Vera Manuel

20 March 1948 - 2 January 2010

Vera Manuel (Kulilu Paⱡki, Butterfly Woman) was an important poet, playwright, and dramatherapist. Drawing on her family’s experiences with the residential school system and the intergenerational trauma it gave rise to, as well as her own experiences with the healing power of writing and performing, Manuel composed several poems and plays, established dramatherapy groups and workshops, and, throughout her lifetime, became a respected activist and keynote speaker at several national and international conferences.

Vera was born on 20 March 1948 into a culturally and politically active family. Her mother, Marceline Paul (Ktunaxa), was a drug and alcohol counsellor, cultural leader, and respected elder. Her father, George Manuel (Secwepemc), was an influential activist both in Canada and abroad. He served as President of the North American Indian Brotherhood (1959-1963), Chief of the Neskonlith Indian Band (1960-1966), President of the National Indian Brotherhood (1970-1976), President of the World Council of Indigenous Peoples (1975-1981), and President of the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs (1979-1981).

As a child, Vera grew up on the Neskonlith Reserve in the interior of British Columbia. While she and some of her siblings were able to attend local public schools, her younger brothers and sisters attended residential schools in Kamloops, Cranbrook, Port Alberni, and Mission. Both the immediate and the intergenerational impacts of Canada’s residential school system played a significant, but largely silent, role in Manuel’s family history, a theme she repeatedly returns to in her poetry, plays, and short stories. Although Manuel grew up aware of her mother’s and father’s experiences as survivors of what she has called “a world of violence and isolation” (26)[1], of residential schools and tuberculosis sanatoriums, she did not learn about the physical and sexual abuse her parents experienced until much later in her life, when her mother began to share stories about her childhood and adolescence at St. Eugene’s Residential School. Much of her work, such as her critically acclaimed play, Strength of Indian Women, returns to the stories her mother and other women told her, and reflects on the effects that unacknowledged trauma can have on people’s lives, including her own.

The relationship between storytelling, writing, healing, and performance had long been central to Manuel’s life. As a young adult, she kept journals and wrote poetry. She lived in Vancouver for several years, studying history, Indigenous culture, and writing at the University of British Columbia and at Langara College. Yet she did not fully step into her vocation as a creative writer, poet, and playwright until she was in her forties, after returning home from several years in Los Angeles with her sister, Emalene (Arlene). Following her return in the late 1980s, a number of deaths, several of which were suicides, occurred within her circle of family and friends and in neighbouring communities, a pattern that, as Emalene notes, left the Manuel family “dizzy with grief” (3).

After the passing of her mother in 1988 and her father in 1989, Vera Manuel was contracted to write her first play, Song of the Circle, for a youth conference.[2] Around this time, she also began co-writing In the Spirit of the Family, a training manual for a national organization of treaty directors. In an interview she gave for Redwire with Peter Morin, Manuel remarks that the process of writing the manual opened a deeper reckoning with the work she still needed to do around her own family’s trauma, a process she had begun confronting shortly before her mother’s death, when Marceline started speaking about residential school. Around the same time, Vera began group therapy with Emalene and, believing others could benefit from what she was learning, soon began facilitating her own workshops grounded in Family Systems Theory and Indigenous Knowledge Systems.[3]

In the early 1990s, Manuel began working on Strength of Indian Women,[4] perhaps her most well-known play on residential schools, abuse, intergenerational trauma, and healing. She went on to write Journey through the Past to the Future, Echoes of Our Mothers’ Past, and Every Warrior’s Song, along with many other plays co-authored with other women.[5] She also wrote several short stories, including “That Grey Building,” “Theresa,” “The Letter,” and “The Abyss.” Only the last play was published during her lifetime. A handful of her poems have appeared in The World Poetry Anthology (2002), ROCKSALT: An Anthology of Contemporary B.C. Poetry (2008), and Salish Seas: an anthology of text + image (2011). The largest collection of her poetry is included in Honouring the Strength of Indian Women (2019).

Across the last two decades of her life, Manuel’s work as an artist, activist, therapist/healer, and cultural leader took many forms. She continued to facilitate healing groups, develop curricula, deliver keynote addresses at national and international conferences, collaborate on CDs, educational videos, and films, and produce two journal publications as well as training manuals.[6] In 2004, she was diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis, a serious illness that threatened to curb her literary and cultural output. Despite this, she remained active in her community. From 2004 to 2005, she was contracted through Helping Spirit Lodge Society to do storytelling work and develop a Drama Therapy Program. This role allowed her to continue working while staying closer to home. She was also a featured poet and member of World Poetry (WP) and received the World Poetry Lifetime Achievement Award. She continued participating in poetry readings and conferences until her health declined. Vera Manuel passed away peacefully at Vancouver General Hospital on January 22, 2010, at the age of 61.

Selected Readings:
Manuel, Vera. “The Abyss.” Residential Schools: The Stolen Years. Edited by Linda Jaine. U of Saskatchewan P, 1993.

---. “The Catholic Church.” ROCKSALT: An Anthology of Contemporary B.C. Poetry. Edited by Mona Fertig and Harold Rhenisch. Mother Tongue, 2008. pp. 150-151.

---. Honouring the Strength of Indian Women. Edited by Michelle Coupal, Deanna Reder, Joanne Arnott, and Emalene Manuel. U of Manitoba P, 2019.

