The Rez Sisters was first performed at the National Canadian Centre of Toronto on November 26,1986. Critical response to the play was overwhelmingly positive. In a 1987 edition of Canadian Fiction Magazine, Daniel David Moses stated, "The majority of Native people, forced to inhabit ignored, economically disadvantaged areas called reserves, are not encouraged to regard their own lives as important. The accomplishment of The Rez Sisters is that it focuses on a variety of such undervalued lives and brings them up to size." Thomas King, who published an excerpt from the play in his anthology All My Relations: An Anthology of Contemporary Canadian Native Fiction, applauded Highway for his portrayal of the "rez" community and his ability to present a community as "the intricate webs of kinship that radiate from a native sense of family."

Highway has also received acclaim for his positive and optimistic look at his...