Transcript: Pow Wow Music in Canada
[Kevin Myran:] So I’d like to say thank you to your university for inviting us out to come speak about our drum. We brought Jayden here with us, Dakota, Kaelen. Anthony, Albert, Joey, Wynona, and Dani, and we’ll get them to come up and introduce themselves a little bit later, right? But what was most important was that you guys gave a tobacco offering, right? And this tobacco offering, it’s for us, to tell the drum what we’re singing for, so the idea of today, right? — was us sharing our information about the big drum with the settlers and Canada, the United States, amongst all the universities, so we’re actually really happy about that to be able to share that, because 50 years, or 70 years ago, we couldn’t. We weren’t allowed to share those things, so the proper thing to do is always give a tobacco offering and you gave me a really good tobacco offering. This is natural tobacco. It’s very nice. What we do with this tobacco is we put it on the drum. Each and every one of us, right? And we offer that tobacco to the drum. We let it know what we’re doing, so today we’re practising and we’re teaching, so that’s what we’re going to do now before we sing our first song. So we’re going to make her offering and we’ll get right into it. We’re going to jam out a song right away. Okay?
[ Drums, Singing ]
Hey, Howard.
[Dr. Howard Spring:] Great.
[Kevin Myran:] That was a quick song, generally a grand entry song. If you want to talk a little bit about that drum in particular —
[Dr. Howard Spring:] Yes, please.
[Kevin Myran:] A drum has two sides. One side represents the female. The other side represent the male. The stitching in between, it represents those children that hold that together. Inside that drum is an eagle feather, and they say that the eagle carries our prayers to Great Spirit. So when we sing, it’s kind of like prayers, ay? We ask that Eagle takes our songs to Great Spirit, let him know that we’re celebrating in a good way. That drum itself, that style of drum, it’s not very old at all. Right? It’s actually only about four or five hundred years old. And it come about during the time of sadness. There was two great nations, the Ojibwe nation and the Dakota nation. They were fierce fighters, and they were at war with each other. Right? And during this time, there was a young lady named Tail Feather Woman, and she grew up during that time, but she grew up respecting all life. Her grandmother told her all those creation stories, told her about — you ever — told us — told her to respect all life no matter what. So when she talked about war, she looked at war, she felt really sad, because she knew that wasn’t respecting life. Right, you know? And she knew about wars, but she didn’t particularly see a battle herself. Right? And like the grandparents, they always tell you, just in case, so they always give you a plan, just in case a war party attacks, right? So she had a just-in-case plan. Right? And her grandma told her, you know, if she ever got up in the morning, to go get water, and there was no dogs, that was the first sign that a war party has approached, right? — because they take out the dogs first. So they she asked her to go hide under the water. So one morning, she got up and that happened. There was no dogs, and she went right for that water, right? And she used a reed along the side of the water to breathe with, and she put herself under that water. So I don’t know how many of you have stayed in the bathtub for longer than an hour, right? You get all wrinkly. Well, this girl was — they say four days she was under that water, and that’s how long this battle took place was four days, right? And while she was under that water, right? — she would check every once in a while just to see if the battle stopped, but it didn’t, and she could hear cries of war, and she didn’t like what she was hearing in any way, so she prayed real hard, right? She asked for something to come along to help the people to get along, right? And she had a dream. In that dream, she dreamt of that drum there, that double-sided drum, eagle feather inside. She was given songs with her dream. Those were chant songs. There’s no words in those songs. You know, the song that we sang were all chants, right? And she was told by the spirits to present that drum to the Ojibwe nation, and that there would be peace amongst our nations, so when she — after four days of being in that water, she crawled out. Right? She was really sick and the medicine man come by and they nursed her back to health and she had an opportunity to talk to the chiefs, talk to the medicine man about this style of drum in the dream that she had. Right? And together, they constructed that drum. They sent a runner to the Ojibwe nation to let them know that we’re coming with the gift. Now the Ojibwe people were pretty wary about this gift because we were known to trick each other. Right? But once they heard that that gift come from a little girl, they were happy to accept it, right? And this girl was probably no older than 11, they say, 11, 12 years old. She wasn’t quite womanhood yet. Right? And ever since then, we kind of sat down. We had our first celebration together. You know, we shared food. We — the men met wives. The girls met husbands, you now? We traded items and we sat down around this big drum and we sang, right? And we shared our songs together with those chant songs. No language between the two of them, so no one can sing Ojibwe, no one could sing in Dakota. They had to sing in the chants, so it was a universal language. Now if you look at today, right? — that drum didn’t stop there. You can go all over Turtle Island or North America and see that big drum. So we’re going to do another song and then I’ll come up and talk about a different style of drum, okay? And maybe we’ll call up some of the singers to talk about what they feel about drumming.
