Aural Traditions: Indigenous Youth and the Hip-hop Movement in Canada

A Dissertation Submitted to the Committee on Graduate Studies in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctorate of Philosophy in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences

TRENT UNIVERSITY

Peterborough, Ontario, Canada

© Copyright by Karyn Recollet 2010

Indigenous Studies Ph.D. Graduate Program

May 2010 *

Library and Archives Bibliotheque et 1*1 Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de I'edition

395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington OttawaONK1A0N4 Ottawa ON K1A 0N4 Canada Canada

Your file Votre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-64088-3 Our file Notre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-64088-3

NOTICE: AVIS:

The author has granted a non­ L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library and permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par Nnternet, preter, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans le loan, distribute and sell theses monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, sur worldwide, for commercial or non­ support microforme, papier, electronique et/ou commercial purposes, in microform, autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats.

The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriete du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in this et des droits moraux qui protege cette these. Ni thesis. Neither the thesis nor la these ni des extraits substantiels de celle-ci substantial extracts from it may be ne doivent etre imprimes ou autrement printed or otherwise reproduced reproduits sans son autorisation. without the author's permission.

In compliance with the Canadian Conformement a la loi canadienne sur la Privacy Act some supporting forms protection de la vie privee, quelques may have been removed from this formulaires secondaires ont ete enleves de thesis. cette these.

While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires aient inclus dans in the document page count, their la pagination, il n'y aura aucun contenu removal does not represent any loss manquant. of content from the thesis.

1+1 Canada ABSTRACT Aural Traditions: Indigenous Youth and the Hip-hop Movement in Canada

Karyn Recollet

In my dissertation I discuss Native emcees' use of hip-hop music to critically engage their contemporary environments by creating new ways of speaking about themselves, their relationships to cities, and their collective historical memory of traditionally

Indigenous lands. The contemporary urban poetry of hip-hop emcees pieces together a collective memory of space and time through contextualizing Indigenous lived experience such as the residential schools which have perpetuated a passed-down grieving. Through examining the lyrics and the narratives of individual emcees, this project illustrates their collective insights and memories, exposing the activism and intelligence embedded within emcee voicing. My work reveals that emcee practices of mimicry, parody, comedy, wordplay, and the ethic of 'keepin' it real,' disrupt 'discourses of dominance'(Vizenor, 1994), and introduce new ways to speak about the cities as

Indigenous space.

This project utilizes a fusion of methods including interviewing and discourse analysis to identify how urban spaces are being thought about, navigated, and negotiated.

My project includes emcee testimonials that reveal the critically conscious and transformational voicings of hip-hop emcees participating in an oral-based movement which resonates with the oratorical genius and activism of past and present Indigenous leaders. The writing style of this dissertation adopts a storytelling methodology, interweaving poetry, activist, and scholarly writing to mirror the creative dialogue produced within emcee prose in formulating counter-narratives that shape new visions of what it means to be Indigenous in a contemporary urban context.

ii DEDICATION

This dissertation is dedicated to young artists in the hopes that you know how much you are loved and supported in voicing Eekwolity and hope. You embody the movement with courage, dignity and critical awareness, while pushing boundaries and transforming the ways in which we perceive our realities.

in ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Within our historical memory, names have been erased, and voicings have been suppressed. Given this history, it is very important to me that I name in order to acknowledge the generous and wise people that have helped me throughout this dissertation process. The emcees inspiring the work have shared their creative process and their visionings of how the world could be better. I would like to acknowledge, first and foremost, the emcees and artists who have provided honest and powerful narratives.

These artists include: Eekwol, Daybi, Theresa Seymour, Wab Kinew, Joey Cappo,

Ostwelve, Quese Imc, Kinnie Starr, Rex Smallboy, Carrielynne Victor, Dallas Arcand,

Joey Stylez, Jb the FirstLady, Mathew CreeAsian and Wabs Whitebird, Blu and Plex.

Through their abilities in 'keepin' it real,' these brave emcees are continuously carving out spaces for us to move in our environments.

During the time of writing, I have witnessed many stories shared by strong women whose shared experiences have helped me to nurture myself and those around me while writing. Moments shared with these women have been very meaningful to me and I am tremendously grateful for their generosity in spirit. These women include: May

Cotter, Vicki Cotter, Rena Ermine, Edna Manitowabi, Verna St. Denis, Marrie Mumford,

Natasha Beeds, Kerry Bebee, Linda Bebee, Vanessa Bebee, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Barb

Rivett, Patricia Monture, Molly Blyth, Lynne Davis, Jennifer Kriesberg, and Naja and

Swelen (The Weaverbird Collective). I can only hope to contribute songs, stories, and ideas into the world as lovingly and passionately as you all have.

I would also like to acknowledge William Kingfisher my friend and colleague for providing much encouragement through sharing ideas, thoughts, and gentle wisdoms.

iv Shawn Recollet, thank you for coming into my life and for your kind support during the final stages of this project. I hope to always have you at my side.

I am especially and eternally grateful for my mother Vicki Cotter. I cannot begin to express how much you mean to me and how blessed I feel to have your love and support. I could not have done this without you.

This dissertation is the culmination of time and much critical attention provided by my committee members: Dr. Lynne Davis (supervisor), Dr. Molly Blyth, and Dr. Neal

McLeod. I would also like to thank Dr. Kimberly Blaeser for her diligent review of the manuscript and vital suggestions. I am filled with gratitude for all of your support and I will carry your advice forward into the next stages of my life.

v TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract ii Dedication iii Acknowledgements iv Table of contents vi Glossary of terms viii

Introduction: Hip-hop's Stories of Survivance 1 Stories of survivance 1 Emcee treatise 4

Chapter One: As she Approaches the Mic - Research, Process and Language. 7 Research goals 7 Methods 9 Discourse analysis as a storytelling methodology 9 Interviewing 13 Language 17 First Nations/Aboriginal/Native/Indigenous 19 Terminology and foundational concepts 22 a) Gerald Vizenor's and Keith Basso's conceptual contributions 22 b) Concepts related to Indigenous 'movement' 26 c) Emcee concepts 35 Introduction to research topic 36 My postionality in relationship to the research 40 Ethical space 41 My research process 45 Indigenous scholarship and Indigenous poetics 45 Chance 52 Performance pedagogy 53 Chapter summaries 57

Chapter Two: Emcees Who-Stories Travel - Emcee Storytelling Techniques and Use of Language 60 Youth and the urban context 60 Relocations and removal 61 The marginalization of Indigenous space and Indigenous spatial consciousness 64 The ahistorical Indian:Youth as threat to 'safe' city spaces 65 Quese IMC: story(ing) the movement 69 Introduction to emcee language and storytelling process 72 Urban Indigenous border crossing 82

vi Chapter Three: Origin Stories & Orality - Indigenous Voicings of 'the Struggle' 87 Genealogies of emcee messagings 88 Origins of hip-hop: socio/cultural context 90 Hip-hop stories of origin within the academy 95 Hip-hop in the prairies and places north of the border 97 African and Native Indigenous oralities: relationships and practices 102 Indigenous hip-hop's internal tensions - the struggle for authenticity 123

Chapter Four: The Transgressional Space of Hip-hop Imbued with a Native/ Indigenous Flavour 144 The spaces from which emcees speak 144 The significance of emcee voicing 160 Cree-ation 164 Emcee transgressions: hip-hop strategies for movement 184 Ruptures through wordplay 199 'Know u'r history': an analysis of temporal & spatial geographies 202 Crew-speak: the hidden text 216 The local: a contested space 220

Chapter Five: Now You See Me, Now You Don't - Rapping Presence While Bordering Absence 227 The authentic Indian 228 Essentialism 228 Transgression & border crossing 232 Aboriginality pushed outside of history 233 Illuminating difference 246 Youth as threat? /or/ dangerous environments? 262

Chapter Six: Caucasian Features or Cheekbones that Cut Glass - Emcee Namings, Identities and Cross-Bloodedness 268

Epilogue: 'Soul Travelling' with Abandon- From Wagon Roads to 'Red Noise' 282 The colonial weight is heavy: emcees' voicing residential schools 284 Emcee treatise: soul-travelling & transmotion 290

Bibliography 295

Appendix A: Interview schedule 311 Appendix B: Emcee profiles 313 Appendix C: Introductory treatise references 317

vn GLOSSARY OF TERMS

B-boy and B-girl:

These terms are the shortened forms of break boys and break girls which are the given names for break dancers. These terms originated from Kool Here to describe dancers who reach the breaking point. However, it can also be associated with those who dance the break beat produced by breaks on a record. These breaks on a record are instances where the music itself is fashioned to highlight the unique styles of break boys and break girls as they showcase their skills.

Biting:

This term, meaning to plagiarize, is typically used in reference to a hip-hop artist stealing another artist's lyrics. When applied to graffiti writing, it means to steal someone's idea and/or style. In an extreme case, one may bite another's name tag /a symbolic signature of someone's identity if certain artists have built a name for themselves.

Breaking:

The term breaking refers to break dancing, a street dance that emerged in the mid

1970's incorporating uniquely styled movements such as the 'freeze' to illustrate originality and athleticism. It evolved as part of the hip-hop movement amongst African

American and Puerto Rican youth in Manhattan and the South Bronx of New York City.

Crew/Crew Collectivities:

A crew collectivity is constructed within a cultural system of extended kinship ties, and close social networks that offer support and critique based on loyalty and

viii respect. A crew collectivity may also include the audience and community for whom the messages of emcees are intended. Members within crews are often tied together economically, socially and emotionally and often reflect affiliation to a particular region or locality.

Freestyling:

'Freestyling' is a practice in hip-hop where the artist improvises lyrical content to capture or transform the mood of a particular moment in a particular environment. It is a form of improvised rapping which involves no previously composed lyrics.

Frontin':

The term frontin' refers to a practice of putting on a facade typically to impress and to deceive others in order to maintain a certain image. Basically this concept is used to describe someone's behavior when they are obvious about trying to be or act like someone that they are not. It also describes a process whereby one is attempting to over glorify one's experience. This practice represents an opposite meaning of 'keepin it real.'

Graffiti writing:

Graffiti writing is one of the five elements of hip-hop culture alongside break dancing, beat making, deejaying, and emceeing. It produces the visual expression of which break dancing is viewed as the physical expression within hip-hop. Graffiti writing is often seen as a form of political activism, where the simple act of producing

'tags' or signatures on subways, and other city spaces can be a subversive act.

Keep six:

IX The term 'keep six' is derived from military communications. It means to hang out and watch out for somebody when they are going into a potentially dangerous situation.

Low key:

The expression 'low key' is used when someone is attempting to describe an intention to keep something low key. It is used when someone does not want information to reach out to a broader audience. Often this expression is used when someone intends to keep a low profile, or to advise a listener that information is only between her and you.

Sampling:

Sampling is the act of taking a portion, or a sample of one sound recording and reusing it as an instrument or a different sound recording of a song.

True head:

A 'true hip-hop head' is an emcee who is knowledgeable about the history from which hip-hop emerged. The emcees in this particular study indicated that 'tru headz' are those that create music that is conscious, meaningful and does not take direction from corporate America.

x INTRODUCTION:

HIP-HOP'S STORIES OF SURVTVANCE

Through researching hip-hop, I have begun a process of tapping into a new consciousness that inspires a shift to new ways of thinking about the world around me. I have engaged the 'emcee' as a teacher of sorts to guide me through these processes and I hope that through the reading of this dissertation you will come to appreciate the intelligence embedded in the 'movements' of emcees voicing from spaces as diverse as the First Nations, Metis and urban Aboriginal communities into which they were born.

Hip-hop emcees are contemporary manifestations of orality. Within spoken word, emcees employ metaphor to produce a mirrored reflection of reality and also to express how these observed patterns can be challenged and transformed. Rather than solely reflecting an oral tradition, emcee voicing is a human response to explain and reflect upon our contemporary place within urban environments. My research engages these spoken words conveying critical messages emanating from hip-hop lyricists in the form of what I would call 'stories of survivance.'

Stories of Survivance

My research combines an analysis of the ideas and concepts introduced by hip- hop emcees which surfaced both in interviews and in their hip-hop lyrics.

Anishinaabe/Chippewa scholar Gerald Vizenor of White Earth Reservation and professor of American Studies at the University of New Mexico has provided many First Nations scholars with the language necessary to convey certain concepts relevant to our research.

In my research, Vizenor's (1998) concept of stories of survivance describes an approach to comprehending the significance of emcees' contributions to our understandings of

1 modern Indigeneity. Techniques embedded within emcee spoken word narratives formulate such stories ofsurvivance which Vizenor describes as "an active repudiation of dominance, tragedy, and victimry" (Vizenor, 1998, p. 15). Vizenor observes that

"survivance, in the sense of native survivance, is more than survival, more than endurance or mere response; the stories ofsurvivance are an active presence" (p. 15).

Within the context of my research, emcee stories/narratives of 'survivance' describe the experiences of young Indigenous people surviving various manifestations of colonialism within their lives. Indigenous youth are dealing with multiple tensions which include disillusionment and social isolation. These conditions are impacts of an assimilative and controlling ideology perpetrated through the Indian Act. Young people struggle with formulating a positive sense of self in a racially discriminatory socio/cultural environment. In fact, many youth are experiencing the passed-down effects of residential schools which surfaces as a feeling of self-hate, a condition of guilt and shame associated with being Aboriginal. Other contemporary manifestations of colonialism include high suicide rates, and the continuing abuse of self and others through substance abuse and violence. Further, marginalization and neglect in mainstream educational systems are causing many to discontinue, thus increasing the colonial cycle of dependency and struggle.

Emcees claim an active presence through producing narratives which critically reflect upon one's experiences. Emcees solidify this presence, using hip-hop as a vehicle to communicate concepts and processes that are integral to asserting a place in our contemporary world.

2 "You can tell by the way I speak [that] a lot of these ideas are very intangible

and that they're about human nature and human development, where we're

going and what people need to do in order to get there. In the right way and

with the right steps and the right breath, and for me, it [hip-hop] is more about

those ideas and those concepts." (Theresa Seymour, personal communication,

October 17,2007)

Theresa's comments are reflections of linguistic determinations that I made in narrating this particular project to include concepts such as "envisionings" and

"messagings." These terms have been inspired by the active, transformational quality of emcee prose. Indigenous emcees have also been influenced by the rhythms and verb- based structures of Native languages. Some of the artists that I interviewed speak their

Indigenous language, while in other cases, the verb-based nature of Native languages is transmitted and translated in different ways, becoming infused in style, performance and emcee expressions such as gestures. These elements, embedded within action-orientated

Indigenous languages and oral traditions, influence the English that emcees speak, and they mimic a state of continuous be-ing and change that is expressed both in the music and in the formulation of my dissertation.

3 Emcee Treatise

In accordance with the narrative tradition of emcees, the treatise below embodies an active presence that reflects the stories of survivance documented throughout my research. In the treatise, I have utilized some of the verb-based languaging of the emcees that I interviewed, and offer this work as a story which narrates emcee patterns of survivance (see Appendix C). Excerpts from this treatise are repeated throughout the dissertation in order to convey how stories of survivance endure and insert themselves as an active presence. It is meant to illustrate that emcees are social activists like some of the old Indigenous storytellers, creating new realities through their own observations and carefully crafted representations of patterns. This piece that I have written is an attempt to accentuate the performative element of Indigenous poetry in voicing a collective consciousness which situates the emcee within a particular conceptual space described below.

It's like we come from the stars. Our voicings do not follow the 'traditional'

Western melodic stylez, but rather artfully integrate the break beats and the

ruptures to reflect our experiences and visionings. We come from the

stars... from above. We crow walked and we learned to fly. Me and my

sketchbook break dancing on rooftops look down at the patterns below,

creating art to carve out spaces, building new conceptual frameworks to move

within your city while we are in it. We resist your classifications and will

infuse our creative praxis to reflect where we are at any given moment. Our

crews represent incubators of intelligence to gift our wordplay with conceptual

4 integrity drawn from rich collective knowledges. We are positioning above

your categorizations and labeling practices emanating from your media

imprisoning systems which effectively fragmentize or erase us all together.

We express a rich historical consciousness which flows into our voiced

presence in this moment. Part of the presence is our sensuality; we are fully

voiced, sensual writers very aware of the feeling of the moment. And through

our 'feeling' we produce a movement that entices others to move with us. We

also practice a pedagogy of fusion, originating out of our experiences of a

multi-plexed universe. We transgress beyond the ways in which you have

named your world through infusing our praxis which draws upon our active

critical reflection of our experiences with your systems and institutions. We

articulate a questioning of your leading narratives and your systems of naming

through our own messaging processes which engage our creative praxis. And

this is what our voice sounds like, feels like and looks like. This is what we

are doing. This is our voiced presence, originating from our world(s) -

effectively changing/mixing up the ways in which you see and experience

yours.

This project maps out emcees' experiences mediated through hip-hop. The next few chapters illustrate lyrical patterns of survivance as they contribute to an 'aural' tradition, a tradition that embodies multi-layered sounds and resonances of emcees echoing past, present and future voicings. Throughout the dissertation, my use of the concept 'aural' in conjunction with 'oral,' is situated in a similar fashion to their application in City treaty: a long poem (2002) written by poet/playwright Marvin Francis from Heart Lake First

5 Nation, Alberta, Canada. Within his poetry he describes "words on paper not aural not oral not heard" (p. 29). 'Aural/oral' denotes an Indigenous soundscape where we "make sound that contours lands" (Francis, 2002, p. 67). It also reflects a similar Indigenous tradition conceptualized by Kyra Gaunt in Translating double-dutch to hip-hop: the musical vernacular of Black girls 'play (2004), whereby oral-aural actions, performance and expressions characterize what she calls a black cultural aesthetic. My insertion of

'aural' is meant to provide a double meaning, thereby infusing and enriching our understanding of the performative and embodied elements of 'orality.'

6 CHAPTER ONE: AS SHE APPROACHES THE MIC- RESEARCH, PROCESS AND LANGUAGE

Research Goals

My dissertation represents a journey into the world of hip-hop produced by Native emcees. I understand that this use of the term 'Native' is problematic in the sense that it fails to encompass the 'real' complexity and richness of Indigeneity; however, I use it to distinguish between Native emcees and those of African-Canadian/American or

Caribbean Indigenous peoples. Also, it reflects the terminology used by emcees in referring to their ethnicity. My main research focus is to determine the multiple layers of meaning created through emcee hip-hop and spoken word narrative, specifically illuminating the new ways that urban spaces are being thought about and named by

Native youth. Emcee dialogue created through spoken word shares key ideas such as those reflecting on the nature of colonialism and its impacts on urban Native youth. My research will bring these contemporary thought patterns and insights to the surface in the hopes that once we understand emcee conceptualizations of our world(s), we can assist in carving out creative spaces for Aboriginal youth in the cities. Further, these new visionings of urban environments provided by emcees are created through acknowledging their right to occupy and thrive within city spaces.

As a consequence of this research goal, my dissertation explores strategies employed by emcees to reverse the effects of the dominant stories that have been told about Native people. One of their strategies involves the articulation of a 'hidden text,' a language system relying on localized lexicons to keep the knowledge within the communities. Within the context of my dissertation 'texts' also include non-verbal

7 movements, signs, signals, and gestures, rather than privileging the written text. My research aims to illuminate how hip-hop messagings transform outdated paradigms of thought by using techniques originating in African and Native musical and oral traditions such as mimicry, parody, and comedy which reverse and redirect power. Further, I accentuate how activities which take place in hip-hop crews are altering the nature of the stories that are being told, and creating new oralities stemming from very specific urban locations.

My research process has been influenced by Brazilian educator and critical theorist Paulo Freire's pedagogical approach inscribed in Pedagogy of the oppressed

(1970) which critically redirected a socio/cultural focus towards the ways in which

Indigenous people name their own realities. As much as possible, I have attempted to highlight how emcees tell their own stories, and let these processes inform the analysis.

In other words, the shape and form of emcee narratives interwoven in this project have played a key role in determining the choices I made in producing the overall form of this work. Therefore, much of the text follows a storytelling tradition which includes the incorporation of my own voicings.

One of the main goals of this project was to engage the conceptual spaces that emcees are carving out in their messaging practices. These carved out spaces have also been referred to as urban pathways producing counter-narratives, envisionings, and lived- experienced voicings (Lashua, 2006). It is my assertion that these concepts and ideas offer a blueprint for life's processes, communicating instructions for how to nurture creativity; to use wordplay as a resistance strategy; to love oneself and others; and to voice one's dreams and hopes for the future.

8 Methods:

Discourse Analysis as a Storytelling Methodology

Within my dissertation, discourses are considered as stories that are responsible for shaping specific realities. Whether produced for maintaining a dominant social order, or for the purpose of disrupting narratives of dominance, discourses are actively formulating

social relationships between people. Ruth Wodak in Gender and discourse (1997) outlines this function of discourse:

Discourse is socially constituted, as well as socially conditioned- it

constitutes situations, objects of knowledge, and the social identities of and

relationships between people and groups of people. It is constitutive both in the

sense that it helps to sustain and reproduce the status quo, and in the sense that it

contributes to transforming it. (Wodak, 1997, p.6)

Given that discourses create objects of knowledge, discourse analysis as a form of retelling and reflecting upon stories, is a useful tool in unpacking the cultural construction

of Native youth within narratives of dominance. Storytelling is a significant function of youth agency (Lashua, 2006) and is integral to transformation. A storytelling approach to

discourse analysis honours emcee praxis which challenges the primacy of the written text

and highlights the sophistication and intelligence of aural/oral, movement-based cultural

forms of expression stemming from crew collectivities. A focus on orality/aurality has been reflected in the practice of lyrical creation. For example, in gathering lyrical material from emcees for the purpose of my project, I found that in many cases emcees

didn't possess written copies of their lyrics.

9 New insights have surfaced within emcee messagings through illuminating stories and narratives. These messagings carry the potential to change the nature of social relationships and the systems that determine these relationships. Discourse analysis, when applied as a storytelling methodology, enables the exploration of the various ways in which emcees are telling their stories through the stylistic choices that are being made.

These include the types of languages and technologies that emcees are using to fluidly move within their changing urban landscapes, landscapes whose original contours began to take shape in earnest in the 1960's when "the post-World War II baby boom in

Indigenous communities soon outstripped the available resources to support their growing populations"(Pitawanakwat, 2008, p. 169).

Hip-hop involves the layering of beats, lyrics, and meanings as a practice distinctive within the art form. Discourse analysis as a method of inquiry accommodates an exploration of these layers. In doing so, it disrupts the creation of monolithic, linear truth claims about research 'subjectivities.' By necessity we need to view the various emcee musical practices as inter-textual entities arising from the intersections between various discourses. Between spaces, and activities taking shape within them become increasingly important to uncover meanings in the different layers constituting emcee knowledge creation. Stories incorporating the themes of resilience/resistance, love and struggle, masculinity/femininity, and hope and agency will be illuminated to portray how

'rupturing' dominant narratives can be used as a theoretical strategy towards their transformation.

