hello everybody my name is robert thompson i'm a member of the haida nation i'm an artistic producer of full circle first ages performance and a proud canadian new music network board member i'm calling in from the unseated territories of the hum comedum and squomish speaking people aka north burnaby and i'm grateful to introduce today's conversation indigenous resistance resurgence with panelists heather posse ian kusan geronimo anutic and sandy schofield and i'm going to pass it over to um bec
ca taylor wonderful thank you rob um welcome everyone uh thank you for joining us today my name is becca taylor i am a cream metis artist and curator based in namaskuchiwa gun also known as edmonton alberta my family comes from fisher river cree nation which is in manitoba and i have lineage to the red river metis i'm very excited to be in conversation today with everyone so i'm going to open it up and allow everyone to introduce themselves and uh next on my street screen is dramaale if you want
to start off please good afternoon uh my name is geronimo inutik i'm originally from a community called clyde river canyon now in nunavut i was born in pro bishop bay now it's called iqaluit i was born in the nwt i'm out in winnipeg now i just moved from montreal and i'm pleased to be with you i practice electronic music and i do installation art multimedia art including video and audio and i work as a electronic musician a dj and as a multimedia artist and i'm pleased to be with you today uh w
onderful ian would you like to go next hi there um my name is ian cuson and i'm calling in today from treaty tree 14 in oakville ontario my family comes from the penitentian area and my i'm french on my father's side and french metis on my mother's side our families lived in the pantangushin area for uh over a hundred years um and we've come came from further west before that my practice is as a as a composer and i write music for well in particular opera but i do all kinds of different uh types
of generally within the western classical music uh idiom uh or umbrella and uh yeah i'm really happy to be here speaking with all of you thanks thank you i'm heather you're next on my screen hi my name's heather pozzi i'm coming to you today from the traditional ancestral and unceded territories of the masculine squamish and slay with nations um i'm very honored to be here be i am non-indigenous and i'm i'm very honored to be uh to be a part of this conversation to have been allowed into to be
part of this my family background is english irish scottish and norwegian and i am a singer i sing opera i sing contemporary music and i'm also the artistic director of my own company astrolab music theater and we produce work that is uh very collaborative and multi-disciplinary in nature based on uh vocal music but encompassing dance film theater uh visual art basically whatever creative people want to bring to the table and i'm thrilled to be here today thank you thank you and sandy would you
like to introduce yourself please sure my name is sandy scofields i'm a t increase soto in french and um and my traditional name is same underwear two days no i'm kidding it's not i don't have a traditional name um i'm calling in from vancouver right now the uh unseated territory like heather of the muskegon squamish and slowtooth people oh my gosh i do everything music related from electronic music to electro acoustic music to sound design to supporting other indigenous artists and dance and th
eater to education i've worked in everything from doing workshops with everything from elementary right through to university all around indigenous music and our cultural practices our cultural practices and um i follow that of the cree the plains creek um i'm just really happy to be here and hoping that in my old age i have a tidbit of wisdom that will impart something to somebody and then i'll know i did my job tonight when i go to bed wonderful thank you so much um for those who are joining u
s today we had an opportunity to all gather um some time ago and have a conversation which led into a video that was presented and a lot of the conversation we were having was around the original title um which was on the idea of resurgence i am so sorry my dog is barking the background hopefully she's not too distracting um and something that i found like i was really struck by is the power of language and the power of um these terms that were being placed that didn't really strongly identify w
ithin the way that we viewed our own practice so one of the questions i originally posed was this idea of resurgence and i wonder if we can just dive into that a little bit more and i'm i'm wondering if each of you can maybe talk about maybe a word that you strongly identify within your practice and and how you kind of are coming to that word or something that just really resonates uh with you also recognizing that practice is fluid and maybe many words inspire us over time um and kind of that r
elationship that you have within your practice anyone can start i can volunteer uh if you may uh i certainly have something to say on the subject and uh there's a lot of key words that are thrown around in uh the cultural communities and artistic communities in uh socio-political contexts key words and words uh definitions that are changing uh used to be eskimo used to be aboriginal now it's indigenous now it's inuit the language uh the the departments of the the governments which deal with uh o
ur communities their names are constantly changing so this dialogue we're having with ourselves with our communities with uh society at large and the institutions which uh frame us we're we're evolving collectively and individually uh you know regardless of cultural background so we're all trying to affirm our our individuality and also bring our our our communities into this in a safe space and a space which traditionally to us seems a very threatening space one that seems to eradicate and null
