The Rez Sisters Lesson Plan

Building on the Day 2 homework assignment that asks students to consider how life on the reserve reflects white materialistic culture, discuss how whiteness appears in the women's plans for their bingo winnings. In what ways does this suggest that an aspirational standard of whiteness is harmful?

Students may discuss Tomson Highway's symbolic use of the color white (Marie-Adele's island with a white picket fence, Philomena's white toilet) to symbolize racial whiteness as well as the more literal manifestations of racial whiteness in the women's dreams (Annie Cook's desire to buy all of Patsy Cline's records and immerse herself in country music, Veronique's desire to...