Annie Mae's Movement

Yvette Nolan

• Publisher: Playwrights Canada Press
• Year: 2006
• Print ISBN: 9780887549045
• eBook ISBN: 9781770913660
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Canadian Drama
• Index: Literature

Annie Mae's Movement explores what it must have been like to be Anna Mae Pictou Aquash, a woman in a man's movement, a Canadian in America, an Aboriginal in a white-dominant culture at a time when it felt like we could really change the world.

Dying under mysterious circumstances, it is still unclear what really happened to Anna Mae back in the late 70s. Instead of recounting cold facts, this play looks for the truth in examining the life and death of this remarkable Aboriginal woman; that we cannot know the consequences of our actions; that we live on in the work that we do and the people we affect long after we have passed from this world.

Nogeeshik

ANNA is staggering, fighting.

ANNA: Com’ awwnn, com’awwn ya pigs, com’awwn. I’ll take you, I’ll take you all, ya lousy bastards. You can’t hurt me anymore, com’awwn!!! Whaddya gonna do? Take away my land?! Take away my language? (laughs) What else can you take from me?

She grabs a bottle, it is ketchup, pours it on her wrists. Wails, drunk and crushed by the weight of history.

NOGEESHIK enters.

NOGEESHIK: Annie! Annie, Christ. Are you hurt? What the hell happened? Who did this to you? Did—

He stops. Lifts her wrist. Sniffs. Licks.

Christ.

ANNA: You left me.

NOGEESHIK: I was at a meeting.

ANNA: I thought you left me.

NOGEESHIK: Anna Mae, this, (taking her hands as he starts to clean her up) this is not good.

ANNA: It’s not real, Nogeeshik.

NOGEESHIK: But is it really how you feel?

ANNA: Sometimes. Sometimes I do, I’ve got this pain, deep inside, and I don’t know what it’s gonna take to make it stop.

NOGEESHIK: Anna, I been thinking… I wanna make a change…

ANNA: You’re leaving me.

NOGEESHIK: Jesus, woman are you only about yourself?

ANNA is mute.

I am not leaving you. Unless you want to be left. But

I wanna go forward.

ANNA: What does that mean? Go forward? You think if I knew how to go forward from this shithole I wouldn’t? I thought this was forward, Nogeeshik, off the reserve, to the city, but it’s so hard, it’s so hard, leaving my kids…

NOGEESHIK: I know it is.

ANNA: What kind of a meeting was this?

NOGEESHIK: A life-changing meeting.

ANNA: A Jesus meeting.

NOGEESHIK laughs.

Oh thank God.

NOGEESHIK: No Anna, not Jesus. It was an AIM meeting.

ANNA: An AIM meeting? Why didn’t you call me?

NOGEESHIK: I tried to find you to come. (beat) They said at work you went for beer.

ANNA: Well you know where we go.

NOGEESHIK shrugs.

What, you didn’t want me showing up at an AIM meeting with beer on my breath? You hypocrite—

NOGEESHIK: I’m quitting.

ANNA: Drinking? (pause) You gonna walk the good red road then, Nogeeshik?

NOGEESHIK: It’...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Annie Mae’s Movement
• Rugaru
• Survival School—Boston, 1973
• Nogeeshik
• Wounded Knee—1973
• Anna Meets Dennis
• Anna Amongst The Women
• Doug
• Dennis And Anna
• Anna Writes To Denise
• Dennis Sends Anna To Los Angeles
• Anna And Doug
• FBI Guy Outed / Speaking Tour
• Anna Arrested By FBI—1975
• The AIM National Convention At Farmington—May 1975
• Anna Interrogation One By FBI—1975
• The Law
• Phone Call One
• The Deal
• Phone Call Two
• Interrogation Two
• Phone Call Three
• End
• Author