AMPLIFY: gchi miigwech maskihkiya

Song inspired by the book Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer and commissioned for premiere of APTN music series, directed by Shane Belcourt and produced by Michelle St. John and Jeremy Edwardes. Featuring vocal performance by Hidden River Singers (Monique Mojica, Michelle St. John, Rose Stella), guitar by Shane Belcourt, and recorded, mixed, mastered and produced by David Travers-Smith. 2018

Appin Nikamowina

Part of a dypthych created for the exhibition With Secrecy and Despatch, I walked along a stretch of highway across a gorge where, on the facing cliff, the Dharawal people were massacred in the 1816 to make way for settlers to farm the area. The chanted chorus is from listening at that place, and the verses were created cutting/pasting together the original words from the officials and military as a way to make them symbolically reckon with their actions and apologise in their own words. 2016

Back to Where My Heart Belongs /

Singing Toronto / Indian Summer

Beginning in the summer of 2013 until the early fall of 2018, I was 1/3 of a songwriting project with my long-time singing partner, Cree knowledge keeper Joseph Naytwhow and Metis spoken word artist and singer, Moe Clark. We composed an album's worth of songs, two of which have been made into music videos.

Why the Caged Bird Sings

An ongoing series of song co-written with incarcerated women, men and detained youth in provincial correctional centres, federal prisons and municipal detention centres. Various locations and co-producers. Sponsored by Common Weal Community Arts. 2008 to present

(Ke’tapekiaq Ma’qimikew): The Land Sings: okâwîmâw

Part of #callresponse touring exhibition, Mi'kmaq artist Ursula Johnson invited a site-specific song to be composed using topographical features between the site of the performance in downtown Toronto and the nearest reserve. As part of my practice of 'singing land' I traversed portions of that path to listen to what mother earth wanted me hear. 2017

Singing Our Bones Home: kîwêsimowin

Commissioned by artist Métis Julie Nagam as part of her installation for Land/Slide in Markham to honour an Indigenous ossuary archaelogists discovered near the exhibition site. For this project, I traveled to a ceremonial place in SK to listen for this song. 2013