[footprints] Lacy Morin-Desjarlais, Michael Green, Narcisse Blood, Michele Sereda

Highway accident claims four celebrated artists

Flags were lowered and tributes flowed when four artists were killed Feb. 10 in one horrific car crash in Saskatchewan; sentiment justified all the more by examining why they were travelling together that snowy morning.

Narcisse Blood, 60, Michael Green, 58, Michele Sereda, 48, and Lacy Morin-Desjarlais, 29, were enroute from Regina to Payepot School on Piapot First Nation to initiate a community project based on the success of Making Treaty 7 – a multi-faceted theatrical performance.

The production features Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal performers and re-interprets the story of treaty-making in southern Alberta. The play asks audiences to consider the inequity of the historical agreement, and to forge a new one together with integrity and respect.

“The project they were going to work on at Payepot School was the equivalent of Making Treaty 7, here in Saskatchewan,” explained Janine Windolph, a close friend of Morin-Desjarlais and Sereda. The process of Making Treaty 4 would empower and heal the Aboriginal community as they explored their history, and non-Aboriginal audiences would be invited to join the dialogue.

“Everyone in that vehicle was a humanitarian in that they saw their art as a way for humanity to heal and move forward. They were powerful bridge builders,” Windolph said.

Each artist/creator/mentor used their voice, body and spirit to bring openness and understanding to diverse audiences. Blood was a Kainai First Nation storyteller and culture keeper, Morin-Desjarlais a Saulteaux Metis dancer and powwow instructor, while Sereda and Green were forward-thinking theatre directors with deep ties to Aboriginal communities.

Staff and students at the University of Regina, from which Sereda, founder of experimental theatre company Curtain Razors , graduated, and where Morin-Desjarlais taught powwow dance, expressed intense loss.

“Both Lacy and Michele were fantastic role models for the students,” said Dean of Fine Arts Rae Staseson in a statement. “Michele was dedicated to giving a voice to those who had stories to tell by teaching and inspiring emerging performers. Her energy and vision touched everyone she worked with in our faculty and we are very proud of her accomplishments.”

Morin-Desjarlais had only moved from B.C. to Saskatchewan two years ago and was involved in dance and film-making, with numerous projects and collaborations on the go. With many community ties, she had performed in the Saskatchewan Native Theatre Company’s Rez Christmas show, and had also begun to write articles for RezX online magazine.

Blood, Tatsikiistamik/Middle Bull, was the former director of Kainai Studies at Red Crow Community College, and an Elder who shared Blackfoot Ways of Knowing in his teachings and films. He collaborated with Green on Making Treaty 7. Green was a long-time cultural force in Calgary who co-founded One Yellow Rabbit Theatre Company and developed High Performance Rodeo into an international performing arts festival.

“This is the most rewarding and electrified piece of art I have ever created in over 30 years,” Green said of Making Treaty 7. In a statement posted on the Making Treaty 7 Cultural Society’s website following his death, Green is quoted as saying, “To have, through this process, through the Sundance, been blessed with a spiritual awakening is a gift I could never have expected.”

Green was profoundly affected by the Sundance Blood invited him to, along with other Treaty 7 performers, during the summer of 2013.

Among other arts community members who mourned the loss was Sandra Laronde, director of Indigenous Arts at the Banff Centre.

“Both Narcisse and Michael were so deeply entrenched in the Making of Treaty 7 here, and Lacy was an emerging dancer in our Dance Residency in 2013. They were so upbeat, positive, excited about Making Treaty 7 and how critical this was to Albertan and Canadian audiences. It’s an incredible loss to southern Alberta, like a library having been burned down,” she wrote in an e-mail to Windspeaker.

Remembering Morin-Desjarlais, Sarina Primozic wrote on Facebook, “You were an inspiration to youth and adults everywhere. You were beautiful inside and out and I’m sorry we lost you so soon.”

With substantial vision for a young woman, Morin-Desjarlais created a controversial dance film with Sereda, Dancing the Space Inbetween, just before her death.

“She was challenging the way we think by dancing a male warrior dance,” said Windolph. “That’s considered taboo, but she wasn’t doing it in disrespect. She was doing it to honour what she says is the time of the woman, that women are warriors, and she wanted to empower them.”

Weeks before his death, Blood offered Windspeaker comments about the passing of fellow Red Crow Community College founder Marie Smallface-Marule. At that time, like Morin-Desjarlais, he uplifted women, saying all Blackfoot ceremonies were given first to the women. He wondered why abuse centres were needed in Blackfoot communities, insisting the disease came because of colonization.

“We must work to defeat it,” he said. “We have to work toward our own healing.”

He spoke of his residential school experiences, saying they were important to know and talk about the pain of the past, but he avoided anger, sourcing his words from the Blackfoot philosophy of love and healing, instead.

“All of these people saw promise in us and pushed us to reach our potential, so we feel the loss, but also need to carry on and honour ourselves and our own abilities as they would have wanted,” said Windolph.

Highway 6, north of Regina, was closed off for several hours the morning of the collision, which involved two other vehicles. A fifth person died, Morley Hartenberger, 59, the lone occupant of a truck. Two other adults in the third vehicle, a woman and a man, were taken to the hospital with injuries. RCMP say blowing snow may have been a factor in the accident.