A Shared Breath: Vocal Performance and Manifestations of Cultural Identity and Acts of Survivance in Chantal Bilodeau’s Sila

Aboriginal peoples of North America in general and Canada in particular have been victims not only to military occupation, repression and exploitation of lands and resources but also to systematic eradication of their cultures. Demolition of indigenous practices and epistemologies is based on a Eurocentric assumption that proposes the inferiority and insufficiency of all that does not belong to the western culture. Propagating colonial notions such as the “ecological Indian” led to communal disasters revealing that the exploitation of land and people are connected.
Throughout years of oppression indigenous people have used representational and aesthetic modes in order to keep and protect their cultural identity amid a dominant western culture practicing what is referred to as “survivance”. Survivance, a term coined by Anishinabe scholar Gerald Vizenor, refers to a way of life that maintains indigenous cultural identity implying both survival and resistance.
Vocal performance in Sila is intended to provoke a dialogue through shared experiences. Both throat singing and spoken-word poetry are counter posed to the monologic discourse of colonial powers. This monologic discourse has been systematically constructed in order to exclude indigenous knowledge and silence indigenous voices. As acts of survivance, they not only nourish indigenous epistemologies, aesthetics and conceptions, but also allow for a range of voices that belong to different times, species and genders to be heard.