13 Facts About Tomson Highway

Tomson Highway was born on 6 December 1951 and is an Indigenous Canadian playwright, novelist, children's author and musician.

Tomson Highway is best known for his plays The Rez Sisters and Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing, both of which won the Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding New Play and the Floyd S Chalmers Award.

Tomson Highway wrote the libretto for the first Cree language opera, The Journey or Pimooteewin.

Tomson Highway was born on 6 December 1951 in northwestern Manitoba to Pelagie Cook and Joe Highway, a caribou hunter and champion dogsled racer.

Tomson Highway has said that "Nine of the happiest years of my life I spent it at that school," crediting it with teaching him English and to play piano.

For seven years, Tomson Highway worked as a social worker on First Nations reserves across Canada.

Tomson Highway was involved in creating and organizing several Indigenous music and arts festivals.

In 1986, Tomson Highway published The Rez Sisters, which won multiple awards in productions across Canada.

Tomson Highway was artistic director of Native Earth Performing Arts in Toronto from 1986 to 1992, as well as De-ba-jeh-mu-jig theatre group in Wikwemikong.

Frustrated with difficulties presented by play production, Tomson Highway wrote a novel called Kiss of the Fur Queen.

In 2010, Tomson Highway re-published The Rez Sisters and Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing in a Cree-language edition.

Tomson Highway has been awarded nine honorary degrees, from Brandon University, the University of Winnipeg, the University of Western Ontario, the University of Windsor, Laurentian University, Lakehead University, l'Universite de Montreal, University of Manitoba, and the University of Toronto.

Tomson Highway believes that such companies simply pass over his plays instead.