My research will have the effect of defamiliarizing/ra//a« identities through highlighting the ways in which emcees are adopting a 'fugitive pose' (Vizenor, 1998).

10 The adoption of a fugitive pose through storytelling, as shown through emcee practices, creates different realities and transforms outdated paradigms. Spoken word and other hip-hop musical forms exist within a larger context of stories and are reflective of the contextual backdrop which renders meaning. Discourse analysis will be used to accentuate emcee stories ofsurvivance through identifying the spaces out of which mainstream Native identity constructions originate and maintain power. A storytelling approach to research reveals how border crossing, an act of transgressing borders to cross over the limits of prescribed behaviours, for example, undermines static referents of

Indigeneity.

Indigenous poetics, Indigenous scholarship, and performance pedagogy have provided a language to accentuate the storytelling of emcees as they use hip-hop as an artistic form to appropriate dominant understandings of Native youth in Canada.

Indigenous poetics and those participating in its production practice a "critical storytelling imagination" (Denzin, 2005) whereby oral traditions, particularly storytelling and poetry as performance, are used as tools to insert the self into a collective historical memory and speak about oppression and colonization through one's own lived experience. Oftentimes Indigenous poetics accentuates narrative forms that arise from between spaces, or borderlands within contemporary Indigenous urban landscapes of the mind, and of physical/spatial/spiritual geographies. Thus Indigenous poetics can be understood as mirroring an ethical space, whereby Marvin Francis's plead "you have to remember what our people went through" (Francis, 2003, p. 64), is taken seriously and applied through a variety of means. Indigenous poetics, in the context of this work is what adds an urban flavour to the mix - creating an environment where "the landscape

11 now has city" (Francis, 2002, p.69). Indigenous poetics is being claimed as encompassing that space where we imagine ourselves, and in some instances, see ourselves for the first time as we are.

Hip-hop entails the intermixing of various forms of music, gesture and style, and the use of spoken word, samples, songs, and soundscapes in their messagings. These elements all point to the need for an approach which acknowledges storying in all of its various incarnations.

Discourse analysis provides a window into the life worlds of emcees and offers a sharp tool for considering how such songs as 'R.Evolution' (Ostwelve) disrupts the positioning of Native youth as scapegoats and embodiments of social ills. The following is an example of how hip-hop reveals itself as a form of discourse that carries the potential to transform realities for Indigenous youth.

"See through the illusions,

Don't let conscience run away

They'd be no more confusions

We live substance everyday

See the formulas they're using

Variables drift astray

This isn't for your amusement

R. Evolutions here to stay"

(Ostwelve, 2008, R. Evolution, Anti-Gravity Dinosaurs)

Other illusions and formulas embedded in dominant discourses are coded using such terms as diversity, tolerance, meritocracy, difference, and visible minority. These

12 discourses are also characterized by absences of Native people and at the same time are built upon the identities of Indians (Vizener, 1998). As with the other discourses of dominance named within this dissertation, they rely upon a romanticism of tribal cultures and are disrupted through an emcee embrace of African and Native oral tradition strategies.

Interviewing

The interview was chosen as a complementary vehicle of inquiry for my approach to research. My focus on a storytelling methodology required a set of narratives only achievable through talking with emcees. In relation to my choice of discourse analysis, interviewing as a method of conversational analysis accepts that 'talk is action'

(Perakyla, 2005). I built this dissertation through interweaving the various interactions that took place in the storytelling process of interviewing. For example, I incorporated

Theresa Seymour's terminology 'voice' to shape the section on the creative process of emcees. According to Seymour, the concept 'voice' is not restricted to what takes place in the voice box, but rather is what is communicated through the eyes, hands and gestures

(emcee Theresa Seymour, personal communication).

In order to identify and contact emcee participants for this study, I relied on Spirit

Magazine (previously owned and operated by Harmony Rice and Jamie Monastyrski,

Wasauksing First Nation, Ontario) and Redwire magazine (Redwire Youth Media

Society, Vancouver, British Columbia). Coincidently, Ostwelve is currently the editor-in- chief of Redwire and he continues to be a great help in contextualizing the movement for me. Online social networking through Myspace, and Facebook connected me with the 17 emcees who participated in my study and provided excellent opportunities to review

13 biographies and tour dates, listen to their music, and to 'chat.' Once I had familiarized myself with the artists and established rapport through, in some instances, a phone call introducing who I am and what my research project entailed, it was not uncommon for them to share music through electronic mixed tapes. On one occasion, I had access to an entire album before it became officially released. Appendix (A) in my study provides a detailed interview schedule which I used as a template to guide the conversations, while appendix (B) displays profiles of participating emcees. These profiles have been attained through Facebook and other public sources.

Interviews with the following artists/emcees were carried out: Emcee Eekwol/

Lindsay Knight from Muskoday Cree Nation ('Niso' 2009 Mils Productions), emcee

Daybi from Grand Rapids Manitoba ('First Contact' 2009 Bombay Records), Kinnie

Starr of mixed blood Mohawk/Irish descent ('How I learned to Run' 2008 House of

Parlance), Rex Smallboy from Hobbema, Alberta (The Resistance), Dallas Arcand from

Alexander Cree Nation (World Champion Hoop Dancer 'REZalationzzz' 2007 Snag

Records), Wabs Whitebird, Cree/Mi'kmaq ('For the Love of Music' 2009 Fluffy

Records/ CMP), Wab Kinew, Anishinaabe radio broadcast journalist/emcee from Lake of the Woods ('Live by the Drum' 2009 Strong Front/ Indie Ends), Theresa Seymour of the

Sto:lo Nation ('No Problem' 2008), Carrielynn Victor Coast Salish/Scottish ('Eatin on

Some Skin' 2004), Joey Cappo, Cree/Saulteaux (SPP Mixtape 2006). Quese IMC of the

Pawnee and Seminole Nations ('Blue Light' 2008 Makvsee Music), Ron Dean Harris

Sto:lo ('Redd Sabbath 2: The New World Testament' 2009 Ostwleve Productions).

Mathew CreeAsian of Cree and Vietnamese descent (deejay, b-boy). Although I did not interview Joey Stylez, Cree ('The Blackstar' 2007 Swagg Productions), Blu, from Big

14 River First Nation, Saskatchewan ('Rez Life' 2007), Plex, Edmonton, Alberta

('Brainstorm' 2009), or J.B. the FirstLady, from Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan ('Indigenous

Love' 2008), their work has contributed to this research.

Semi-structured interviewing allowed for freedom of movement that was so crucial to the process of experiencing emcee messaging through dialogue. A dialogical approach (Bakhtin,1981) enabled my own participation in collective knowledge creation and exchange during the interview process. My style of interviewing encouraged flexibility on a variety of levels and I molded my approach of entering relationships, dialoguing and gifting, to suit the context. My gifting (in recognition for their generosity and ideas) was uniquely styled, and ended up reflecting the in-the-moment characteristics of the hip-hop culture itself. For example, Kinnie Starr's interview at the Sweet Water

Music Festival, in Ontario commenced after she had announced during her performance that she 'left her belt at home.' (She still looked fantastic, but needed to adjust every now and then). As we sat for the interview I took off my belt (it was real leather engraved with a special turquoise buckle) and handed it to her. Obviously, I had adjusted my thinking, to be in-the-moment, and at that moment, I knew that that was the right thing to do. My approach to interacting with the artists blended my own beliefs about the importance of being 'real' in formulating meaningful relationships. In this way, 'speaking the language' of Indigenous artists required a reflection on my life experiences as both a performer and an urban-based Cree Indigenous woman. After the interviews, I had opportunities to give back through assisting them with their promotional work (writing segments of their press kit) or through networking contacts for shows.

15 Most of interviews were conducted in the summer of 2007 with subsequent interviewing taking place in 2008. Interviews lasted anywhere from forty-five minutes to an hour and half and took place in coffee shops in downtown Regina, Saskatoon,

Toronto; at festivals and shows; or across distances over the phone. I preferred face-to- face interviews, as people have a tendency to engage in other activities while talking on the phone. In all cases I did not mind the journeys that these artists took me on with their cell phones. I found myself riding subways with them, buying food at the grocery store, clothes shopping, and guiding a little one through eating cereal on a Saturday morning.

My work made sense to me when I spoke with the artists. Even more meaningful was that my life's praxis made sense. We made connections on a number of levels, as I understood what it was to feel a need to write at three in the morning; I also empathized when they spoke about struggles associated with racism. Throughout this process I have been graced by their honesty, trust, and willingness to share. Sitting with the artists I was reminded of their drive, passion and intelligence. They gave off a strong sense of self- assuredness, along with a brave ability to express their vulnerabilities and fears. As I sat there listening to them, I had to hide the tears that may have formed in my eyes, as I realized the significance of the voicings to which I was bearing witness. Overall, their insights and envisionings made my reality seem clearer and it gave me strength to sit with them. Within this process my experiences blended with those of the artists as I willingly opened myself up to embody the meanings of what they were expressing to me. For example, when Rex Smallboy, an emcee from Hobbema, Alberta conveyed to me that he didn't want to be an Indian anymore, it was as though my memories of hurt, pain, and

16 self-hate were mirrored back to me. Empathy is a meaningful starting place for re­ thinking the ways in which we conceptualize the world(s) around us.

My process of analyzing interviews was embodied, and incorporated a focus on looking after my body through running, stretching, acting, performance, and movement.

In order to achieve an 'openness' to the language of creativity communicated by the artists, my own practices of listening and interpreting were enriched through connecting with my impulses and creativity. These practices helped me to enter into that dialogical space that was necessary to enter into relationship with the emcees. My process also entailed being comfortable in urban spaces where art and music have helped me to establish an understanding of an arts-as-activism ethic which resonates with emcee philosophy.

In analyzing the interview and lyrical materials, I had to learn how to break the habit of looking for linear/complete answers to questions that I had formed. In a sense, I had to let go of my need for harmony and an easy flowing melody, requiring that I find comfort in uncomfortable spaces brought forth by honest messagings that force us all to look at ourselves in challenging ways. The music itself and the overall messaging practices of the artists continue to inspire me and produce in me a desire to reflect upon my own understandings of who I am.

Language

My writing mirrors a storytelling methodology by incorporating 'scholarly/ academic' prose alongside a poetic/testimonial style of writing surfacing in the form of personal reflection and the "treatises" that appear at both the beginning and end of my dissertation. This influence reflects a practice housed within a particular form of writing

17 described by Chyann L. Oliver in For Sepia 'coloured girls' who have considered self/

when hip-hop is enuf,

I have a unique writing style; I fuse poetry with scholarly/critical essay. I believe

that it is crucial that knowledge be accessible to many people and in many forms.

I use the combination of poetry and scholarly/critical essay to further my

commitment to rejecting the activist/academic dichotomy because poetry/theatre,

which is often viewed as activist and artistic, and non-academic, are theory, and

should be validated as such. (2007, p. 250)

My use of certain active terms such as messagings, voicings, and languaging practices are meant to reflect the fluidity and motion that is required to actively engage

our environments through challenging existing power relationships. This use of nouns as

active-voiced verbs reflect Indigenous emcees' influence by a verb-based ideological

structure which is communicated to them in a variety of ways. This use also reflects the

ways in which emcees embody theory. In emcee-speak, within this embodiment of both

theory and method, theory takes the form of not only describing what is happening, but

also providing an imagined space which names how things can be different.

Emcees are also incorporating new language patterns in order to respond to the

fluidity of their urban environments. They are, indeed, actualizing a cutting-edge form of

language. In order to represent the language of hip-hop as transformative and shifting, my

dissertation's narrative encapsulates an understanding of concepts embedded in language

as 'stable fluidities' (Ty Smith, 2008. "Decolonizing gender" workshop, Peterborough,

Ontario). In fact, languages need to be viewed as temporary resonators of a feeling,

incorporating a voiced consciousness that is apt to change. Enabling transformation

18 within language practices is a hip-hop cultural priority. Emcees use wordplay to radicalize language in order to question static positions and the impacts of stereotyping within dominant narratives. Once institutionalized for consumption by popular culture, language becomes static, and as a result, no longer functions as a temporary resonator of a feeling and/or experience. This process of institutionalizing language has impacted the contemporary use of concepts such as the community, the rez, and the territory. These fluid spaces are adopted by Native emcees articulating a transformative land-based paradigm. For example, referring to the reserve Mistawasis (Cree name meaning 'Big child'), Vancouver-based Cree emcee Daun Pechawis (2008) speaks about 'going back to the land of the Big Child.' Wabs Whitebird's decision to name his album Chief of the

Concrete City, also illustrates a shift in dominant thinking about non-urban and urban geographies as traditional territories. This recognition of cities as Indigenous space with a history absorbed within an Indigenous collective memory is also reflected in Marvin

Francis's work in City treaty: a long poem (2002). The ways in which we speak about these spaces through poetry and spoken word, reinsert a presence which masks the absence created through a form of colonial amnesia.

These necessary insertions/interrogations highlight the multiple layers that space/territory, rez/city adopt, representing language practices that transcend static understanding of racial/spatial geographies (Razack, 2002).

First Nations/Aboriginal/Native/Indigenous

Within the narrative prose of many of the emcees that I have spoken with, the terms 'Indigenous,' 'Cree,' and 'Native' have been used interchangeably to describe individual ethnicities and the style of music that they perform. For

19 example, consider Eekwol's description of self and the music that she produces which mirrors these layers.

"The style of music is...it's definitely respecting hip-hop roots and also

respecting our own Indigenous roots. I live here on Cree territory, so my

experiences here as a Cree person is going to reflect in that music

obviously, and I'm not going to try to be from somewhere else like New

York, or L.A., cause that's the way I respect hip-hop and the culture, is by

making sure to recognize those roots. But also to incorporate my own so

that it's still something that's true and original. So that's what I do. It's

sorta Indigenous hip-hop, but I don't really like to title it as Indigenous

hip-hop, it's more hip-hop with an Indigenous flavour, with a Native

flavour." (Eekwol, personal communication, July 29, 2007)

The terms 'Indigenous flavour' coinciding with 'Native flavour' within Eekwol's statement suggest that this layering of terms, Cree, Native and Indigenous is an acceptable and realistic portrayal of an urban experience of identity(s). Given our collective historical and contemporary experiences with governments and consequently a

Western European-based tradition of naming First Nations people, our experiences of naming ourselves have generated a variety of concepts to describe our Indigeneity including the ways in which we speak about our Indigenous roots. As a way to respect this fluidity, I strive to use a variety of terms to describe Indigeneity. Within my dissertation I have chosen the term 'First Nations' to provide a context for dialogue relating to emcee relationships with traditional territories. The concept 'First Nations' consciously recognizes the histories of struggle and responds to a need for politicized

20 concepts necessary to communicate inherent rights to land. Cree emcee Eekwol, for instance, refers to Saskatchewan reserves as traditional territories, and thereby challenges dominantly held assumptions. Further, 'Indigenous' also describes Indigeneity because of its connections to a broader field within contemporary thought which situates global struggle and highlights Indigenous rights. My use of 'Indigenous' is intended to refer to a similar historical memory and consciousness shared between both African American and Caribbean cultural traditions and Aboriginal traditions in the context of music and orality/aurality. As storytellers/story keepers of historical memories, dub poets such as

Jamaican-born Lillian Allen, author of Psychic unrest: poetry (1999) create collages of socially conscious narratives which reflect a multi-positioning of Indigenous identities as well. For instance, Lillian Allen's heritage, as a Jamaican-Caribbean, Canadian woman is reflected in her poetry.

The terms 'Native' and 'Aboriginal' surface at different times when referring to specifically urban youth. The concept 'Native' came into vogue beginning in the 1960's and reflects an urban-based social climate which coincided with the movement of Native people from reserves into the cities. This process fostered movement away from traditional territories in a similar fashion to the relocation policies in the United States.

The term 'Aboriginal' arose in the 1980's in reference to the Canadian Constitution.

These terms when applied to an urban context of marginalization and ghettoization, are currently being challenged by Toronto-based Mi'kmaq/Cree emcee Wabs Whitebird who has called himself the 'Chief of the Concrete City.' To mirror the fluidity and contingency of these naming processes, I have purposefully shifted the terms

'Aboriginal,' 'Native,' and 'Indigenous' within my dissertation. While most hip-hop

21 emcees that I have spoken with refer to 'Native' as a way to self-identify, this association is layered with a belief that they themselves have been overly categorized. Within my

dissertation these terms have been used in particular ways in order to contribute to the

overall shape and form of the analysis.

Terminology and Foundational Concepts

I have been influenced by certain discourses and concepts which have been useful in

illuminating the theoretical resonance of emcee narratives in that they embody social

critique while actively engaging in social transformation. These understandings have been inspired by the conceptual integrity of various scholars writing and theorizing about

the place and space of modern Aboriginality, and the strategies used to represent the multi-positioning of Aboriginal identities. The following section reveals these concepts

and their relevance to my research.

A) Gerald Vizenor's and Keith Basso's Conceptual Contributions

Having stated that language creates meanings as 'temporary resonators,' certain

foundational concepts and terms have influenced the analysis contained in my

dissertation. Such concepts include those introduced through an awareness of the

transformational works of Keith Basso and Gerald Vizenor. These concepts, which will be explained below, include: code-switching for its contribution in understanding how

texts can be subverted to accommodate certain means; discourses of dominance, a term

describing the social narratives which have produced stereotypes of Indigenous people; fugitive pose, a positioning of resistance and renewal for reclaiming the right to self

define; the authentic Native/Indian as a construction of dominant social narratives to

represent real Indians without considering the value of Native stories to inform

22 Indigenous identity; and tragic victimry, a literary tradition whereby Native peoples are reduced to play victims as spectacle for the dominant historical memory whose notions of

'progress' have undermined the historical memories of Indigenous peoples (McLeod,

2007).

Code Switching

One of the strategies that produce Native stories ofsurvivance is the act of what

Keith Basso (1979) describes as code switching. In Portraits of the whiteman and linguistic play and cultural symbols among the Western Apache, Basso explains:

The social meanings conveyed by acts of code switching pertain to elements

of the situations in which they occur. They are context bound messages that

refer indexically to aspects of events currently taking place, and thus may be

said to communicate about phenomena that are 'present' in the situations

themselves. (Basso, 1979, p.9)

Basso's use of the social-linguistic expression 'code switching' introduces the idea that social meanings of verbal messages, as ingrained in emcee lyrics, are heavily dependant upon context. Thus strategies which include changes in pitch, volume, tempo and voice quality, signal to the knowledgeable listener, that is a listener who is aware of the context, that a certain style of subversion has begun. Emcee-adopted strategies of subversion such as word play depend upon the community's ability to create and sustain its own localized lexicons of meaning.

23 Discourses of Dominance

Vizenor's concept discourses of dominance offers a focal point for analyzing emcee responses as it reveals the unequal power relationships rooted in dominant interpretations of Native voicing both past and present. The terminology discourses of dominance introduced in Fugitive Poses (1998), describes the master narratives produced by colonial history which amongst other elements, has been shaped through the romanticism of tribal cultures and is responsible for producing the Native identity informing the mindset of dominant society. As noted by Vizenor, critical theorist David

Carroll claims:

Master narratives perpetuate an injustice, a denial of the imagination, a denial of

the right to respond, to invent, to deviate from the norm.. .In other words, the right

to little narratives that are rooted in difference rather than in the identity

established by the grand narrative. (Vizenor, 1994, p.27)

Highlighting the narrative tradition which excludes First Nations people from historical memory, 'discourses of dominance' take various guises as they themselves have undergone changes in order to maintain their power.

Fugitive Pose

The term fugitive pose, introduced by Gerald Vizenor (1998) describes a series of strategies that are useful to disrupt discourses of dominance. It is a positionality that one adopts through a careful consideration of the cultural construction and use of Indians within narratives of dominance. Vizenor infuses this term as an act of trickery and mimicry in order to actuate Native stories ofsurvivance (Vizenor, 1998).

24 The Authentic Native/Indian

Vizenor describes the authentic Native as the Indian in discourses of dominance which, in effect, suppresses actual Native identities. In the following statement he adapted his own witty wordplay in describing this positioning, "the Indian is a simulation and loan word of dominance; the Indian is an ironic crease." He further states that "the

Indian has no native ancestors; the original crease of that simulation is Columbian"

(Vizenor, 1998, p. 15). He describes Indians as simulations, embodying the absences of

Natives. Vizenor claims that the Indian transposes the real, and the simulation of the real has no reference, memories, or Native stories. The emcee narratives included in this dissertation, I would suggest, are Native stories, not Indian stories shaping one singular authentic identity. These narratives implicitly explore the multi-layered realities fashioned through a variety of Native identities finding expression through orality. The strategies that emcees employ to disrupt discourses of dominance do so by illustrating that Native youth can occupy a variety of sites simultaneously, not deferring to one authentic version. This is the task of the postindian ofsurvivance, whose practice is to

"waver over the aesthetic ruins of Indian simulations" (Vizenor, 1998, p. 15). Emcees adopt various strategies to transgress these borders; they cross over the limits of prescribed behaviours through mimicking these authentic Indians and using symbolic language and metaphor to create alternative visionings of Nativeness against a contemporary urban backdrop.

Tragic Victimry

Gerald Vizenor's concept tragic victimry gives breadth to the overall impact and significance of emcee messaging to resist conceptual imprisonment. Histories of writing

25 Indians as tragic victims, for example, produced stereotypes such as the gangster figure dominating peoples' perceptions of Native youth presence within cities. Within the discourses of dominance, tragic victimry manifests in its contemporary form as gatherings of Native youth in cities who are being 'seen' and treated as gang members.

The Native gangster accommodates Native marginalization in city spaces as it fits within the racial/space-based geographies of urban areas and legitimates the association of

Native people with ghettos and urban strolls (or red light districts).

Emcees repudiate the association of tragic victimry through stories of survivance created through the metaphor and symbolism of mythology building. For example, Cree emcee Daybi No-Doubt, in his song entitled 'The Quickening' (First Contact, 2009,

Bombay Records) proclaims that "we survived, we crow walked and we learned to fly," thus articulating a myth as a story of survivance, outlining processes of how to live in this world despite the multitude of obstacles that Indigenous youth are called upon to negotiate and survive. Cree playwright, author and composer Tomson Highway's understanding of modern mythologies (Highway, 2005) as the spiritual landscape of

Indigenous peoples, focuses on elements of transformation. This transformation from human to crow is possible in the magical space that transcends science and theology to produce a reality that challenges the victimry of the Native gangster image, an image which will be discussed in detail as the dissertation unfolds.

B) Concepts Related to Indigenous 'Movement'

I introduce the following concepts: space, between space, consciousness, consciousness-raising, historical consciousness, traversing, transgressing, and Vizenor's concept transmotion in order to describe the thought space and physical positioning that

26 inspires emcee music creation. These terms also highlight the significance of

'movement' within this dissertation as an act of Indigenous survivance.

