The Rez Sisters Play Analysis

In the play The Rez Sisters by Tomson Highway the sisters dream of going to play bingo, then they raise money to go to play bingo and fulfill their dreams, just to lose and go back to the reservation. Tomson Highway shows the key to creating realistic change on reservations is for less talk and more action to have an understanding of what will actually help. This is shown when there is all talk about change, then action to create the change, followed by gaining better knowledge to make a realistic change. Realistic change is unable to occur with all talk and no action to fix it. This is shown at the start of the play Pelajia complains about how they have a poor quality of life on the reservation which proves that they are all talk and do not take action. Pelajia complains that she is “here in plain, dusty, boring old Wasaychigan Hill… Wasy… waiting,” while she hammers on the roof of her “little two-bedroom welfare house” (Highway 2). The sisters are living on a

The women start to take action which demonstrates their belief that the bingo game will solve their problems. Coming together in the church, the sisters decide that they are “gonna work this out on our own,” so they can go to the bingo (Highway 62). The women are not used to working hard for what they want but are able to work together to raise money for bingo. They are no longer talking about change and just waiting for it to happen. They have finally taken the initiative to create the change they want to see happen by working together to raise money. Likewise, in “Nanabush Creates” the World by Coatsworth Nanabush has to take action when he needs to create the new world after the serpent people flood the world. After floating on the raft for a month, Nanabush instructs the creatures to “Dive down below the water and bring me some mud so that I can create a new world” (Coatsworth). The old world is gone and Nanabush acts by creating a new