by Rosemary Brown
Thomson Highway’s 2022 CBC Massey Lecture has been turned into a book entitled Laughing with the Trickster: On Sex, Death, and Accordions. This is a short book and a fascinating discourse on language, culture, humour, sex and gender, and death. Keep your eyes open for accordions.
Highway is a prolific and award-winning playwright, novelist, and musician. He was born in Brochet, at the northern end of Reindeer Lake in northern Manitoba, near the Saskatchewan border and only 200 km south of Nunavut. He is Cree and a member of the Barren Lands First Nation. One of 12 children, he was sent south to The Pas for his education at the age of 7 but returned to spend summers on the land with his family, hence he retained his fluency in Cree.
While the book is divided into chapters dealing with the themes mentioned above, the themes are often interconnected, for example language and humour. You can tell that Highway is in love with his Cree language, its expressiveness, and its emphasis on humour and laughter.
He touches briefly on stories about how in the distant past humans and animals spoke the same language, and that one theory of how humans developed language was through their observation of the natural world around them and the “sounds, gestures, and cries” made by animals. He discusses the link between language and mythology. He states while theology centres on God, and cosmology centres on the Universe, mythology centres on both. Then he discusses the three mythologies prevalent in North America: Classical (Greek and Roman), Christianity, and North American Indigenous thought (a hybrid of the mythologies associated with each language family).
Highway pursues the theme of mythology in his chapter on culture. He states that Christianity is the youngest of the three mythologies. He describes it as monotheistic, male, heterosexual, and anthropomorphic. In this mythology there is an emphasis on time which is considered to be linear. Only the male force (God) was involved in creation, and that God gave man dominion over nature.
Older than Christianity, classical mythology is polytheistic with many gods and goddesses. Creation involved both male and female forces. Nature was important and natural elements were considered to be Gods and Goddesses, given human or anthropomorphic form. Classical mythology was a “celebration of senses” and real emotions. Sex was integral. Space took priority over time and time was not linear.
In contrast to monotheism (one God) and polytheism (many gods), North American Indigenous thought is pantheistic with god in everything: “world is spirit” and “everything has a soul”. Pantheism is not anthropomorphic, and God is considered to be a “divine energy” neither male nor female.
The world came into being “through a female force (Mother Earth), with no masculine involvement.” Space has priority over time and time is not linear but circular with no beginning nor end.
In the chapter on humour, Highway explains that the Trickster was the third being created by Mother Earth and that every Indigenous nation has a trickster, although they may vary in form. He refers to the Trickster as the Clown God who brings laughter, which in turn is medicine. Again he talks about the Cree language as emoting humour and offers several hilarious examples of how words in English are translated into Cree. He describes Cree as having a “madcap energy and sexual innuendo”, all related to the Trickster.
In the Chapter on Sex and Gender, Highway again employs the framework of monotheism, polytheism, and pantheism. He points out that there is no word for gender in Cree. There follows a discussion of English, French, and Greek related to gender and hierarchy or lack thereof. He points out that in pantheism there are numerous genders. He also says that those who are Two-Spirit embody “the souls of both genders at one and the same time”, and that they “become the shamans, priests, and artists,” and they perform caring roles within the community. The Trickster is neither male nor female but both at the same time.
When it comes to death and what happens to us afterwards, Highway contrasts the destinations of heaven, hell, purgatory, and limbo in Christianity with Hades, the only destination in Classical mythology. Hades is a place where “the shades” of everyone go. Here there is “no suffering but also no joy.” “Immortality lay in remembrance through monuments and statues.” In North American Indigenous thought, upon death our physical selves become one with the earth, but the spirit remains here.
Highway’s analysis of the three mythologies, when it comes to culture, humour, sex, and death is far more complex than what I have portrayed, and I simply cannot do it justice. However, it is all quite thought-provoking. And I promise there are accordions in there somewhere!
Click here to the Brentwood Community News home page for the latest Brentwood community updates.