[ Drums, Singing ]
[Kevin Myran:] So right now, we’re actually in a neighbourhood where there’s one, two, three — there’s four buildings of native people in this neighbourhood, so when we were done, we heard “Woo hoo!” That was pretty cool. That’s just one style of drum. Right? With First Nations people, there’s many style of drums, so there’s a little boy water drum, which is really, really old. No one knows how old that drum really is. There’s a double-sided hand drum. Right? Can’t really fit your hand. You have to use the handle. Right? That one goes in the ceremony, goes in the sweat lodge, ay? There’s a hand drum that the Cree people use for round dance. Right? And that round dance is a time of mourning. Right? So instead of crying, we celebrate. Right? You now, we celebrate, and there’s a whole story that goes to that. Maybe I’ll tell you another time. And then there’s the kettle drum. Well , it has to do with hiding our ceremonies. So the kettle is actually an all-cast iron kettle, and it’s like a water drum. Put water in it, and you put a seal over the top. Right? It goes [sound]. It makes a sound like that, but what we used to do is we only did those songs at nighttime, because the Indian Agents in the Army were scared to come in at night. They don’t know what to expect, so they would only come in in the morning, so here are all these songs going on, and all this celebrating. Then they’d come into our camps in the morning and tear apart our camps looking for everything, and they couldn’t find nothing but a piece of wet hide, because we use that kettle. Sometimes you’ll see a cast iron smudge bowl, cast iron frying pan for a smudge bowl that we use to smudge with, right? And that’s because that. We had to hide our ceremonies, so speaking of we had to hide our ceremonies, we have women singers behind our drum. And as women singers, they didn’t actually start there. They were the ones that gifted us the drum. Right? But because they like the way we sing so hard, right? They come in behind that drum and they help us out a little bit, so they give the boys a chance to come down, right? — in their voices, and the girls come up, and when the boys — and then girls come down in their voices, the boys come up in their voices. It gives us a little bit of a break that we need, ay? And then also, the girls have a job to do. Right? Because of the fact that when we’re sitting around that drum, the drum’s a sign of peace. Right? So it’s a sign of unity, so if our drummers are at the drum and they’re not getting along, right? — and they’re arguing, they’re bickering with each other, the girls will touch your shoulders and tell them, “Hey, you guys, you’re at the drum. You have to be peaceful,” right? And then, there was a time when we weren’t allowed to powwow at all, right? So we weren’t allowed to gather, and this is less than 100 years ago, just so you guys know, okay? — less than 100. Some of your grandparents, oh, can remember this, okay? Our girls, our grass dancers, had to come out and make the powwow grounds, and had to do it quietly, pack down all the grass for the celebration grounds. And our girls who come up behind that drum, we sit them in each direction, four directions, right? And that was to keep an eye out for the Indian Agent, right? They would sing, but we’d be drumming, so we’d be so concentrated in drumming, our dancers would be so concentrated in dancing, we needed eyes out there, so the girls would watch for the Indian Agent, and you could see the smoke come in, or the drums come in or the grass moving, you tell them — the girls would tell them, “Pack up your stuff, boys. Time to go.” We got to pack up our stuff and go hide our stuff in the bush, because we weren’t allowed to do this, right? So I look at the singers now, right? — and I look at these girls singers. I look at that drum. I’m amazed it survived, because the government in Canada, the United States, did everything in their power to crush our culture, take away our ceremonies, take away our language, take away our way of celebrating, right? And this is a way of celebrating. Now powwow wasn’t always powwow. You boys got another song ready? Yeah? Get one ready. Give me a couple minutes here, okay, guys? — two minutes, two minutes. Okay? So the powwow wasn’t always powwow, right? Powwow was just the time when we all got together, right? Powwows come about was when we were allowed to travel. Right? The actual first powwow was with — you guys ever heard of Wild Bill, the Wild Bill west show, right? Well, Wild Bill, okay? — he liked to showcase our culture, so we had an opportunity to do war dances, and the actual first dances were only men’s traditional dancers, just war dancers. Right? And then he wanted us to fancy it up a little bit and they want us to a do a war dance a little faster. The men’s fast dance came about, right? And you’ll notice the song’s are a lot faster. That’s where powwows started, bringing in the flags, and all that kind of stuff like that. It was during rodeos and things like that we’d come in and showcase or stuff into that rodeo circle, so that’s when you go to a powwow, you’ll see that great big circle. It’s a representation of that rodeo circle. Right? That’s how we used to celebrate, because we were allowed to celebrate at that moment, at that time, right? So when we’re actually able to travel, that’s when powwows come about, right — because we we’re able to go to a different reservation and celebrate, so powwows became big, because before, we weren’t allowed to leave the reservation without asking the Indian Agent, and it had to be for work, and then to top it off, we had to give up our status cards, so we weren’t allowed to be native if we left the reservation. We had to give up a rights to be native, right?
[Dr. Ryan Bruce:] Is it a custom that there’s always a full circle around the drum?
[Kevin Myran:] Yes, it is. There’s always at least four singers. If you don’t have four singers, you don’t set up. Right? You got to have a singer for every direction. A lot of times young groups have 8 to 10 singers, right? — and then plus your backup singers, four girls behind you. Right? So a drum group usually consists about 10 to 15 people. Right? Yeah. That’s not the only style of drum. If you go to a powwow, you might see those bass drums. You know those bass drums that you see? Right? From that drum set, you might see those, right? And that’s us. We’re kind of making fun of Custer, right? — because during that battle of Big Horn, we stole his bass drum. I mean, when we beat Custer, we took his bass drum, and then when the US Army came after us, they came after all the war chiefs, all the war chiefs and families and they were getting rid of all the war chiefs and families. They wanted to take out our bloodline, so Sitting Bull and a few other of the war chiefs brought us up to Canada, and we sang with the Crees. And we actually sang on that bass drum, right? And we told that story of that battle of Big Horn on their bass drum, right? So every once in a while, you’ll see a powwow drum group, they’ll pull out that bass drum, and that’s just to tease, so they’re teasing, saying we took out your best, the bestest that they could, that could be beat, we beat him, and this is his drum, right? So we celebrate and we tease just a little bit about that when you see that other style of drum that comes out, but today, powwows are everywhere. You know, you can go all the way to California. There’s a powwow trail on California. Every province has a powwow trail. You’ll see all kinds of drum groups just like us. Our drum groups pretty special. We show — I think I’m the oldest, right? And then Anthony’s the second oldest. We got our original members and we started with was Jayden, Dakota and Albert, and then we have two other little guys that come on, and then we also have guys that we teach, right? — that come on, that are smaller, that are just learning. Right? So we’re trying to pass that knowledge on because it was lost, right? All right, guys. So the next song we’re going to do is a song that you sing before grand entry. It’s to open up the powwow, right? And during this time, we ask all the grass dancers to come out and bless the ground. So what their job is to do is to pat down the grass, right? — for the grass dancers and say a prayer that everybody gets there safely, that they get home safely. A lot of people don’t know this about grass dancers, that they were the stoics. They were the finest of all warriors. They’re the best of the best, and they would send the grass dancers out first just in case something happened, just in case we get seen, that they’d be able to get away or they’d be able to fight their way out of it, right? So the grass dancers are all of the ones that came in first. So this is a grass dance song.