ify our existence somehow uh in many ways and which pits us one against the other uh you know for the ends of economic means and uh and and who knows what other purposes uh but i see a lot of words thrown around in the in uh the professional artistic and musical community uh and one of the words i've been seeing is decolonizing it and uh i i i'm not i'm not saying that to to pinpoint that word because my response to that word was to to to bring the dialogue in another light and to say that we're
indigenizing corporate space we're indigenizing uh social space so uh within this context i think that word for me uh strikes more of a chord of a resonance in terms of affirming positively what uh uh i do you know because uh there's many uh facets to to my practice as a as a musician um and uh how i identify myself culturally socially so uh for me indigenizing is an important part of my practice and the responsibility that i carry with me and and also a celebration it's a celebration in terms
of my capacity to being able to continue to to to be in a transmission and carry a cultural uh uh cultural a cultural banner so to speak when when i am called to such occasions like this very specific one i i am i'm invited as a cultural representative so i i remember that uh concept indigenizing because uh it's it's an important responsibility we have to have these dialogues and it's uh this definitely uh puts me to challenge in many times to have that process of indigenizing because it's a lif
elong relationship as for me as a multicultural individual who's dealing with many frames of reference and many tools and means of expression so that for me is the word wow drama you brought up so many things indigenizing and colonial and of course becca was talking about the title of this event right now resurgence um are we frozen are you guys frozen yeah okay you're also still i thought the screen's frozen um resurgence i want to start with that one resurgence implies a period of inactivity o
r low maybe low visibility and maybe it's that i don't know because i take a reaction to that word right away i think we're not resurfacing i mean the practices besides the colonial modern structures say for example electronic music we don't do that right but we're indigenizing that colonial structure um i totally have lost my train of thought and i hope you'll forgive me because i'm kind of the elder here today um yeah i i don't think anybody's resurfacing it's just that suddenly uh dominant so
ciety is taking more of an interest right they've exploited everything else and they're looking for something fresh i think and so they're looking at kind of what we're doing and they're really open to what we're doing because as geronimo said he's introduced the word indigenous we're indigenizing our art forms no matter what we work in opera classical music electronic music electro acoustic music contemporary music or you know i sing traditionally i write traditionally as well we're indigenizin
g maybe the last the last one traditional scene we'll take that one out but all the other forms genres that we're working in let's face it they're colonial structures we can't decolonize all we can do is indigenize that structure right so thanks geronimo for making my brain start working today i'll have a go um i i i have less of a strong reaction of the word uh resurgence but i also i i really like what you're saying sandy about repositioning because i think in one sense you can look at it from
the from like the colonial lens and then to see it from an indigenous lenses seems more empowered and so i really like geronimo and sandy what you're saying indigenized is a strong word um one word that had and it's actually associated with it that's been really a big part of my practice of late is um relationship and community and uh and i think it's just realizing more and more both in life and in the work that i've been doing how you don't do it in a vacuum and you don't do it alone i mean i
t's funny i'm sitting in my office right now and i've been sitting here working on a piece for a long time alone but but the work really is happening in dialogue with people it's happening with um other creatives it's happening in our conversation it's happening in our um in our you know living our lives together in a certain way and so yeah this idea of community has been really important and one one of the ways is actually in making pieces differently and making work differently um you know we
we've always thought like oh the composer is this person and here is the person who's writing the words but what if there are multiple people that were part of the composition what if uh what if there are multiple people adding text and so this idea of like ownership changes from one person or two people or three people to a community of people and so that's been something that's been really really fun and actually scary too because i was trained in all these you know western art music ways whe
re it doesn't work that way so it's been a like an unlearning of that for me and uh an absorbing of what is much more traditional and much more community uh focused wow and i want to pick up on everything that geronimo and sandy and ian have just expressed um you know as as a non-indigenous person in this conversation i remember when we had that initial conversation about the word resurgence and i thought well it's not my place to talk about indigenous resurgence i'm not indigenous but i did hav
e a strong reaction to the word because as sandy said just for me it implied that something had subsided or had gone to you know a different level and was coming back and as far as i knew as i've been taught by my amazing colleagues and mentors and and like just the amazing artists that i've been privileged to work with now for so many years it never went away so you know that was that was my reaction to to resurgence um as far as indigenizing geronimo that hit such a huge chord for me because y
ou know unfortunately delphine derrickson armstrong from west bank first nation um who's uh okanagan uh phenomenal human being in every single way artist mentor teacher elder language keeper language expert um unfortunately can't be here but really she has completely changed the way that i view my art that i practice my art um and indigenizing is something that we certainly did when we collaborated when we co-collaborated with artists from west bank first nation on this opera that we presented a
