. Here, Cadieux’s last sarcastic remark
is “that’s politics”,°° which hints at the untrustworthiness of government
policies and politics in general. But there is a change taking place within the
Native communities and the question of identity within the scope of past,
present and future clearly emerges, pointing toward a promising future in
Taylor’s plays.
The Gothic and its machinery provide the props that manage the
movement between past, present and future. The concept of time has major
importance in another youth drama by Taylor, Toronto at Dreamer’s Rock
(1990). The location of the play is Dreamer’s Rock, which is a “real place with
real power. It’s located beside a highway on Birch Island Reserve, and many
people still go there for guidance.”" The play was first produced by De-Ba¬
Jeh-Mu-Jig Theatre Group under the direction of Larry Lewis, and the cast
consists of only three characters, three teenage boys, aged sixteen. The time
of the performance is not particularly important but a summer afternoon,
possibly a Saturday afternoon would be preferred to fit the references in the
text. The Dickensian structural layout is used to connect past, present and
future, and open dimensions to the otherworld. This work does not employ
58 Tbid., 133.
59 Tbid., 137.
60 Ibid., 139.
61 Drew Hayden Taylor, Toronto at Dreamer’s Rock, Calgary, Fifth House Publishers, 1990, 10.
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