{"id":10229,"date":"2019-02-01T10:59:06","date_gmt":"2019-02-01T15:59:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/?p=10229"},"modified":"2019-02-01T10:59:06","modified_gmt":"2019-02-01T15:59:06","slug":"ajijaak-henson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/2019\/02\/01\/ajijaak-henson\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Ajijaak On Turtle Island,\u2019 Heather Henson\u2019s Puppet Spectacle With Indigenous Roots"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cAjijaak on Turtle Island\u201d<\/a>\u2014by Heather Henson (daughter of Muppets creator Jim Henson) and IBEX Puppetry\u2014is an environmental fable, Henson says, about \u201chow to survive and thrive into the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

The giant puppet spectacle being performed tonight at Providence\u2019s Moses Brown School \u201cis about a whooping crane on its first migration,\u201d Henson says. But Ajijaak\u2014an Ojibwe word for sandhill crane\u2014gets separated from her parents when they flee a fire and is left to make her first migration south and back alone. It\u2019s a tale of a lost child on a great adventure, trying to find her parents, meeting animals and Native people along the way. \u201cThese are Indigenous people that are still alive today and tell their stories,\u201d says Ty Defoe, a Grammy Award winner who co-directed the show with Henson, and has Oneida and Ojibwe roots himself.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the mainstream world, mainstream thinking is really out of balance. \u2026 There is a lot of turning to Indigenous knowledge for leadership,\u201d Henson says. \u201cI\u2019ve been doing environmental theater for a lot of time and I\u2019ve been wanting to give platforms to our Native voices on these topics.\u201d<\/p>\n