nd and that goes back to 2012 you know when we were invited to to come to west bank first nation and create together and then ian what you just said about um this sense of responsibility and community um you know the relationships that i have been so privileged to make within west bank first nation uh that we you know they started in 2012 it's it's a decade later and we still have those relationships and i feel that the work that i do as an artist whether it's on the work that we co-created toge
ther that's you know having different iterations now or any of the work that i do going forward i have a responsibility to that community um to to carry the things that i have been taught the teachings that have been given to me to carry that into all of the work that i do as an artist and my life really has changed as an artist because of it um so everything the three of you said is just really resonating with the way that i view my practice now and the way that i um that i take my that i under
take my practice and not just my practice just my life at least i hope to the best of my ability thanks everyone i think that leads really well into my next question actually because you guys were all um in the video eluding or talking about this merging of art forms or these merging of cultures and the way that you produce and make work and i was just wondering if you could all speak a little bit more about it about your experiences celebrations and challenges you had bringing these different f
orms together merging these different cultures within your practice and the way you carry it forward i'd like to speak to that um and it ties in obviously with what heather was talking about and that is walking with responsibility with um with our you know the creator gives each one of us gifts this is how i've been taught and so when people like admire us and everything we have to remind them that they have gifts too you know just to keep it real now so we have to i really try to walk with resp
onsibility in my work i'm thinking about that poor underprivileged person on the reserve that's only accessible by air say you know there's no employment and they have no voice right i'm trying to be a voice for these voiceless people not that i'm an authority on anything indigenous i'm just trying to as i go into a non-indigenous environment to perform i'm trying to walk responsibly with the teachings that i have and the knowledge that i have to create i i try maybe this is egocentric i don't k
now but i try to create a bridge of understanding of compassion of empathy you know i try to show the audience it's okay to laugh at my corny jokes you know humor's medicine for us like you know um i try to impart some a little window that it's not all us and them it's we're all together you know so i really i just wanted to speak to that because that just hit a nerve with me heather i thought yeah that's that's what it is you know it's not doing it for my ego it's doing it to shed positive ligh
t on my people you know for those people that don't know us because that's where hatred starts you know that's all i have to share um yeah i think in some ways um like our many of our bodies like our physical bodies are are this kind of meeting point of different worlds and different experiences in different cultures and so we kind of carry within ourselves um a lot of different pieces and i think that that can be a really um a scary thing but also an exciting thing in the scene when we go into
spaces to do work that don't traditionally have indigenous stories um and i think some of those experiences are can be really really positive and i would think of like i'm even thinking of some projects that where um you know a commissioner of a piece of music uh asks for like right this 20-minute work or this you know this 10-minute piece and and then you and then they give a kind of like full license to do whatever it is that you want to do or you think is important to do um those are those ki
nd of experiences where you can then bring stories appropriately into those spaces or other collaborators or whatever it might be are really positive i think the ones that become really challenging is when um those same commissioners ask for something very specific and it's something that is either something that you know isn't maybe appropriate to bring into that space like into that um concert hall or opera house or theater or they have a really clear expectation of what that sound world will
be because like we work in sound right so it's like well oh you write indigenous music so it's going to sound this way as though there's like one magical indigenous sound and i think the thing about the screen right is like we're all an amalgam of so many different musical worlds and and part of us cross into each other and part of us are like completely separate from another and that's what's so beautiful about it it's like we are not one thing we are so many things and um yeah so just talking
about like thinking about the experiences that are tricky like is when it's like give us the drum sound that's what we want because that's what we expect from you and you're just kind of like no not doing that or or i'm going to do that in my own way or i'm going to do that appropriately because i have to be responsible to my community after after this and i don't want to i don't want to walk badly you know so i'm definitely uh moved uh by sandy and uh ian's words i i am with you both on uh on o
n every every everything you said in terms of uh where kind of what my experience of uh my relationship to uh having um [Music] a responsibility of cultural representation and the bond to a community when uh through uh i guess we could say the challenges of history which has uh caused uh difficult relationship and and uh challenging social conditions for some of us and not every not everyone's making it through so so greatly as us great talented people and uh so uh and some of us are a little bi
