Interview with Tomson Highway

The following is an edited extract from an interview with Tomson Highway which took place at the University of Helsinki, Finland on March 2, 2002. Highway had the previous day given a talk humorously entitled, ‘The History of the World in 60 Minutes F la t’, in which he focused primarily on mythology. Contrasting Greek, Christian and Cree mythological worldviews, he argued that to destroy mythology is to destroy ourselves. He also talked more generally about his work and explained how musical structures and counterpoint underpinned all his writing. Highway’s talk, illustrated by excerpts on the grand piano from his plays/musicals, was the highlight of a two-day Canada Seminar entitled, ‘First Nations: Symbolic Representations’. The interviewers are Mark Shackleton, who organised the seminar on behalf of the Nordic Association for Canadian Studies, and Hartmut Lutz, who gave the keynote speech at the seminar.