Space and Between Space

Space is an important concept that will be defined and redefined throughout this dissertation illuminating the in-flux, multi-layered nature of the uniquely styled hip-hop emcees themselves. Choctaw, Cherokee/Irish American author and scholar Louis Owen's

(2002) concept frontier space articulated in his article Moonwalking technoshamans and the shifting margin: decentering the colonial classroom, captures the essence of spaces between. His description of frontier space delineates the nature of the space between as always unstable, multidirectional, and indeterminate. Owens formulates a characterization of frontier space to bear an inconclusive range of possibilities for those with the strength to dwell in such spaces.

My focus on space represents the nature of the creative force which is ingrained in hip-hop praxis. Liverpool-based scholar and author Brett Lashua's article entitled Just another Native? Soundscapes, chorasters and borderlands in Edmonton, Alberta,

Canada (2006) conceptualizes space as comprising "intersections of mobile elements and shifting, vague borders" (p.398) as opposed to the fixed, distinctive nature of place. This work engages those creative spaces that defy static categorizations. Emcee 'soul travelling' which engages between spaces inspires a practice centralizing movement and the transgression of space.

Throughout this dissertation, I also refer to Indigenous space which has been partially shaped through processes of the social activism of past family members such as the emcee's grandmothers and grandfathers as those Indigenous ancestors who left a

27 legacy of intellect and resiliency for generations to follow. My use of the term space is also meant to reflect a shifting, multi-layered, highly mobile way of naming and thoughtfully engaging one's complete environment. Space is a construct created out of the memories and words embedded in oral traditions including those taking shape within the cities; therefore it is continuously being created and recreated through everyday practices. However, as pointed out to me during a conversation with Cree artist, activist, educator and composer Buffy Sainte-Marie {Running for the Drum, Gypsy Boy Music,

2006), contemporary reflections of space can be heightened when we reflect upon the stars (June, 2009). She shared that the stars in space are not in this pretty and peaceful state; rather there are eruptions, explosions, and constant meteor showers going on up there. In short, there are ruptures in space, and Indigenous poetics accentuates the narratives that arise from such activities. These forms of expression give voice to the fissures embedded in a historical memory of colonization which can be traced to the dehumanization of Indigenous peoples as a result of Indian Act policies, including the imposition of boarding schools and residential schools; the dishonouring of the treaties and the corresponding inability to see Indigenous people as equals capable of exercising their own sovereignty; and the confinement of Indigenous peoples to reserves. McLeod

(2007) describes the impact of colonization through the experience of his grandfather

John R. McLeod as an attempt to "strip the identity from his soul." (p.81). The impacts of residential schools and the foster care systems where families were literally ripped apart are narrated within Indigenous poetics which embody the lived experiences of Indigenous people and contour a landscape of historical memory. As a consequence of the nature of these narratives, Indigenous space can be a very intense, powerful and difficult space.

28 Repeated references to between spaces throughout my dissertation are inserted to describe the origins of the new names and meanings that emcees attribute to urban spaces. Further, between spaces describe an important site within the creative processes of emcees. Native performance methodologies foster an understanding of this between space as a creative source linked to the idea of an impulse which is the base of all movement and creation. Emcees embrace an understanding that the presence of impulse as the spirit or life force, lives in between the drum beats. In emcee terms, this source dwells in between the break beats. In his 2005 article entitled, The artificial tree: Native performance culture research, 1991-1996, Cree playwright and actor Floyd Favel Stan- conveys that Native performance culture concerns itself with the terrain of the impulse and the sources of movement and life (p.70). He provides a description of the Cree round dance to identify the basic building blocks of Cree song and dance as starting points for a creative vital action. The round dance was explained to him in the image and action of a duck bobbing in the lake water. This image, he understood, provided the basic DNA of the dance step, voice and drumming.

The spirit of the dance and singing is actually contained in the spaces between the

waves of the water and the movement of the duck, between the drum beats and

steps, between the dancers. (Favel Starr, 2005, p.70)

The space between, created through the image of a duck bobbing in the water, allows the dancer to embody the movement and connect with the culturally-based impulses of creativity. Native performance culture, according to Favel Starr, involves an investigation of, and a grounding in the Cree and Anishinaabe body. In a similar fashion, emcees interacting with urban environments practice such grounding to create between

29 the drum beats. This space between has also been described within other cultures as a source of creation and spirituality. As described by Favel Starr:

The Japanese have this word Ma. Ma is the interval, the pause in music and in

dance. Butoh artists say that the ancestors and spirits dwell in this interval and

pause. It is this we are talking about when we say the dance is in the

intervals between the wave, between the movements of the duck from one wave

to the next in the drumbeats. (Favel Starr, 2005, p.70)

Indigenous poets such as hip-hop artists, dub poets, and spoken word artists are actuating these between spaces which are manifested in a variety of ways. Accessing these spaces, and the life energy and spirituality that they house, can be within the grasp of everyday, urban life. In City treaty: a long poem (2002) Marvin Francis's 'word drummers' embody ancestral processes of retrieving survival strategies and spirituality from unexpected between spaces.

"Follow the word drummers to the city treaty. Those word drummers pound away

and hurtle words into that English landscape like brown beer bottles tossed from

the back seat on a country road shattering the air turtle words crawl slowly from

the broken glass" (p. 69).

Marvin Francis's "word drummers" are those Indigenous poets who carry the words and stories of these between spaces, capturing the resonance of the contemporary landscape to describe modern Indigeneity as an act of survivance.

30 Consciousness, Consciousness-raising, and Historical Consciousness

Within hip-hop collectivities, the concept 'consciousness' is understood to express an awareness of one's existence. It mirrors the totality of the hip-hop communities' thoughts and feelings relating to a particular sphere and often is followed with the active transcendence of familiar structures. This consciousness becomes generated through critical spoken word informing emcee lyricism.

The hip-hop ethic of 'consciousness-raising,' is an activity that increases

Indigenous communities' social and political awareness. Consciousness-raising involves bringing oneself beyond our immediate realities in order to observe the bigger picture with an ability to observe class, race, and gendered systems and their impact upon individuals and communities encompassing people of colour. This consciousness has nurtured a lexicon of words, reflecting the new meanings and concepts embedded within hip-hop communities, describing this constructed reality, and imagining how things can be different. The act of consciousness-raising and the articulation of an historical consciousness through hip-hop go hand-in-hand. For example, Michael Eric Dyson, critical theorist in the area of African American Studies, claims that hip-hop initiates a

'historical revival' which uses the past as a vehicle for modern-day intellectualism.

The salutary aspect of the historical revival is that it raises consciousness about

important figures, movements, and ideas, prompting rappers to express their

visions of life in American culture. This renewed historicism permits young

blacks to discern links between the past and their own present circumstances,

using the past as a fertile source of social reflection, cultural creation, and

political resistance. (Dyson, 2004, 67)

31 Within my dissertation I employ the concept 'historical consciousness' to represent the totality of the thoughts and feelings of an Indigenous collective relating to a past and present historical memory of colonization which, for Indigenous youth, encompasses feelings of disillusionment and isolation. This collective consciousness surfaces in feelings of frustration as Indigenous youth continue to see other young people around them die in acts of violence.

As previously mentioned, this consciousness also transmits messages through narrative forms which must negotiate and continuously struggle against self-hate, another technology of colonialism. Cree playwright, author and concert pianist, Tomson

Highway (Brochet, Manitoba) describes his lived experiences of colonialism as he reflects upon his high school experiences in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

I had never, to that point in my life, really been that conscious of the colour of my

skin, but now here I was, so uncomfortable inside its brownness that all I wanted

was to disappear, to be invisible. I was not proud of who I was. For that first

week, I walked the hallways of that school, and the streets around it, with my

head hanging, my eyes cast downward. I didn't want anyone to see how

embarrassed I was to be who I was. (Highway, 2010, p.51)

When I was younger, I too adopted this practice of not looking people in the eye.

It is perhaps one of the most obvious characteristics of the embodiment of colonization in young people. This consciousness can be shared as a collective experience within

Indigenous narratives recalling urban Indigenous historical memories.

My dissertation utilizes the concept 'historical consciousness' in reference to the ways in which emcees engage an awareness of historical memory to re-fashion history by

32 offering new interpretations of colonialism as an embodied experience. The sphere of emcee 'historical consciousness' has been determined by the activistic languages emcees employ, creating a sense of what it is that they are responding to, such as the colonization of one's mind. My use of the term historical consciousness reflects this need to make visible Canada's history through the active insertion of Indigenous thought space. Freire, in his work Daring to dream: toward a pedagogy of the unfinished (2007), refers to the necessity of putting the subject within history. The inclusion of Native people as part of history, rather than as existing outside of it, is an effect of emcees asserting their place and sovereignty through the movement.

Traversing and Transgressing

The use of this term traversing in the context of this dissertation reflects emcee movements as they deeply consider, travel, or in some instances lie across various borders. In order to acknowledge the contested nature of urban spaces, the term transgressing acknowledges that in many cases, these boundaries are firmly maintained by governments responsible for formulating policies directed towards youth. As an outcome of this practice, Native youth are under constant surveillance in our cities. I too am a fellow traveller, oftentimes lying across those same spaces, sharing similar tensions of being Aboriginal in the city. These tensions associated with the positioning of an urban Aboriginal "edgewalker" (Francis, 2002) involve the construction of invisible borders and boundaries that oftentimes escape recognition of dominant society. The impacts of these barriers on Aboriginal youth include guilt and shame, producing a lack of confidence. Additionally, feelings of alienation and isolation prevent young people from engaging in certain community circles. Added to these tensions are those that are

33 associated with the need to be mobile within an urban environment whose systems of justice are structured to keep a close eye on Aboriginal youth. Youth mobility within cities often entails movement from home to home, parent to parent, guardian to guardian and has a context in the history of the mass adoptions and fostering of Native youth during the 1960's and 1970's and the confinement of children in residential schools. It is a contemporary function of poverty in urban areas.

As will be discussed, these concepts of transgressing and traversing, reflect the movements of emcees and acknowledge the very deliberate ways that Native people have been pushed toward the boundaries of urban spaces.

Transmotion

Native motion is an active presence of Native be-ing which Vizenor (1998) names as acts of transmotion. This concept refers to the practices of crossing boundaries that have been artificially constructed and originate with both intentionality and a volition to move. Vizenor in his (1999) preface to Manifest Manners: narrative on postindian survivance reveals that:

Natives have always been on the move, by chance, necessity, barter, reciprocal

sustenance, and by trade over extensive routes; the actual motion is a natural

right, and the tribal stories of transmotion are a continuous sense of visionary

sovereignty, (p.ix)

Transmotion references those activities that stem from the impulse that Favel Starr describes as the source of creative energy.

Vizenor (1998) has suggested that the connotations of transmotions include creation stories. Since transmotion is an active presence, then perhaps emcee stories of

34 survivance, in the form of voiced messagings, are the modern manifestations of creation

stories in and of themselves, using 'mythologies of the cities' (Highway, 2005) in

creating the types of worlds that they would like to see in the future.

C) Emcee Concepts

The following phrases are foundational to the ethics of emcee practice. Knowin' your history, and keepin' it real have emerged as significant ideas contributing to the

development of my dissertation.

Knowin' Your History

This phrase represents an emcee tenet that has repeatedly surfaced within the

interviews as a reminder that true emcees have done their homework to know the history

of struggle that is the source of consciousness-raising hip-hop. Within my dissertation,

'knowing one's history' allows one to see the range of possibilities, which is a necessary

practice in revisioning a different reality. It represents a trajectory to move into the space

of ethical encounters (Ermine, 2005) within which anything and everything is possible.

Keepin' it Real

Native emcees resist static identifications attempting to capture "the way that

Natives are." A redirected focus on perceiving Native youth as travelers, and in some

instances, transgressors within and between urban spaces, challenges this view that there

is indeed some ultimate identification which can be captured in such all-knowing phrases.

The methods that emcees use in disrupting the discourses of dominance to which

Vizenor refers, are the strategies embedded in the hip-hop communal expressions keepin'

it real, and being comfortable in this skin. Through promoting the ethic of keeping things

as real as possible, for example, representation in its truest form is encouraged; thus this

35 act challenges stereotypes that have a tendency to lock people into certain fixed categories.

Introduction to Research Topic

My research topic emerged as a response to my own concern, fear and frustration towards gendered violence in the form of continual abduction and murder of Native women in Canada. Living in Saskatchewan, this practice of abusing women's lives, bodies and spirits really affected me on a deep and personal level. The practice had weighed heavy on my mind and I soon started thinking about patterns - identifying structures and systems that accommodate such violent positioning of these women. I began a process of piecing narratives together to reveal that this practice is related to a historical consciousness created through racialized, gendered practices where colonizers have historically used sexual violence as a tool of genocide (Smith, 2005). I realized that gendered violence runs parallel to the continual naming and claiming of Indigenous lands and territories. According to Cherokee scholar Andrea Smith in Conquest: sexual violence and Amerindian Indian genocide (2005):

sexual violence is a tool by which certain peoples become marked as inherently

'rapable.' These peoples then are violated, not only through direct or sexual

assault, but through a variety of state policies, ranging from environmental racism

to sterilization abuse. (Smith, A. 2005, p. 3)

This 'inherent' designation explains how it is that Native women have been literally and physically pushed to Canada's border zones (e.g. bodies left on sides of highway roads). Conscious of my own movements in city landscapes such as avoiding certain areas after dark, I was led to the desire to identify the ways in which Indigenous

36 youth move about the cities. I wanted to get a feel for Native youth's own positioning through exploring how they represent themselves as occupiers of communities and territories within urban environments.

I realized very quickly that for Native youth, physical movements are deeply connected with the ways in which the space is being thought about and named.

Dominant languaging produces movements through the creation of conceptual realities and naming systems which oppress. Hip-hop languaging informs how to move within city landscapes, and encapsulates a vocabulary and repertoire of movement stemming from a collective consciousness which, amongst other actions, responds to struggle. The way that music creates visuals, for instance, enables the development of critiques against socially accepted practices which exploit Native peoples. These visuals accommodate the development of a consciousness through embodying the experiences narrated within

Indigenous hip-hop lyrics. In approaching my research, initially, I turned to hip-hop to help me negotiate city environments, and quickly recognized its strength in providing the language to 'call out' and name instances of racial discrimination and violence against women.

In some cases, hip-hop mimics the negativity of urban spaces through projecting an orality infused with rhythms that conjure up images of dark, scary alleys and predatory glances. Fearful environments are sometimes created within hip-hop beats, to produce images of predators as an indication of being knowledgeable of one's surroundings.

These visuals evoked as dark, raspy-voiced lyricisms, are layered over top of an electronically produced chilling beat. Voiced anger accompanying haunting beats mirrors the feeling of risky city environments and is used as a subversive technique. Hip-hop

37 dissemination not only enables emcees the space to comment on unsafe environments, but also provides techniques of subversion to assist women of colour, for example, in their everyday movements within these environments. However, urban narratives vary when approached through a female lens rather than a male perspective. Our experiences of the cities as Native women have shaped the ways in which we move in the city, thereby informing a different style of narrative. During my interviewing stage I wrote the following journal entry.

"I had flown to Saskatoon to visit and set up an interview with Lindsay Knight

for that evening. I was very excited about being back in Saskatoon and

decided to leave my hotel room to walk downtown. My intentions were to go

to 20th street and take a look at a graffiti project that I had heard had been

underway at the White Buffalo Youth Lodge. So I started walking. I hadn't

gotten very far downtown when I saw two Native men walking towards me. I

could see something different in the way that they approached, almost

predatory, and I questioned to myself if I should cross the street. Then I

thought, no they won't say anything.. .1 was just being silly. For hadn't I just

written a piece on the social/ cultural positioning of Native youth and the fact

that the gangs were spaces for youth to be surrounded by kin and as a survival

strategy for living in a violent, white supremacist society? Well here I was

confronted with the media image of two Native gangsters and decided that I

was going to think of them as brothers, that I would be safe because I too wear

my red coloured skin as I move about the world. Surely they wouldn't

disrespect a sister! However I was so nervous as I walked past them and I got

38 the immediate sense that I was not going to be let past that easily. To my fear,

one of the men stepped into me and said 'come here bitch.' I was so scared,

but was determined to keep walking. I hoped to god that they weren't

following me as I continued to walk down the street. Thankfully they didn't

follow me, that was probably not their intent. I hated this fear that I carried

with me as I walked. I hated him for doing that to me. And I wanted to talk

with him, to speak with him about how disrespectful he was being to a

sister.. .but the truth of the matter was that I was not his sister, his mother, nor

was I a cousin. I was a Native woman, walking down the street not embodying

my own power as I met his glance." (Recollet, July, 2007)

Hip-hop as a musical form encompasses elements of sensual/sexual energy space.

However I believe that the intersections of race and power, particularly in relation to black and Native bodies, have created a context where hip-hop as a musical form both critiques these relations and in same moment maintains them. The reality of male domination within the field of hip-hop was articulated by female emcees participating in this project. In fact Cree emcee Eekwol used the term brodeo to describe the 'jock mentality' that exists within hip-hop (Eekwol, July, 2007). The use of this term brodeo indicates that hip-hop lexicons contain a way of speaking about this power differential within the community. Brodeo functions as a new language created within the collective consciousness representing a different way of perceiving masculinity and femininity.

Notably, the discourse of Indigenous masculinity is often associated with the typology of the Indigenous 'warrior' construct discussed in Gail Valaskakis's work Rights and warriors: First Nations, media and identity (1994). There is a long tradition of warrior

39 societies ingrained in First Nations' political, social, and cultural systems of governance and justice.

However, the term brodeo, responds to the misogyny that exists within hip-hop narratives and community praxis. Eekwol highlights the fact that internal criticisms exist within Indigenous hip-hop communities concerning their relationship with gender. Her commentary reveals that hip-hop communities are fluid spaces where there is room for new understandings and approaches. Eekwol's expression brodeo illuminates how naming can be used as a technique to negotiate urban spaces. In inserting myself into the research paradigm, I soon learned that entering into this context requires familiarity with certain stylistic languaging practices in order to protect oneself from being treated as a sex object.

My Positionality in Relationship to the Research

My positioning reflects the multiple layers that make up my reality, such as my connections with both my Native family at Sturgeon Lake First Nation, Saskatchewan, and my non-Native family in Ontario. The Native arts community and the academic community have also informed my lexicons for describing who I am. As a 35 year old

Cree woman who has lived in cities as long as she can remember, I have come to creatively engage my own Aboriginality through these urban Indigenous spaces. My positionality, as such, reflects a hip-hop cultural understanding that realities are comprised of a mixture of various elements. I am also shaped through my own attempts to come to terms with a world of representation and commodification that carries certain expectations of Native people, urban or otherwise. My traversing between different communities challenges Aboriginality as a singular and authentic subjectivity. Further,

40 my positioning between, or in liminal spaces, is better understood through considering the shifting nature of discourses that have shaped me. The term liminal is intended to describe a threshold, meaning that being Native in Canada requires some tricky navigation to avoid those invisible borders that impose a false sense of identity on

Indigenous people. Within both a historical as well as a contemporary context, these outside forces include Indian Act policies which determine Indigeneity in the eyes of the state. Native performance culture offers an enlightened way of thinking about this between space. There are others who have contributed to my understandings about this position. Butler (1997), for example, observes that these between spaces embrace contradiction. She suggests that these realms encompass a set of conditions that accommodate 'a radically conditioned form of agency.' Butler supports the notion that this contradiction is meaningful as it opens up possibilities for the creation of new subjectivities.

Ethical Space

Literatures pertaining to the ethics of researching with and for Native people contain blueprints on how to engage the space between. This space between as a centre space has informed the ethical use of language as temporary resonators of a feeling or experience contributing to the construction of a changed reality. In this way, Indigenous poetics 'voices' between spaces and exposes how oppression can be transformed into understanding through the performer's ability to convey one's lived experience of colonialism. This is combined with the audience's ability to empathize and 'feel' these expressions, thus opening possibilities for change.

41 Cree scholar Willie Ermine of Sturgeon Lake First Nation, Saskatchewan, articulates an enlightened understanding of ethical space in which we are called to engage. Ethical research requires an understanding of the dynamics of that centre space responsible for creating relationships and shaping research processes. It depends upon a prior acknowledgement of a cultural divide between the researcher and those Indigenous peoples that are involved in research projects. Although I may be a Cree woman, in some instances, my distance from emcees involved in this research project involves social/economic, gender, and national differences. Ermine shares his perspective of ethical space as:

The affirmation for, the existence of two objectivities, each claiming that their

own distinct and autonomous view of the world, and each holding a different

account of what they are seeing across the cultural border, creates the urgent

necessity for an understanding of what constitutes this cultural divide.

The idea of two spheres of knowledge, two cultures, each distinct from one

another in multiple forms, needs to be envisioned since the distance also inspires

an abstract, nebulous space of possibility. (Ermine et al., 2004)

This ethical space presents itself as a neutral zone of dialogue and opens up a range of possibilities for future actions. Ethical research requires dialogue concerning the intentions, values, and assumptions of the contributors within the research project. During the interview phase of my project a particular question thwarted a response which challenged the assumptions embedded in the inquiry. My question was worded "how do you feel your music impacts Native youth?" Unintentionally, this wording assumed that because the emcee was Cree he would have an effect on other Native youth in changing

42 and challenging their everyday actions, thus taking the position of a role model. Cree emcee Dallas Arcand's response discredited societal attempts to control the actions of

Native youth through health, educational and judicial systems. Instead, Arcand described his music as a reflection of his individual experience meant to be read primarily on his own terms. This dialogue between us generated a new understanding of the intentions of creating hip-hop as a reflection of one's experience, and represented a moment of illumination as I witnessed the nature of the cultural divide that existed between myself and a particular emcee. It also made me consider my own, sometimes static use of language and how dialogue needs to be open to envisioning a different kind of reality. As a result of this dialogue, I began to think differently through realizing the importance of engaging the centre space in the research process. This ethical space also provides opportunities for us to seize moments of possibility to create substantial and sustained ethical and moral understandings between cultures (Ermine et al, 2004). The language produced by dialogue within this space has provided the courage to adopt the liberating style of hip-hop within my own writing.

In reflecting upon the source of my research praxis I recognize that a youthful paradigm informs the lens through which I view the world. This youthful space helped me to identify and name power structures which attempt to restrict my movement through labeling me as deficient, undeserving, and incapable. The embrace of this youthful paradigm has functioned as a primary source for my energy and intellectualism throughout this project.

Throughout my research process, dialogue with emcees challenged me to reflect upon, and in some instances, change my assumptions and thoughts regarding research

43 and research praxis. Also, Toronto-based spoken word artist D'bi Anitafrika's concept of artist's integrity inspired me to contemplate my integrity as a researcher, providing meaningful clarity in approaching relationships within the context of this project.

