Summary
Act 1 takes place on a morning in August at the Wasaychigan Hill Indian Reserve on Manitoulin Island, Ontario. We see Pelajia Patchnose on the roof of her house, nailing shingles. Pelajia tells her sister, Philomena, that she wants to go to Toronto, that she feels stifled in their community. Philomena Moosetail, her well-dressed sister, comes in with a ladder. "But you were born here," Philomena says, "All your poop's on this reserve." She teases Pelajia for wanting to go, saying that she will stay there for the 30 or 40 remaining years of her life.
Philomena tickles Pelajia, saying, "People change, places change, time changes things. You expect to be young and gorgeous forever?" Pelajia complains that she was woken up at 4:30 AM by Andrew and Matthew Starblanket's drunkenness, and heard them fighting with a baseball bat. Phiomena says she likes it there and is going to play bingo every night until she wins big and can afford the toilet of her dreams.
Suddenly, after climbing the ladder, Philomena falls from it, screaming. Pelajia scolds her for not wearing pants to do a "man's job" and talks about the fact that now Philomena's skirt is ripped so it will look like she came from "Big Joey's house." Philomena goes back up the ladder and defies the rumors about her, while Pelajia talks about how her sons and husband have to travel far, to places like Toronto, to get work. Pelajia then complains that they only have dirt roads, even though the leaders have been talking about paving the roads for years.
Annie Cook, who lost Eugene, her betrothed, to another woman 19 years earlier at church, wanders towards them. She perkily climbs the ladder to talk to the women, and Philomena scolds her for not coming to bingo with her. Annie tells Philomena that she went somewhere with a woman named Emily Dictionary to hear music, a country-rock band from Toronto called Fritz the Katz. They gossip about how Gazelle Nataways is going to go to Toronto with Big Joey, before Annie tells them she has to go to the post office because she has a package that is shaped like a record waiting for her. They talk about Annie's daughter, Ellen, who lives with a white, French man who is a garage mechanic.
Pelajia proposes that they stage a revolution, burn down the church, scare the priest, and go to Espanola, where the bingos are even better. Annie leaves to go to the post office. When Philomena seems dejected, Pelajia tells her she bought her hammer with bingo money, for $24.95. Philomena remembers the good old days, with someone named Bingo Betty, who would go to every bingo game.
As Pelajia climbs down the ladder, Philomena continues talking about Betty and nearly falls off the roof. She recovers her balance and climbs down the ladder.
The scene shifts to Marie-Adele Starblanket standing in her yard near her white picket fence. There is a seagull nearby who is "the dancer in white feathers." Highway writes, "Through this whole section, Nanabush (i.e. Nanabush in the guise of the seagull), Marie-Adele, and Zhaboonigan play 'games' with each other. Only she and Zhaboonigan Peterson can see the spirit inside the bird and can sort of (though not quite) recognize him for who he is."
Marie-Adele tries to shoo away the seagull, as Nanabush tries to coax her into flying away with him. Veronique St. Pierre, passing by with Zhaboonigan Peterson, her adopted daughter, asks Marie-Adele if she is talking to the birds. The gossip a bit, and talk about the fact that Marie-Adele has 14 children, all with Eugene, Annie (her sister's) ex. Veronique asks Marie-Adele who will take care of the children when she goes to the hospital, implying that Marie-Adele is ill.
Zhaboonigan asks Marie-Adele where Nicky is, and she tells her he's at the beach. In Zhaboonigan's interaction with Marie-Adele, we can see that she is mentally disabled in some way.
Analysis
The beginning of the play introduces us to Pelajia, an Indigenous woman who longs to escape from her life on the reserve. She dreams of traveling to Toronto, of going farther than the eye can see. Meanwhile, her sister Philomena insists that she will never leave. The two sisters have contrasting perspectives on their lot in life. While Pelajia sees the reserve as a place from which to escape and strike out on a new journey, Philomena sees an ordinary life on the reserve as their destiny.
While Pelajia has dreams of the wider world, Philomena insists that life on the reserve is just enough of a life. She believes that they will both stay there for the rest of their lives, and has no problem with that prospect. Instead of worrying about the darker sides of living on the reserve, Philomena sets her sights on practical dreams, such as winning enough money at bingo that she can afford a new toilet, "big and wide and very white." The two sisters differ in multiple ways. Where Pelajia is tomboyish, Philomena is more feminine. Where Pelajia is a dreamer, seeking new horizons and places to go, Philomena is more than content to stay where she is and play by the rules of the reserve.
A lot of the fantasies that the women have center around the promise of bingo. Trapped in the economic systems of the reserve, the women have no choice but to try their luck gambling, and it is only through gambling that they can imagine accumulating money to improve their quality of life. This structure only makes them more prone to dreaming and yearning for a better life. Different though each of the women may be in their philosophies, they all share the dream of improved conditions and more opportunity.
Contrasting with the earthly and material ambitions of the characters is the spiritual and metaphysical world on the reserve. In the next scene, we meet a seagull, who is the manifestation of "Nanabush," a trickster spirit in the First Nations mythologies. Whereas the previous scene concerned the social and personal lives of Philomena and Pelajia, this scene interweaves the mystical with the everyday, staging the spiritual world that watches over and plays around with the reserve.
While the dialogue in the play is often spirited small-talk, it is clear that each of the women on the reserve struggles with their own issues. The gossip that the women engage in conceals some difficult and dramatic truths. Pelajia has dreams of a better life and her husband and sons are in other places, Marie-Adele took her sister's fiancé and seems to be suffering from an illness, Annie lost her husband to her sister, and Zhaboonigan was orphaned and is mentally disabled. Each of the characters struggles with different tragedies, in spite of whatever social veneer they use in their conversations with one another.