[ Drumming, Singing ]
All right. Grass dance song. All right, my boys here. This isn’t the only drum we got. We got three different drums. We had to retire one drum. It was our fourth drum. So we’re at Kettle Point pow — no, no. Cape Croker powwow, and it was our first competition, you know? And we were all pretty nervous and, you know, I screwed up my lead. Anthony screwed up his lead, and we were supposed to be the old guys, right? But we were drumming so hard and so our drum split right in half, right? So we had to flip the drum over real quick, right? — and continue our song. And the other drum had — the other side had a little bit of a hole in it, and it was sewed up. And there was a drum group out there called Charging Horse, and one of their singers had a spare drum, right? So he asked us if you wanted to borrow his drum. We said, yeah, that’d be great. And we borrowed his drum. At the end of powwow, we got to walk our drums our, and that lead singer gave us that drum to use, so now that drum [inaudible], right? And the other drum, we took it back to the water, where that drum came from, right? — because it came like I told you the story about how that drum came from the water spirits, right? So we took it back to the water and sunk it in the water there at that powwow, right? And then after that drum came we built the family drum, a great big drum, bigger than this one. It’s a Buffalo drum, right? And that one’s used at [inaudible] fire, and it’s for the dads and for the kids and for our singers to sit with the dads and the kids teach them singing, right? That’s why we call it a family drum. And we have a lot more girls coming around because the moms come out and sing too, right? And then this drum here, we applied for a grant, me and Dakota, through Taking It Global, and they gave us $1,500 for us learn how to make a drum. So I asked Dave White. He’s been a drum maker for probably about 40 years, right? And he helped me and Dakota put together the frame, barrel style. He helped us get our hide. [inaudible] some teachings on how to lace it right. And so me and Dakota and Joey and who else? — [inaudible], no? A couple other kids came in and helped us sand a little bit when we constructed this drum here. This is our newest drum. We put dye on it so it looks cool, right? And the original drums don’t have no dye, but it’s year 2020 and we want our kids to come into drums. We make our things look cool. Even the sticks have changed. Right? The sticks are a lot nicer, shinier, right? And therefore, there were more blingage, right? Before they were just sticks and had a little bend in them, like that, and it was used [inaudible], right? Now it’s a softer pad. This one in particular, we got Council Fire put right on it. There’s Council Fire put right on there.
[Dr. Howard Spring:] What is it made of?
[Kevin Myran:] This is this just hide. This one, hey, do you know those fence poles?
[Dr. Howard Spring:] Yeah.
[Kevin Myran:] Those orange marker poles?
[Dr. Howard Spring:] Yeah.
[Kevin Myran:] They — it’s fiberglass. We use fiberglass so it doesn’t break. Right? If you use wood, like the amount of singing we’re doing, it would just bust the stick.
[Dr. Howard Spring:] Right.
[Kevin Myran:] It would be no good.
[Dr. Howard Spring:] Right.
[Kevin Myran:] Right?
[Dr. Howard Spring:] So Kevin, how do you learn the songs?
[Kevin Myran:] How do we learn the songs? This is how. Okay? So sometimes we have drum practice twice a week. Sometimes we have it once a week, right? But it’s always important to practice, right? And when the singers come, and sometimes [inaudible] right away, so they sit and they listen. Right? Kaelen, it took him a year to develop his singing. Joey, took him a year to develop his singing. Jayden, he was already developed in singing. He went to powwows his whole life. Right? So when he came to the drum it was nice to have him, right? — because he already knew the songs. He developed the beat. Dakota asked myself, Dakota here, if he could learn how to sing, so I brought in some older singers to show us, because I never knew how to sing either. So when Dakota started learning how to sing, so did I, right? So he asked me and I had to find a way to learn how to sing. We had a drum at Council Fire, an old drum, that first one and that busted when we started [inaudible] that one, right? But I called in some singers that knew how to sing, right? And then taught us the songs, right? So every song — like there’s a song for every style of dance. There’s a song that pulls off the powwow. There’s a song to pick up an eagle feather. Just about a song for almost anything, right? And besides the powwow drums, there’s other drums. You have songs for ceremonies, the sun dance songs. Sun dance singing is a lot different than powwow singing. As you can notice right here, like you can hear a lead. So one singer will do a lead, right? And everybody here will second, right? They’ll come in and do the same lead, okay? And then there’ll be a body of the song, right? And then they’ll repeat that same body of the song again. That’s one time through. Okay? We’ll go over it four times through, right? — for a whole song, at least four, sometimes five, right? When you go to sun dance that might be 150 times through, right? — depending on what song it is. Huh? You mean the second? So Dakota told me to make sure to tell you guys the meaning of the lead, okay? So when we lead, our first lead is to Creator, right? So we start off as if we cry. You know when you’re born, you put out that first cry, right? That’s what it represents, that first cry, that high-pitched cry. And that second is all the singers calling on the ancestors, so they represent the ancestors and they sing. So they call upon the ancestors. They call upon the Creator to come celebrate with us. Okay, you know? That first lead, second lead. And these sticks, they say are a extension of your arm, right? So we’re not — like we’re drumming, right? But we’re only giving that drum what it can handle. So we’re not up here just slamming down as hard as we can on that drum, right? Because [inaudible]. It’s just like beating that drum, so like, we want to give it respect. We all at the same time, drumming at the same time, and do honour beats. They’re not that hard, but they’re hard enough to make noise, right? So we just like — we want to drum on the drum. We don’t want to beat up the drum, right? And that’s the idea. So we have to remember that the sticks are extension of our arm, because we’re hitting that drum really hard, it’s just like us hitting that drum with our fist. Right? So we want to keep it soft. Well, not too soft, but do not want the drum to [inaudible]. This is — the next song’s a crow hop, and it’s one of the favourites for a lot of the dancers. They can really shake their stuff during this time? You have to ask an elder to come up and talk to you guys about that meaning of the crow and what the crow did for us, right? I’ll give you a short version is that, Crow, they say got back our fire. Okay? When our fire was taken away, they say the crow went and got it for us, and that’s why his feathers are black, okay? And so when those dancers dance, you kind of do that representation of that crow hop, of that crow when he hops.
[ Drumming, Singing ]
>> Thank you, so much.
