Origins - Festival of First Nations
At venues across London May 4th-17th 2009
"My people will sleep for one hundred years, when they awake it will be the artists
who give them their spirit back"
Louis Riel (Metis leader, Canada, 1885)
Origins is the UK's inaugural festival of First Nations creative arts, bringing together groundbreaking
artists from the indigenous cultures of Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the USA. At venues across London,
the festival explores First Nations experience in the twenty-first century through theatre, film screenings,
and participation.
Origins focuses on First Nations people's relationship to the contemporary, Westernised world.
The festival considers today’s vital issues from a First Nations perspective, addressing key
themes from truth and reconciliation to the environment and climate change.
At a time when the Western world faces environmental and financial crisis, can it learn from the
respectful relationships the indigenous peoples of the world have with the Earth, within their own
communities and with their heritage? Origins invites audiences and performers to engage in this
dialogue in London, capital of a country that radically changed history for the original inhabitants
of the lands it "discovered" and colonised in centuries past.
Opening Ceremony - (4 May - The Scoop at More London - 2.30pm)