In order to 'speak the language of the community' within which I am situating the project (Anitafrika, 2008), I have depended on relationships with emcees to create a strong environment where their words, thoughts and ideas can be housed. These relationships have led me to participate in the languaging style of emcee-speak involving me in a community which challenges forms of oppression. Through immersing myself in the language of the hip-hop community, I have adopted a similar form of resistance through interrogating colonial narratives. I have learnt that a researcher needs to overcome insularity by continuously reaching out to communities to ground herself within patterns of emcee experiences. We need to keep moving in order to respond to struggle that does not exist within one singular space. Similarly, Maori scholar Graham

Smith (2005) responds to multiple forms of struggle through transformative strategies within Indigenous theory and research. He observes that struggle constantly forces us to identify and review our beliefs determining both what we stand for and that we stand against; hence, Smith reveals the need for an anti-oppressive stance in building research goals. In my own research practices, I have been open to the various forms of oppressions identified through emcee narratives in the form of the theory that they themselves encapsulate. Using rap as a medium, their interpretations of experience are, by nature, theoretical in that they succinctly critique present structures through incorporating new visions which integrate contemporary concepts. I have understood that my role as a

44 researcher is to be open to the possibilities of new transformative strategies that emcees use to disrupt past and present holding patterns.

Scholars Tricia Rose {Black Noise: rap music and black culture in contemporary

America, 1994); and Verna St. Denis {Real Indians: cultural revitalization and fundamentalism in Aboriginal education, 2004) reveal the importance behind critical considerations of the functions of both agency and oppression in doing ethical social analysis. A context-free focus on individual agency, can lead to individualizing the problem, as in the association between Indigenous youth and criminal activities. An analysis of the social context must be kept in the limelight to maintain a secure grip of the dynamics of oppression. In explaining the importance of this approach, Rose states:

Agency and oppression must be joined at the hip, otherwise an incapacity to

'overcome' self-destructive behaviour is no longer connected to structures of

oppression and is easily equated with cultural pathology. (Rose, 1994, p. 142)

It is important in our analyses to be accurate and inclusive when identifying socio/cultural forces impacting Indigenous youth. This accuracy contributes to the larger project of transforming narratives of disillusionment and self-destruction into hopeful narratives which critically consider conditions of oppression and move beyond them.

My Research Process:

Indigenous Scholarship and Indigenous Poetics

Indigenous scholarship has assisted in creating a language that can be useful in describing the significance of emcee knowledges within hip-hop. Through its various contributors, Indigenous knowledge(s) articulated within academic institutions have brought us to this point where new interpretations of a presently constituted historical

45 consciousness can be voiced. This consciousness lives through emcee narratives which are important sources of knowledge when we consider the nature of the experiences from which they arise. Willie Ermine (1995), in describing Aboriginal epistemology, sees it unfolding as movement travelling inward to connect with the Cree source of intelligence, described through the concept mamatowisowin or mahmdtdwisowin. Mamatowisowin describes one's capability to tap into the life force, or the creative source. Similar to what

Favel Starr has described as an impulse, literatures pertaining to Indigenous knowledge help us find expression for the theory informing the creative practices of emcees.

In contemplating contemporary environments, Anishinaabe, mixed-blood writer

Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm from Chippewas of Nawash First Nation, has shaped a symbolic and image-based oral tradition upon the memories of her ancestors. For example, in her collaborative spoken word/poetry album entitled "Standing ground"

(Nishin productions, 2004) Akiwenzie- Damm expresses this relationship through the following spoken words:

"We were given breath like waves in the sea

Like fossils in stone

Ancestors in me."

Together, Indigenous scholars, poets, and spoken word artists/intellectuals have carved out an Indigenous thought space, and have grafted a language within the academy, while maintaining connections to Native communities, both urban and rural. They also illustrate some of the contradictions and contestations within Indigenous thought space revealing its nature as ever-changing and ever-in-flux. In his article entitled Jagged Worlds

Colliding (2000), Blackfoot scholar and author Leroy Little Bear identifies Indigenous

46 consciousness as a site of overlapping, contentious, fragmented, and competing desires and values. Such contributions towards understanding the various characteristics of

Indigenous thought coming from intellectuals -poets, artists, and scholars- allows for

Native youth in all of their complexity to reinsert their experiences into history. As a condition of these voicings, emcees continue to carve out spaces.

Indigenous scholarship has provided the space within which we can envision and create. The intellectuals that are part of this movement inspire others to travel outside of the academy to connect with important sources of life's energy. It is because of these earlier explorations that I have had the opportunity to do my own 'soul travelling' in carrying out the intentionality of this project. Soul travelling, a concept adopted from emcee Daybi, can occur as a conscious act, but most often is manifested as the impulse to create in any given moment. This concept, I believe, uses between spaces as spring boards, and represents an intellectual journey that encompasses both inwardness and outwardness.

This work has relied heavily upon the traditions of Cree, Anishinaabe and Sto:lo spoken word and performative pedagogies practiced and nurtured throughout history.

Such spoken words are echoed through the creative work of Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm which stresses the importance of spoken word as a vehicle to thoughtfully engage our contemporary place in this world through using older forms of orality. She believes that her spoken word poetry stems from her Anishinaabe ancestral line, much like some of the emcees upon whom I have based this study. Akiwenzie-Damm describes that her relationship with poetry has been passed down through her bloodline. She explains, "my grandmother Irene Akiwenzie was a descendent of the Kegedonce line. Kegedonce is an

47 Anishinaabe word for orator" (Akiwenzie-Damm, 2009). The realm of Indigenous poetics have contributed tremendously to creating the space to acknowledge the creative practices of emcees, specifically their use of language in order to be subversive.

Older styles of Indigenous poetics have been contemporized through the poetry of

Okanagan poet/author/activist Jeanette Armstrong ('Native Poetry in Canada: A contemporary Anthology', 2001), and Cree/Metis poet/author Louise Halfe ("The

Crooked Good,' 2007), as they dreamed, envisioned, dramatized, mocked, interrogated, revised and reshaped our understandings of our current environments. These actions illuminate and describe our historical consciousness through mapping the ways in which treaties were and continue to be dishonoured, for example. These elements can be also used to highlight the sacrifices made by Indigenous women and men in our families and they are instrumental in determining the contours of hope within our collective consciousness. Dub poets, hip-hop emcees, and spoken word artists, as those who engage in Indigenous poetics, actuate mirrored reflections of our contemporary worlds.

Artists versed in Indigenous performance through theatre have also contributed to producing a vocabulary which informs my research. Cree/Metis/Chippewa Director

Marrie Mumford, who holds the Canada Research chair in Aboriginal arts and literature at Trent University, Peterborough, Ontario, embodies a performative pedagogy well versed in Indigenous philosophy and praxis. She has mentored me while engaging in the process of my research. Further, Rosa John (Taino), founder of Kehewin Native Dance

Theatre based out of Alberta, Canada has expressed the need for opposing ideas and social forces within storytelling in order to provide stories with vibrancy, relevance, meaning and life. These contributions provide the conceptual space to recognize

48 contemporary emcee strategies informing how to move within city environments, and thus creating new narratives feeding into our oral/aural traditions.

In her article entitled Hip-hop feminist (2004), Joan Morgan describes the context of opposing ideas and social forces that shapes the encounter between hip-hop messagings and dominant ways of thinking about the world around us.

We need a voice like our music- one that samples and layers many voices,

injects its sensibilities into the old and flips it into something new, provocative

and powerful. And one whose occasional hypocrisy, contradictions, and

trifeness, guarantee us at least a few trips to the terrordome, forcing us to

finally confront what we'd all rather hide from. (Morgan, 2004, p.281)

Hip-hop encourages an embrace of fluidity in one's perception and positioning, challenging a static view of the world. This research has inspired a greater appreciation of fluidity of movement in my own practice. B-boy and b-girl bodies physically mirror fluidity as their pulsing, popping movements capture the contradictions and struggles experienced through an active commitment to engage this world around us.

As readers you will observe that my dissertation is not meant to engage in an analysis of classical Indigenous orality; rather I am highlighting the 'orality of the city'

(McLeod, 2009). I do, however, acknowledge that classical or traditional Indigenous oralities exist and permeate somewhat in the lyricism of the emcees. Furthermore, while my goal is not to draw these explicit connections, I acknowledge that this is an important root of the orality. As previously stated, my work draws specifically on the ways that urban spaces are made meaningful through the concepts shared by emcees. Emcees embody some of the same rhythms that First Nations' ancestral orators had. In reflecting

49 upon the concept 'orality of the city,' there is a relationship between the desire to express a higher consciousness through the spoken word by emcees and by past Indigenous leaders and intellectuals in thinking about their environments. Communicating this consciousness involved the nurrurance of words and meaning which was then combined with an ability to voice them with integrity and purpose. Oral traditionalists recognized that words carried the potential to create reality. Consequently, emcees are presently echoing the oral traditions of their grandmothers and grandfathers, as they introduce a movement of orality in the city. In expressing various elements of urban environments through naming and critically engaging these spaces, emcees are linked to the practices of their Indigenous predecessors. These emcees representing various First Nations, are social activists in the way that some of past Indigenous visionaries and storytellers were, as they continue to speak a new world into being. EekwoFs song entitled 'Look East,' for instance, incorporates as its hook "look to the East where the night meets the day, yah hey, hear the old ones say. Bring back the will and the reason to fight, protect us and we'll make this right" (Eekwol, 2009). This song expresses the space between as a space that offers up new strategies based upon older narratives in order to face certain challenges, which in the context of "Look East" are the obstacles surrounding patriarchy's teachings on Aboriginal men. In this move to speak a new world into being,

Eekwol explores the contemporary context of male disillusionment through illustrating historical injustices towards Aboriginal men and offers the solution of'Looking East.'

"The quiet before the storm brews heavily,

don't want to ask for help cause you say you're not ready.

The killer is the build up of all the secrets in the vaults.

50 Time released when you start to admit your faults.

Don't think that I'm fooled cause women see it all,

stay weak stay humble get out before you fall

Throw away the pills the casino, that drink

stop hitting your woman, and drag her down while you sink.

I know my man you've had it the worst, history dealt you the raw deal first

Took away your role, along with your soul,

and expect you to succeed that's taken its toll.

Convinced you with devils and damned you with sin

and made you look down on your own brown skin.

Where's our protectors, our leaders, our fighters,

outside the bar holding bottles and lighters.

Pimpin' us, hatin us leavin us alone

to fight against the elements that stole the home.

Don't act like it's over, too late time is done

The kids need a future- warrior daughters and sons

Bring back your culture, it never left

and think of your woman as life, give her respect."

(Eekwol, 'Look East,' 2009)

Similar to Eekwol's process of observing existing patterns and framing new ones, concepts such as 'look to the East' lay out strategies through thinking deeply about the contextual nature of our environments and voicing one's activism. Deriving from Cree

/female perspectives, activism in this context acknowledges the impact of Indigenous

51 "warrior" discourse formulating cultural narratives that both contribute to the problem of violence against women, and at the same time posit a wider solution through re-visiting the socio/cultural role of warriors within Indigenous society.

Chance

In seeking to voice alternative positionalities of emcees, my process is informed as much as possible by the resonance of emcee praxis itself. This praxis has been articulated through the original treatise-like narrative presented at the introduction of this dissertation.

Our voicings do not follow the 'traditional' Western melodic stylez, but

rather artfully integrate the break beats and the ruptures to reflect our

experiences and visionings. (Emcee Treatise, Recollet, 2009)

Hip-hop music embraces a style that incorporates 'breaks' and 'rupture' as samplings reflecting the experiences within the city spaces that make up hip-hop's birthplace. As an urban Indian, my own research praxis expresses a desire to accommodate changes and transitions; I accept that personal expression can be communicated through a variety of seemingly opposite forces. Emcee dialogue which mirrors these patterns of mobility can be seen as an embrace of narrative chance. Narrative chance was a concept first introduced to me through the work of Gerald Vizenor who connected strongly with this concept (articulated by Russian social critical theorist Mikhail Bakhtin) to express, that

"there are events that, in principle, cannot unfold on the plane of a single and unified consciousness" (cited in Vizenor, 1990, p.4).

My process of narrating chance adopts the emcee practice of interrupting main dominant narratives. These movements carry the potential to shake up our worlds, taking

52 us to spaces of instability and discomfort- thereby forcing us to face that "terrordome of which we would all rather hide" (Morgan, 2004, p.281). In performing ethical research we are expected to dwell in spaces of uncertainty and discontent as we transgress from old paradigms into new ones. An implementation of chance-based research challenges us to be conscious of the danger of framing research in ways that might overshadow what people are actually saying. In other words, a praxis informed through chance enables one to be intimately aware of framing tendencies such as the desire to create singular narratives surrounding multi-plexed phenomenon.

Performance Pedagogy

In response to the elemental components of hip-hop, my methodological approach can best be described through using the concept of fusion. The elements used to formulate my discourse analysis are inspired through a critical storytelling approach infused with race/gender, and class analysis and performance pedagogy. My work embraces transformative methods ingrained in Indigenous methodologies, critical race analyses, and specifically the work of Paulo Freire and Gustavo Esteva who have laid much of the foundation shaping community-based research through using the language of re-envisioning. The elements that I draw upon from a performative/arts-based pedagogy, in my mind, 'embody' a transformative approach, and along with discourse analysis, foreground 'storying' and its various strategies.

Denzin's (2005) concept of critical storytelling imagination can be used to describe the emcee production of narratives which disrupt the flow of dominant messages that misrepresent youth. The implementation of a critical storytelling imagination acknowledges that the collective historical consciousness reflects multiple and diverse

53 experiences of colonialism. It describes the vehicle which is used to identify conditions of oppression while in that very moment of'voicing,' accommodates its transformation.

According to Denzin, a critical storytelling imagination:

Contributes to reflective ethical self-consciousness. It gives people a

language and a set of pedagogical practices that turn oppression into

freedom, despair into hope, hatred into love, doubt into trust. (Denzin,

2005, p.948)

Emcee participants in my study, for example, claim that the creative process often entails a process of transforming hate into love (Carrielynn Victor, personal communication,

October, 2007). This feeds into a broader thematic component of Indigenous poetics shaped through embodying similar patterns of historical consciousness. For example,

Cherokee poet, musician, and author, Joy Harjo has addressed the transformation of hate into love in her poem The creation story,

"The stars who were created by words

Are circling over this house

Formed of calcium, ofblood-

This house

In danger of being tom apart

By stones of fear.

If these words can do anything

I say bless this house with stars

Transfix us with love."

(Harjo, 1996, p.3)

54 The transformational aspects of the messagings reflect the complexity of emcee languaging and intellectualism. The popular emcee expression stating that hip-hop

"saved my life" (Cappo, 2007), communicates the ultimate affirmation of change.

As an element of Indigenous poetics, empathy is created through narratives which express the lived experiences of emcees shared amongst listeners. For this reason, listening to hip-hop music vicariously provides the opportunity to experience transformation along with the emcees; thus hip-hop carries the ability to break down those boundaries between listener and speaker. Breaking down the fourth wall is a practice acknowledged through performance-based praxis where the audience becomes the actor and vice versa. In this way, breaking the fourth wall provides a moral/ethical space as artists enter into dialogue with audiences in a way that creates a space of possibility to engage new concepts, and to envision a different kind of reality. This space challenges power differentials and encourages the healthy distribution of voice.

Alexander, a performer/researcher/scholar, speaks of a performance pedagogical approach which, "asks audiences to position themselves in relation to those being represented in performance...for this reason, performances are always enmeshed in moral matters" (Alexander, 2005, p.417).

This way of doing research honours that space where dialogue ensues as a result of 'breaking down the fourth wall,' thus creating a 'break' in power differentials. Cree scholar/artist Willie Ermine's (2005) use of the concept ethical space, mirrors the transformative, power shifting dynamic of hip-hop's spatial realm. Breaking down the fourth wall becomes a strategy to enter into an ethical space where audiences and performers can engage in dialogue.

55 Rooted within a space which encourages the transformations from hurt to love, hip-hop as an art form engages aural/oral, and sensory spaces within its community of fellow emcees and listeners, to produce movement music (Quese IMC, 2007). Its transformative power rests in the ability of the messagings to move people. Research based on impulse and feeling recognizes concepts relying on embodiment for expression such as Ostwelve's (2008) assertion that "the colonial weight is heavy." As previously mentioned, this colonialism is felt and experienced each time a friend or relative dies, or when people hate their own skin colour. Both are products of a colonial system whereby

"colonized peoples embody this experience, and it often affects their physical being"

(McLeod, 2007, p.81). An arts-based way of knowing accepts that we embody what we learn and use our bodies as vehicles for knowledge's dissemination (Conrad, 2002). This reflects the practices of emcees in their use of tattoos, gestures, dance movements, tone and mood in storying their lived experiences. Youth are consistently creating new embodied concepts and ideas through their participation in an ever-transforming community praxis which purposefully engages stylistic, aural/oral, sensory spaces. As a recorder of the movement, I am challenged to actively engage my senses as I bear witness.

The discussion introduced in this chapter will be expanded throughout the narrative of this dissertation. Below, I explain briefly the terrain that will be explored through the theories and practices of the hip-hop world.

56 Chapter Summaries

Chapter two Emcees who-stories travel: Language, research and process, describes the relationship between the context of urbanization and the construction of emcee oralities; and introduces the reader to the storytelling and languaging practices of emcees as they generate new knowledge. This section also explores the generative nature of spoken word in creating different types of realities.

Chapter three Origin stories & orality — Indigenous voicings of 'the struggle' introduces the origin stories of the hip-hop movement, highlighting the socio/cultural conditions that facilitated its formation. I then explore the origins of the study of hip-hop and its contributions within academia in both the United States and Canada. Chapter three highlights the relationships between African, Caribbean Indigenous and Native

Indigenous oralities and explores the nature of the practices that emerge out of this fusion. This chapter also includes an analysis of emcee's voicing 'the struggle,' and illuminates the function of hip-hop as a powerful tool to critique societal injustice. Lastly, chapter three engages the tensions associated with dominant discourses' constructions of

'otherness,' and explores the impacts of these 'othering' practices on Indigenous peoples participating in the movement.

Chapter four The transgressional space of hip-hop imbued with a

Native/Indigenous flavour, introduces a discussion of 'rupture' and reveals how emcees negotiate and represent the tensions and contradictions experienced through a relationship with their hip-hop cultural and Indigenous urban environments. I also identify how rupture can be used by emcees as vehicles for change. For example, my exploration will highlight how 'breaks' in the narrative support the creation of spaces within which

57 alternative visionings of the world(s) can be actualized. I also discuss the nature of the spaces from which emcees speak, revealing some of the strategies that are used in the creative process. These techniques illustrate how 'rupturing' represents an Indigenous critical theory. My analysis in chapter four focuses on the significance of between spaces, the strategic use of style to express one's way of being in the world, and centre's on the emcee creation process. Reflected within their dialogue, emcees' creative processes involve traversing physical and ideological borders. Further, creation requires that one be in-the-moment in order to capture the mood, flow, and feeling of a particular experience.

This chapter also explores how hip-hop strategies articulated as knowin' ur history, and keepin' it real, inform new ways of thinking about spatial territories such as the rez, Indigenous territory, and Indigenous community. I discuss the significance of

'the crew' as incubators of knowledge which house the collective consciousness, and represent them as vessels of intelligence inspiring newly-fashioned urban conceptual landscapes. The final focus of this chapter is to look at how 'the local' can be both a contested and celebrated space within the practice of hip-hop culture.

Chapter five Now you see me, now you don't: Rapping presence while bordering absence, highlights emcee narratives constructed to challenge the singular positioning of

Native youth as 'without history' represented by the authentic Indian. In repudiating the exclusion of Native youth from history, I will expose how emcees strategically reassert a presence within Canada's historical consciousness. Within this section I will interrogate the positioning of Native youth through the familiar/externally produced idioms such as caught between two worlds, the youth deficiency model, youth as danger or threat to society, and visible minority designations; I will investigate these labels in securing the

58 invisibility and marked presence of Aboriginal youth in contemporary society. Finally, I will discuss the maintenance of inequality as a product of colonial amnesia and reveal how an emcee embrace of unity disrupts patterns of exclusion.

Chapter six, Caucasian features or cheekbones that cut glass: Emcee namings, identities and cross-bloodedness, explores the nature of transgressive spaces and shows how emcees work with the knowledges and energies of border spaces in order to shape and express complex identities. In carefully negotiating the relationship between consciousness and identity, I engage 'cross-bloodedness' as a conceptual realm to capture the significance of emcee border crossings. This chapter also speaks of the multi-layered emcee naming strategies. I illustrate, for instance, how emcee naming narratives reinsert self-representation into a historical and contemporary consciousness.

The epilogue to my dissertation, entitled Soul travelling with abandon: From wagon roads to white noise examines Cree emcee Joey Stylez's song 'Living Proof

(2007, Blackstar Productions) as an example of contemporizing history through emcee dialogue. Messaging lived-experience oftentimes contains critiques of institutionalized violence and racism. My final piece explores the ways in which emcee voiced messagings speak back to colonization fostered through the residential school policies of the past, and the present colonial amnesia that perpetuates continued practices of marginalization. My dissertation concludes with a final treatise that enters an emcee realm of consciousness in order to enable our own travelling to inspire further yet- unwritten stories ofsurvivance.

59 CHAPTER TWO:

EMCEES WHO-STORIES TRAVEL - EMCEE STORYTELLING TECHNIQUES

AND USE OF LANGUAGE

In order to provide an understanding of the context of urban youth and the significance of voicing through hip-hop, I begin with a discussion of the relationship between Indigenous people and urban environments. I narrate the history of the removals that provided the foundations for a spatial consciousness of marginalization amongst

Indigenous peoples, to support the idea that emcees' response has been shaped through a very specific positioning. Rooted within particular localities and struggles, Indigenous hip-hop uses a variety of techniques which will be introduced in this chapter, and expanded upon in later chapters. The urban context nurtures a very specific method of storytelling expressing an 'orality of the city' (McLeod, personal communication, 2010).

This chapter introduces these distinctive oralities through presenting voicings of hip-hop emcees which respond to impacts of colonization including the historical removal and marginalization of Indigenous peoples.

Youth and the Urban Context

This next section explores the historical context of urbanization and its impacts on

Indigenous people and Indigenous thought. I will explore Indigenous relocations and removals from urban spaces as an impact of policy; the marginalization of Indigenous space within cities and the subsequent creation of an Indigenous spatial consciousness informed by this marginalization; the removal of Indigenous people as key figures within

Canadian historical memory through the creation of the ahistorical Indian; and the idea that Native youth represent threats to 'safe' city spaces. In the following section, I

60 introduce insights pertaining to the new urban Indigenous consciousness expressed through hip-hop.

Relocations and Removal

Informing the context out of which new oralities emerged, urbanization began as a project of displacement of Aboriginal people. In the early stages of urban

Aboriginality, a pre-established tradition of movement and travel between urban centres and rural communities existed. More than half of the Aboriginal population and approximately 40 percent of registered Indians now live in urban centres (Newhouse and

Peters, 2003); however, in the late 1900's there was an active removal of Aboriginal people from these emerging urban spaces.

