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| Dry Lips Oughta Move To Kapuskasing |
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| Tomson Highway is a Cree from Brochet, which is a reserve in the most extreme northwest corner of manitoba. Two of his many plays, The Rez Sisters and Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing, deal with reserve life, made him a national celebrity. Born in 1951 in a tent on his father's trapline, as a small boy Mr. Highway discovered the piano. He studied classical music and English literature in Canada and England. After university, however, he gave up his blossoming career as a concert pianist to work for Native support orginizations for several years. www.scar.utoronto.ca/~sue/ancestral/pieces/highway.html |
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| Tomson is the eleventh of twelve children, five boys and seven girls. Only six of the eleven are alive today. For the first six years of his life he lived a traditional nomadic lifestyle in the remote forests and lakes of northwestern Manitoba. Cree was the only language spoken among his family, and he only became fluent in English in his late teens. He was sent to Roman Catholic boarding school at the age of six. He stayed there until age fifteen, and was then sent to Churchill Highschool in Winnipeg, where he stayed with a number of white foster families. He graduated in 1970. www.playwrightsworkshop.org/tomsonbio.html |
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