[Kevin Myran:] So like I said, this is four times through, right? And there’s different types of singing for different events, right? We would sing you guys a sun dance song but we can’t, right? — because those songs were only song at sun dance, right? And sometimes well, we’ll practice but not in front of the camera, in front of people, right? I’ll offer that tobacco to the spirits, let them know that we’re just practising, right? — and that we’re not calling on the spirits for sun dance, you know? We’re just practising. We’ll offer up an offer, so we don’t just respect that, the songs, right? — because those ones are really, really old, the sun dance songs, right? And you seen there’s [inaudible] singers [inaudible] I brought them to sun dance this year and Jayden, Dakota, and Joey became the sun dance drum for the Thunderbirds sun dance lodge there asked them back and sing, right? And the elders want to pass that knowledge down to him, right? So they want him to come back every year to sing, right? And it’s not like a normal singing, right? They sing from five o’clock in the morning, right? — sunup to sundown, right? — all day long, straight, right? So it’s really hard on the throat, and not every singer could do that. Not every singer can be a sun dance singer. I’m really proud of these boys that they’re able to do that. Right? And they’re able to complete that part of the ceremony, while two of us dance. And the sun dance is just about — it’s the same as prayers for the world. Right? So we’re not — like you’re not there for you, but you’re there for the whole world. You’re there for the world problems. You’re there to make offerings. You’re there to make — to pray the tree about pollution, but world hunger, about clean drinking water, about COVID, about many different things. That’s what we sun dance about. It’s never about us. It’s about the whole world, and that’s what the Sundance is really about. You know, it’s when all these natives, even though all these things have been done wrong to us, okay? — even though our land has been stolen, even though our culture has been stripped away piece by piece, right? — we still pray for the world. We still pray for all the good things to happen in every community, in every society, no matter what colour or race you are, even if you bleed green, you don’t bleed red, you know? We hope the best for you, right? That was always our intentions. When you go into a grand entry, right? You’re going to see these flags coming in, right? You’re also going to see these eagle staffs. [inaudible]. It’s the oldest one we got, man, your old school. The flags, they used to be war staffs, right? So they had a spike on the end, right? And you had all your feathers down here. A lot of those feathers were keeping feathers, which meant if you let your enemy live, it was worth more than honour to let him live than to kill him, because he could go home to his family, look after his kids, all that stuff, right? So you see give him that break. You got a feather for that, you know? In some cases, you know, in war, war happens, you have to kill, right? But a lot of cases, if you can let somebody go, you would, right? And they’d have to go home with a big lump on their head and say they could cope. It’s kind of embarrassing, right, you know? But all those staffs, it’d be those war feathers. Right? So when we decided to do treaties, right? — we decided that you know what? Enough’s enough. Too many people are being hurt. You know, we have to settle, right? We decided to do treaties. We took our war staff, and we bent them into a circle, so now you’ll see those eagle staffs will be a circle, on those eagle staffs, and that’s to show the government that we came in peace, that we’re not coming in with our war staffs, that we come in with a bent staff. That means we’re being peaceful. Right? And then we’d carry in their flags too, so we carry in a Canadian flag. We carry in the US flag, right? — just to show that, you know, that unity amongst us, right? You know, just because unity wasn’t shared from the settlers to us, doesn’t mean that we didn’t have that unity in mind, right? And we did, because otherwise we would have kept those war staffs bent straight just like. We’re going to sing a flag song for you guys. And it’s usually sung after grand entry. We’re going to do a flag song where they post the flags or the retire the flags, right? — which are meant represent — we’re giving honour, right? — to those nations. Right? So Metis Nation, all of our nations, right? — including the U.S., and Canada.
[ Drumming, Singing ]
The boys don’t want to sing the retreat song because they say we don’t retreat.
[Dr. Ryan Bruce:] That was great, Kevin. I wonder could you talk about the drumming a little bit, because I’ve noticed that of the songs that you’ve sung so far, the drumming has different levels and especially in the last one there was different levels of drumming? And also and I forget his name, I’m sorry. The drummer to your right seems to be taking the lead at some times. He’s drumming a different part than other people. Could you describe that for us?
Kevin Myran:] So in between the first and second body, on the second body, right at the beginning, there’s an honour beat. As we’re all going the same, he’s going to do an honour beat. Right? That’s the chance when those dancers raise their staffs, okay? Some of the girls when they’re dancing, they’ll pray. So they’ll raise their fans. And that’s like that’s for their prayers. Right? There’s many different things we use those honour beats for. At a giveaway, okay? — at the end of the powwow, we have a big giveaway. On those honour beats, those harder beats, bang, bang, they’ll raise their gift up to say thank you to Creation for receiving a gift at this event, right? In the beginning of the song, our beat’s kind of slow, right? Certain songs, we’ll drum on the side, the last dance, right? Then we’ll come back and we’ll come in, right? That’s just so we can hear our voice more, right? And so those grass dancers can focus on their prayer, instead of that great big beat. Once their prayer is focussed, we bring that beat in. That’s what that side [inaudible]. In the song, we have a pickup, right? So dancers dancing, they usually start of flow, right? So we’re going to pick our beat up so those dancers move a little faster.
[Dr. Ryan Bruce:] I’d like to know, you know, who gets designated as the person to —
[Kevin Myran:] To do the honour beats.
[Dr. Ryan Bruce:] To do those honour — yeah, honour beats. That’s right. Thank you. To do the honour beats, and also who gets designated to be the leader of the singing? I didn’t get to ask that last time.
[Kevin Myran:] Okay, so we have usually it’s a guy that’s been around the longest. Right? It’ll — he’ll be the one that’s the lead singer, so we have in our group we have four lead singers. Okay? So we have the Dakota. Right? We have Jayden. We have Albert, and we have myself. Each of us have different roles, right? So, Dakota has a higher pitch, right? — in his voice, so if we want to start a song off at a high pitch, we’ll call on Dakota. Jayden has a lower tone of voice, so if you want to call — if you want to start a song off with a lower tone, right? — and bring it up to a high tone, we’ll start with Jayden. And Albert has like a medium high-pitched tone. Right? So if that’s how we want to start the song, we’ll start with him. We never start with me. I wreck the lead every time. Sometimes we’ll start with me. Like on the older songs, generally, I’ll start the older songs, right? I don’t know why that works out but it just does. Like for the AIM song and a few of our older songs, I’ll start them off, being the older guy, right, you know? — and I’ll start the pitch off for that. The person in charge of the honour beats, depending on what we’re doing, so if it’s for a gig in the show, right? — we want our guy that has the best honour beats to do the honour beats, so that’s generally Albert. We get Albert to do our honour beats, and Jayden, between those two. Now, if we’re just practising, and we’re at a social event, we’ll pass those on honour beats around, so we’ll give everybody a chance to do honour beats. Not everybody is good at those honour beats as Albert or Jayden or Dakota, right, you know? And so it gives us the opportunity to learn a little bit better doing those honour beats. Like my honour beats are different. They’re more straight. These guys have a more newer style honour beats and the drum developed. Like it changed. Like our style of drumming, changed according to our dances, right? So even the drumming used to be real straight, not too much of a pickup, but as the dances got fancier, as men’s dancing come about and women’s dancing come about and the different songs change, different dances come along, the beats changed. So they wanted to show off those fancy dancers a little bit more so the beat picked up. It got faster, right? And then partway through the song, it’ll get really fast, and on that fourth time through, it would be so fast that dancers just be giving a — and we try to trick the dancer and stop at a certain time, so we have songs, some songs are like trick songs. It’s a competition between the drum and the dancers, so they won’t know our song. That’s when we’ll come up with a new song. Right? And we’ll try to trick them. Hopefully we’ll catch them during their competition, and either they’ll lose points, right? Or we’ll get the honour of being able to trick the dancers, some of the dancers, right? And they’ll come up and offer us tobacco, say “That was a good song, man. You tricked me.” They’ll give us tobacco, right? Sometimes [inaudible] money. You know, here you go, man. That was a good song. You know? How do we pick those lead singers? Through practice, right? During our practices, those singers that know most of the songs, right? And have those leads, you know, they’ll generally take charge, right? When Jayden’s around, he really controls our beat. Right? So he makes sure our beat’s right. That’s one thing that he’s really good at is that keeping that beat. We all have to stay in tune. We all have to drum the exact same time. It goes off, it goes sounds like a horse beat. Right? That’s not a good style to dance to, right? We want our dancers to be able to all have the same beat to dance to so we all go in sync, right? We sing in sync. We do everything in sync and try to do in sync as best to our ability. I’ll talk a little about the girls. Right? You know, we talked about how the girls don’t sit at the drum and that come from a story from when — I think — did I tell you guys the story of the drum.