Initially policies actively displaced Aboriginal peoples from urban areas. These state-sponsored mechanisms of control included the selection of reserve lands far away from urban areas; the 1885 pass system that confined First Nations people to marginal spaces, forcing their imprisonment on reserves; the dispossession of Metis people from their lands and their settlement on urban fringes; and the expropriation of reserves and communities overtaken by expanding urban boundaries (Newhouse and Peters, 2003). To expand, in 1885 a policy was designed to inhibit the movements of Native peoples. Those who wished to travel off their reserve were required to obtain a pass signed by an Indian agent. J.R. Miller maintains that this system was designed to inhibit the movements of

Indian diplomats; discourage parental visits to residential schools; and provide the North

West Mounted Police and Indian agents with the authority to stop Native people living in the plains from participating in ceremonies such as the Sun Dance or the Thirst Dance on distant reserves (Miller, 1990, p. 389). Section 114 of the Indian Act 1895 banned these

61 ceremonies, thereby alienating Indigenous people from the oral narratives and performance culture ingrained in their spirituality. One significant outcome of this policy the Indian Act was the enforced inability of Native people to gather as collectives, thus debilitating ceremony, dance and songs. Communities of dancers, singers, and ceremonialists were forced underground in order to carry out these events and continue to nurture the spoken words and movement-based mirrored reflections of life that are now taking the form of hip-hop amongst Native youth. Under the Indian Act, First Nations leaders were imprisoned and confined, thereby shaking the foundations of political/spiritual and cultural communal structures. Indigenous knowledge transmission, including education, economic cultural, and reproductive systems, (Maracle, 2010, p. 81) were collapsed as a result of the removal of children and the factionalism of individuals within communities that was a direct result of these policies. The Indian Act created a

'system of subservience' and inequality (McLeod, 2007, p.81), creating a cycle of poverty and disillusionment that carried into the cities in the late 1960's. This movement to urban centers was the response to a lack of resources and livelihood on allocated reserve lands. These cycles of dependency and restricted mobility, legislated through the

Indian Act, impacted Indigenous people's experience in the cities where the lack of economic, cultural, and medical resources retained this state of dependency.

Contemporary studies of the urbanization period indicate that by the 1980's the focus of attention towards Aboriginality in the cities shifted to poverty, unemployment, inadequate housing, and low levels of income and education. At this time, according to

Newhouse and Peters (2003), we saw the emergence of urban Aboriginal organizations, many with roots in the earlier period of movement and migration into the cities. The

62 migration of specifically Aboriginal women into the cities in the 1970's was inspired by a variety of factors. The executive director of the Ontario Federation of Indian Friendship

Centres, Sylvia Maracle (Mohawk) provides a historical context for the multiple levels of women's participation in leadership activities on national and community-based scales.

Maracle identifies that some Aboriginal women were forced to leave when they married non-Aboriginal men and were subsequently disenfranchised by losing their Indian status and band membership. She also indicates that women came to urban centres so that their children could be educated. Further, she suggests that others left the reserve because of frustrations with the aggressive band policies that marginalized their status as women in areas such as housing (Maracle, 2003). Early Aboriginal urban-based organizations provided the space for "the celebration of Aboriginal cultures and development of culturally appropriate ways of delivering services" (Newhouse and Peters 2003, p.9).

New initiatives arose alongside other programming such as those offered through

Employment and Immigration Canada, presently Human Resources Development Canada which focuses on the training of Aboriginal individuals living in urban areas and providing employment (Newhouse and Peters, 2003). These programs initiated a series of policies motivated through the desire to address individual social problems. This focus on individualism could be criticized for failing to address larger systematic problems experienced by the collective.

Leading characteristics of the marginal status of Native people in urban areas are high rates of mobility. Researchers Norris and Clatworthy in their article Aboriginal mobility and migration within urban Canada: outcomes, factors and implications (2003) have identified mobility as a contributing factor to student underachievement - an affect

63 also created from within the school system itself which 'moves' Native youth between schools if they demonstrate behavioural problems. Further, Norris and Clatworthy (2003) have suggested that marginalization within cities is brought about by the lack of access to affordable housing, or housing that is located in impoverished inner-city areas. This marginalization has also been related to the conflict between urban institutions and

Aboriginal cultural values, leading to social isolation and economic marginalization

(Norris, M.J. and S. Clatworthy, 2003). These factors suggest a context wherein emcee re-articulations of urban spaces as Indigenous space are all the more necessary and meaningful.

The Marginalization of Indigenous Space and Indigenous Spatial Consciousness

The aforementioned policies existed to facilitate the development of cities on traditional Indigenous lands, territories which encompass their own history as Indigenous gathering places. Unlike most other migrants coming to the cities, Aboriginal peoples in cities are travelling within their traditional territories. This is also a point that has been reinforced through the voices of emcees participating in this particular research project.

Urban spaces are creations of Aboriginal marginality and removal. Given that historically, Native peoples have been literally pushed to the margins, Indigenous space has been created as marginal to accommodate the interests of industrial capitalism.

Practices once rooted in Aboriginal historical memory such as the creation of reserves, have been reenacted through similar patterns of marginalization in the cities. A spatial consciousness emerges within the contemporary stories of emcees expressing similar pushes to occupy marginal spaces in cities.

64 The Ahistorical Indian:

Youth as Threat to 'Safe' City Spaces

According to Newhouse and Peters (2003), most settlers saw the presence of

Aboriginal people within the cities as detrimental to the moral and physical conditions of both Aboriginal peoples themselves and the urban areas they inhabited. Contemporary social narratives stress the incompatibility of Aboriginal cultural resilience with urban living, thereby producing the idea that Aboriginal people migrating to the cities are attempting to assimilate into mainstream society and obviously disconnecting from

Indigenous community and cultural traditions.

The stereotyping of Aboriginal people that historically facilitated their removal from city areas has continued as a marginalizing strategy. Part of this tradition has involved the marginalization of Aboriginal people as actors in the historical construction of Canada as a nation. This has been achieved through the past and present positioning of Aboriginal people within urban landscapes. Consider Marvin Francis's (2002) prose in Edgewalker which locates his positioning of Aboriginally in the city,

"society edges the other from others walks all over our person reality invisible borders stronger than barb wire cement our paths to our edge walking ways."

Formulating the ahistorical Indian has required the erection of invisible borders stronger than barb wire, keeping Aboriginality locked outside. Dominant framing practices had literally written Native people outside of history. This phenomenon which preceded the

65 urbanization period, continued to have particular salience in shaping further marginalization. As a product of a specific colonial ideology that sought to keep cultural and spiritual resiliency at bay, the ahistorical Indian was created each time that child or adult was renamed according to the actions of government, missionaries and influence of

Christianity which refashioned the names of Native peoples to ensure land access, assimilation, and the severing of kinship ties (Goodwill and Sluman, 1982). The practice of renaming people according to anglo-sized versions of Native names strengthened the demise of historical claims to land through inheritance. Within the public domain, such actions literally severed the ancestral lines of contemporary Indigenous peoples from a recognizable association with their ancestors. The dishonouring of treaties and the implementation of the residential school system which had officially begun inl 879 and lasted until 1986 (Milloy, 1999, p. xiii) were both strategies that were instrumental in carrying out the colonial government's goals to assure that Native people were not meant to survive as Native people in the Canadian historical memory. The ideology that accompanied these policies fed into the more contemporary misperception that moving to the city automatically meant that one was assimilated without the skills necessary to live a successful life.

Initiating in the 1980's prevailing public narratives view urbanization as a disjuncture, creating an undesirable orientation often described as living in-between two worlds. Often, this response is formed through misunderstanding that Native reserves represent an authentic Indigenous space free of cultural fragmentation. Native youth in the cities are represented through practices of the media to embody a perceived lack of culture, historical memory and Native consciousness - a product of their perception as

66 lost or caught in-between worlds. In countering these misunderstandings, history reveals that urban landscapes truly are Indigenous territories.

A similar tactic of marginalization that involves the exclusion of contemporary

Indigenous youth from urban spaces is through the media-constructed belief that urban youth represent the moral degradation of safe city spaces. This attitude reveals that

Aboriginality in the cities continues to be a contested space within the dominant social consciousness. The narratives of the emcees participating in my project, for example, reveal that emcees are continuously being watched in stores and public buildings, expected to steal rather than purchase goods. This surveillance which is an extension of an earlier Indian Act ideology of wardship and control, continues to impact Indigenous landscapes reflected in the fact that dominant consciousness has yet to come to terms with Aboriginality in the cities.

In shaping a response to this associated narrative of urbanization, Newhouse suggests:

What is important is that we begin to see urban Aboriginal peoples both as

individuals and as communities, with interests, aspirations, needs, goals, and

objectives that they wish to pursue within the urban landscape rather than as

objects of public policy or victims of colonization or displacement.

(Newhouse and Peters, 2003, p.l 1)

Critical thinkers within the field of Indigenous Studies have already begun to engage new insights regarding the naming of Indigenous urban spaces. In contemplating

Indigenous ideas about the future and modern expressions of Aboriginality, Onondaga critical thinker and scholar David Newhouse has asked of us, 'what does it mean for

67 Aboriginal youth to self-actualize in urban spaces?' Through hip-hop, emcees are forging complex responses rooted within hip-hop community praxis. Emcees are naming their city environments and the patterns of mobility through both a history of movement within urbanization and a strong tradition of storytelling which recounts these movements. The cities represent those spaces where this particular strand of orality in the form of hip-hop emerges to create expressions of a contemporary collective consciousness. The collective consciousness embodied by Aboriginal youth includes a variety of stories encompassing personal experiences of disillusionment, disengagement from society, and a lack of trust towards the systems and institutions that make up their surroundings. Urban Aboriginal youth belong within a legacy of ancestral travelers that to a large extent, have confronted these symptoms of colonization within their own lived experiences and have devised strategies to negotiate invisible borders. Through recounting their movements, expressed within hip-hop music, we observe not only how contemporary youth are self-actualizing, but how they actualize urban environments in their quest for change. Aboriginal youth have also developed a consciousness whereby they are critically aware of their colonization. This modern Aboriginal society has begun the process of picking up the soundscapes of leaders in the past, and using them to inform new analyses accompanied by an embrace of new technologies. Anti-colonial discourse within the context of modernity recognizes the many diverse voices involved in the multitude of stories that make up history. Youth today are questioning the idea that one master narrative tells the authoritative story (Newhouse, 2005, p. 5).

68 Quese IMC: Story(ing) the Movement

Emcees are travelers between time and space who narrate their experience within

conceptual and geographical landscapes. Long-established traditions of orality disrupt narratives which threaten the very survival of First Nations peoples. In this section, I

incorporate the voicing of Seminole/Pawnee emcee Quese IMC to portray how a story of

survivance can be communicated as an act of dialogue between a listener (myself) and a

storyteller (Quese Imc).

Quese IMC (Blue Light, 2008) illuminates his active presence through describing

the larger struggles that Indigenous people face. He proclaims the significance of the

activities that shaped contemporary understandings of colonization when he states,

"We're a way of life that was supposed to be wiped out from the face of the earth"

(Quese IMC, personal communication, August 4, 2007). This opinion is reminiscent of

the writings of Cherokee poet, musician and author Joy Harjo of the Moscogee Nation in

posing her question, "Who would believe/the fantastic and terrible story of all of our

survival/those who were never meant to survive" (Anchorage, 1983).

The process of colonization is being examined through the narrative formations of

hip-hop emcees who have asserted that colonization exits in the body and that Indigenous

people carry it around with them as they move about the world. The body is addressed as

the foundation for experiencing the past and is acknowledged for being a conduit for

ancestral voice (Eekwol, aka Lindsay Knight/Cree emcee). Quese IMC establishes this

connection when he states: "I'm an instrument for my ancestors to speak" (personal

communication. August, 2007). This insight is accentuated by other equally important

ideas communicated by Quese IMC in the following narrative,

69 "I rap about our sovereignty, I rap about our sacred sites such as the land and

the struggles of our ancestors -what they went through. You know, how our

ancestors died/survived and fought so that us-you, me and all these people

could be here today to enjoy...Our culture, ceremonies and our language -1

talk about that. I wanna remind the younger generation that we're not just

Natives from different tribes-we're a way of life that was supposed to be wiped

out from the face of the earth. We were supposed to be exterminated and we

can never forget that.. .I'm an instrument for my ancestors to speak and I am

going to do that because that's important. We could never forget those things

that took place in the old days and we survived it, so you know I talk about

that. And at the same time I talk about what's going on now in Indian country

with all of the violence, abuse, alcohol and drugs. It's all of our negative

statistics that we have to endure because of colonization and oppression, the

boarding school era you know. We gotta lot of healing to do and we can heal

because we still have our humour, we still have our laughter. They haven't

destroyed our spirit." (Quese IMC, personal communication, August 4th, 2007)

Quese IMC gives us a glimpse of the space out of which movement music is born; he describes this moment as a response to acts of colonization, described as that time when "those bad spirits that latched themselves onto us." This narrative poses that there is a spiritual element to colonization when experienced by Indigenous peoples who have formulated complex relationships with the spiritual realms of existence.

This element, which is oftentimes over-looked, illuminates our status as

70 "edgewalkers" (Francis, 2002) and as those who embrace a "collective narrative memory" (McLeod, 2002). As Quese IMC further elaborates:

"You know they really did a number on our minds because our minds are what

confuses and makes us do these bad things, wicked things. Our minds are the

things that make us pass down these generational curses you know that were

never our curses to begin with-but those bad spirits that latched themselves

onto us. So now it's our opportunity to heal each other through this artistic

form of music - hip-hop. I believe I can do that.. .1 want people to be moved

spiritually and to walk away saying man that was 'do dah hey,' that was dope

[that was great] what just happened-rather than leaving people emotionally

heightened in a frenzy with nowhere to channel it. Cause music will just be

music, but music can also be a movement. Now if we can start to mend and

heal from the centre, the root, then all the other Native people will move

forward with us. Because then it won't just be, let's get hype for a month, and

do nothing for years. It's for us to stay consistent with it and move forward and

that's what I strive to bring out through my music. I make music to move that

moves-you know like it's moving through me. When it starts going a lot of

people feel it you know. Just like when I see somebody performing their

cultural dance like from Africa, I can't help but wanna dance it I feel it. I

watch them do those cultural African dances and that's when I realize that

whenever we operate in our gifts as Native people, people feel that. It's

movement man, it's kinda like if you believe it without a shadow of doubt,

nothing can take that away and if you believe it, other people will believe it.

71 And that's what music is." (Quese IMC, personal communication, August 4 ,

2007)

Conveying the inspiration behind the movement, Quese IMC relays an important insight in stating that colonialism is a physical manifestation that acts as weight within the body.

The idea of colonialism as a physical manifestation was introduced within postcolonial literature by Martinique-born psychiatrist, philosopher and revolutionary Franz Fanon in

Black skin white masks (1952, 2008). Within this work Fanon described the internalization or "epidermalization" of inferiority (Fanon, 2008, p. xv), thus embracing a similar understanding of embodiment. Visualized as 'bad spirits' latching onto Native people, colonialism assumes a new face whose scrutiny can assist in understanding the true nature of Native struggle within Canada. Through considering Quese's perspective, we can see how newly emerging concepts and ideas manifest into 'movements' with transformative potential. Such understandings contained in the phrase 'a time when bad spirits latched themselves onto us' can assist in creating 'ethical space' (Ermine, 1995) through our ability to 'see' the embodiment of colonialism. Quese's insight that music contains spirit and impulse to carry us forward, transcends struggle through counteracting the impacts of colonization. According to this lyricist, hip-hop as movement music heals that space within us that embodies that historical past and begins a process of transcendence.

Introduction to Emcee Language and Storytelling Process

An important element in transforming social realities, emcee 'embodied theory' represents a lived-pedagogy. Quese's dialogue illustrates how meanings can be created in-the-moment, a significant theoretical contribution of emcee storytelling. Consider the

72 following description provided by social and critical theorist Henry Giroux, outlining the importance of experience-based narratives rooted in the realities of the present:

While pedagogy is deeply implicated in the production of power/knowledge,

relationships and the construction of values and desire, its theoretical centre of

gravity is located not within a particular claim to new knowledge, but with real

people articulating and rewriting their lived experiences within, rather than

outside of history. In this sense pedagogy, especially in its critical variant,

clarified how power works within particular historical, social, and cultural

contexts in order to engage and when necessary to change such concepts.

(Giroux, 1996, p.20)

The processes of how to live, storied by the spoken words of artists, transpose us into the realm of their experiences which foster new understandings of our contemporary social world. Emcee methods mirror Giroux's description of process, in that emcees are embodying theory as they critique the social world. Through messaging, emcees clarify how power is arranged, while refusing to set up more power hierarchies. Their process can be described through revisiting the thought-space of Caribbean-American writer, poet and activist Audre Lorde who proclaimed that "the master's tools will never dismantle the Master's house" {This bridge called my back, 1983). Similarly, in Chickasaw poet and author Linda Hogan's autobiographical essay The two lives (1987), she proclaims how her own energies have gone into exploring other technologies which dismantle and challenge various forms of gender and race-based inequalities. Through engaging new technologies of anti-colonial narratives and storytelling strategies, emcees are actively dismantling, while at the same time are building new foundations of meaning. They are

73 participating in a process which effectively allows them to "take back what we dream and say what we mean" (Eekwol, 2004, Reluctant Warrior).

Emcee languaging is beginning to reflect a broader recognition that colonial power, in its modern guise of institutional power, has been maintained through the use and repetition of language constructions. The perception of Native youth as gangsters, for example, is produced through a colonial mentality guiding programs and policies directed towards youth. Emcees are beginning to formulate challenges towards society through a movement which pushes forward as though federal control did not exist.

Ostwelve's statement "me and sketchbook, break dancing on rooftops" ('For you I

Ryde,'2008) illustrates how their new language positions emcees above categorizations.

Giroux's will to express real-lived experience as pedagogy echoes the following vision of deconstructing hierarchies through the practice of reshaping language to suit certain interests. Through wordplay emcees are already beginning to actualize ideas expressed by leading intellectuals such as those of Gustavo Esteva, founder of the Universidad de la

Tierra in Oaxaca, Mexico. In considering the context of Zapatista struggle and revolutionary discourse, Esteva claims:

What the Zapatistas and we are saying, all the time, is that we are affirming our

dignity-that is a word that we like. That is affirming our dignity, affirming

who we are and taking control of our lives. That is for me radical democracy.

It is not a structure of government. It is not a different system of power. It is

not re-redistribution of power. It is not using our power because power is

associated with domination, with control. That is not the idea. We are not

trying to manipulate or control anyone. Perhaps we need a new language, a

74 new political language to express what we want to express. (Nic Paget-Clarke

interview with Gustavo Esteva, 2005)

Lindsay Knight's aforementioned statement that "we need to take back what we dream and say what we mean" (Eekwol, 2004, 'Reluctant Warrior') represents how this new political language manifests amongst contemporary storytellers. Questionable forms of determining one's reality through the redistribution of power become thwarted through a dignified approach to voicing practices. It is understood that realities are deeply implicated in language; hence my concentration on the relevance of the emcee strategies of keepin' it real, being comfortable in this skin, and actualizing a response that states the colonial hangover is harsh. Keepin' it real, for example, represents a practice that prevents one from false representation and acknowledges that our realities are multi- layered and quite nuanced. Emcee strategies recognize the elements of reality that dominant discourses have overshadowed. Keepin' it real is a statement expressed by many of the emcees to follow a particular ethic of keeping things as rooted as possible within one's experience, thus resisting a need to manipulate one's identity to suit

'popular' desires of dominant society.

Hip-hop messagings are the purveyors of oral traditions voiced in city environments. As digital technologies got to be more accessible, young people began to formulate their stories ofsurvivance using digitalized cuts, breaks, and samples as new ways of expressing their experiences. Within the spaces where they lived, hip-hop took off amongst Native youth whose truths were being voiced in the city soundscapes complete with complex messagings which spoke to their experiences.

75 Hip-hop exposes the 'gritty of the city,' a spatialized concept that has been articulated by emcees Daybi No Doubt (2007) and Wabs Whitebird (2007). This expression points out that emcees are engaging urban spaces and introducing new ways of thinking about the city through an ability to 'see' the city in unique ways. Daybi's lyricism "the concrete greets me and knows me well, stories that live and stories that tell"

('The Quickening,' 2009, First Contact) illustrates that emcees are establishing complex relationships with cities, as repositories of stories, whose nature is raw, gritty, and not always accommodating or friendly. Hip-hop also opens space for free expression of thoughts, emotions and positionings; as well it reveals inherent contradictions which challenge our sense of a completely knowable, categorical world. In fact, the musical form itself almost calls for such contradiction and struggle, and this is reflected in the language of hip-hop of a Native/Indigenous flavour.

Language shapes one's realities and structures the range of possibilities determining how one can name the world; therefore, languaging is incredibly important within this study. Berger and Luckmann (1967) speak about the causality of language which evokes the transformative and creative potential of spoken word. They claim that

"language realizes a world in the double sense of apprehending and producing it" (p.

153). Likewise, Weedon, in addressing this phenomenon suggests that "language, far from reflecting an already given social reality, constitutes social reality for us" (Weedon,

1987, p.22). Using a poetic language to highlight these processes from a Native point of view, Kiowa/Cherokee author N. Scott Momaday, states:

76 Words are intrinsically powerful. They are magical. By means of words can one

bring about physical change in the universe. By means of words can one quiet a

raging weather, bring forth the harvest, ward off evil, rid the body of sickness and

pain, subdue an enemy, capture the heart of a lover, live in the proper way and

venture beyond death. (Momaday, 1997, p. 15)

Such a consideration of the causality of the spoken word reveals that music can be a very powerful vehicle in speaking oneself into being. The ability to play with language to produce new meanings is a necessary tool for Indigenous youth still bombarded by colonial narratives which operate through a form of mental control leading to erasure and self-hate. Consider Ngugi Wa Thiong'o's (1986) observation that:

[Colonialism's] most important area of domination was the mental universe

of the colonized, the control through culture, of how people perceived themselves

and their relationship to the world. Economic and political control can never be

complete or effective without mental control. To control a people's culture is to

control their tools of self-definition in relationship to others. (Ngugi, p. 16)

The practice of speaking oneself into being is rooted within Indigenous oral-based traditions amongst African and Native nations. Other practices stemming from Native oral traditions such as the use of a hidden text or discourse have also come to fruition in contemporary forms of hip-hop cultural expression. Okanagan scholar and writer Jeanette

Armstrong and Lally Grauer (2001) acknowledge the secret poetic language of symbols and images housing certain concepts which can be appreciated by a Native person who is culturally knowledgeable. This hidden language according to Armstrong and Grauer enables writers to communicate spiritual concepts without having to transgress beyond

77 those who did not have cultural access. Oral tradition utilizes the hidden text in the form of contemporary Indigenous poetics expressed in movement, dance, and the spoken words of Native emcees. In fact, this hidden text/discourse is a manifestation of the between spaces out of which Indigenous poetics emerges. Within hip-hop communities the hidden text is a strategy nurtured within crews to disrupt discourses of dominance through constructing a new language with its own symbolism, imagery and meanings.

