Miles Morrisseau
ICT
Santee Smith, or Tekaronhiáhkhwa, is a dancer, but more than that she is a storyteller.
The evolution of this artistic world view occurred over the past 20 years since she created Kaha:wi Dance Theatre, one of the first Indigenous dance companies in Canada. The company celebrated its anniversary on Oct. 11.
Smith, Mohawk, grew up on the Six Nations of the Grand River in an artistic family that practiced many of the storytelling and dance traditions of the Iroquoian peoples.
When she was three years old, she was hit by a vehicle, and dance became part of her recovery. The art form has always been a part of her healing.
“I was always a dancer since I was little,” Smith told ICT while taking a break from rehearsal on her latest production. “I went to the National Ballet in my teens. I decided that ballet wasn’t for me. And I went back to regular school, went to university and just thought the dance world was behind me.”
Smith graduated from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, with a degree in physical education and psychology and in 1995 moved to Toronto and entered the Masters of Arts in Dance at the University of Toronto. She soon connected with the booming Indigenous performing arts world in Canada’s largest city.
“I started hanging out at Native Earth Performing Arts and meeting people,” Smith says about the renowned theatre that was the launching pad for actors like Gary Farmer and Graham Greene.
Farmer asked Smith why she wasn’t pursuing dance.
“He knew my background from Six Nations, being a dancer. And he said you should do something with your choreography, with your dancing because you have all the training,” Smith said.
He not only believed in her talent, he wanted to put it to work.
“Gary hired me to create two short works for his documentary with the National Film Board called ‘The Gift.’ That was my first introduction to be able to create dance to stories that reflected who I was as a Haudonesaune person,” she said.
The dance pieces were based on the legend of Sky Woman, the music of Indigenous trio Ulali and the sacred relationship that Iroquois peoples have with corn, beans and squash.
“It was really inspiring and one of those epiphany moments where I was thinking I could create movement and dance, but I don’t have to be telling your western stories, as I did in ballet,” recalled Smith. “I can be sharing these stories from my community, and stories that are not available out in the mainstream and not even available within our own communities in a creative way. So that really was the initiation point of thinking I would like to pursue dance. But now, as I evolve, I don’t even say the word ‘dance’ anymore. I embody storytelling, because that’s really what the work is for me.”
Smith continued to perform in theatre productions, which introduced her to some of the most important figures in Indigenous dance in Canada at that time.
“Through Native Earth, I did a few plays, and then I can’t remember who introduced me to Alejandro Ronceria, who was working with Raul Trujillo and had been working previously with Rene Highway, who was one of the foundational Indigenous contemporary dance artists, and they were hosting a dance workshop at the Banff Center for the Arts called ‘Chinook Winds Aboriginal Dance Project,’” Smith recalled. “I basically was again swept up into thinking, ‘Oh my goodness, I could make this, I could pursue this. I could tell my own stories.’”
Her earlier experience in ballet productions also provided an understanding of production and how to stage performances for small and larger audiences.
“Because I had the background in ballet, I knew a little bit about production and I knew how large scale works. I was in large scale works. It was at the old O’Keeffe center. I was in the Nutcracker and I was on the big stage,” Smith said. “So I knew a little bit about that, the trajectory of how productions could be. And through going back and forth to the Banff Center and learning lots of Indigenous dance, I embarked on my first production, which was called ‘Kaha:wi,’ which means ‘to carry,’ and it’s also a family name.”
It would be a long road from that original inspiration.
“I spent about six years starting from the seed of idea to the end production, everything from fundraising to marketing, to collaboration on music, sound and to set design, costumes, and really cut my teeth on what it means to go from an idea to the presentation and that was as an independent artist,” Smith said. “And so after that, I was interested in continuing, and it just seemed inevitable the next step. If I wanted to do this as a career that it would, I could stay as an independent artist, but to get, like support for … more of an administrative body around my work that it, the logical step was going in to form a company.”
With the help of the Dance Umbrella of Ontario, a nonprofit organization performing arts group that supports dance in the province, Smith incorporated as a nonprofit arts organization in 2005.