[Dr. Ryan Bruce:] You did. Yeah.
[Kevin Myran:] I did. Okay. In that story, right? — it talks about that young lady gifting that drum to her men, right? So if the women sit at the drum and sing, it’s like that — them taking back the gift, because that gift was meant for us men to be able to get along. Right? For us to celebrate in a good way without us arguing or fighting or going to war. That’s what that’s about with the girls not sitting there. It wasn’t a girls who were fighting. It was the boys. Girls got along just fine with each other, and the boys were the ones that never go along. Look at any war. It’s mostly boys that fight. It’s not the girls.
[Dr. Howard Spring:] You said there was a bunch of different kinds of songs.
[Kevin Myran:] Yeah, so there are. There are different melodies, different style of drumming. Right?
[Dr. Howard Spring:] So are they different because they’re just played at different times, or they have different melodies or different tempos?
[Kevin Myran:] Yeah. Yeah, so there’s like, there’s a crow hop beat, right? — where it’s a whole different beat that those styles dance to, right? There’s a double beat crow hop. It’s a whole different style of beat. And there’s a sneak up song, right? — where it’s a ruffle. And it talks about those dancers sneaking up on Custer, right? And it tells that story, that sneak up dance, right? In the old days, that sneak up dance, those dancers didn’t wear bells, because if they wore bells, they wouldn’t be sneaking up on anybody, would they? Right? You know? Then you’ll hear, again, that ruffling during that sneak up song, you’re going to loud on the beats, bang, bang, bang. That’s representation of gunfire. Right? So those dancers, when they’re dancing that song, they’ll duck down, and they’ll dodge that gunfire. You’ll see them dodging it out, right? You know, when they talk about our old stories to some of our warriors could see those bullets coming, and just move right away from them. So that’s what they talk about in the sneak up dance, right? — is that sneak up. That was one of our first dances, one of the first songs that we sang and told stories with was actually that sneak up dance. We shared that with a lot of our different communities, right? — different nations and Dakota people. That’s where that dance come from was the plains natives that got that style, this style of drumming, this style of dancing, the style of celebrating. And it was just shared amongst the different communities, and now it’s spread like wildfire. So if you were to go anywhere on Turtle Island, you’re going to see, you know, powwow way out in New Mexico, powwow way up north, you know? You’re going to see those powwows happening everywhere, and they spread. That big drum’s everywhere you go. What other different styles of beat? You would do a round dance, where it’s more of a heartbeat, ta-doong, ta-doong, ta-doong, ta-doong, and everybody holds hands and they dance in a big circle all the way around. It’s kind — it’s called — oh, in B.C., they call it a friendship dance because everybody takes the time to go around, shake everybody’s hand during that dance, to say hi to each other. And there’s not a style of dance. It’s the same beat. It’s called a two-step dance, and that’s for couples, and the couples — the girls ask the boys. The boys are not allowed to ask the girls. The boys are not allowed to refuse, so if a girl asks you to dance, you can’t refuse. If you want to refuse, you hope that you’re rich, because she can ask for anything that she wants for that refusal. If she wants 10 horses, you got to give her 10 horses if you don’t want to dance. If she wants a house, you best get her a house because if you don’t want to dance with her, right? So you got to show her that respect if you don’t want to — if she admires you and you don’t admire her, you got to give her a gift, right? You know, in most cases, boys don’t say no, but in my dad’s time he seen a boy say no. Right? And the girl actually wanted two horses. And it took till the end of the powwow, but the boy had got two horses for her, and presented her with the two horses at the end of the powwow. And even a ride for the horses attached to the back of the truck. And my dad said that’s how — because see, that boy was in love with another girl and he was hoping that that other girl would ask him, right? But the other girl’s friend jumped in there and asked first, and that was a story on how my dad seen horses, they’d give them away during that style of dance. These days, the girls don’t ask for much. Most of time the boys don’t say no. They’re just excited that somebody asked them to dance, you know, and they go up and dance. That’s a style of dance. And at the end, they have a giveaway song. These days they use a jingle dress beat, a sidestep. Right? And everybody dances to that one and during honour beats everybody holds up their gift and hold it up like that and then bring it back down, and that’s just to tell Creation that they appreciate the gift that they received from this community, whatever community that you’re at, and you’re singing at. How you conduct yourself around the drum is really important too. Each one of our singers are kind. They’re not mean people. Right? So you’re not going to see Albert or Jayden or Dakota going out in the street picking fights, right? You know? They’ll defend themselves if they have to defend themselves, you know, but they’re not going to be that guy that goes out there and calls somebody name or they’re not going to be that guy that hits his wife. They’re not going to be the guy that that spanks his kids. He’s not going to be the guy that, so when you become a singer, you have to follow those seven grandfather teachings, and there’s — love is the first one. It’s very important. Truth and honesty, wisdom, using your wisdom, bravery, humility, and respect, and when we use all those seven grandfathers, you’re able to conduct yourself in a good way, no matter what situation arises. You know? In some cases in life, you might have to fight your way out, but in all those cases, you can guarantee that none of these guys started it, that they’re on their best behaviour, and they’re asked to go sing at — they’re so honourable that they’re asked to sing for the chiefs, and many times when they’d have the chief conferences. Whenever they come to Toronto, they ask for a drum group. They call on our drum group, and there’s a few drum groups out here they could call on, but they call on ours because they know our boys are always on their best behaviour, and they do good things. They put their best foot forward. You know, when they see lady struggling on the streetcar with getting her stroller on the streetcar, they’re the first ones, first ones to lend a hand. You know, they see somebody struggling with their groceries, you know, [inaudible] car, they’re the first ones to lend them a hand, you know? If one of our buddies calls, “Hey, we need help moving,” they’re all there. They show up as a group and they make sure they help, you know? When there’s a protest in the city, and we’re called upon to help out, you know, they don’t ask to get paid or get an honorarium. They show up, and they sing for that protest, for that event, whatever is going on. If they’re lucky, they get an honorarium after it, you know? You know, some people do give good honorarium but those types of events, these guys go up — every Thursday, they go up the Native Canadian Centre and we sing for our residential school survivors, right? And we show them that the