This hidden text nurtured within crew collectivities follows a deep seated connection with

African and Native practices of orality.

Ngugi's observations on the oralities of prose, song, performance and literatures, resonates with the hip-hop movement. African conceptualizations and meanings were kept alive through forms of oral stories such as the poetry and riddles expressed through ceremony and everyday speak (Ngugi, 1986). I would argue that hip-hop languages are the new languages of Aboriginality in the cities; they are the pidgin languages created out of those very geographical and ideological spaces that Native youth are occupying. Ngugi expresses a similar sentiment of the importance of the creation of new African languages like Krio in Sierra Leone and pidgin in Nigeria. These languages, Ngugi advances, were

"kept alive in the daily speech, in the ceremonies, in political struggles, above all in the rich store of orature- proverbs, stories, poems, and riddles" (p.23).

There is a rich history within First Nations spoken word and poetry that gathers resonance and meaning from the rhythms and energy flows of Nehiyawak,

Anishinaabemowin, and other oratures, providing sustenance to the contemporary urban

Native hip-hop movement. These new urban languages are being transmitted through practices of poetry, mimicry, subversion, call-and-response, and riddle production.

78 The power of African processes of song production as a transformative response within struggle (Ngugi, 1986), mirrors similar priorities found within poetics expressed through Native literature, as well as those engrained in emcee spoken words.

The peasantry and the working class threw up singers. These sang the old songs

or composed new ones incorporating the new experiences in industries and urban

life in working-class struggle and organizations. These singers pushed the

languages to new limits, renewing and reinvigorating them by coining new words

and new expressions, and in generally expanding their capacity to incorporate

new happenings in Africa and the world. (Ngugi, 1986, p.23)

The new languages expressed by Native emcees through hip-hop mirror Native

Literature's critical engagement of contemporary environments infused with Indigenous cultural sensibilities - as in Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony which engages the reader as a participant in shaping the story, and thus creating new knowledges. Indigenous emcee reflections of contemporary experiences are equally as effectual in pushing the language to new limits using a form that is new yet draws upon similar structures of orality adopted from old storytelling traditions. Silko, in addressing people's concerns of the contemporary novel's ability to reflect Indigenous experience, shares this insight:

People often ask me about my use of the novel; they assume that the novel is not a

natural form for the Indian. But the cycles of stories in the oral tradition were like

a novel. I just continue with the old storytelling traditions. (Silko, interview with

Jahner, E, 2000, p.47)

Silko's comments on the use of the novel to communicate languages that hold dignity for

Indigenous peoples, can be applied to hip-hop's capacity to nurture and carry forth new

79 transformative languages to reshape our intellectual and physical environments. Nurtured within Indigenous hip-hop communities, these new concepts and ideas have resonance for the rest of the world in both describing and transforming our current social, political, and cultural circumstances. The role of the emcee is to create and articulate alternative meanings which call into question outdated and irrelevant ways of thinking about our present environments. Consequently, through the positioning of the emcee, the contemporary vibrancy and relevancy of the oral tradition carries on.

Reflecting upon the broad impact of hip-hop within communities, I am drawn to consider the implications of naming emcee praxis as 'Indigenous theory,' a term which I apply throughout to describe the way that emcees employ a critical lens to reveal phenomenon. For instance, emcees have developed a sophisticated way of looking at the world to observe the multi-layered patterns that make up their realities. As critical theorists, they have begun to transform these insights into action. Maori scholar Graham

Smith's description of Indigenous theorizing suggests similarities to the narratives created through Native cultural priorities and those embraced by a wider hip-hop culture.

As Smith (2005) describes, "Indigenous theorizing is understood as an engagement with the dominant cultural system in order to make space for the sustainable existence of

Maori ways of knowing, being, thinking, and acting, speaking, and living" (p. 10). This resonates with the ways in which emcees interrogate dominant cultural discourses and insert their own narratives which question the very nature of dominant discourses. Smith also observes that Indigenous theorizing reflects a strong cultural grounding through demonstrated cultural skills and a connection with "the epistemological foundations of the knowledge, language and culture" (Smith, 2005, p. 10). Additionally, he claims that

80 Indigenous theorizing can help transform our condition, which includes the previously described experiences of colonization. According to this understanding, emcee praxis can be considered Indigenous theorizing as it holds special relevance in each of these areas. However, we should also be cautious in asserting static categorizations on emcee conceptualizations which honour fluidity and represent a less static world. Perhaps the world is not quite ready to embrace the full extent of emcees' multi-plexed expressioning of Indigenity (ies) as 'Indigenous theory'; and it could be argued that emcee messagings quite simply are whole, valued voicings which stand on their own without the need for alternative (limiting), legitimizing languagings. However, this caution does not undermine the fact that emcees continue to produce critical work which derives from multiple experiences.

Another element to consider is that the hip-hop cultural priority, keepin' it real challenges the power plays involved in constructing grand theories about the realm of the everyday which needs always to be open to rupture, chance, and transformation. Keepin' it real, and being comfortable in this skin, as strategies, also retain their complexities just as they are, without pageantry. As a consequence of these recognized contradictions, I strongly maintain that 'fluidity' is a central function of the contemporary urban-based critical theory actuated by emcees.

Reflecting a similar tension, my own inability to categorically define myself in a singular position, may assist in exploring the hidden strategies to create the multiple/complex positionings which challenge singular notions of Indigeneity and

Indigenous space. The creation of categories such as the label 'Native hip-hop' as an identifier could potentially inhibit one's choice of movement. As expressed by the

81 emcees themselves, we need to leave the conceptual space open enough to accommodate those voices that claim, "I do hip-hop, I just happen to be Native" (Joey Cappo, personal communication).

Each emcee is a carrier of multi-layered narratives inclusive of change and transformation; they create narratives which defy permanently ascribed formulas. The emerging concepts embody a fluid and complex collective consciousness. In order to reflect this context I include my own voice insertions throughout this narrative with the intent of destabilizing singular truthing practices.

Urban Indigenous Border Crossing

Emcees participating in my research share processes through lyrics relaying how to navigate and position oneself in a city that is intent on erasing the presence and resonance of contemporary expressions of Aboriginality. Through their own will to travel, emcees produce unique navigational patterns which challenge those forced removals of previous generations. It is no coincidence that today, modern storytellers continue to engage the spaces between point A and point B as sources of inspiration and creativity. These travellings, admittedly sometimes forced on them through family circumstance, encourage an embrace of mobility in a process which reclaims a form of urban agency. Contemporary Indigenous identities in urban Canada, for example, are patterned through people moving between reserves, urban fringes and centralized city spaces. The knowledge(s) youth are connecting with as they develop patterns of movement generate new conceptualizations and actions, thus reshaping cities as contemporary Indigenous spaces with added Cree, Anishinaabe, Sto:lo flavours.

82 Cree artist, poet, author and scholar, Neal McLeod articulated the concept 'border lands' which was used to inform my analysis. In his article, Plains Cree identity: borderlands, ambiguous genealogies and narrative irony (2000), McLeod employed the term border lands to describe the transmission of cultural information between Cree,

Saulteaux and Assiniboine communities in the Western Plains. Consequently, his work challenged the written tradition of producing singular and simplistic representations of

Plains Cree identity. Literally, and metaphorically, Indigenous youth have inherited border lands as contemporary Indigenous space. Border crossings (Giroux, 1992) entail one's occupation on, or on both sides of a boundary or threshold, and are characterized by their unsettled and constantly shifting elements. Emcees as border crossers dwell in these spaces between as the source of rich and multi-layered identities. In highlighting this relationship between identity and spaces between, Maria Shevtsova applies Mikhail

Bakhtin's description of border and its relationship to identity:

The border is his [Bakhtin's] recurrent metaphor for the intersection between

different spheres through which identity of each is defined. Precise identity, then,

has its source in the relation between entities. (Shevtsova, 1992, p.749; McLeod,

2000, p. 451)

Therefore intersections between Cree and Vietnamese, and between African American/

Caribbean culture and Native cultural forms of orality, are providing complex and important identity referents for Indigenous youth culture. As a practice, border crossing mirrors a long-lasting tradition of travelling that has been the base of Cree, Anishinaabe,

Sto:lo and Metis survival pre-dating the determination of provincial and state boundary markers. The use of the concept border crossing within my dissertation acknowledges

83 the multi-layered genealogies and urban experiences that are fused together to produce meaning within emcee hip-hop and spoken word narratives. For example, participants in this research reflect a cross-bloodedness, rooted in the fusions between several bloodlines and cultural trajectories echoed in the Cree and Vietnamese identities of Mathew

CreeAsian, the Mi'kmaq and Cree fusion of Wabs Whitebird and the rich contributions of

Mohawk and Irish cultural bloodlines embodied in Kinnie Starr. In voicing these border crossings, emcees challenge pure notions of Nativeness through creating a language that makes room for alternative expressions.

The leading narratives embedded in this work reflect an orality of the city as emcees describe how they move between spaces. Mobility, reflecting one's freedom of movement, is achieved through the use of metaphoric languages in order to free up dominant conceptual spaces and increase the range of possibilities. These border crossings are narrated in 'For you I ryde,' a song produced by Sto:lo emcee Ostwelve in his album Anti-Gravity Dinosaurs (2008).

"I stayed with my momma and poppa up against the flow

Sometimes those days were slow but there was always love

Elders that surrounded me and helped me rise above

Whether it was push or shove, they loved this orphan child

Every birthday and Christmas, had the presents piled

Rezzy child running wild, getting older now...

Thank you to my mom and poppa for living all this with me

For those who cared for me, and were scared for me

Always there for me, for you I ryde

84 For those who put up with me, stood up for me,

showed loved for me, for you I ryde...

Finally my mom gave a shot, raised a teenager

I dropped out in grade nine sportin my green pager

By then I was Rockin mics that I could

No more rottin Ronnie by then, the name was Os good

Hangin out in any hood, [see busted from Crew shop]

Me and my sketch book, break dancing on rooftops

With the Asian Crew trooped up, and many an emcee

The homies that died young, the streets trying to test me

I'm grow'in like Vetspie I moved to my aunties

But it wasn't like my momma didn't love me or want me

The past was still haunt'in me so I hit it with liquor

Experimental phases in life, tryin to grow up quicker

Rhymes only got sicker mov'in home to home

Thanks to Doughboy and his dad for shar'in rooms now I'm grown"

(Ostwelve, For you I Ryde)

'For you I Ryde' illustrates strength and goundedness in naming Ostwelve's reality as a set of movements reflected in his lyrics "rhymes only got sicker mov'in home to home.'

Rising above the systematic displacement of Native youth in cities, Ostwelve's literal placement above reflected in his lyrics "me and my sketchbook, break dancing on rooftops" (Ostwelve, 'For you I Ryde'), illustrates how emcee intellect relates to observing patterns in their narrations of the city. These observations assist transitions

85 from home to home (a contemporary reality for many), through creating a language which accommodates expressions of fluidity and a sense of normalcy for movement.

Such movement reflects a border crossing necessary for the creation of new ideas and intellectual insights.

As expressed earlier, one of the focuses of my research is to explore through emcee dialogue, the creation of key ideas and concepts reflecting upon the nature of colonialism and its impacts on Native youth. Ostwelve's lyricism clearly identifies how processes of colonialism forced him to 'grow up quicker' (Ostwelve, 'For you I ryde').

Clearly, his symbolic positioning on top of roof tops epitomizes a border land positioning as a source for his intellectualism and ability to convey complex understandings amongst

Ostwelve's listeners.

Through practices such as border crossing, emcees produce a new language by incorporating elements of Cree, Anishinaabe, Metis, and Sto:lo oral traditions in combination with the syncopated rhythms of hip-hop. This new language helps emcees narrate experiences within urban spaces, challenging certain impacts of power within their own territories.

To this point I have illustrated my own storytelling techniques within the dissertation, and have provided an introduction to the ways in which emcees a) engage the 'movement,' b) embody theory in order to create, and c) use spoken word and border crossing techniques to create alternative realities. The next chapter delves deeper into the origins of the hip-hop movement and reveals the significance of hip-hop as an intercultural dialogue representative of rich histories of struggle and survivance.

86 CHAPTER THREE:

ORIGIN STORIES & ORALITY - INDIGENOUS VOICINGS OF 'THE

STRUGGLE'

We come from the starz, from above. We crow walked and we learned to

fly, break danced on rooftops while looking down at the patterns below,

creating art to carve our spaces, building new conceptual frameworks to

move within your city while we are in it. We express a rich

historical consciousness which flows into our voiced presence 'in the

moment.' (Emcee Treatise, Recollet, 2009)

I enter this chapter with the intent of discussing the origin stories of the hip-hop movement, and the foundational contributions within the study of hip-hop in both an

American and Canadian context. I then highlight the spaces between African, Caribbean

Indigenous and Native Indigenous oral/performance-based cultural aesthetics to speak of the complex and meaningful layers that arise out of this fusion of cultural elements. For example, I incorporate an exploration of mimicry, parody, and comedy, all strategies that arise out of African American, Caribbean, and Native oral/movement based traditions.

This chapter also includes an analysis of how emcees voice 'the struggle,' and the function of hip-hop as a powerful tool to critique societal injustice. The following sections of this chapter introduce the tensions associated with the production of

'otherness' in dominant discourses, and explores the impacts of these practices on the participation of Indigenous peoples in the movement.

87 I will begin this chapter with a discussion of hip-hop's origin/creation stories keeping in mind the deep seated linkages between the location of the movement (the birthplace and present day positioning) and those spaces that emcees embody.

Genealogies of Emcee Messagings

Emcee origin stories are not the typical kind in that they don't exist as concrete narratives which follow a chronological order. Rather these stories of origin reflect the types of fusions that occur at spaces typified by struggle and rupture, with unexpected mixings reflected in the experiences of emcees and lyricists. Origin stories today transgress beyond the boundaries of those who are innocently asking the question 'where are you from?' Emcee positionalities reflect the nature of the universe, which is understood as consistently shifting energies, creating natural ruptures supporting non- linearity. My response to this question 'where are you from?' has been that 'I come from the stars,' a response shaped through an awareness that in the literatures of dominance,

Indians can only move about this earth according to a strict set of guidelines to ensure their absence. I strive towards a realistic representation of my own positioning that extends beyond a conceptual landscape that always seems to leave me out. Emcee stories of origin are narratives that come to express a positioning that entails being planted above, an understanding that is articulated through Sto:lo emcee Ostwelves' practices of

'break dancing on the rooftops of cities.' This phrase holds particular salience both as a literal placement above, and as a metaphor for the creative space that exists between earth and sky. Emcee spaces of intelligence are carved out through a strategic fall to city spaces. On this descent, these carved out spaces serve as incubators within which young

88 emcees are creating and nurturing new ideas, concepts and languages to transform our cities and societies.

Since the genealogies informing emcee storytelling do not follow concrete patterns of origin, they make the discourse of the authentic Indian an oversimplification and, at best, an unrealistic assumption. Such master narratives are challenged through contemporary origin stories of Native people. Contemporary Native lives have not embodied singular narratives representing smooth transitions to the idealistic Indian territory. For Native youth, home can be a struggle, just as being comfortable in this skin can be a struggle. Emcee creativity represents a celebration of all the fluidity that surrounds us as we search for meaning and new ways to conceptualize that fluidity and contradiction. Hip-hop's embrace of celebration and struggle, its concern with origins and being true to oneself, speaks to the experience of many First Nations youth across

Canada who have had to transgress boundaries in order to survive.

Dominant media practices continue to associate Native youth as occupiers of fragmented spaces, rather than the more dignified position as occupiers of a multiplicity of spaces simultaneously and as full people. Consequently, this generation of young emcees don't easily answer the question of our predecessors 'where are you from?' In some instances this question helps to locate Native peoples within an extended community of relations, as in Simon Ortiz's (Acoma Pueblo) poem Some Indians at a party (1977) which illuminates the relationship between place names and Indigenous family naming practices. However, for many Native people in the cities, this spatial locator requires that the person asking better have a bit of time on their hands to capture even a basic understanding of the mobility into which they were born. This particular

89 generation of artists was born within this fluidity. An assumption of singular origins has birthed the phrases 'where are you from?' and 'who are your people?' The spaces that emcees occupy are multi-layered and shifting. No longer can they be expected to respond with single worded answers. Mathew CreeAsian captures this multi-plexed positioning when we consider that he is an Edmonton-based Cree/Vietnamese deejay, b-boy, and crew member of the Red Power Squad. A narrative which requires that he locate himself within a singular origin story denies him this complex, exciting positionality.

Origins of Hip-hop: Socio/cultural Context

"It's such a big, big thing. It's a culture and it stems from, from urban

centers. I guess specifically from New York, but I think that it's a culture

that's based on struggle and probably based on a place where probably kids

didn't have much and they create something positive out of a lot of negative.

And I think that it was such a success it started with you know deejaying,

break dancing, emcee and the graffiti, that it, it just blew up and it got to be

this huge popular thing, but to me hip-hop is still where those roots are it's

still that struggle. And it's wanting to do something positive amidst so much

th

negativity." (Eekwol, personal communication, July 29 , 2007)

A common thread within the literature on the historical emergence of hip-hop refers to the relationship between the civil rights movement and the new languages, ideas and ideologies embraced by the hip-hop generation. Hip-hop brought about a new social critique through incorporating and expanding upon the ideas and ideology of the civil rights generation (Alridge, 2005, p. 226). Some scholars have argued that the civil rights movement had a more oppositional influence on the creation of the hip-hop movement's

90 origins in that hip-hop represented an outward rejection of the tenets of the civil rights movement. Scholars such as Boyd (2003), for example, in The New H.N.I.C.: the death of civil rights and the reign of hip-hop, affirm that the civil rights movement foreshadowed the struggles of black people that didn't comprise the middle-class or upper class focus of the integrationist movement. Boyd claimed that "hip-hop replaced the pious, sanctimonious nature of civil rights as the defining moment of Blackness"

(Boyd, 2003, p. xxi). In an insightful discussion on the nature of the practices and policies formed through the civil rights movement, scholar Patricia Hill Collins identified that its racial integrationist policies specifically re-produced a system that failed to achieve certain equalities:

Racial integration, the primary strategy pursued by the Civil Rights Movement,

has produced unprecedented gains for a sizable segment of the African American

population. But it also failed large numbers of working-class and poor African

Americans who continue to deal with higher unemployment rates than whites,

poorer housing, bad schools, and disparate health outcomes. (Collins, 2006, p.9)

Essentially, the economic and political tactics employed by the civil rights movement failed to adequately address the economic tensions that urban black people experienced in the late 1970's. In a similar manner to the exclusionary political strategies geared towards

Native peoples in the cities, "integrationist projects advise young African Americans to assimilate into a social system that repeatedly signals that they are not welcome"

(Collins, 2006. p.9). Further, Native peoples in the cities experienced similar tensions here in Canada surrounding a perceived deficiency created through early urban integrationist policies. Native people in Canadian cities were also experiencing the effects

91 of systematically ingrained economical and social inequalities which included poor housing, over-crowded conditions, substandard access to health care and education, and intense poverty. Peters (2004) identified that a common theme within the literature on

Aboriginal urbanization during that time period was the belief that Aboriginal culture presented a major barrier to successful adjustment to urban society. Oftentimes the cities were represented as places of loss for Aboriginal peoples. The tensions that Aboriginal peoples experienced in the cities reflected those that were being experienced by African

Americans south of the border, constituting the birth places of hip-hop. For these communities, similar tensions arose as a result of urban renewal programs and a heavy economic recession.

Hip-hop became the vehicle of expression for urban youth, particularly in the

South Bronx, to voice their responses to the changes that were starting to take hold.

Early on in the movement, there were those who foresaw the transformative potential of an embrace of hip-hop. One of its founding fathers, Afrika Bombaataa, founded the Zulu

Nation in attempt to "channel the anger of young people in the South Bronx away from fighting and into music, dance, and graffiti" (Lipsitz, cited in Bennett, 1999, p.78).

According to Rose:

Rappers seized and used microphones as if amplification was a life giving

source. Hip-hop gives voice to the tensions and contradictions in the public

urban landscape during a period of substantial transformation in New York and

attempts to seize the shifting urban terrain, to make it work on behalf of the

dispossessed. (Rose, 1994, p.22)

92 The uncensored, underground nature of the practice of rapping was enticing to those who failed to fit the mold. The rap concert, according to Dyson, was a space where issues of racism, classism, social neglect and urban pain could be addressed freely. He describes the rap concert as a unique space in which:

Rappers are allowed to engage in ritualistic refusals of censored speech. The

rap concert also creates space for cultural resistance and personal agency,

losing the strictures of the tyrannizing surveillance and demoralizing

condemnation of mainstream society and encouraging relatively autonomous,

often enabling forms of self expression and cultural creativity. (Dyson, 2004,

p.62)

Break dancing (or breaking) was another cultural element claiming urban space in resistance to the oppressive economic and social circumstances of the late 1970's. Like rap, it also had its origins amongst black and Hispanic youth from the Harlem, Bronx and

Queens areas that make up the boroughs of New York. An 'urban vernacular dance,' breaking acts as a discourse through which youth express their style, skill, and uniqueness via a series of dance moves, contortions and freezes. B-boys or breakboys was the designation given to those early mid-seventies free-stylists who danced in the breaks of funk and disco records. Basically, the term 'break dancing' arose because of the expressive movements that took place in the breaks in the music.

Like rap, breaking in the late 70's and early 80's experienced a cross- cultural sharing within the boroughs of New York. After the break dancing of the 70's (which was predominantly picked up by black communities in New York), Puerto Rican youth started to pick it up and incorporate acrobatics and gymnastic moves. In this way, black

93 youth passed it on and inspired the next generation of break dancers who were Puerto

Rican. Today, its practitioners include an internationally diverse membership of creative, uniquely styled artists and can be considered a unique expression of Indigenous poetics.

From the beginning, breaking functioned as a way to claim public spaces, where places such as schools became ideal environments for early breakers to perform.

However, there was also a strong underground component, since it would take place outside of the public eye (Banes, 2004).

Hip-hop has a history of being an underground practice giving crews the

opportunity to develop hidden languages which contained alternatives to dominant narratives. Given the social context of intense surveillance on congregations of youth,

which is exacerbated through the presence of Native gangs in Canada and the United

States, the hidden nature of hip-hop as an underground practice offers reprieve from an invasive social world that they were dealing with on a daily basis. Sally Banes' insight

into the underground nature of breaking highlights the importance of the practice

whereby (before the onslaught of the media hype), breaking was self-generated and

invisible to the adult world.

It was both literally and figuratively an underground form, happening on the

subways as well as in parks and city playgrounds, but only among those 'in the

know.' Its invisibility and elusiveness had to do with the extemporaneous

nature of the original form and also with its social context. (Banes, 2004, p. 15)

Hip-hop discourse also has a history, and contemporary presence within universities. This next section contextualizes the life-world of hip-hop within discourses of the academy

where scholars in the United States engaged in hip-hop studies contribute to our

94 understandings of hip-hop origins. These literatures, combined with the works of those studying hip-hop of an Indigenous/Native flavour within Canada, contribute to shaping the context within which this particular study emerges.

