The Rez Sisters Study Guide

Nanabush

Nanabush, who is described by Tomson, as a "pivotal and important a figure in the Native world as Christ is in the realm of Christian mythology", is a central and symbolic character in the play. Although he is specifically played by a male actor in the Rez Sisters, Tomson switches the gender in Dry Lips, noting that Nanabush is traditionally dual-gendered. The character is present in both scenes of joy (Marie-Adele and Zhaboonigan innocently playing), and of anguish and despair (Zhaboonigan describing her rape, the women fighting, Marie-Adele collapsing, dying). These appearances possibly speak to the understanding of Nanabush as an apathetic deity, reinforcing the ending of the play: circular (Pelajia is once more on her roof), and without resolution. It is worth noting that Nanabush, who‘appears’ in bird form, is only seen as "the spirit inside" by Marie-Adele (who is close to death), and Zhaboonigan (who has a mental handicap), perhaps speaking to the relegation of this deity to the margin in the Aboriginal community.

Rape/ Screwdriver

In the play, the details of Zhaboonigan's sexual assault - including her being abducted and attacked with a screwdriver - closely parallel the details of the 1971 murder of Helen Betty Osborne of Norway House, Manitoba. Despite overwhelming physical evidence— blood, hair and clothing fragments were found in one of the suspects' cars — it was not until 1987, a year after The Rez Sisters opened, that two out of the three suspects in Osbourne's murder were charged. Highway's deeply sympathetic character, Zhaboonigan, can be seen as a statement againstthe injustice inflicted upon Osborne.

The rape of an Aboriginal woman with a symbol of "western" domination is a reoccurring image in Highway's work, paralleled in Dry Lips with a woman raped by a crucifix. One reading is the crude image of the screwdriver as a western ideological "tool" used to "fix" the "broken" condition (Zhaboonigan is mentally handicapped) of the Indian.