t more uh affected by some of the socio political socioeconomic realities that affect our families and affected our communities and it could be a challenge to have to balance all of that to have to try to have a creative freedom and to have a sense of social responsibility and to uh to use our talents to help bridge you know uh disparate uh cultural realities uh um i and that's always the challenge i kind of have and for example within the artistic multimedia installation context i i want to try
to use the the radio uh for example and and uh audio installation to try to bring the visitor to the gallery space and to these spaces which i'm i'm trying to represent but also i want to be able to bring to the uh people who experience uh art music and moments of contemplation and appreciation right and we we we want to be able to sing with joy and and to also uh uh sing our songs of sorrow and to to be able to live our all of our our feelings and our emotions in a safe space and that's always
the challenge for an artist for a community uh to to establish that and and uh we're we're in a process of of defining that in that way where we're when we're saying resurgence and that we're we're i think collectively individually so you know uh individually some of us and collectively uh we're we're at a point where we're empowering ourselves with with the tools that uh might have been occulted from us might have been we might have uh historically had problems with but we we're still here you
know and and we're still doing it and uh for and it depends where we're from as when we say indigenous peoples we're very varied right it's not a one people's it's it's when you look at what the country of canada and uh when we look at the first nations communities and inuit communities there's so much uh variety but there's so much that uh holds us in in common which is a lot of these difficulties and challenges that we're discussing but uh through that we we find hope i think when we're able
to see through it with with our creativity and with our uh the strengths that make us who we are such as humor and i really appreciate that and having to be able to access that those those places of joy and appreciation and contemplation and remembrance and interconnectedness it's it's challenging to to have to want to do that i think and it's audacious for all of us to want to do that and i think that's what gives us potentially qualities as artists i love that toronto and i i love the the fact
that you just used um challenges but also hope and joy in the same sentence um uh becca you asked about some of the challenges about the work and and i think uh maybe for the work that i'm doing um the two biggest challenges are two f words which is fear and failure and the that these two words have led me not what i can keep saying me i don't mean me i mean all the artists that i'm privileged to work with um we've we've walked down these roads um with with great fear and in fear of failure um
because there's so much uncertainty and there's so when you carry so much fear into into a situation for it can be for the best intentions or the best reasons you don't want to offend you you're afraid of saying or doing the wrong thing and and sometimes that fear can just get in the way of having open hearts and open minds and one of the things that again that delphine has repeatedly taught me is stop being so afraid we just we just have to stop being afraid of each other and work from a differ
ent place and that can be really hard to get out of that but when you find the joy and you find the um the hope in the work and in the process of creation it enables you to gradually start putting the fear behind and hand in hand with the fear is is failure um and i i was part of a conversation i think ian you may or may not have been part of this conversation as well but um something that marian newman who you know most of you probably know a ferocious artist and singer and like just amazing pe
rson and she's you know also an opera singer and she said we have to realize that as as classical musicians we've been trained to be perfect you are perfect all the time you do not fail so for us to come into this kind of work or this kind of creation or collaboration and expect to be perfect we're also carrying that on our back and it is we're also afraid of failing and and i know that these are two f words that i'm gonna i'm gonna be walking with them for the as long as i continue making art b
ut the fact that they are now so present in front of me and i have i think been empowered to take away some of their power and actually put the focus on on the work on the communication on the understanding on the collaboration that is the joy and the hope that mitigates a lot of the challenge and the humor thank you everyone that was really generous um everything that you shared and i love these how everything is just there's like um how you express that kind of like hope and and movement forwa
rd um within a lot of these challenges that we have um you know it just made me really think about um kind of brought me back to you know being an urban indigenous youth and really these power of these spaces have on being able to identify yourself within a space you know and as an adult i'm very privileged to spend most of my time with indigenous makers and creators and thinkers you know as a child is very few and far between in urban environments and and those moments really became the most po
werful and influential moments for me and the identity and really allowed me to um see my own lived experience um and my own stories within the work that was being shared with me and it leads to my next question and a lot of um what you're in the video uh i noticed was these ideas surrounding storytelling and the importance of storytelling within our works whether it be um stories we heard as children um maybe fictional uh non-fictional um up for debate for some uh lived experiences that we may
