Only Drunks and Children Tell the Truth

Ian C. Nelson is assistant director of libraries at the University of
Saskatchewan, and président de la Troupe du Jour, Regina Summer Stage.

Drew Hayden Taylor, a self-described “blue-eyed Ojibway,” is a
former artistic director of Native Earth Performing Arts and a
contributing writer for television’s North of 60, Beachcombers, and
Street Legal.

Only Drunks and Children Tell the Truth is a sequel to Someday, a play
based on a short story Taylor wrote for The Globe and Mail. Both plays
deal with the long-term aftermath of what Native people call the
“scoop up,” when Native children were taken away for adoption. In
the first play, the adoptee—now a successful Toronto lawyer—sought
out her natural mother but could not bridge the gulf that separated
them. The second play picks up approximately five months later, a few
days after the mother’s death. The lawyer’s sister, her boyfriend,
and his brother suddenly appear in her apartment, intent on taking her
back to the reserve to reconcile with her past and the memory of her
birth mother.

If this plot sounds heavy, its execution is not. The issues surrounding
cultural stereotypes and repatriation, though prominent are made
accessible by Taylor’s self-deprecating humor (“Why bother [going on
vacation when] you’ve got a natural tan”) and by his careful
avoidance of white bashing. An amusing reservation story about Amelia
Earhart is raised to the level of a myth that parallels the play’s
central action. Taylor’s style of humorous realism has already proven
its power: Only Drunks and Children Tell the Truth was the 1996 winner
of the Chalmers, Dora, and Canadian Authors Literary awards for best new
play.