culture’s still here. That we’re still singing strong, that they survived for a reason. Right? And that all that hiding our culture and stuff that their parents did, we’re picking it up, and we’re singing it, and we’re doing it, right? So we go up there and put a show on for them. We sing and we celebrate with the elders, and they really enjoy it. They don’t ask for anything for that. We just do it every week, just for the sake of doing it, right? — just for going up there and bringing a good feeling. And that’s the idea is to bring good feeling. Last week, when we sang out here, we had some kids come out. The kids were dancing. This week we have people waiting. They’re waiting to hear us sing which is a good feeling, so it brings community together, no matter what community you’re in. When I was at home at my house, we had the big drum over there. I would bring out my big drum, and we’d sing on the porch, and you wouldn’t believe all the community members come out, come say hi and introduce themselves and, you know, native people for years have had a bad look. We’re looked at as drunks, you know, savages, violent people, you know? And it was — and to see just the opposite is good for the community. Right? You know, so there was lots of questions being asked, and the community got to know about us, so my neighbourhood, we can sing anytime we want, and the community knows exactly what the drum’s about. They know what we’re singing for. Right? And these are non-natives. These are all non-native people in my community, in my area, and they’re [inaudible] and they come out and they bring food and gifts and things like that. It’s really cool. Right? So that’s what that drum’s about is bringing people together and together as a community, and bringing that good feeling that happiness. Right? And that’s why we sing, because it makes us feel good. It makes us feel proud to be first nations. You know? It gives us the opportunity to express who we are, where our grandparents never had that opportunity. Right, you know? And yeah, it’s a little bit of both, about that big drum. So we’re going to sing you a crow hop. That’s going to be our — one of the songs to show you a different style of beat besides that straight beat that we do, right? And they say that that crow did something really special for us. He brought back or fire. Right? And there was a time when they say that Old Spirit come along, and he didn’t like us so much as human beings, but he really liked our fire, and our boys were arguing about who was going to watch the fire, and there’s always supposed to be a boy around that fire, and they walked away. So that spirit had his chance he snuck in there and he grabbed that fire, took away from us. And they say that all the animals had a council because we didn’t know how to get our fire back. We didn’t know where it went, and we out and searched for it, and when they found it, it was a crow who snuck into that spirit’s camp, grabbed that fire, and come down the mountain, bring us our fire, and they say that when he grabbed the fire, he grabbed it so that that spirit wouldn’t know that it was taken. Right? And he took a great big stick out of that fire like that, which is the end of it was red, and they say that he couldn’t fly down the mountain because the stick was too heavy, right? So he hopped, and he hopped over down the mountain until he got to us, and they say by the time he got to us, that it there was just a piece of coal in his mouth. Now, not a lot of people know this, but crow used to have a really beautiful singing voice. He was a really good singer. He didn’t have that cawing that he has now, right? And his feathers used to be all white, and they kind of shined like a rainbow when you held it up to the sun, and it still does that. If you were to hold a crow feather up to the sun, you can see that rainbow inside the feather, but they say crow’s feathers went all black from the smoke and from the coal. From the coal in his mouth, he lost his voice, so we sing that crow hop song, and those dancers kind of tell that story and hop around like that crow and how crow hops, right? This is a crow hop.
[ Drumming, Singing ]
Is that one of our songs? Yeah? Did you make that one? Who made that one? That song was actually a song that one of our boys made. They don’t remember which one made it, but they remember it was made by us, so that’s an original song. You won’t hear that from any other group. You hear that from us, right? And sometimes those boys how they make the songs, is they’ll be at home and a song will come in your head, as a verse, right? And they’ll try to tap it out and they’ll come up with the lead. Then they’ll try to make a body fit to it that kind of matches the lead, right? You know, and then they’ll do the second body, and if it sounds good, and they went through their drum list of all songs, and it doesn’t sound like any other song, then we can use that as a new song. But if it sounds too close to some other song, then we can’t use that. We have to make sure our songs are original, and they sound different from the other songs. So that was one that they made up. Boys, we’re going to do a sidestep, okay? I know it’s a hard beat but we’re going to do a sidestep to show them the different beat. They’re asking about different beats today, right? You know? So we’re going to show them a different beat.
[Dr. Ryan Bruce:] Was it a chant or are there words?
[Kevin Myran:] That was chants? So most of our songs are chants? We barely use words, but when we do, you have to know what the meanings are, so you have to know what you’re singing. Right? So if you’re going to sing in the language, you have to know what it is you’re singing because you’re singing to Great Spirit. You can’t just sing gibberish, right? And then not know what you’re saying, so you won’t know what you’re saying, so if you hear do a word song, we’ll tell you the meaning. Maybe we’ll sing a word song a little bit later, for yous, okay? But this one’s going to be a jingle dress style dance song. Right? And the song’s pretty special. It’s not an old style dance at all, you know? It’s less than 100 years old. Right? And it come about during a time when a old man’s granddaughter was really sick. And he couldn’t figure out what was wrong with her, right? So he had a dream of these cones that he puts on the dress and that he was dancer around the circle that she would get better around that circle with these cones, and that’s what he did. He constructed her dress, and they sang the first jingle dress dance style and the first time around they say that she had a hard time going around. They had to help her, pretty much carry her all the way around. The second time, you know, she only needed one person to help her around. Third time, she was moving on our own. And by the fourth time around, she was dancing. So at a powwow, when you hear that the jingle dress dancers are coming up, if you have somebody in your family that can use healing, that’s the time that we ask, and you know how you guys gave us tobacco to sing. You would do the same thing. You’d walk up to a jingle dress dancer and offer tobacco to sing for your family member that’s — or dance for your family member that’s sick. And what she would do is she would say prayers that the right people come into her life, into that person’s life. That’s going to help them get better. This is a jingle dress style beat. It’s a little different. It’s going to be a sidestep beat. It’s a little faster, and you’ll see. You guys ready? You got one? All right.