have had our community stories that we bring forward with us how do we how do you come to these stories how how do these stories present themselves to you and and become something that you share to your audience and and you know how much do you know to share and how much do you keep that is more meant for just you and your community as you move forward to present them publicly maybe i could respond to that as well first um i i'm in i'm in a particular position where i'm i'm uh i do remixing i i
i do mash up i'm from a dj remix culture in a way i'm coming in in the urban context i'm coming from that from that angle but i'm also coming from an angle where young i was living in the camp my that where my mother's family would go traditionally that's where they lived six hours outside of this remote community and those those instances living in the tent uh and uh living in the midnight sun and having a totally different sense of time and space than what we know in the city life and the rout
ines that we have that we give ourselves in order to follow the the needs of society is is all that stuff seems so far away within my memory of of what it was to be out on the land so i'm taking two very extreme positions one is uh very uh you know cutting edge techno music in a way and and on the other extreme is uh my mother was the first to go to residential school you know and and uh her parents only spoke initiative so i would i i was uh raised by them in my childhood at a certain point so
i'm i'm privileged to that in that sense where i'm equipped with these very strong tools but in the sense where i'm going to talk about my per i'm talking my about my personal relationship to uh cultural representation and the challenges i have sometimes just that kind that came with the whole uh complicated set of socio sociological conditions which where i was vulnerable and exposed to uh all kinds of social problems uh in my upbringing and uh with all this privilege it seems to have balanced
out and nullified sometimes i think but i still seem to think that i won somehow in this great lottery because it could be very difficult to be able to to be there in in the in the skids you know and uh that's uh uh uh it seems that within this context that that dynamic somehow is is like the the back again to fear and failure i'm i'm impressed by those words and that's always the challenge we have as artists but as a cultural as as members of a cultural community where because of the difficult
to social social realities uh like like you were saying it is a challenge to have to to be able to to assume our identities within these spaces is is is an audacious thing and and it's something we we we have a privilege to have you know if uh some of us uh you know and it's uh it's happening and how could we share that you know because not everyone has that access all the time and not everyone's coming to it from the same angle as i am and that's what i understand too is i have a very particula
r kind of approach to it and we all kind of have a very particular approach to indigenizing of of of of these corporate spaces as i call it re-indigenizing [Music] emergence the indigenous emergence within the cultural community the cultural the you know the social identity and that raises all kinds of ethical questions amongst one another and sometimes those ethical questions uh are challenging so back to the beginning of where i was a mash-up culture right like sometimes i'll be repurposing co
rporate music in order to recontextualize it and pilfer it for a new artistic statement and how i was able to express my identity culturally through media arts and music particularly video and music is the very same approaches one building my own body of work or in this case building my own sample bank of recordings recording having the privilege of being with the community member who who is talented and who can sing and i could record them and i could mash up once again in the remix in a new wa
y so i i have the privilege of having had access to that in terms of uh i was already coming with a drum machine and a sampler but then because i was i had access to the community young i was also asked to be a cultural representative in that context so it's like it's it's not necessarily something i i hundred percent chose i can't say that and that's very particular to me i understand that because that's just the circumstances i was put into because i had a piano at my dad's mom's you know and
i in high school i played the saxophone band you know and uh i was able to be in the context where i could go to a school and be in a safe place in in the institutional context and i i've had the challenge of not always having that [Music] security because and i see for some of us it's it's it's not so generous in that sense where they don't always have that sense of security within the institutional context and and uh i've i'm kind of losing my train of thought here i'm turning in circles aroun
d the things is the fear and failure uh once again that that that uh challenge us uh to want to bring us to uh to these places of affirmation cultural affirmation and uh it is always challenging that's what i think it's always a challenge because we feel judged from other people we judge ourselves we evaluate ourselves to think oh well i'm not doing it in the right way maybe it's not authentic that's me i'm talking about me when i say we but i i say that uh maybe i say that maybe because maybe w
e all kind of feel that in a way that's that fear talking it's a sense of inauthenticity but it brings us to ethics are we doing it in an authentic way are my cultural carriers that i'm uh that i'm accessing that i'm recording am i am i being uh uh uh ethical to them am i having good uh you know there's all kinds of uh professional uh organizations for songwriters professional organizations for uh performers if you're in the orchestra you're part of the union and i've been working at a point whe
re i'm trying to establish that where how can we if you're if you're being if you're acting on a tv on on a documentary even if it's a slightly slightly fictitious you should be getting actor you know actor union kind of stuff and and how could we how could we continue to bring our our cultural authenticity within these spaces is a challenge and i i but we got to keep doing it and i feel like i'm i'm just blabbing on and on so i'll just stop talking i forget the question to be honest that was so