“The founding board and myself were there, and we stayed at that small scale for about three years before we had our first employee, and the rest is history, really because it just kept snowballing and working, and I became an I became a full-time artist, full-time artistic director, and went about creating.”
Kaha:wi created one of their most challenging and celebrated productions in 2020. “The Mush Hole” is the story of the Mohawk Institute, one of the first and longest-running Indian residential schools in Canada. The school earned its dubious nickname based on the students having to eat oatmeal as their main food source.
Smith described the work as “a story about hope and finding light in dark places, as much as it speaks to intergenerational trauma, it screams resilience. Every single element represented on stage comes from survivors sharing their experiences with us.”
The production would be critically acclaimed and win the majority of awards at the Dora Mavor Moore, which celebrates the best in Toronto’s performing arts. The show won awards for Outstanding New Play, Outstanding Production, Direction and Performance by an ensemble.
Mixing tradition and contemporary art
Santee Smith (left) is artistic director and founder of Kaha:wi Dance Theatre in the production of “Mush Hole,” which shares the experience and resilience of Indigenous people who were impacted by the Indian Residential School System. (Photo by Fred Cattroll)
There is a history in the Smith family of reclaiming and evolving Indigenous traditions including pottery.
“My grandmother, Elda ‘Bun’ Smith, revived the pottery making in our community in the ’60s. So it had been lost, and she started looking at shards, going to museums, digging clay, and basically revived it in our community. She taught a lot of people whose families are still doing it today. And of course, my mom and dad had Talking Earth pottery, and I worked as a designer for that.”
Her father Steve Smith began to practice pottery with his parents as a child. He became regarded as a true master of the craft, and his work is showcased in museums and in art collections.
“My dad got sick in 2018, and the pottery studio just shut down. And then so I thought, ‘Oh, well, maybe I’ll come back to pottery when I’m done dancing or I’m slowing down.’ But no, all these opportunities just came for me to incorporate clay work and pottery and performance.” In 2022, she created “Talking Earth,” a performance that incorporated clay, pottery and projection mapping.
With her background in traditional dance and Indigenous artistic practices and training in Canada’s national ballet school, she takes from both and does not believe there is any clash or conflict between traditional and contemporary.
“Back in the day, it was contemporary versus traditional, and sort of that conversation of what was to stay traditional, what was contemporary,” Santee said. “Those questions within the performing arts have sort of worked themselves out, and now I can’t even remember what the issues were, because it’s so much evolved from those early conversations. And it just became more about telling stories in the, in the way that was the language of that piece, whether it was very Haudenosaunee, which may include the essence of our social dances, but it’s really for me as an artist, it’s about how to tell the story in movement, an expression that is the language of the piece. … So that question of contemporary versus traditional really was an early conversation, but I don’t think many people within the performing arts talk about it at the same degree as we did in the early days.”
She continued: “I come from a family of visual artists, so when I’m creating, I’m more like a concept designer, which is also new language for talking about I’m not just a choreographer and not just director. I’m thinking about the lighting,” Smith says in describing her process. “I’m doing the research and doing the collaborations and I’m designing physically the imagery … what is the, the esthetic and what is the look and feel of this work in this world and creating worlds and experiences for the audience.”
Smith’s artistic journey continues into her 20th year with a continued passion to take inspiration from anywhere, including technology that gives the audience more insight and her stories more impact.
“We’re telling stories representing ancient knowledge in a very contemporary, new tech way, and with new materials and creating these worlds, and also basically creating the journey of what that story is, that it’s immersive and it’s experiential for the audience,” she said. “And so I feel like that’s my trajectory. I’m going more into that immersive space and blending tools that are able to propel a story forward that people really feel viscerally in their body.”
In recognition of her work, Smith was appointed to the Order of Canada on Sept. 18, the highest civilian honour in the country. Earlier in the year, she was appointed to the Board of Governors of the Banff Centre for the Arts and Creativity. She continues to serve as chancellor for her alma mater, McMaster University, a position she has held since 2019.