Internationally renowned artist Santee Smith celebrating 20 years of Kaha:Wi Dance Theatre

As an artist who is always trying to build and move forward, Santee Smith says it’s been overwhelming to look back on her career. The Mohawk, multidisciplinary artist has been doing a lot of reflecting as the company she founded celebrates it’s 20th anniversary. Kaha:Wi Dance Theatre, launched in 2005, now has more than a dozen productions and numerous short works attached to its name that have toured nationally and internationally. During the same time, Smith has become an internationally recognized leader in the performing arts, the 19th Chancellor of McMaster University and a member of the Order of Canada. Smith has always loved to dance. She discovered her gift early in life and would break out in dance as soon as she heard music. Family members always encouraged her to dance, her grandmother called it her medicine. As a child, after an injuries left Smith with two broken legs, it was dance that she used as a form of physical therapy. Smith trained at Canada’s National Ballet School. Back then, there were very few Indigenous dancers. “It has changed, a lot. There was little to no representation on Canadian stages for Indigenous dance, so it was kind of breaking the door open and advocating for presence, representation, visibility, presentation,” says Smith on the latest episode of Face to Face. “Those early years were about educating people about what is it, what does it look like and battling people’s expectations or stereotypes of what they’d expect to see. It’s opened a lot more. We’ve been one of the companies that have shaken things up and continue to advocate,” adds Smith, who believes opportunities exist today for Indigenous dancers that never did before. One of the ways that Smith is celebrating the anniversary of Kaha:Wi Dance Theatre, is by taking her award winning production of The Mush Hole back on the road. The production uses song, dance and theatre to explore the lives and spirits of children forced to attend the Mohawk Institute residential school in Brantford, Ont. The poor quality of food served to students led to the schools nickname, the Mush Hole. Members of Smith’s family attended the institution, the oldest and longest running residential school in Canada, operating from 1828 to 1970. The production, the Mush Hole was created using testimony from survivors that Smith knows and others who shared their experiences with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. “There were very pinnacle moments that people would share. Experiences that happened in specific rooms, so it became more about sharing what happened in the bricks and mortar in the school. What was tied to the boiler room, what was tied to the boys play room, what was tied to the classroom, or the girls dormitory or the laundry room, solitary confinement. So, we would hear these stories that happened in the place so it was tied to the school and the colonial infrastructure of that,” says Smith. “So, that’s how I structured the scenes. There’s not a story line that is a literal story line, we have glimpses of what happened in different rooms and the intergenerational impacts of that.” Bringing the award winning production back to the stage in 2025 coincides with the 10th anniversary of the release of the TRC’s calls to action. This year also marks the reopening of the Mohawk Institute Residential School as an interpretive historic site and educational resource. Over the years, Smith has added new elements to The Mush Hole. “When the Kamloops graves were announced, we incorporated just gestures of digging and searching, layered into the piece. A survivor elder passed away this year in Six Nations, John Elliot and he gave us the idea to put in a suitcase because for him as soon as he saw the suitcase that he knew he had to go back to the residential school and in fact some others had mentioned, have a small little suitcase and so this tour, we added a suitcase,” says Smith. The Mush Hole has just wrapped up its theatrical run. Smith, who is also a pottery maker says she will not get to work on a very large, secret commission that will be announced at a later date. Continue Reading