The development of the opera brought Indigenous artistic collaborators together from Nations across Canada to give voice to Shanawdithit and her people, responding to the ten drawings that are the only first-person account of the life of the Beothuk. Led by Algonquin librettist Yvette Nolan, collaborators, performers, and Indigenous community members have been instrumental in the shaping of the work from the beginning of development, through a collaborative and workshop-driven creation process influenced by oral and visual histories passed down to them. The artistic collaborators - choreographer Michelle Olson and artists Jordan Bennett, Meagan Musseau, Jerry Evans, and Lori Blondeau - studied each drawing and determined how to visually communicate the essence of Shanawdithit’s account using dance, language, costume, photography, projections, sculpture, and set design to effectively bring her drawings to life on the stage. These interpretations happened in tandem with the composition of the musical score, leading to a truly collaborative creation.

Opera on the Avalon and Tapestry Opera co-commissioned the work and the workshop process, which saw community engaged workshops in both Toronto, Ontario and St. John's, Newfoundland.

When Dean initially asked if I wanted to work with him on an opera about Shanawdithit, I was intrigued. As long as I had known him, some twenty years, he had been fascinated by her story, and I knew he had already done some writing about her. I was also a little apprehensive. Who was there to speak to about her? No Beothuk elders, no descendants that we know of, only her sketches. Because I wanted to disrupt the received knowledge about her, her singular identity as “the last of the Beothuk,” we decided to invite a number of Indigenous artists in to respond to her work. The Mi’kmaq would have been the people closest to the Beothuk, geographically, and we connected with a number of Mi’kmaq artists: Jordan Bennett, Jerry Evans, Meagan Musseau, Aria Evans. From the other side of the country, Michelle Olson and Marion Newman. From the centre of this land, Lori Blondeau and me. The intention was never to imitate or recreate Beothuk arts, but to be inspired by Shanawdithit’s works, and let that inform ours.

- Yvette Nolan

It has indeed been a long process for me. I grew up in Central Newfoundland with the story of the Beothuk all around me. Over two decades of trying to find the right path to help bring this story to the stage finally lead to Yvette and the incredible Indigenous artists that she has brought into the team. In that same way, I didn’t attempt to recreate Beothuk music – something which we also know next to nothing about. The score of the opera is inspired by those things that Shanawdithit and I shared: the sound of the wind, rain, and tides of the North Atlantic.

- Dean Burry

Yvette, Dean and I met, and we proposed an unconventional approach to creation. Yvette would write the libretto, with elasticity for collaborative artist input, and with specific vessels for where the drawings would come to life, with a dominant point of view from a collaborating artist. The artists would meet with Yvette and depending on their discipline, also Dean and myself, to reflect on the drawings and work through their thoughts and what was possible within a musical-dramatic-narrative and design framework. Dean would compose soundscapes, not music, to start. Drawing on his shared familiarity with the same lakes, land, rivers, and weather that Shanawdithit grew up and lived in, he would experiment with capturing those sounds rather than risk imitating or appropriating ‘Indigenous’ music sounds or stereotypes.

Chronologically this meant that instead of Yvette completing a final libretto and sharing it with Dean for him to take over, as is most often the case, in-depth meetings with all of the collaborators following the first draft libretto led to changes in the libretto. New art commissions based on the artists’ interpretations had to have their directions finalized before Dean would compose that section. All in all, the process was complex and, instead of hierarchical, it was collaborative and organic. This is not another settler artist explaining what happened. The key to the success of Shanawdithit is in its welcoming Indigenous voices to shape and lead the work in creation and performance. This is meant to be a contrast to previous artistic works, histories, and academic publications that ignored Indigenous voices and placed a positivist settler perspective on history.

This work challenges that one-sided historical perspective. Considering the collaborative and facilitation role of composition in how Dean is approaching Shanawdithit, it should be understandable why the team is not completely Indigenous. It is Indigenous led and as a result many will see the piece as a true coming together of settler and Indigenous arts and artists, where the Indigenous voices are privileged. In working in opera we can explore a story that requires Indigenous voices and leadership, which will have the story and its retelling reach a different and new public through the mixing audiences of opera, multimedia theatre, and Indigenous arts in Toronto and St. John’s.

- Michael Mori

"Shanawdithit is a powerful addition to our national dialogue on reconciliation. The production, which gloriously fills the large performance space, is a wonderful example of how a large number of different artists can come together collaboratively to create a visually delectable spectacle melding music, voice, movement, and visual art."

- The Toronto Star

Winner at the 2020 Dora Mavor Moore Awards:
Best New Opera - Dean Burry and Yvette Nolan

Nominated at the 2020 Dora Mavor Moore Awards:
Outstanding Production
Music Direction - Rosemary Thomson
Performance - Ensemble
Performance - Marion Newman
Projection Design - Cameron Davis & Jerry Evans
Set Design - Camellia Koo, Jordan Bennett, Lori Blondeau, Meagan Musseau
Direction - Yvette Nolan and Michael Hidetoshi Mori

The memory of objects, the oral tradition, and why we don’t say Shanawdithit is the last of her kind.

If you ask Indigenous communities around Newfoundland and Labrador, the Beothuk are not gone. Not only is it widely accepted that intermarriages existed between the Beothuk and other local nations before settlers arrived, it is also understood that the remaining handful of Beothuk who survived the settlers were taken in and protected by the Mi’kmaq. History books claim that the Mi’kmaq were partially responsible for “wiping out” the Beothuk, but the Mi’kmaq oral traditions dispute this version of history. What is certain is that settlers systematically slaughtered the Beothuk over territorial disputes, ultimately driving the survivors inland to succumb to starvation and disease.

Shanawdithit’s drawings are a first-person account of the life of the Beothuk. The writing about the Nation that came after was written entirely by settlers, so the drawings stand in distinction to 200 years of non-Indigenous writing about, rather than by, Beothuk people. However, it is inaccurate to refer to them as the only first-person account, because ancestral objects created by the Beothuk remain, and they carry within them spirit and memory. These objects are not inert; they carry the essence of the object-maker within them. They have their own awareness. It is not just people who witness the world around us, it is the things, the animals, the dead, and the world itself. Everything is connected by a spiritual thread. These spiritual imprints are carried down generation to generation through stories and teachings as well as the use of objects, both ceremonial and functional. To call Shanawdithit’s narrative the “only first hand account” of the Beothuk is to dismiss the wealth of information passed on.

In telling the story of Shanawdithit, we are challenged to engage ourselves in the balance between acknowledging the cultural devastation of the Beothuk people while not casting aside what and who remains. We must both recognize the incredible harm and loss, and see clearly the people who survived. With reconciliation comes the necessity of seeing the whole picture, hearing the whole truth, from all perspectives, not just the one that wrote the history.