Hip-hop Stories of Origin within the Academy

Hip-hop practices became known in public discourses starting in the late 1970's.

The body of written work on hip-hop began in the United States when Billboard published an article on hip-hop in 1978. At this time journalists working on the culture beat also started to write about the cultural practices of break dancing, graffiti, and the underground music scene. As noted by Forman, these literatures sprang forth before the musical form became known as 'rap.' Hip-hop reached the academy in 1984, beginning with the publication of David Toop's Rap attack: African jive to New York hip-hop which is based upon interviews with the early pioneers of hip-hop and represents hip-hop's first published intellectual analysis. Forman notes that today scholarly work on hip-hop, at least in the United States, is less marginalized than it once was. For example, in recent times we have seen an explosion of material relating to hip-hop practices within the academy since the formation of'hip-hop studies.' Dyson (2004) claims that hip-hop's presence in the academy is multi-disciplinary in nature and includes borrowings from sociology, politics, religion, economics, urban studies, black studies, communications theory, cultural studies, media studies, performance studies, English, women's studies, musicology, and now Indigenous studies.

Another such indicator of an academic embrace of hip-hop is that contemporary academics fuse some of the elements of hip-hop practitioners into their styles of writing and their approaches to academic theory and research. Scholars in hip-hop studies are

95 using strategies that "include appropriating and reincorporating academic theories"

(Forman, 2004, p.3). We are also beginning to witness the employment of other practices which may involve subversion of traditionally' academic forms of practice. As a consequence, hip-hop methodologies may employ breaks in traditional Western academic practice, thus challenging forms of inquiry through introducing the methods of hip-hop emcees. Emcee methods of critical inquiry have been acknowledged by scholars internationally. Netherland scholar Priya Parmar's work entitled Knowledge reigns supreme: the critical pedagogy of hip-hop activist KRS-One (2009), incorporates a hip- hop cultural studies and critical theory approach to illuminate the teaching strategies and techniques deriving from within hip-hop culture. Her work presents a libratory pedagogy created through the lyrics of hip-hop artist and activist Lawrence Parker aka KRS-One.

We are also beginning to see the emergence of research centers. One such example is the

Hip-hop Archive (est. 2002), housed in the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and

African American Research at Harvard University. In describing the intersection of hip- hop within academia, Murray Forman identifies that those working with and through hip- hop-based concepts and ideologies actually have been influenced in other facets of their lives. Forman describes that such work is derivative of the liminal space where the "hood and the university converge" (Forman, 2004, p.3).

Youth practitioners of hip-hop have been cited to have some concerns towards the placement of hip-hop within the ivory tower, specifically with regards to the nature of knowledge that is being produced about hip-hop culture through and by academics with little to no experience inside the hip-hop community. Forman (2004) expresses this concern in the following statement,

96 It is not rare, for instance to hear critique among youth constituents of the

hip-hop nation' who are convinced that the professors with little or no

connection to 'the hood' and, thus, lacking in 'street credibility' in their view, are

exploiting the culture in order to identify with something cool, exciting, 'fresh,' or

'phat.' (p. 4)

It is important to consider the role of academics in shaping public knowledge about hip- hop communities. Does the research agenda exploit knowledge for personal and professional gain at the expense of the hip-hop communities themselves? The construction of truth claims is one of the main strategies used to sustain discourses of dominance. Truth claims, or knowledge claims entail an arrogant perception (Ortega,

2006), which reflect the desires of those making the claims, more than the realities they are supposed to reflect. In order to avoid making such claims, the positionality of the researcher needs to be understood from the beginning. Another method of making sure to avoid exploiting the artists is through adopting an approach which reflects some of the characteristics of hip-hop itself. While we also need to be mindful to not appropriate hip- hop practices in carrying out research, I believe that ethical research can be carried out through a methodology which accommodates ruptures, chance (Vizenor, 1994), and unexpected moments in its approach. We also need to acknowledge that the many layers that make up hip-hop musical form may contradict and collide with each other, thus making the search for truth claims impractical and even unethical.

Hip-hop in the Prairies and Places North of the Border

The following section discusses the contributions of multi-disciplinary approaches to hip- hop studies within Canada. Scholars participating in the movement in a Canadian

97 academic setting, illuminate the language, new concepts and meanings embedded within contemporary expressions of hip-hop of an Indigenous/Native flavour.

Marianne Ignace is an anthropologist and member of the Secwepemc community in British Columbia. Her (2005) article entitled Tagging, rapping and the voices of the ancestors: expressing identity between the small city and the rez, provides an illustration of the conceptual/contextual landscape of hip-hop cultural graffiti art amongst Native youth transgressing between reserves and small cities. Her work analyzes contemporary graffiti art produced by First Nations youth from Skeetchestin and Kamloops at St. Ann's

Academy in Kamloops as a project in providing outlets for young artists to express their sense of and search for identity through visual art. Her analysis explores the synthesis of meanings of Aboriginal traditions and graffiti art as she claims that Native youth identities are connected to multiple layers of experience (Ignace, 2005). This work is significant to the body of literature that exists within Canadian hip-hop scholarly inquiry in that it is co-written by GEO (George Ignace) who is an emcee/artist himself. This particular piece carves out the space for other such voicings to engage and broaden hip- hop cultural analyses within the academy.

Brett Lashua's (University of Liverpool) research interests are in leisure, popular culture, music, and soundscape, particularly as these inform questions of creativity, representation and identities. The Beat of Boyle Street was the site of his doctoral work in

Edmonton, Alberta. His study was a local/city-based music project created in collaboration between the University of Alberta and an inner city charter school. This school engaged predominately Aboriginal youth between the ages of 14-20. Lashua's research recorded the experiences of youth negotiating complex city spaces, revealing

98 hip-hop lyricist's responses towards stereotypes experienced through daily interactions in mainstream society. In his article entitled Just another Native? Soundscapes, chorasters, and borderlands in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada (2006), Lashua describes the intersections between Aboriginal youth's everyday praxis and the realm of popular culture where daily experiences may require an ability to traverse different socially constructed barriers. This article contributes to the field of Aboriginal hip-hop by highlighting the importance of exposing the multiple strategies youth are adopting to record their travellings, such as the production of soundscapes. Lashua's work explores how hip-hop practitioners are expressing their movements as transgressors, while simultaneously producing challenges through narrating everyday experiences within racialized, gendered, and classed city spaces. Soundscapes illustrate the transgression of spaces through recording everyday surroundings. Du Guy suggests that,

Soundscapes refer to the 'actual' sounds of the world, but also to the meanings,

feelings and associations that occur in the landscape of the mind. (Du Guy et

al. 1997, p. 20; Lashua, 2006, p.393)

One such soundscape featured in this article is produced through recording the sounds of a ride along a subway route in Edmonton, Alberta. The recording picks up on the announcements of station stops; the opening and closing of doors; and the sounds of the conversations that are taking place in the subway car. This soundscape provided a base to layer beat and spoken word in order to record experiences of travelling through the city and to present what Lashua calls 'an aural collage' (Lashua, 2006, p.393).

Lashua's (2006) article entitled The arts of the remix: ethnography and rap, privileges the voicings of youth hip-hop emcees and lyricists in using popular cultural

99 modes of production and consumption to disseminate their voicings. Within this article,

Lashua speaks about the strategy of sampling and producing remixes, those same conceptualizations which can then be used to describe urban youth processes in negotiating transgressive space to fashion uniquely styled identities.

Charity Marsh is currently the Canada Research Chair in Interactive Media and

Performance in the faculty of Arts at the University of Regina, Saskatchewan. Her research pertaining to the Canadian (Indigenous) hip-hop culture focuses on the

'disruptive' possibilities of the Indigenous hip-hop scene across the Canadian Prairies.

Her work illustrates the contested relationship between the view that Indigenous hip-hop represents a globalization of Canada's Indigenous youth and the contrasting belief that

Indigenous hip-hop represents a culture of 'sublimation.' Similar to Lashua's project,

Marsh has been instrumental in engaging youth participants to produce music of their own. Marsh spearheaded the development of her New Interactive Media and

Performance Labs at the University of Regina which houses (amongst other emcee spaces) a multi-media deejay interactive studio and performance/workshop space, and a beat-making electronic music studio. This space housed the Hip-hop project version 2

(HHPv.2) which involved 15 grade 10 Scott Collegiate students earning English and arts education credits while learning about hip-hop. As part of this programming, students are instructed by Marsh, and local hip-hop deejays, graffiti artists, emcees, b-boys and b- girls. Participants in this project learned about music composition and production, alongside other hip-hop cultural elements such as dance instruction.

Marsh has contributed to the overall scene of Indigenous hip-hop in Canada through continuing to support the emcees and artists. As well she has presented at a vast

100 number of conferences, both nationally and internationally promoting an exposure of

Indigenous hip-hop in Canada. One such presentation entitled Warrior(s)?: Reflections on Indigenity, gender, and technology in Canadian hip-hop, interrogates the concept of difference in the lyricism of Cree lyricist Eekwol, and Mohawk, mixed-blood artist

Kinnie Starr. Marsh's discussion paid particular attention to issues of belonging and community as expressed through hip-hop. Both Lashua and Marsh are non-Native scholars working with Native youth to assist with bringing voice to their experiences.

Their technological insights as deejays and mixers themselves, allows for them not only to do research with Native youth, but also to contribute to their creation process through the projects that they are initiating. This inclusion of voice is accommodated through themselves 'stepping back' in order to avoid voicing on behalf of Native youth to produce truth claims about their practice.

Represented within the academy and amongst popular cultural forms of dissemination, hip-hop of an Indigenous/Native flavour has a multi-layered and rich relationship with African American, African Canadian and Caribbean oral and movement-based traditions. An embrace of practices stemming from a fusion of these several traditions with Native oral traditions, assists in breaking up the dominant narratives characterized by risky youth and the ahistorical/authentic Indian discourse.

These next sections attest to other 'stories of origins' whose birth stories are still being shared, enacted, and to a large extent, created.

101 African and Native Indigenous Oralities: Relationships and Practices

This section engages hip-hop culture to reveal emcee processes which include expressing resonances of their Native foremothers and forefathers, and those of their adoptive hip- hop kin such as Africaa Bombaataa and Kool Here.

"I was happy that hip-hop was part of that. You know hip-hop filled in the

identity that we had lost. You know it gave us something so that we could be,

and it made us stronger. A lot of traditional songs that we didn't know, hip-hop

put songs there for us and dances that we didn't know, break dancing you

know, dance moves and it became like you know the new culture. I hear elders

and traditionalists, they talk about pow wows and how those pow wow songs

come to people as a gift and, I've had that feeling myself." (Rex Smallboy,

personal communication, July 15th, 2008)

In his narrative, Cree emcee Rex Smallboy from Hobbema reserve in Alberta, describes the fluid nature of an embrace of hip-hop which originates out of fusing various music/movement-based traditions stemming from African American,

Caribbean, and other Indigenous cultures and communities.

Emcees are formulating complex responses to discourses of dominance through an embrace of strategies stemming from both African and Native oral traditions. These strategies include: the primacy of metaphor in obscuring meaning through wordplay as an act of'signification' (Gates, 1998); the use of parody to take back power; and the subversive implementation of mimicry. Lyricist Ostwelve, for example, applies a satirical mockery of the significance of blood within Native history through his lyrics 'oops I got blood on yah' (Ostwelve, "blood on yah"). Mimicry also manifests in the emulation of

102 dress, style and speak created through reinterpreting an authenticized 'African American identity,' taken from its context within the lived experiences of individuals from the

Caribbean and African American communities. Representative of a media construction, this version of identity represents the absence of the 'tribal real' (Vizenor, 1994) and is located within discourses of dominance.

Mohawk/mixed-blood artist Kinnie Starr (Vancouver) challenges mainstream portrayals of Native women as sex objects. In the following narrative she expresses the idea of mimicking the sex-based languages inherent in overtly masculinized hip-hop. By using mimicry as a vehicle to expose this issue, Kinnie hopes to create a dialogical space whereby the stereotyping of women in sex-based narratives can be challenged.

"I definitely have toyed with the idea of making a record that talks exclusively

about sex and about men as sex objects. I've thought quite a lot about that, and

the concept. Like that hook 'I know what girls want, I know what they like,

they think I'm sexy, they want to sex me.' You know, like all those old

school hooks? I've been thinking about using them and just flipping the verses

and writing new verses. The only thing is that, because it's still such a boys

club, I don't know how. I don't really want to make enemies and I don't really

want to offend people. And I don't know how men would feel to be

treated like sex objects the way women have been. Like I think that it might be

really hard on them and that's not what I want to create cause dudes don't

know what it feels like. We're used to it, you know.. .our aunties and all.

We've been trained to be strong around that. I don't know how men would

103 feel if we started talking about them that way and it might hurt them which is

not the goal. The goal is to shine light on that."(Kinnie Starr, personal

communication, August 4th, 2007)

In the storying of Indigenous realities through music, similar strategies have been adopted amongst different African American, Caribbean and First Nations communities.

These strategies exist as a result of traditions passed down through a variety of historical roots.

The rap artist appeals to the rhetorical practices eloquently honed in African-

American religious experiences and the cultural potency of black singing/musical

traditions to produce an engaging hybrid. (Dyson, 2004, p.68)

The elements within hip-hop culture reflect its dissemination in that its practices arose out of rich African traditions and styles of movement, music, and oral traditions. Many of its practitioners refer to their own cultural practices as similar to those espoused within hip-hop. For example, within an Indigenous context, elders utilize orality to prophesize or communicate a critical understanding of the present, past, and future. A strong link exists between the contemporary practices of Native hip-hop artists and its historical roots embedded within traditions of African cultures. To state it succinctly, hip-hop artists are contemporary orators. The Native lyricists that I interviewed articulated a shared experience of struggle that is grounded in the music.

"African Americans have a similar struggle. You know from being taken from

Africa and brought to this land. A lot of times you know.. .stolen from Africa and

sold. And brought to this country to be oppressed. I've had opportunities to build

104 bridges with my African American brothers and it's a beautiful thing." (Quese

IMC, personal communication, August 4th, 2007)

In articulating this struggle, it seems as though these modern-day orators have incorporated understandings of their racialized status through a variety of forms stemming from black historical consciousness. The use of language that is incomprehensible to those outside of the community represents one of these trajectories.

In some instances, artists will adopt strategies to highlight a criminal/deviant subjectivity in their music while at the same time critiquing those same systems that work to produce them. This is an example of the double consciousness articulated through critical practices of voicing. Double consciousness is a term first introduced by W.E.B. Du Bois

(1897) who expressed this term to mean:

That sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of

measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and

pity. One ever feels his two-ness - an American, a Negro; two souls, two

thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose

dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. (Du Bois, W.E.B., 1897,

p. 194)

An awareness of double consciousness informs contemporary practices of manipulating dominant identity constructions, in calling back power. These practices reflect the wit, wordplay, subversion, and parody embedded in the 'trickster' of oral traditions. Imani

Perry, author of Prophets of the hood: politics and poetics in hip-hop (2004), refers to emcees as musical tricksters - as "those who use the oral tradition to subvert their own relative lack of power through trickery and verbal dexterity" (p.29). She speaks of

105 trickster consciousness in African-American folktales as representative of "the superiority of intelligence and cleverness over brute force" (Perry, 2004, p.30). While it is important to be mindful of those who are critical of the excessive use of the term trickster discourse (McLeod, 2007), in this particular context the concept helps to illuminate those strategies by which emcees are 'speaking back' to discourses of dominance.

We can see this trickster consciousness illuminated in each of the elements within hip-hop culture. For instance, the 'break' in hip-hop dancing signifies a moment whereby dancers highlight their individuality, cleverness and skills through a pantomime, or other unique manifestation of'dissing' other dancers. Trickster practices, in short, destabilize notions of the 'authentic' identity through literally reconfiguring hip-hop practitioners' bodies and languages. Perry claims that such 'trickster music' inserts itself into the traditional by borrowing and reconfiguring texts in service to the authority and artistry of the emcee and deejay (Perry, 2004).

Through adopting such strategies, conscious hip-hop respects the complexity of its roots. According to Keyes (1991):

The distinctive vocal technique employed in rapping can be traced from African

bardic traditions to rural southern-based expressions of African-Americans -

toasts, tales, sermons, blues, game songs, and allied forms - all of which are

chanted in a rhyme or poetic fashion. (Keyes, p.40; Bennett, 1999, p.78)

In a similar fashion, Dyson (2004) expresses rap as a form of music which blended different black musical traditions, from the oral traditions of Africa, to the blues, to gospel music.

106 Similar to the ancestors, emcees continue to apply poetic languages deriving from their environment in formulating their activism and movements. Quese IMC offers a fascinating narrative about the relationship between his own peoples' spiritual songs generated during the trail of tears and the history of black musical traditions leading up to hip-hop:

"A long time ago when we were on those long journeys like those trails of

tears songs we sang during those times are real sad.. .sad songs you know. And

I know a lot of those songs and if you find the notes to those songs they are in

blues notes, blues keys, and they say that a long time ago when they were

walking those trails a lot of those slaves during those times would watch as all

of those Indians were going through the south singing those songs, a lot of

Indians died during those years.. .thousands and thousands of Indians died so

all those songs they sang were like mourning songs and they say that

those tunes moved those slaves during those times in the 1800' s you know.

They were moved so much by those songs that they began to sing those tunes

and made songs out of them which they called spirituals you know, old Afro,

you know Negro spirituals. And from that came the blues, and from the blues

came jazz, and from jazz came hip-hop. You know, so a lot of people don't

know the story that us as Native people we're descendents of what... you

know hip-hop came from. You know and that's just what I was told you know,

from our people." (Quese IMC, personal communication, August 4, 2007)

As previously expressed, Native peoples in the Americas likewise have a history of oral traditions which mirror patterns emergent in Black forms of orality. Pura Fe, a

107 singer/songwriter from the Tuscarora Nation's Red Black on Blues illustrates the history of strong connections between the spoken words of black communities and Native communities. In this song she establishes the connection between the Tuscaroran 'stomp dance' as a call-and-response composition mirroring the work songs popular in black communities during the 1800's. These songs, according to Benicewicz (2007), have a relationship to the development of gospel music and the blues.

I would suggest that the delivery of spoken word lyrics by Seminole, Cree, and

Sto:lo artists fills the senses with hope, anger, and passion in an almost prophetic fashion.

Quese IMC, in the following narrative, speaks about the significance of the church and of ceremonial grounds as both song and spiritual repositories. His comment speaks of an example of border crossing which was as significant a practice then as it is now.

"I rap about my Oklahoma, the old Indian churches way out in the middle of

nowhere that have held tight to our Indian songs you know, but at the same

time you know they have the beliefs, you know, of the church you know which

is fine because that was the card that was dealt us, but for the simple fact that

they did it in the Indian way. And it's beautiful to me. Through our traditional

ways, the ceremonial grounds that we go to, we practice the ways that we've

always practiced. Which is beautiful with all the different avenues that Indian

country has taken and we can take that and translate it in our hearts...you know

in an articulated way." (Quese IMC, personal communication, August 4, 2007)

The legacy of spiritual complexity to which Quese refers involves the presence of 'the old Indian churches' that represent the presence and actions of missionaries in First

Nations communities. This influence has meant that for some 'fusion' has inspired

108 spiritual forms of expression for quite some time. Quese expresses these experiences in a strong and gentle manner.

The practice breaking, as in break dancing also arose through various Indigenous cultural forms that have inspired its contemporary feel. Breaking has many influences including Haitian dances and those coming out of the Caribbean. Hip-hop has also been noted to have roots with caporeira, a Brazilian form of martial art that evolved as a dance to disguise itself during a time of slavery when people were forbidden to practice it.

Moves from the Afro-American repertory of dance, such as the 'lindy' and 'Charleston' also have been credited with influencing break dance practices (Banes, 2004).

Micheal Holman (2004) reveals that breaking has a history in pre-civil war

America, with slavery: "like most American dances, breaking owes much to eighteenth century American slavery when African and European dance styles began to mesh"

(Holman, 2004, p.32). Holman describes the significance of the Juba to modern day practice. This African-based dance used the circle format whereby each would take their turn in the circle and return to the outside of the circle. This form of dance indicates that the establishment of competitive dancing preceded modern forms of break dance. In fact modern forms of break dance are still being created as we are seeing a movement whereby pow wow dancing is being fused with break dancing moves to the point where special categories of hip-hop pow wow contests have been created at reservations in the

United States.

Another strong cultural practice which has its roots in early forms of Indigenous musical/spiritual traditions of both African and Native cultures is the ceremonial and social use of the drum. When speaking of the drum, certain hip-hop practitioners hold

109 firmly to its symbolism of Indigenous resistance and resilience. In a 2004 interview, one of the founding fathers of hip-hop, Kool D.J. Here speaks of the centrality of the drum:

"Music was always our way of information - it was the drum. They took it

away from us in Africa, now we found it again. The music is our fuckin' drums

man." (Nelson, 2004, p.55)

Reflecting a similar tone, Haida/Cree emcee Dereck Edenshaw (a.k.a. Manik) based out of Vancouver, alludes to the relationship with the drum when describing the layered elements of hip-hop musical composition:

"These are new forms and adaptations of those drums and rhythms, plus you

have different samples and powerful words you can put over top of that. But

there's always that drum." (Manik)

In the following narrative Kinnie Starr establishes a connection to hip-hop through the cultural practices of the contemporary pow wow through comparing the roles of the master of ceremonies at a pow wow with the emcee hip-hop practice freestyling:

"It occurred to me on more than one occasion at pow wows that.. .this guy is

basically freestyling, like he doesn't have a beat...but he is freestyling.. .It does

feel like pow wow to me.. .a bit like a congregation of people and I know that

other people have talked about that and that's been written about too, but at the

same time when I was first discovering that, I was discovering that exclusively

from my own experience and I really did trip out I was like wow this is

definitely like the new pow wow, the new drum is hip-hop." (Kinnie Starr,

personal communication, August 4th, 2007)

110 Kinnie expressed a significant connection that speaks of one of the strategies of hip-hop.

Voicing captures the feeling of the moment and shares it in the form of an embodied collective knowledge. This embodiment allows for the free-flowing expressions found within emcee storytelling. Nuxalk/Cayuga emcee Jb the FirstLady illustrates the ability of voicing to establish a connection with listeners by sharing the feeling of frustration with cyclical oppression. This is exemplified within the following lyrics:

"Gotta feel my worth,

gotta feel mother earth

my people are elder's rebirth

one breath

six deaths

must confess

equals stress

is it a test

a lesson

or a bless'n

I'm still stress'n

one tree

one seed

is it all gonna be

when will the oppressed

ever be free

how do we heal

111 how do we deal

when is it all gonna

feel

better?"

