'Let's stand for the mountains!': the Native American rockers fighting to be heard

In the shadow of Canada’s 150th anniversary celebrations, once-obscure Indigenous musicians from across North America gathered in Toronto to perform songs fused to the land of their ancestors

Rebecca Bengal
Thursday 24 August 2017 10.00 EDT


On a Monday evening in August, I am sitting at a Holiday Inn in downtown Toronto with John Angaiak, a Yup’ik Inuit musician who has travelled more than 4,300 miles to get here. The bar is closing early; a glass of last-call red wine sits in front of him. As soon as we are introduced, he proudly shows me photos of his wife and daughter from his wallet and describes his life back in Homer, Alaska, in plain words that sound lifted from his own lyrics. “I live far away by the ocean,” he says. “I catch and eat fresh fish; I paint; I write songs. If you come visit, I’ll cook for you.”

Of the dozen or so performers arriving for the next day’s festival of indigenous Canadian music, Native North America Gathering, Angaiak has made the furthest trek, which is saying a lot for a group travelling from points north, west, and east to play on the same stage, some for the first time in decades, some for the first and likely only time ever.

The concert is part of the labour of love that yielded the 34-song Grammy-nominated compilation Native North America (Vol. I): Aboriginal Folk, Rock, and Country 1966-1985, released in 2014 by the US reissue label Light in the Attic. It features a generation of musicians whose songs are indelibly fused to the places their ancestors inhabited for years, whose once forgotten folk and protest music is undergoing a particularly timely revival; it was merely coincidence that a historic gathering of Native musicians would occur in the midst of the 150th anniversary of the Canadian confederation – the process by which the British colonies of Canada, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick were united into one dominion.

Kevin Howes, the Vancouver-based curator of the comp, spent a good decade tracking down the First Nations and Aboriginal makers of the records he had unearthed in basements and swap meets all over Canada. The pioneering singer and film-maker Willie Dunn was battling cancer when Howes found him at home in Ottawa. Morley Loon had died in 1986. Willie Thrasher was busking on the British Columbia waterfront, performing rousing rock’n’roll eco anthems for earth and water with his new singing partner, Linda Saddleback. Willy Mitchell had helped start a network of community radio stations on the Algonquin reserves in Ontario.

More:
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/aug/24/lets-stand-for-the-mountains-the-native-american-rockers-fighting-to-be-heard