[ Drumming, Singing ]
All right, so let’s sneak up, okay? The thing about the sneak up dance — because that last song, on those honour beats, you’ll see the girls at powwow, they’ll raise their fans during those honour beats, and they say that they’re letting go of those prayers, so they’re ask — they’re sending off those prayers to Great Spirit and asking that eagle to take those prayers and with those cones and all that, so you’ll see that at a powwow when you go there. So in this style here, this style of dance is sneak up. It’s for a men’s traditional dancers. Only men come up and dance in that song. Just like that jingle dress dance, only the girls will appear in dance. You won’t see mixed dancers in there. That crow hop, most all dancers do the crow hop, okay? So most of them will do the crow hop. And this style of dance here is just men and they’re sneaking up on their enemy. That’s what the true meaning was was they’re sneaking up on Custer and they tell that story, that war dance, that story to how they snuck up and how they couped and how they stole the drum and how they got away and how they won that battle. And that’s what this this song was all about, and that honour beat you hear here, you’re going to get a ruffle in the beginning. Everybody’s going to be ruffling the song. You hear great big honour beats, bang, bang, bang, bang. So that’s when the dancers will sneak up. Right? And then when those great big hits go bang-bang, they’ll duck down because that’s gunfire and you’ll notice. Here we go. You ready?
[ Drumming, Singing ]
We’ll do a grass dance song next, guys. Yeah? So there’s only — so you hear about the drum, right? You hear about those war dances. Right? You hear about those kind of things, right? There’s only two war dances left out of all the war dances that we ever did. That was one of them, so the sneak up is one of the war dances. Another war dance is the grass dancers. Okay? Those grass dancers were the elite. They were the best of the best of warriors. They were the fastest runners. They were the fastest on horses. They could camouflage themselves in the best way, and they were the best of fighters. Right? Them and the dog soldiers. Okay? We sent the grass dancers out first as scouts. Right? So that was their job is to go into enemy territory and to scout, and a lot of times they would put real grass onto their regalia, so when they moved, it would move like that grass blowing in the wind, and you couldn’t even tell that they were there. Right? So during that grass dance, when you see their style of movement, some of them will be swinging and swaying and they’ll be moving like that grass. And then other parts of it will be some deadly kip work with their feet. Right? And that’s them in battle, right? That’s them right in the middle of battle, and they’re trying to get away and get back, so they have their own story to tell, those grass dancers. And a lot of people don’t know that that was one of our original war dances. It was the grass dancers actually came out first, and then the men traditional dancers came out, because that’s how our dancers were, right? The scouts went first. Right? And then our warriors came after, after we knew how many how many soldiers that were there or how many enemy was there. This is a another war style of dance.
[ Drumming, Singing ]
So I don’t know if you guys can see the — we got a baby in the background here. We got a couple moms that come out to listen to the music, and like I said, it brings the community out, right? And just to see the baby listen in, and you see that it doesn’t scare the baby. The baby doesn’t cry. Right? And if you really look at it, when the baby’s inside a mother’s belly, that’s what she hears. Right? It’s a heartbeat. So it’s nice to hear it, when you come out of the womb and you hear the heartbeat again, you know, that big heartbeat that we do. Right? And that’s what we call that. That’s the heartbeat of our mother, or the heartbeat of the nation. Right? So we call that, that beat, that main beat, that’s the heartbeat of mother. Right? And you hope that Creator hears that, that here we are, and we sing those cries out, that first lead to Creator, and the second lead coming into our ancestors, right? And sing nice and hard that way.
[Dr. Ryan Bruce:] Kevin, it seemed like that one was a little bit different, more different than a lot of the other ones that you played. It was really nice. There was parts when some singers were louder than others. How did — how do you make those decisions while you’re performing?
[Kevin Myran:] Some singers are loud — oh, you mean the leads?
[Dr. Ryan Bruce:] Not just the leads. There was times, you know, at the end of the first or second time through, definitely when the women were louder,
[Kevin Myran:] Oh, we came in louder. Okay. So it always starts off smooth, starts off low, and it works gradually, it gradually works its way up. Right? So we try to pick up the momentum near the end of the song, so we try to get a little louder, a little stronger in our singing, and then you’ll hear the girls come in. Right? And that’s when we bring our voices down a little bit. Right? And some of the singers’ voices are just — they really like that song, so just goes a little louder, you know, depending on how well you know that song, and sometimes the singers don’t know the song that well. Right? So the voices go down a little bit because they’re not too sure. They’re just learning that song, right? You know? When we do presentations, like this is the first time we actually recorded during practice, right? We usually don’t do that. Usually we’ll do a presentation, and we’ll have set songs that we’re going to sing, right? — and ones that we’re really good at and ones that we really practice lots, right? So having you record during drum practice is kind of funny for us because a lot these songs, we’re just working on. We’re still learning them right? And we’re practising them. That’s what we’re doing. We’re practising, right? So you caught us during a practice time and, you know, there was — we’re just picking our songs as we go. Right? And hopefully it sounds good when we’re singing.
[Dr. Ryan Bruce:] It does. It sounds great.
[Kevin Myran:] Yeah. This is going to be a song that was composed by Jayden. Right? [inaudible]. Ready?
[ Drumming, Singing ]
So that song did have words in it. Right? That was a word song. Jayden, want to get up and talk about that song just a little bit? I got Jayden come up, one of our lead singers. This is Jayden Wemigwans. You can see the camera there, Jade. He’s going to talk a little bit about that song.
[ Indigenous Language ]
>> [Jayden:] I learnt that introduction from my teacher here, Tasha. As we practice our language or we were practising our language, but that song I composed for the All Nations Juniors Drum Group, and in those words, it’s saying that all the Anishinaabes, they’re welcome to come dance. And Kakeo [phonetic] it’s a mixture of Cree dialect and Ojibwe, so I mixed two of those dialects into one song and created that Anishinaabe Kakeo. It means come, and “hone maetuan” [phonetic] is like, “you’re here”, to be safe, so you’re dancing area is safe. So I also compose a lot of other songs, like crow hops and other straight songs, different dance styles. So all of my teachings from other singers and other song composers helped me to create my own songs, and yeah, so what else?