engaging i'm like following you word by word yeah i don't know that was really wonderful um i was just asking about storytelling and how that takes how that affects your work um just thinking through kind of our lived experiences community stories but also maybe some yeah once again coming back to those community stories and how that kind of how do you know which ones to carry forward or how much are you kind of exposing and kind of that relationship to storytelling we'll go next um sometimes i
have a i'm in a singing group with uh some other women and we go in the schools and we sing for the little ones and it's often non-indigenous uh students right so they're eager to learn and i'm so excited when i get those chances because that's where i think you start dismantling racism is with the little ones okay so um um what was your question quickly becca on your relationship to storytelling and bringing your okay okay i got it i got it i got it i view my craft as storytelling everything h
as a beginning a middle and end so uh compositionally it's a story lyrically i try to make a story i try to i don't just sing stupid love songs right i try to sing about things stories and um yeah i feel that my work anyway is all storytelling that's all yeah i think your your question is like a huge question we could talk probably the whole time about just the ethics of of and what types of stories you tell and like like i love that question about like what stories are for the community and are
for special circumstances and then which ones can become like public in some ways right and so um i think you know one of the things that uh that that we have to do is to consider like the impact of the story that we're choosing to to bring forward or that we want to bring forward um like i can think of projects where i thought an interesting story and then i talked about it within community and i was told like no no no you don't do that and it's like you listen when when you're told that and u
m but one of one of the things that i've been just doing as much as possible in terms of storytelling is uh is is approaching some of the people that i i really admire and respect deeply and whose work i love um and uh it's been a lot of actually uh indigenous female poets um and and asked them if i could um have permission to um to make their text into songs or into larger works and that kind of thing and um and one of one of the pieces i wrote recently uh was texts of catharina ferment um and
there are these gorgeous poems um very much like an urban indigenous experience and what i wanted to do is well first of all they're beautiful words and and um it was a great like i i could hear them musically when i was reading them but then it was also because this was going to take place in an opera house and it was going to be put on a big stage with an orchestra and all of the glitz and glam of that and what was so beautiful was that these poems are really they they have images in them that
are like the the broken down images that we sometimes experience like there's one where there's this plastic film put on the windows and we all know like that film is to keep the the heat in right in the winter time and and her poem like one of the poems talks about like the children picking a hole in the window so that they can see outside to this world and you think of like the image of like a veiled way of seeing and then finding the little glimmer of light through this this but it's like pl
astic on a window and i was like that goes in the opera house because that's the kind of story that's the kind of image that is it is more than magical it's like everything in some ways and so um that was a kind of opportunity not so much storytelling but like saying these are the kinds of words that need to live in the most exciting and biggest kind of like art music places because this is what is this is the culture this is this is everything really and then it's like my responsibility as a th
e person writing the music to like to make that the most wondrous thing uh it's not a like a it's not a it's not a just a cheap image it is everything and i have to imbue it with all of the power that is in that image and that's the responsibility as well as being like the musical storyteller so um i think like i hear your question gives me almost like nervousness because there is responsibility and that is i think the most important thing is that we're responsible we're not doing this like free
-for-all on our own we have to be responsible to our communities and um yeah to do things well i didn't intend to make you nervous it was just something i was really thinking about um but i was actually thinking specifically ian about the work that you shared a lot in that question too and that um and that's actually working with writers i think is just a really beautiful approach and that kind of shared storytelling because you're also telling a story with them right as you're kind of working o
n the music and i think there's just something really empowering about yeah choosing those stories to bring forward and you know kettering over met like her work is lovely you know i absolutely love her work and that specific moment is a very specific story in time it's just very inspiring to see you be able to bring that forward heather would you like to add something well i've been pondering what i can add actually because um i i indigenous stories are not my stories to to tell um so i think i
f i think about storytelling in you know in this sort of context i'm i'm a student um i'm the one who's privileged to hear stories to to know what can be shared and the things that can't and you know the work that that we that delphine and i and and corrine derrickson and i have done and crystal lazard and other artists have been to create stories together um so i guess i could talk about storytelling from from that way where we bring we bring ideas and needs and desires and and and really have
