In this collection of short humourous essays originally written for the popular media, playwright, novelist and screenwriter Drew Hayden Taylor sends his readers fascinating and exotic postcards from his globetrotting adventures, always on the lookout for the NEWS about aboriginal peoples around the world. Organized around the thematics suggested by the four cardinal directions central to the Ojibwa peoples—East for beginnings and youth; South for journeys both physical and spiritual; West for maturity and responsibility; and North for contemplation and wisdom; these communiqués are sent not so much to instruct as they are to delight.

Never without a healthy dose of irony, humour and often unabashed laughter, these “postcards” offer their readers unexpected insights into the intense and often hilarious complexities of our new multicultural reality. Throughout his travels, Taylor has discovered that the four cardinal points are central to most First Nations’ teachings concerning the landscape and how to live on it to survive, build families and communities, create cultures and develop notions of spirituality and identity. This is not, however, a seamless or even necessarily recognizable paradigm from place to place throughout North America, and there is plenty of room for doubt, misunderstandings and unintentional social faux pas even among and between aboriginal peoples themselves. One of the great discoveries of this collection is that each of our First Nations boasts its own traditions—go a hundred miles in any direction and you are no longer on certain ground with respect to the meanings, attributes, even the colours definitive of these cardinal points of the social compass.

Ojibway writer Drew Hayden Taylor is from the Curve Lake Reserve in Ontario. Hailed by the Montreal Gazette as one of Canada’s leading Native dramatists, he writes for the screen as well as the stage and contributes regularly to North American Native periodicals and national NEWSpapers. His plays have garnered many prestigious awards, and his beguiling and perceptive storytelling style has enthralled audiences in Canada, the United States and Germany. His 1998 play Only Drunks and Children Tell the Truth has been anthologized in Seventh Generation: An Anthology of Native American Plays, published by the Theatre Communications Group. Although based in Toronto, Taylor has travelled extensively throughout North America, honouring requests to read from his work and to attend arts festivals, workshops and productions of his plays. He was also invited to Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute in California, where he taught a series of seminars on the depiction of Native characters in fiction, drama and film. One of his most established bodies of work includes what he calls the Blues Quartet, an ongoing, outrageous and often farcical examination of Native and non-Native stereotypes.

Drew Hayden Taylor's profile page

“Drew Hayden Taylor has a deft touch for mixing comedy and commentary in an entertaining … form of social satire.”
— Vancouver Sun

“… delivers the special combination of being gutbustingly funny while leaving you with deep realities to mull.”
— Telegraph-Journal

News: Postcards From the Four Directions

This collection of short reflective essays is humorous and glib, insightful and thought provoking. Using the traditional First Nations teachings of the four directions as an organizing principle, these varied pieces consider encounters with academia, the Olympics, the Oka crisis, making money from First Nations practices, settlements for the survivors of residential schools, the younger generation and the postmodern narratives of traditional First Nation stories among many other topics. The author’s take is often original in his view from his beloved Curve Lake home.

This book won a Chalmers Play Awards: Theatre for Young Audiences and a Native Playwrights Award among others.