Dancing with Death: (Re)Embodying Grief and Dying

Abstract

Indigenous death in media and culture often becomes divorced from the human, embodied experience of grief. In this article three creative works from the 2010’s surrounding Indigenous death are analyzed: Robert LePage’s Kanata, The Royal Winnipeg Ballet’s Going Home Star, and Joanna Jolly’s Red River Girl. It is argued from a combined death doula and critical perspective that the witnessing of death, particularly Indigenous death, needs to return to the body, through a metaphor of dancing with one’s own death.