“Stories can keep the past alive, you know like sharing stories about my childhood or sharing stories with my own children about the silly things that they did, or just my life experiences.”
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By the time Rhonda Donais was in Grade 8, she’d attended 13 different schools.
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Her experiences at many of them were memorable, but not for the right reasons.
She recalled being in Grade 2, lined up at the back of the room with the other Métis and Indigenous students. The Sister in charge would slap their hands with a yardstick.
“That was in case we did anything wrong that day in case she didn’t see,” said Donais.
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Between moving around and failing grades, her struggle in the Western education system was constant. When she left school in her teens, she was still illiterate. But she was articulate and naturally gifted at telling stories, including ones about her own life.
She’s spent 30 years building her career using those talents and abilities. Last month, she was named the Regina Public Library’s 2025 Indigenous Storyteller in Residence.
“Stories can keep the past alive, you know like sharing stories about my childhood or sharing stories with my own children about the silly things that they did, or just my life experiences,” Donais, now 60, told the Leader-Post in a recent interview.
Forging a career path
Donais is a member of the Ocean Man First Nation in southern Saskatchewan. She grew up on the nearby White Bear First Nation with her grandparents before moving to Regina, which is approximately 150 kilometres northwest of there, to live with her mother.
She was the first in her family to be raised off-reserve but not attend residential school.
Experiencing racism for the first time in the classroom confused her at first, she said, as she came from a loving family.
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“I was very loved as a child by my great-grandparents, my grandparents, my aunts and uncles,” Donais said. “I didn’t understand why nobody liked me.”
Despite her experiences with the school system, she wanted to be a teacher because she enjoyed working with kids.
Donais applied to the Saskatchewan Urban Native Teacher Education Program (SUNTEP) and worked to overcome her illiteracy by upgrading her courses. Although she earned a 76 per cent in English, she didn’t pass the math requirements to pursue a degree.
“That was what held me back from a lot of things, was my lack of education,” she said.
Inspired by her childhood hero, Mr. Dressup, Donais began to pursue a longtime dream of becoming an entertainer instead.
Centre stage
She got her start at the Regina International Children’s Festival.
Her first year she wrote out volunteer tags. Another year she busked. Eventually, she got to do a stage show as her clown persona, Tulip, who she’s since retired.
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One day, an advertisement for the Centre for Indigenous Theatre in Toronto landed in her mailbox.
“When I held it I knew I was going to be there,” Donais said. “I had never even really left Regina ever. I had no real experience going anywhere so Toronto was a big thing.”
Donais said she made sure her rent was paid and there was someone to look after her two young daughters. Then, she said she booked herself a flight to Toronto to attend one of the centre’s intensive courses in 1995.
She became part of a theatre troupe that toured around Ontario. She even got to travel to Europe for an international theatre festival in Copenhagen, Denmark.
After attending the Toronto course, she came back to the province with a renewed sense of confidence. She wrote and performed two plays: Legend of a Prairie Miracle and Troubled Waters.
Donais had a few television segments on CBC Kids and her career as an entertainer was snowballing.
“I met musicians and worked with musicians and we wrote songs. We wrote the play. We sold out. I performed under Fred Penner.”
While she didn’t become a teacher, Donais’s hard work and collective experiences did bring her back to school.
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She’s spent more than 16 years working as a community co-ordinator for Regina Public Schools and seven years working with kids in a group home, trying to empower them to overcome the obstacles they were facing.
These days, Donais works one-on-one with kids and has the ability to make them feel heard and special, whether she is working in schools, group homes or the library.
“I feel that — and I’ve been told that — when I’m telling stories I feel like I’m personally telling each individual child, like I’m talking to them,” said Donais, adding that she loved that very quality that Mr. Dressup made her feel when she watched him on the television as a child.
She enjoys telling stories — both silly and scary, ranging from contemporary to traditional Indigenous stories.
Her favourite legend to tell is the trickster tale about how the rabbit got narrow shoulders, also known as Wisahkecahk and the Rabbit. She especially loves telling it in February, which is recognized as Saskatchewan’s Indigenous Storytelling Month, to tie in the themes of love to Valentine’s Day.
“The lesson to the boys is that they too should only have one girlfriend at a time or you too will have narrow shoulders and tiny arms … It’s one of my favourites because it makes people laugh and it’s silly.”
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