Tanya Lukin-Linklater - Sunday July 27, 2008

This is sort of a P.S. to the Saturday night post, because of course Tanya performed then too, a song dedicated to the over 500 Canadian Aboriginal women who have gone missing. With her child on her hips, throat singing and melody or her lips, she sang, "Grandmother" over and over again in Tlingit. She used this song again in a performance in front of City Hall Sunday afternoon.



Part dance piece, part ritual, part political statement, Tanya danced around a star blanket on the lawn and swam in the fountain. She then invited the audience to wade into the water, where she held them and sang to them in what my Christian upbringing could only frame as a baptism of sorts. The we returned to the lawn and were each given a present: a blanket. A most generous gift, my white self thought, in light of history. Of course smallpox-infected blankets were one of the many "gifts" my people brought from Europe to perpetuate genocide. And the numbers of missing Native women suggests that genocide is still on the agenda.

Although this piece wasn't officially part of Visualize, those of us from the festival were glad the timing worked out and we could see it. Its mix of visual elements, movement and song were presented so cleanly. And Tanya had been very much a part of our week, our experience here in Edmonton. Visualize artists got very competitive around who would hold her baby next!

One of many interesting about watching Tanya perform is the way in which her children are integrated into the pieces. Not separate. Art as just part of life.