[Kevin Myran:] Awesome. Thanks, Jade. That’s good.
[Jayden:] All right. Thank you.
[Dr. Ryan Bruce:] Yeah, thank you. It’s great to hear about the songs and the composers and what they’re thinking and how they’re learning. Very valuable. Thank you.
>> [Dr. Howard Spring:] Well, it’s great to hear that young people are still creating.
Kevin Myran:] Yeah, they’re creating. Yeah, that’s the best part about it is that they’re actually doing the creation of their own songs. Right? They’re not scared. Right? And it’s not illegal for us anymore which is even better. The last song we’re going to sing, it’s — for you guys — it’s called the AIM song. Right? And we sing this in the end, and the AIM is called the American Indian Movement. Okay? And they came about during the ’60s and ’70s when native people needed to be picked up, and they needed to learn about the culture, so they came around and they actually got rid of whole liquor stores and took over towns and took the alcohol away and brought in culture. They brought in drumming. They brought in medicines. They brought in teachers. They brought in dancers, and they helped picked up the community in many different nations. Right? And there’s a chapter in Ontario of AIM and run by two females. Right? And we were asked, as our drum group, to be the AIM drum group for Ontario, so these young guys not only have — not only are they All Nation Juniors Drum Group, right? They’re also southern Ontario’s AIM’s drum group, and they’re also Thunderbird Lodge drum group for sun dance, right? So they’ve earned those spots throughout the years that they’ve been dancing. So this last song is pretty important to us. It represents that pickup of our people. It represents that us taking back our culture. It represents the warriors that we still have. This is our last song and thank you, Howard and thank you to the University of Guelph for inviting us out to talk about our drum and, you know, and to listen to our songs and take the time to get to know First Nations people and about some of our celebrations, so we just want to say thank you. Thank you for taking the time to do that. It’s the last song, Howard! It’s the last song.
[ Drumming, Singing ]
All right. That was the AIM song. That’s usually what we end with. This time, I’ll get all the singers to come up here and introduce themselves real quick, so you guys at least have that for your video, you know who sang for yous, right? I’m going to introduce Anthony Gladue. He was our [inaudible] worker. He couldn’t make it out, due to vacation. He’s out in ceremony, out in — out west, but he was here the first round. He been singing with us for about three years. He’s our driver. He gets us at all the powwows with the van and he’s also a sun dancer, and these boys sang for him last round, so I just want to say thank you to Anthony for coming out in the beginning, right? I’ll bring up Joey Myran. Come on up, Joey. Introduce yourself.
[Joey:] My name is Joey Myran.
[Kevin Myran:] [inaudible] Dakota.
[Joey:] [inaudible] Manitoba.
[Kevin Myran:] How long you been singing, Joey?
[Joey:] Three years.
[Kevin Myran:] Three years? How do you like leading, when you do leads?
[Joey:] It’s good.
[Kevin Myran:] What does the drum make you feel like? Proud?
[Joey:] Yeah.
[Kevin Myran:] Proud? Okay. Most natives are shy, so we’re lucky to get him up here. Okay, thanks, Joey. Kaelen, come on up, man. Right? Kaolin here, he’s been with us for — this is Kaelen Pelletier. He’s been with us quite a long time. Also, about three or four years. He’s also our eagle staff carrier, so at council fire, we have a youth eagle staff and he carries out through all the protests and everything that we do. He looks after it, feeds it. Our first drum, the one that we were given from — I talked about it — from Charging Horse, Kaelen here looks after that drum at his house, right? So we have a drum on the other side of the city and we have a drum on this side of the city, so we can sing anytime we like [inaudible] part of the city you want to. And Kaelen, do you have anything to say? How’s the drum make you feel, man?
[Kaelen:] Proud.
[Kevin Myran:] Proud? Awesome, man. Okay. Good one. Well get Dakota up here quick. This is Dakota Myran, one of our lead singers. He’s been — how long have you been singing?
[Dakota:] Since I was six.
[Kevin Myran:] Since he was about six, and Dakota here is the reason why we started All Nation Juniors Drum Group. He wanted me to learn how to sing. I didn’t know how to sing, so I called upon my co-workers and they helped me along and we started a drum group. Right? And here we are today. Dakota, how does drum make you feel?
Dakota:] Closer to my spirit.
[Kevin Myran:] Closer to his spirit, man. Awesome. Call up Albert. Albert Therrien. Albert Therrien is also another one of our original members. And thank you for coming out today, Albert. Okay? And how does the drum make you feel?
[Albert:] Makes me feel good.
[Kevin Myran:] Makes you feel good?
[Albert:] Yeah.
[Kevin Myran:] All right. Thanks, Albert. All right? Jay, Jay, you guys met Jay already, okay? Jay, how’s the drum make you feel, Jay? Come on over.
[Jayden:] Well, drumming makes me feel happy. It’s always a place I could rely on and express myself in the way I want to sing, and I also dance, so dancing helps me cope with any stress or any negative things are happening in my life. I always like to go back to my culture and sing my heart away. Yeah.
[Kevin Myran:] Awesome. Thanks, Jay.
[Jayden:] You’re welcome.
[Kevin Myran:] Girls up, Dani, and Wynona. You’re okay? Yeah, this is — go on, introduce yourself, Dani.
>> [Dani:] Where’s the camera?
[ Indigenous Language ]
Hi everyone. My spirit name is Black Bear Woman. I live in Toronto. My family comes from Gwich’in First Nation as well as Wiikwemkoong on Manitoulin islands. I’m Thunderbird Clan, and I’ve only been singing with All Nation Juniors for about a year now but I’ve been singing since I was six years old, ceremony songs and I’m a powwow dancer. I’m a jingle dress dancer and I take our culture very seriously, and my goal in life is to share everything with the young ones to help that generational traumas. So yeah, chi-miigwech.
[Kevin Myran:] All right. Thanks, Dani. Come on up, Wynona.
[Wynona:] Oh, there’s the camera. Hi.
[ Indigenous Language ]
I’m Ganeegahaga [phonetic], Anishinaabe, and Mi’kmaq as well. I’ve been singing like since I was 13, I think? — 14 with Council Fire. And yeah so far it’s like been a fantastic experience. I love it. I love singing. For me, it’s like my time to like heal. A lot of it’s my self-healing, and yeah, I just get to share and create songs and with a great group of like guys and girl and yeah, so thank you.
[Kevin Myran:] Awesome. Thank you, Wynona. Well, that’s the All Nation Juniors, and that’s the gist of us.