The Royal Theatre Thousand Islands in Gananoque, Ontario, hosts the annual First Peoples’ Performing Arts Festival of the Thousand Islands, produced by King Street Productions, the Royal’s not-for-profit in-house presentation wing. This event is designed to create greater awareness of Canada’s First Nations in Eastern Ontario, particularly in the Thousand Islands Region.
The Festival has been created by Kevin John Saylor MSM, a Mohawk from Kahnawake, who owns the Royal Theatre, in the heart of Gananoque, on King Street. Along with a dedicated committee of volunteers, Saylor recognized a need for Indigenous celebration, education, reconciliation and healing in this region. Gananoque is a community steeped in Colonialism, like so many others that have very little recognition of the First Peoples who lived on these lands and along the shores of the Saint Lawrence for many thousands of years before the Europeans claimed sole ownership of property that the Native Ancestors once tried to share. It is significant that in a town with an Iroquoian name, there are no monuments to the First Peoples who lived here for countless generations, but many plaques, murals and signs that document the relatively short history of European settlement. The First Peoples’ Performing Arts Festival of the Thousand Islands will become a living monument to our region’s and, indeed, our country’s Indigenous Culture, and it will accomplish this through an inclusive celebration of the true Ancestors of these lands, through the Performing Arts.
