Musqueam performer, former model finds her voice in 'O'wet/Lost Lagoon'

Actress and playwright Quelemia Sparrow's is the first to admit that her new one-person show — premiering June 21 on National Aboriginal Day — is expansive.

O'wet/Lost Lagoon explores Sparrow's journey of becoming a model in Tokyo at age 15, her family's ancestral ties to Stanley Park, intergenerational trauma, canoeing and navigating her own identity as a mixed-race indigenous woman in the modern world.

"There have been many times in the play where I have been like, 'What is this piece about?' " Sparrow laughed.

"It's an interesting mix."

Leaves international modelling career

O'wet/Lost Lagoon, an Alley Theatre production presented in association with Full Circle: First Nations Perfomance, runs until June 25 at the Firehall Arts Centre in Vancouver.

O'wet (pronounced oh-wee) is a verb used to denote propelling a canoe, according to the website of Full Circle, a Vancouver-based arts society focused on the development of indigenous performance,

Sparrow told North by Northwest host Sheryl MacKay that she left the Musqueam Nation reserve in Vancouver at a young age and went on to an international modelling career that lasted a decade.

But after a while, the job became stifling.

"I really felt suffocated when I was modelling," Sparrow said.

"I really felt like I had no voice at all. I wanted to be part of the creative process, so I was always like, 'What's the photographer doing? What's the make-up artist doing?'

"There's lots of really creative elements to it, but I wanted to be involved in those elements. I didn't want to just stand there and put the clothes on."

While working in New York and Los Angeles, Sparrow began thinking about acting, and realized she wanted to return to her home to do that.

"I knew that it needed to be connected to my culture and my land and being indigenous in some ways," she said.

That process also meant reclaiming some of her culture, and diving deeper into her family's relationship with Stanley Park.

Indigenous families in Stanley Park

Her grandfather used to tell her stories when she was young about how her great-grandmother used to live in Brockton Point in Stanley Park — an area where she said many mixed-race families lived for generations.

"There were many families that lived in Brockton Point that were evicted in order to create the park and their homes were set on fire and they were relocated," she said.

Sparrow decided to put Lost Lagoon in the play's title because the name of the body of water near the park's entrance came from a poem by Pauline Johnson, an early 20th-Century half-British, half-Mohawk writer.

Sparrow saw a number of similarities between herself and Johnson, who performed all over Canada as well as in Europe.

"She managed to weave in and out of both of the worlds — both the indigenous world and the European worlds, so I totally got that. I'm half-British and half-Musqueam and I modelled for about a decade, travelling around the world. I immediately connected to her."

She said her play is a journey of discovery for both herself and her audience.

"It's important for all Vancouverites. I always hear that we live in such a new city … and sometimes I feel like we're hovering over the city. I think it's really good for us all to find those roots into this place."

With files from CBC's North by Northwest

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