---. “When I First Came To Know Myself” and “Two Brothers.” Salish Seas: an anthology of text + image. Edited by Joanne Arnott and Michelle Sylliboy. Aboriginal Writers Collective West Coast, 2011. pp. 68-70.

---. “Strength of Indian Women.” Two Plays About Residential Schools. Living Traditions, 1998. pp. 75-119.

Works Cited:
Manuel, Emalene. “Introduction: Emalene (Arlene) Manuel.” Honouring the Strength of Indian Women: Plays, Stories, Poetry by Vera Manuel. Edited and with Afterwords by Michelle Coupal, Deanna Reder, and Joanne Arnott. U of Manitoba P, 2018. 1-24.

Manuel, Vera. Honouring the Strength of Indian Women: Plays, Stories, Poetry by Vera Manuel. Edited and with Afterwords by Michelle Coupal, Deanna Reder, and Joanne Arnott. U of Manitoba P, 2018.

---. Interview by Peter Morin. “Letting go of Trauma On and Off
Stage.” Redwire. Accessed March 16, 2018. https://users.resist.ca/www.redwiremag.com/lettinggooftrauma.htm

Endnotes:
[1] Quotations from Honouring the Strength of Indian Women: Plays, Stories, Poetry by Vera Manuel have been taken from the manuscript. Page numbers may vary in the published version.
[2] The script for Song of the Circle was almost lost due to copyright laws for scriptwriters, but thanks to a close ally and legal advisor, Emalene and Vera were able to retain ownership over it. The play was first performed for the twentieth annual Union of B.C. Indian Chief’s conference, in August 1989, with Sophie Merasty as the elder Anmah. It also featured Michelle Thrush and Byron Chief Moon from 1989-1991.
[3] Family Systems Theory is a form of psychotherapy that helps individuals resolve emotional and/or psychological trauma within the context of their family unit. In the ‘80s and ‘90s, it was believed that Family Systems Theory lent credibility to, and was most closely aligned with, Indigenous Knowledge Systems. Although Vera Manuel worked with well-known therapists Elaine Story and Jane Middleton-Moz in order to underscore the credibility of Indigenous Knowledge Systems as therapeutic models, she and her sister Emalene continued to face scrutiny from the non-Indigenous community, which questioned whether these models measured up to “professional” counselling standards. Because of their non-mainstream approaches to healing and therapy, their interest in redefining conventional Western ways of telling stories and conducting therapy, and Vera’s lack of “official” credentials (which prompted one non-Indigenous therapist at Helping Spirit Lodge to suggest letting her go), the goal of Vera and Emalene’s project also addressed, on a much larger scale, the issue of decolonizing Western ways of thinking about therapy, theatre, and storytelling (Emalene Manuel 15). For more information on how the sisters struggled against Western standards pertaining to theatre and therapy, see Emalene Manuel’s introduction to Honouring the Strength of Indian Women, pp. 6, 8-9, 14-15.
[4] Strength of Indian Women was first staged by Storyteller Theatre at the Women in View Festival at Firehall Theatre, Vancouver, British Columbia, in January 1992. The play was in many ways a family production: Emalene Manuel played Sousette, Vera Manuel’s other sister, Doreen, joined the cast for a few of the play’s performances, and Emalene’s daughter, Nukinka, was mentored by Vera, who wrote the role of Suzie for her. The original cast of Strength of Indian Women included Carol DeEscobar Hoof (Agnes); Kutcinkaats Pathkey Arlene Manuel (Sousette); Nuhkinka Swinwen Uktht Mountain Melanie Manuel (Suzie); Penishe Gustin (Eva); Denise Lonewalker (Mariah); Sophie Merasty (Lucy). The play toured Canada and the United States, has been published by Living Traditions (1998), Indigenous Education Press (2018), and First Voices, First Texts (2018), has been discussed in Native American Drama: A Critical Perspective (2009), and has been taught in a number of classrooms.
[5] Some of the solely authored plays have been published in an anthology of her work published as part of the First Voices, First Texts series at the University of Manitoba Press. Scholars are also hoping to draw more attention to Vera Manuel’s co-authored plays, which she produced with women from her dramatherapy groups—plays which have not yet been published due to complications related to authorship and gaining permission for publication from the others involved.
[6] For a more comprehensive list of Vera Manuel’s impressive cultural and literary accomplishments, see pp. 4-5 of Emalene Manuel’s introduction to Honouring the Strength of Indian Women (2019).

Vera Manuel entry by Lara Estlin, March 2019. Lara is a former SFU student who completed her English Honours project on Indigenous authors William Apess (Pequot) and George Copway (Anishinaabe). After completing her BA at Simon Fraser University, she then completed her MA in the Department of English at UBC. She worked as a research assistant for The People and the Text from 2018 to 2020.

Updates by Eli Davidovici in April 2024. Eli completed his M.Mus. at McGill University in June 2024.

Entry edits by Margery Fee, April 2024. Margery Fee is Professor Emerita at UBC in the Department of English.

Updated by Kayla MacInnis in November 2025. Kayla is an MA student in English Literature at Simon Fraser University and a research assistant with The People and the Text.

Please contact Deanna Reder at dhr@sfu.ca regarding any comments or corrections at dhr@sfu.ca.