The bookstore clerk’s hand hovers over book bindings as we both scan the shelves. He’s looking for my copy of the recent Governor General’s Literary Award winner for drama, Kamloopa: An Indigenous Matriarch Story by Kim Senklip Harvey. Centred around a narrative of three Indigenous matriarchs who travel to their first powwow, Kamloopa is an artistic ceremony that contains joy, humour, Indigenous ceremony and protocol, and transformative love.

Kim Senklip Harvey is a proud Syilx and Tsilhqot’in Indigenous cultural evolutionist, storyteller, director, and producer. She is the first female Indigenous author to be awarded a Governor General’s Literary award in this category. 

Congratulations on your Governor General’s Award! What does this award mean for Kamloopa?

Thank you! I think winning the Governor General’s Award for Kamloopa means, hopefully, and with great spirit, we can enter into a new era of Indigenous storytelling that doesn’t just focus on the trauma of Indigenous lives. Kamloopa is a challenge in a colonial patriarchal cult system and sector to show that working with matriarchal systems is possible. For other practitioners looking to work outside of the normative western Canadian methodologies, there’s an option for them. The amplification of that process, of the story, means Indigenous people will get stories that will make them laugh, that will make them feel joyous, which will gather us in a way that isn’t about the inflicted violence that white people have impressed upon us. 

You mentioned the presence of laughter. Could you speak about the role of humour in your work, and Kamloopa especially?

 As a director and a creator, it’s my job to keep people’s attention, and I know comedy does that because comedy is hard! Writing a good joke is very difficult. I’m so elated that the [Governor General’s] jury honoured that! I believe comedy, joy is the route to Indigenous emancipation. I think some people misinterpret Kamloopa as this irreverent, ruckus road trip story, but I say look again. I was very thoughtful and deliberate in the modality and genre I chose to get Indigenous people to a place where we’re respected and afforded dignity by the entire community.

What about drama do you like as a mode of storytelling?

 I love theatre as a genre, as a mode, because there is nothing that beats sharing physical space with other human beings in a vibrational, energetic sense. When a human being is standing in front of us, that brings us back to, I believe, all our ancestral paths of sitting around a fire and telling a story.

The adaptation of Kamloopa into a pilot, which we’re calling “All Our Relations,” is going to be a different mode. I think that moving into digital storytelling is important because a lot of our community members can’t have access to theatre.

So you’ve adapted Kamloopa into a TV series?

Yes, I’m shopping it around for producers, but I’m making it into a six-part series called “All Our Relations,” and it follows the characters of Kamloopa to the powwow in the first season. There has never been a TV show about off-reserve Indigenous women ever. It would be the first. Then on top of that, it’s a comedy! I never grew up having a TV show about off-reserve Indigenous peoples that I could look to. That is wild to me. I think it’s incredibly important that this show gets picked up because young radicalized folk, young Indigenous folks deserve to see themselves, and we still don’t have that. 

What are your days consumed by right now?

We’re in pre-production to film Break Horizons, a 75-minute concert documentary, and I’ve been working 11 hour days! I work relationally, so it’s a lot of meetings!

 What I try to protect each week is what I call Interior Plateau Salish Earthing. A methodology where I get back out onto the land. I try to do that once a week. A lot of my time is also writing. I started writing later-on-ish in life just because I had to heal why I was obstructing my own self from actually writing. So now, I de-centre myself; it’s not about me, it’s about serving my people. If I want to serve my people, I need to be in the best holistic health I can be.

I hear how important it is to look after yourself so that you can create.

I think many Indigenous people—because there are so many negative and violent stereotypes about us and our work ethic abilities and competencies—feel that we can overwork to compensate for all the negative stereotypes about us. I have been guilty of doing that, and so I’m also trying to set a better example for the next generation. I do have a break coming this summer. I am taking a bit of time to rest and relax before heading back to school to get my Ph.D. in law.

What is your motivation for law school? How do you feel about it?

 I am absolutely daunted, but I’m elated to be at UVic with Canada’s only Indigenous law program. I’m interested in studying how every day when our artists pick up their tools to carve, when I sit down to write, when a dancer puts on their regalia, when a storyteller starts speaking around the fire, that we are actually asserting sovereign Indigenous law. As a cultural evolutionist and a storyteller, I realized that my work is actually creating artistic legal orders, which is why I take it so seriously—it’s a form of service. I want to present and deepen these ideologies to ensure that when Indigenous artists do their practice, they’re respected the same way legal protocol is respected.

Kamloopa can be purchased at Talon Books or your local bookstore.

Follow Kim Senklip Harvey:
Twitter 
Instagram 
The Indigenous Culture Evolutionist Podcast
Kim’s Blog