Miskozi is searching for something…
There’s something missing.
And she’s not sure what it is.
She goes on a search for herself and her culture, accompanied by her inner white girl, Waabishkizi, and guided by Ziibi, a manifestation of an ancestral river, both provoking her to try and find the answers.
She begins the journey back before she was even born, right at the seeds of colonization when her ancestors were forced to hide their culture anywhere they could.
Burying their language.
Their teachings.
Their bundles.
Their moccasins.
White Girls in Moccasins is a hilarious and poignant reclamation story that world-hops between dreams, memories, and a surreal game show. Miskozi recounts her life and is forced to grapple with her own truth, while existing in a society steeped in white supremacy.
A love letter to brown kids born in the 80s, surviving in the 90s and all those continuing to deeply reclaim.
News & Reviews
“Of all the productions I’ve seen in the staggered theatre reopenings during the pandemic, this is the show that has best understood the possibilities and the potential of the art form. This is theatre as ceremony, as ritual.” — Glenn Sumi, Now Magazine, NNNN
“Bonnell’s storytelling feels audacious in the best ways: She shows stories that most First Nation, Metis and Inuit people experience in one way or another but don’t often speak publicly about. It’s an unusual way to see ourselves and be seen. For me, it’s as if I were watching my own story. The cultural touchstones were those of my childhood, as well as the way in which I unquestioningly absorbed Eurocentric standards of beauty and defined myself in relation to them, and subsequently, like Miskozi, had to unlearn and replace them with love and acceptance. For those of us not there yet, Bonnell shows what a road map to loving oneself without judgment might look like.” — Robyn Grant-Moran, Globe and Mail
About the Author
Yolanda Bonnell (She/They) is a Bi/Queer 2 Spirit Anishinaabe-Ojibwe, South Asian mixed performer, playwright and multidisciplinary creator/facilitator. From Fort William First Nation in Thunder Bay, Ontario (Superior Robinson Treaty territory), her arts practice is now based in Tkarón:to. In February 2020, Yolanda’s four-time Dora-nominated solo show bug was remounted at Theatre Passe Muraille while the published book was shortlisted for a Governor General’s Literary Award. In 2022, her play White Girls in Moccasins was produced at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre in Toronto and at the frank theatre in Vancouver. Yolanda was the Indigenous artist recipient of the Jayu Arts for Human Rights Award for her work and won the PGC Tom Hendry Drama Award for her play My Sister’s Rage. Yolanda has facilitated at schools like York University and Sheridan College and proudly bases her practice in land-based creation, drawing on energy and inspiration from the earth and her ancestors.
