Tompson Highway inspires teachers

BY HEATHER CAMPBELL

Renowned Cree author and playwright Tompson Highway was the special guest speaker for teachers with the Rainbow District School Board during a recent  professional development day.

The PD Day included workshops designed to help build bridges to aboriginal learners and the community.

This professional development day was part of the board's progressive approach to the Ministry of Education's January 2007 policy framework to improve aboriginal learner achievements. 

The province is striving to integrate First Nations, Métis and Inuit cultures, histories and perspectives throughout the curriculum that will increase knowledge and awareness among all students.

Highway, born on the trap line in northern Manitoba, has two arts degrees, five honorary degrees and joined the Order of Canada in 1994.

A brilliant pianist, author and playwright, who lives part-time in the French River area, Brandon, Man.  and the south of France, Highway is also trilingual speaking Cree, French and English.  His books have also been translated into many languages including Hungarian and Polish.

Highway's message to his audience of teachers, custodians, assistants, principles and other staff, was to convey how his father, Joe Highway's motto inspired his own life, "to expect the best, you will get the best."

He is the 11th child of 12 children, "I was an uncle four times before I was born." His father was a caribou hunter and legendary dog sledder. He told the audience, "It was just our family and the expanse of the wilderness, my father was the king of the north!"

Highway spent nine years in a residential school in northern Manitoba.  He said "some good things came from residential school" such as his love of the piano and classical composers. 

He shared how he loved learning and would sneak his math books to bed at night to secretly study in the light of the bathroom.

He started playing the piano at age 11, too late for becoming a concert pianist, but he was very ambitious and within one year had moved from Grade 1 level to Grade 5.

He went on to receive two degrees from the University of Western Ontario, a music degree in 1975 and an English degree in 1977.

He told the educators that back in the 1970s there were only 20 native students in an entire university population of 2,200, and there were no books talking about native people.

Highway and his late brother Rene Highway, a dancer and choreographer, led the emergence of the now burgeoning native arts community in Canada. The brothers were part of the first professional native theatre arts organization in Canada, the Native Earth Performing Arts.  Highway made mention that there are now 58 countries around the world that offer native studies programs. 

Grace Fox, trustee and chair, First Nations Advisory Committee, said, "Highway speaks for us through the arts rather than in a political forum."

Sudbury and Manitoulin schools have the fourth largest population of aboriginal students in the province.