Coming Soon in Canadian Theatre Review… Tell Us When You’re Uncomfortable: An Anti-Colonial Poetic Script

HARC Research Managers, Marion Erickson and Lisa Striegler, along with Research Director, Sarah de Leeuw, are delighted to announce the upcoming publication in Canadian Theatre Review of their latest work: Tell Us When You’re Uncomfortable: An Anti-Colonial Poetic Script with Mosquito, Lisa, Knowing, Western, Caesarean, Written Word, Marion, Being, Medicine, Sarah, and Other Unruly Characters.

Drawing on unruly, messy, and arts-informed methods emerging in Indigenous, anti-colonial, feminist, and queer research and literatures, this creative article is styled as a ‘poetic dialogue script’ exploring tensions between diverse world-views and ways of being. Authored by Indigenous and white settlers from (so-called) northern British Columbia, the article upends long-standing tendencies in medical and health sciences to pathologize Indigenous peoples, knowledges, and places. In both form (experimental) and conceptual content (anti-colonial and arts-based), the article asks
why some bodies, stories, and geographies attain and accrue power while others are written off and out of, for instance, disciplines like
medicine.

Stay tuned for the full publication!

Here’s a teaser from the anti-colonial poetic script…

WESTERN/MEDICINE/KNOWING: (In unison, with arms around each other.) Wait! First, land is for extraction and profit, not health. Second, your people didn’t do C-sections. We discovered them. That’s scientific brilliance. That’s MEDICINE. And it all took place in CITIES!

WRITTEN WORD: And I wrote it down.

MARION: Now this is going to be an interesting story …

(Laughing smugly.)

BEING: Well, you were raised by Western, and you look the part. And I have first-hand knowledge that you’re Western, since I’ve been watching you … you can’t just bang on a drum and reject all that is Western.

WESTERN: Drum? Did I hear someone say ‘drum’? We should put it in a museum for safekeeping. So the people can learn about culture.

BEING: (Rolls eyes.)

MARION: (Picks up white male’s arms and starts waving them.) Hey you! I’m over here. I’m getting kind of uncomfortable.

MEDICINE: (Looking at white male.) Uncomfortable? I can fix that. (Hands white male a Coke®.)