Mother tongue: Colonized bodies and performing cultures

Abstract

This essays presents and reads Mother Tongue, a theatre and performance work by Calgary‐based writers/performers Cheryl L'Hirondelle and Alexandria Patience. Mother Tongue explores the history and genealogy of the two women and the implications of this for their participation in contemporary Canada. Patience, who emigrated to Canada from Scotland, and L'Hirondelle, a Metis woman born in northern Alberta, map the similarities and differences of their particular experiences and ask their audiences to engage with questions of racial identity and cultural pluralism. Bennett reads this work in the context of a federally and provincially promoted “Canadian multiculturalism” and suggests that Mother Tongue both points to the dangers of government‐envisioned multiculturalism and to the possibility of less fixed notions of cultural diversity.