a lot of conversation about what is it we want to say and how can we say this and everybody it's a very collaborative process and together we create whether it's a scene whether it's a dialogue whether it's dance those are the stories that we're trying to create together and and it's always fascinating because it's it's not the the writer rights and then the composer composes it then the artists perform i mean that's you know that's my training um and this is a very different way of creating but
in a way it goes back to my childhood in the way that that i would you know it's just always the way that i felt about art that it ideas and passions and things come from inside and then you you take them into the world and the people who are supposed to be part of it they come they show up in your life and you create them together i know that sounds really maybe kind of woo-woo but honestly that's when things have gone right in my artistic life that is just always the way it's been um the hear
t of it has to come first and then the rest of it just shows up so i'm kind of wavering off the road here too but when i think about storytelling now it's it's it's the people that i'm telling the stories with and what we want to say how can we say it what can we share and what just needs to stay private because honestly in storytelling there there are always things that that can't be shared because that's the potency that's the power of the story and now it really will be quiet i'd like to add
one last thing to that um yeah sharing uh our cultural stories your teachings i always go for um like general kind of things you know like um don't put your drum skin down on the ground or you know little things like that so um i feel there's not really a thread of you know passing on any kind of uh spiritual like things that are important to us still that we don't want um dominant society to take and exploit you know so yeah i'm mindful of that but there's lots of stuff we can talk about otherw
ise you know so i just wanted to add that thanks everyone um i'm noticing that we're starting to come to the end of our time i have a few more questions but i think now's um i don't know if i remembered to mention this at the beginning but if the audience has any questions um feel free to post in the chat and we could bring them forward to this group um [Music] my next question for everyone is i'm just kind of curious you guys started talking about it at the beginning and i feel like a lot of th
ese questions are really interconnected i'm just kind of curious what's important for you to bring forward in your work um what's yeah like what kind of drives that and it's really important that you kind of carry on with each project something that you kind of want to share to like future generations or or if you have anybody you work with mentees or anything what what's what's that really what's something that's just really important for you to be moving forward with i'll answer my answers ver
y quick cultural pride cultural pride that's what's really important for me for me it's about representation it's seeing um seeing yourself your story or community on a stage or in a concert hall or whatever in places where we've just not been yeah i mean i i i agree too like i with both uh uh sandy and ian in terms of having that uh artistic challenge somehow we're we're a child we're we're challenging ourselves artistically yet at the same time uh there there's a tradition and then there's inn
ovation it seems to be two different things to me and we're at a point where we have to be a bridge to a tradition and we have a individual uh nature to have to innovate you know as not just because of the market conditions but because of our nature as i think as creative people and as expressive people we you know we could take a traditional song and add our own inflections to it and however which way we access our traditions whether it be through a a con a direct continuity through family or t
hrough our community members which transmit to us their songs and share with us their songs or we access it uh another way is through the archives and that's often through the institutions too and and it's that sense of ethics towards our communities and ourselves and the individuals who have who are doing the work to help guide us along and to have good relationships and and to be able to support and encourage the whole community around that is what brings me some kind of redemption and satisfa
ction and happiness in it i'm just gonna jump in with another uh another f word um and it it's maybe not even the right word but to me flame is the word that i would come to when i think about the work that i want to bring forward and how i want to bring it forward that there has to be the flame of the work has to be present from the start i think that's why the work comes into our hearts our minds our souls and it it catches fire and it it fuels and it fans and it has to cause a flame in in any
one who who is present uh with the art the creators the people with whom we share the work um and i had another i had another thought on that and it's just completely uh it's completely gone but yeah there's there's flame there's fuel there's fire oh that's what it was um and and my specific hope is the work that i do is to that this uh flame is gonna like burn down the the hierarchical practices that uh that i was raised in in my art form um that i've always chafed against and uh there are ther
e's so much better way of creating work um and i have to say that my work with indigenous artists has really just enabled uh the dismantling of so much stuff for for me that that now i can't uh i mean i still work in in hierarchical practices i have to that's half of my professional life um but in the art that i choose to create it doesn't have to be that way um and that goes back to flame and fire and desire bringing forward so many great words um do any of you have any questions for one anothe
r at this time that you'd like to bring forward or when can we all meet in person [Laughter] when is it going to be safe i would love to meet in person orbit's here to stay that's what i think i wanted to speak about uh the fear and failure thing for me failure is an illusion the fact that i i'm afraid of something fears real but the fear of the fail or failure the concept of failure i think what is that does that even really exist when i look in my life i think uh when i'm afraid to do somethin
g because i'm afraid to fail the very action of moving forward in it is success so how does failure manifest and what i think about it it never manifests there's always successes right even when something seems like big disastrous crisis and that can be in my artistic work oh my god everything's a mess um you know uh there's no failure for me anyway i just like to look at it as an illusion and so take a move into my fear then there's no more fear failure okay i'll shut up now i heartily embrace
that next time i i want to say f word i'm going to have to think long and hard which one am i thinking am i experiencing now well i really only have one more question for everyone which is maybe a bit of a generic question but also one of my favorite questions to ask um is what's next what's everyone working on do you have any big projects you want to share with everyone what can we look forward to seeing from you in the future i'm going to answer i'm going to invite any listener to go to the we
bsite nvb1 that's a northern virtual broadcast channel one nvb1.com i'm working on a multimedia installation that's going to be shown at the canadian center for architecture and it's a project based around community radio so i've been collaborating with some of my community members to develop a facsimile of a radio show on a pretend radio network which is called the northern virtual broadcasting network and the show is called i'm calling home and uh because community radio is such an important u
h uh central point in in our communities it tells you the news it tells you where the garage sale is it tells you [Music] low tide high tide everything you need to know in the communities they're on the radio so that for me is a i've been working on that project and i continue to to explore a independent expression with electronic musical instruments in the techno sphere and uh oh i recently remixed o canada for parks canada and collaborated with my uh uh my colleague nina segalowicz and added s
ome throat singing to the uh slowed and reverbed oh canada that i did for parks canada so those are the exciting things that i can share with you today oh and i have a tape out on my tape label indigene audio indigene.bandcap.com there's a limited run of tapes with my friend takarika thank you i noticed you need a lot of saliva to speak enacted talking okay i'm gonna have a cd uh released in june another cd it's been a long time since i've released anything and um so i'm looking forward to that
and i'm doing a little spot on cbc tomorrow and i forget the show for me um i just finished a piece of music for the vancouver and victoria symphonies and it's a it's a 20-minute song cycle for singer and orchestra and um and that's going to be premiered in in april and i'm actually just orca's finishing orchestrating it right now but the cool thing is that it's three poems by joy harjo uh the u.s poet laureate incredible poet um if you don't know george harge's work um may's another amazing ind
igenous uh female poet um and the third song actually is the three songs are um songs from the house of death which is a great title uh the second is i am a dangerous woman another great title and the third poem is called the creation story and i'll just read you the last few lines of the cycle she says the stars who were created by words are circling over this house formed of calcium of blood this house in danger of being torn apart by stones of fear if these words can do anything if these song
s can do anything i say bless this house with stars transfix us with love that is amazing and so beautiful and so powerful wow um well our film uh our long delayed film the lake has been accepted to a film festival in montreal um and we're just waiting to hear about more film festivals uh we're planning on having a public screening in west bank first nation west kelowna in june um and it will be able to be seen publicly um but i just uh can't share yet where that ink is still being signed on con
tracts so but it's that's the uh five-year project uh finally being burst into the world um and we're right now we've just started a research and creation workshop of our uh next major project which will be the uh canadian prayer premiere of george benjamin's opera into the little hill uh which is a contemporary retelling of the pied piper story um that i fell in love with about a decade ago and was waiting for the right collaborators and uh basically asks who are the rats in our society and who
do we view as a rat um it also talks about music and uh the power or or lack of power um in our society about music one of the characters says all music is incidental um and i think this opera makes the case that it is most assuredly not so those are two things that i'm beyond thrilled about for astrolab all sounds very exciting i'm gonna keep my um eyes open for all of your projects um i'll open it up to any final comments anybody wants to make um there's nothing else i just want to thank you
all for sharing space with us today um thank you for your open honesty vulnerability and sharing your wealth of experience with us so i'll rob i'll let you take it away from here wow what a conversation i've been uh just smiling in the background thinking about all your wonderful responses and the beautiful questions becca had laid out for today so how to all of you for taking part howa tour um to our audience watching along and uh thank you tune in next time for our next conversation check out
newmusicnetwork.ca for upcoming events and uh i'd also like to acknowledge the support of factor for helping us put this conversation together so thank you thank you everyone liam limpton stay well thank you all thanks for having us thank you for having me yes she is she on the flippy oh okay
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