(Jb the FirstLady, 2008, One Day, Indigenous Love)

As a strategy for change, voicing inserts the speaker and listener into historical memory as emcees express experiences and ideas familiar to the collective. This voicing also disrupts the absences that discourses of dominance rely upon in order to construct and re­ fashion authentic identities to maintain the status quo. Jb's narratives also illustrate how embodiment, an element of Indigenous poetics, can be an anti-colonial endeavor as it helps to generate empathy amongst people who previously might not have an understanding of the 'feel' of colonialism.

In order to comprehend contemporary messaging practices of emcees as voicing a historical consciousness, it is important to consider how emcees were drawn towards hip- hop as a musical form. This musical form allowed them to link their own experiences with those practices and messagings of their adopted hip-hop forefathers. Hip-hop as a form of voicing has also provided the spaces through which emcees could speak of the understandings of their other forebearers such as Big Bear, Poundmaker, Anna Mae

Aquash, and others who were also a part of their historical consciousness.

112 "Like people like Dr. Dre, Tupac you know, those were the pioneers and you

know didn't wanna be like them. I wanted to be my own, but have the same

amount of ambition as them and intellect, art - everything. To be part of it all,

part of that energy.. .part of that energy/inspiration field." (Dallas Arcand,

personal communication, August 5, 2007)

Aspiring emcees discovered hip-hop culture through engaging in their own uniquely styled versions of b-boying/b-girling (or break dancing), beat making, graffiti writing/ tagging. And while they were being introduced to the culture through its varied forms, they were also compelled by the music of such emcees and crews as Public Enemy, Salt- n-Pepa, Tupac Shakur, and Dr. Dre. Public Enemy's song 'who protects us from you' would have been enticing to Native youth questioning the practices of 'corrupt cops' and some of the behind-the-scenes violence and abuses towards Native youth by those that are set up to 'serve and protect.'

Artists participating in my research project shared their understandings of the complexity and multi-faceted nature of struggle in their communities. For example, during an interview, Storlo emcee Theresa Seymour described the multiple manifestations of struggle - experienced as the shame brought about through addictions, and the struggle to be Indigenous in this contemporary world. In a similar vein, Maori author and scholar Graham Smith (2005) described the "need to move beyond the hegemonizing position of seeing 'struggle' as a single issue" (Smith, 2003). Within hip- hop's discourse of struggle, the realm of the 'everyday' becomes a tremendously important space. The everyday lived experiences are also key elements shaping the flow of the messagings themselves which, in Indigenous hip-hop collectivities, are

113 communicated in ways that mirror the oralities found in ancestral prose. In the following narrative, Eekwol discusses hip-hop's connection to First Nation's oral tradition:

"And of course our history is based on oral tradition and what better medium

than hip-hop, spoken word to relay those stories in a cool way with a drum

beat you know with the beat, so I don't know, you probably heard that one

before hey? The whole oral tradition.. .and yeah it's just so natural and I think

that's why Indigenous people just totally latch onto it, it's just so natural to

what our ancestors listened to before.. .to what our ancestors used to do."

(Eekwol, personal communication, July 29, 2007)

Credited as the forefather of Native American hip-hop, Litefoot was an early inspiration and one of the first artists on the scene with socially conscious lyricism. Tru

Rez Cru (based out of Six Nations of the Grand River reserve in Ontario) and War Party

(hailing from Hobbema, Alberta,) were two of the earliest crews in Canada to initiate the movement north of the border. In a 2003 interview with Exclaim magazine, Joshua

Harris, Aka, Maawho of Tru Rez Crew talked about the breadth of Native hip-hop in reflecting real life:

"We try to bring a positive message, but life isn't always positive... Everybody

has love, I write that into the music. Everybody has hate. I write that into the

music. You have your ups and you have your downs. It's just

real life." (Joshua Harris interview with Kruchak, 2003)

In speaking about his hip-hop group War Party appearing on the scene 1995 with a well known track entitled Feeling Reserved, Rex Smallboy discusses the inspiration coming from the elements of hip-hop that appealed to his experience:

114 "I mean at the time hip-hop was a little more where it originally was like it was

about expression, it was about doing the right things and back then with hip-

hop there was things like 'keep it real' and that meant something and

represents where you're from and so those were two things that were driving

me to try to give the world a picture of what it was like to be me which I was

right in the middle of an identity crisis and so my music then became a tool to

try and define for myself being Native. My goal was to take Native and make it

cool to be Native cause at that point in my life there was so many things that

were against it like the alcoholism.. .like I don't know, the morale was so low

you know people didn't believe in themselves and there were so many Natives

that were ashamed to be Native. I wanted to redefine that and make it

something cool you know like with rap music cause that was something that

young people really you know took to and felt o.k, well if Chuck D could do

this for his people, if Ice-T could do it, I could do it for my people.. .1 could go

out there and give my people voice and try to make society take our people

more seriously." (Rex Smallboy, personal communication, July 15, 2008)

In this dialogue, Rex Smallboy contextualized the social/cultural context of inequality and racism through his own voicing which expressed a heartfelt desire for personal and collective dignity. There were many challenges involved with cultivating a voice for 'the people.' In the beginnings of War Party, Rex faced challenges of a music industry that was blinded to the notion that there could be a market for Native rap. Rex recounted that he was directly confronted by major labels saying that "no one wants to hear Native politics in music." As a result of being shot down by those who claimed there was no

115 market, Rex took his rap to communities and helped First Nations reserves and communities organize shows. The attempted marginalization of newly adapted Native musical forms pushed Rex to find the market himself:

"I built my own market. I didn't accept the fact that they said there was no

market. I went out there and built one to show them.. .and for me, I guess that

became the opposite of what the government set out to do to us a long time ago

which was to divide and conquer.. .like I got to be part of the opposite of

that which was to go and try to unite the people you know." (Rex Smallboy,

personal communication, July 15, 2008)

As a response to the external forces driving the emcee creation process, the struggle came to be meaningful to the art form which in turn inspired the creation of hip-hop imbued with a Native/Indigenous flavour north of the border. Native artists picked up the practices of'articulating the struggle' through testimonial-like narratives imbued with hip-hop's rhythmic form, flow, beats and lyricism. It is my understanding that 'the struggles' articulated through hip-hop spoke directly to Native youth by inspiring them to voice some of the injustices that they saw happening to their families and friends. It gave them a way to connect with some of their own frustrations as collective responses towards certain realities attached to systematic forms of oppression. It would have been quite meaningful to hear testimonials over the air waves, in a sense affirming some of their experienced lives.

While articulating the struggle is an important component of modern hip-hop, there are First Nations artists amongst us that struggle towards a transcendence of struggle in their work. Cree emcee Wab Kinew, based in Winnipeg, described hip-hop's

116 beginnings as influenced by a celebratory vibe expressed through early practitioners such as Kool Here and Africaa Bombaataa, where the creation of music was informed through a greater goal of celebrating life rather than a singular focus on the struggle. This influence represents an overlooked appeal of hip-hop to bring 'the people' together in celebration amidst a social/environmental backdrop that serves the interests of the non- black middle/upper class segments of society. In speaking of this phenomenon in the evolution of Native hip-hop, Kinew states:

"Grandmaster Flash came out with 'the message' and then that's when it

started to get socially conscious and then you know like Public Enemy and

NWA and in the wake of those guys is when Native hip-hop started so it's

weird because Native hip-hop has had like the opposite development. So it

started with struggle.. .it's like the reverse evolution, like going from more

struggle/consciousness stuff to more fun loving, like lighthearted things."

(Wab Kinew, July 16th, 2008, personal communication)

Based upon conversations with emcees, the evolution of hip-hop with a

Native/Indigenous flavour is manifesting itself as a transcendence of solely articulating

'the struggle,' and is moving into the realm where youthful creative energies are being spent creating the types of worlds that they would want to see. This represents a collective retreat away from the responsive mode, entering into the visionary space through voicing a celebration of life. I think that this is significant, as it expresses an unwillingness of Native people to constantly self-position in defensive mode, forced to react against external mechanisms of colonization and control. In describing these dynamics Smith (2003) refers to typical strategies used against Indigenous people as

117 constituting the 'politics of distraction' which he characterizes as, "the colonizing process of being kept busy by the colonizer, of always being on the 'back-foot,' 'responding,'

'engaging,' 'accounting,' 'following,' and 'explaining'" (Smith, 2003, p. 2).

Hip-hop of a Native/Indigenous flavour has been impacted by the demonization of Indigenous forms of musical expression. This practice has deliberately masked hip- hop's contribution in producing a necessary social critique. However, as the following discussion portrays, hip-hop's complexity is not solely housed in its social critique, as it also embodies sophistication as an art form.

The voicings of contemporary emcees are still being challenged by a hegemonic social interest which has put down black musical forms in order to maintain social and cultural dominance. In this play of power, both hip-hop and Aboriginal youth occupy a similar positioning as scapegoats representative of the social ills within society. Such criticisms coming out of mainstream communities are the result of a refusal to distinguish between rap which puts forward positive messages, and acts of violence that exist in many inner-city surroundings (Dyson, 2004). Basically, the individualization of systemic violence through demonizing black, Latino, and Aboriginal embraced art forms has functioned as a tool in order to retain the status quo. In the following excerpt, Dyson illustrates that a healthy embrace of hip-hop music would actually pose a threat to social order:

It is difficult for a culture that is serious about the maintenance of social

arrangements, economic conditions and political violence to display a

significant appreciation for musical expressions that contest the existence of

such problems in black and Latino communities. (Dyson, 2004, p.63)

118 Dyson illuminates the ways in which narratives of dominance have degraded African

American musical forms in order to maintain social and cultural structural dominance.

This no doubt stems from an acknowledgement of the transformative nature of the musical form through its ability to produce, nurture and actualize alternative versions of social realities. Hip-hop calls out and identifies the ways in which inequalities are upheld, through practices of police violence against Indigenous peoples, including Native

Indigenous peoples, for example. This makes it a 'subversive' mode of communication, a risky reminder that racism and other forms of inequality exist within governing institutions. Within a Native context, emcee Plex's song "Spare Change" contains lyrics which illuminate this context of racial inequality,

"What the hell you talkin' bout

Why's everybody smoking' meth and rockin' out

Two-thirds of the world on prescription drugs

We don't need pills, all it takes is hugs

Can't we all just love one another

Not build the barriers based on skin colour?"

(Plex featuring Rellik, Touch, and Leemai, 2009, "Spare Change,"Brainstorm)

Although there are those who appreciate the ability of hip-hop to illuminate patterns of injustice, we cannot also overlook the fact that hip-hop maintains integrity as an art form through its varied artistic, stylistic, and structurally aesthetic qualities. Those engaged in thinking critically about the significance of hip-hop as an art form caution against advancing a singular understanding of hip-hop as issue-specific.

119 While the music bursts with sociopolitical themes, it is quite dangerous for the

critic or listener to interpret it purely as a reflection of social and political

conditions, without thought to the presence of artistic choice in every narrative

and composition. (Perry, 2004, p. 39)

A focus on issue specificity carries the possibility of stripping emcees of their agency through positioning her/him as a manifestation of particular issues. This distortion is oftentimes a product of the ways in which dominant discourses manipulate identity, striving to distil a singular, authentic version of the perceived self. Oversimplification as a strategy of dominance produces a societal tunnel vision which masks the complexities of identities, and in this case, the complexities inherent in hip-hop. It is important that emcees have that ability to be agents of change, while honing their skills in their art form.

Within hip-hop, choices have been made in terms of how individual artists present reality. Perry (2004) suggests that we need to consider hip-hop as an art form "with substantial socio/political ramifications and issues attendant to it, yet not reducible to them, [if we can achieve this] we avoid reducing the music, or the population it represents to a socioeconomic location" (39).

This process of reduction clearly is not reflected in the music. Cree emcee Daybi

No Doubt's song entitled "The Deep End" (2009) illustrates the significance of the stylistic choices that emcees make in producing good hip-hop:

"It leaves it even gleams at the end of a tunnel,

when it wants to I mean.

I leave it up to it just to channel it and find you,

120 colouring the air in your space over there"

Although a mood is captured in his other lyrical affronts to practices of colonization, this particular song is not a critique. The critique of hip-hop should not be judged solely on the basis of its social/cultural importance in challenging the status quo. Rather the evaluation should also be allowed to extend to the music's stylistic and compositional excellence. There is a freedom that accommodates this shift in thinking, when emcees are not confined to producing music only with socio/political themes. The role of emcees has been to participate in a form of Indigenous political thinking which involves considering deeply the role of hope in transforming societies. For example, amongst the Indigenous hip-hop community, artists have expressed the joy of creating songs which capture the mood of a society already transformed. In a light and positive reflection of what that society could look like, Wab Kinew states:

"the next video that I want to do is for a song with (Donna Myrell) and the idea

is not a happy relationship, but just like Natives being happy, having a good

time, 'cause I don't think that that's really been done... Every music video has

been about either the struggle, or like a shitty relationship like the one I did, or

like about guys trying to be gangster. It's all like pretty downer. If it's not

downer, it's like at least real serious in tone. I think that the next one I wanna

do is like lighthearted, kinda maybe even like get some laughs outta it." (Wab

Kinew, personal communication, July 16( , 208)

Doug Bedard, aka Plex introduced his song "Grateful" which is a spoken testimony to all that he is grateful for in his life, including a healthy relationship with his family, his

121 partner and himself. The creation of this song, in my mind, is a reflection of his ability to

speak from the position of a reality transformed.

"I'm grateful to be blessed with the hunger to learn,

For seeing that the greatest gifts aren't given, but earned

There were times in my life when my spirit was crushed,

I didn't know where to turn, let alone who to trust

I'm grateful for a woman who backs my every move

She knows that I'm real that I've got nothing to prove

I'm grateful to have shared the stage with Rellick and touch

For all I get still I try not to ask for too much

I'm grateful for the time invested in my crew."

(Plex featuring Darp Malone, 2009, "Grateful," Brainstorm)

Meaningful considerations of hip-hop as an art form accommodate a turn towards the

artistic talent and agency that artists espouse as individuals creating music. As well, it ensures that dominant society avoids pigeon-holing youth into categories that restrict their mobility to cross borders. If we fail in this regard, we may fall into reconstituting

Aboriginal youth subjectivities according to our own need to categorize, thereby perpetuating discourses of dominance.

Hip-hop's significance lies in its complexity in stylistically engaging dialogue.

New envisionings of alternative world(s) are informed through rhythmic patterning, sampled sounds, and complex layerings that reflect the multi-plexed (Daybi, 2007) nature of the creative spaces within which artists find inspiration. The emergence of hip-hop collectivities embracing a multiplicity of styles within urban communities illustrates that

122 Aboriginal youth are taking their rightful place in cities in fully constituting Indigenous spaces.

Despite the abilities of artists to engage multi-plexed realities through hip-hop, these collectivities are also impacted by certain tensions. The following discussion identifies and provides a context for a particularly complex tension which impacts

Indigenous hip-hip and members of the diverse Indigenous communities that embrace it.

This section will discuss the complex relationship between the construction of

'otherness' through the (mis)portrayal of 'Indigenous gangsterism.' I will also highlight how the dominant creation of'otherness' impacts peoples of colour participating in the movement.

Indigenous Hip-hop's Internal Tensions - the Struggle for'Authenticity'

As previously mentioned, Aboriginal/Indigenous emcees have utilized certain strategies stemming from African/Indigenous traditions of orality such as mimicry, subversion and comedy. Beyond these strategies, the actions of Aboriginal youth in the cities are inspiring a dialogue surrounding the emulation of a distorted, media-produced stereotype of African and Caribbean Canadians. This constructed 'identity' represents the absence of the 'tribal real' (Vizenor, 1994), and is located within the discourse of dominance as the authentic African American. With the use of Vizenor's terminology, I attempt to negotiate tricky terrain. It is not my intention to set up further binaries between 'blackness' and 'Native,' but rather to illuminate the common ground in our struggle over representation. The shared histories and genealogies between and amongst

Native and African American, African Canadian, and Caribbean cultures attest that these roots run deep and shape complex and rich identities. References to constructed

123 identities are meant to illuminate practices producing discourses of dominance such as the commodiflcation that takes place through media-based technologies. I have already mentioned that the practice of mimicry has a long-standing history within the oral traditions of Indigenous peoples, and we observe how it is taking shape in today's context as Aboriginal youth in the cities attempt to emulate the style, dress and speak of a perceived African American identity. I say 'American' because these dominant representations are maintained by corporate America and sent to us through films, television shows, rap videos and such. Some Native youth are presenting a reinterpretation of an African American identity influenced by corporate America. This identity communicates an 'authentic African American,' in a seemingly similar fashion as the production of the 'authentic Indian' embedded in discourses of dominance (Vizenor,

1994). The phrase 'authentic African American' is meant to speak to Patricia Hill

Collins' depiction of the 'authentic' Black person which describes the ways in which

Black people become stigmatized as examples of Black essentialism (Collins, 2006, p. 104). Within my dissertation, this static identity is linked to a romanticism towards tribal cultures, and, similar to the construction of the authentic Indian, is a fetishized version of dominant culture's anti-selves. Rooted within a similar struggle of representation, the identities of African men have been manipulated through a history of colonial literatures that positioned them as threats to the moral and ethical order of society; in much the same fashion as Native women, they were written as contagions.

Stereotyped as criminals and overtly sexual gangsters, discourses of dominance assured that Native and African American identities were locked in similar narratives. This foregrounds the importance of strategies of subversion embedded within the oral

124 traditions of Indigenous peoples, creating firmly established legacies to pass on to each generation.

The emcees that I spoke with formulated varied responses to this discourse of 'the authentic African American' through both subsuming this identity, and criticizing other

'rappers' for 'tryin to act black' (Kinew, July 16, 2008, personal communication). This criticism, spoken by certain emcees participating in this study, is meant to call out other

'rappers' for trying to emulate the gimmicky and glorified thug-like activities of mainstream American hip-hop. In such instances, the term rapper is used in a derogatory fashion critiquing those not producing conscious hip-hop. An associated tension within

Indigenous hip-hop is the struggle with accusations that Native artists engaged in hip-hop are appropriating a musical form that doesn't belong to them. This criticism represents an ironic tension within a movement whose roots rely upon a healthy dose of fusion alongside individual articulations of style. Coast Salish/Scottish emcee Carrielynn Victor articulates that ironically enough, it can be a struggle to represent struggle when one's positionality is contested:

"In the past I've had to justify my position as a hip-hop artist because I'm not

black. I've done a bit of research and hip-hop itself is a fusion of cultures and a

fusion of all kinds of music styles and genres so I took that in. I see that a lot of

music is born out of struggle, but at the same time, it's born out of passion

too." (Carrielynn Victor, personal communication, October 18 , 2007)

The embrace of African American experiences, representative of a real connection with struggle, carries substance amongst emcees and is articulated clearly by artists such as

Quese IMC. However, the discourse of Natives 'tryin-2-b-black,' is seeped in media-

125 driven/misdirected associations of 'blackness' with gangster discourse, constituting a denial of real-lived experiences of Afro-Caribbean identities. The Indigenous emcee's embrace of such discourse could be interpreted as representing an impact of the 'cultural bomb' which entails the erasure of one's past and an identification with a version of a historical consciousness which has been co-opted and consumed. According to Ngugi

Wa Thiong'o (1986), "the effect of the cultural bomb is to annihilate a people's belief in their names, in their languages, in their environment, in their heritage of struggle, in their unity, in their capacities and ultimately in themselves" (28). Emcees Theresa Seymour

(Sto:lo Nation) and Dallas Arcand (Cree) have expressed this desire of Natives not wanting to be Natives, a response to this imperialistic tool responsible for the production of 'contact zones.' On a personal note, I share this memory:

I remember feeling like this when I was a young person, this idea of not

wanting to be Native anymore. My grandparents shared with me their

concerns over this when I got older. They saw that in me, and they didn 't

know how to change my ways of thinking. The beauty myth (as I now have

come to understand it) was reinforcing this message that my brown skin and

First Nations features were undesirable, un-feminine in an environment that

focused on the delicacy, purity and beauty of whiteness. I remember smearing

my dark face with my white mother's lightly-shaded foundation to appear

lighter. I thought that this would be the way through which I could be deemed

acceptable amongst my peers as female, and as a person. And I was right to

assume that this is what I needed to do. I received the message of dominant

standards of acceptability loud and clear. I had to wait until I got older to

126 come to realize that I was operating in a system that legitimated and

systematized the self-hate of people of colour such as myself. (Personal journal,

July 2007)

Implicit within the aftermath of the cultural bomb (Ngugi, 1986), we want to identify with that which is furthest removed from ourselves. My experience growing up in a predominantly white community inspired messagings that 'whiteness' was the desirable condition. These influences projected an attitude that undermines the ability of people of colour to find common ground. The effect of the cultural bomb on me as a young person was an increased desire to identify with whiteness and a purposefully mediated distance with peoples whose struggles resonated with my own.

As a discourse of dominance which maintains a masking over of actual identities, authentic versions of people of colour have been created through the image of the stereotypical gangster. This gangster image affects both Native youth and African

American youth, making the movements of males within cities garner intense scrutiny and surveillance. The gangster stereotype is also rooted within the discourse tragic victimry (Vizenor, 1994). Stories that typify tragic victimry, according to Vizenor, deny the existence of tribal imagination and wisdom. Encased within this narrative of dominance, alternative expressions of identity are curtailed as they don't conform to the standardized versions which rely upon popular cultural forms of expression.

Gangster designations of Indigenous bodies are a product of multiple layers of experience and discourse including the contemporary media portrayal of Native gangsters in Canadian cities, particularly concentrated on the activities that take place in

Saskatchewan (Regina, Prince Albert, and Saskatoon) and Winnipeg, Manitoba. The

127 discourse 'gangsterism' in the contemporary urban West is related to real-lived

Indigenous experience whereby an association with gangs and gang-like activities are prevalent and a function of poverty, and a product of dislocation. Gang activities can be seen as a technology for voice in a social system that discriminates against Indigenous participation. With a history of enforced institutionalization via the residential school system and the present confinement of Indigenous youth in juvenile detention centers and penitentiaries, Native youth are drawn to gangs for a variety of reasons. These include a sense of belonging and social acceptance, lack of attachment to school, and feelings of disenfranchisement from community and family. According to the Federation of

Saskatchewan Indian Nations report Alter-Natives to non-violence report: Aboriginal youth gangs exploration - a community development process (2005) "disengaged youth, segregated from active participation in society, will form their own culture through gangs" (p.25).

The gangster occupies its own history within colonial narratives of dominance. In the following quote, Greg Demitriadis (2004) discusses the significance of this positionality and examines the nature of the construction of the gangster as fulfilling a role through embodying a capitalistic ethic of individualism, violence, and materialism.

Indeed, the gangster holds a very special place in the American popular

imagination. He embodies such capitalist values as rugged individualism,

rampant materialism, strength through physical force, and male domination

while he rejects the very legal structures which define that culture... the

'gangsta' is a 'romantic' figure, a ready-made tool for male teen rebellion.

(Demitriadis, 2004, p.430)

128 Vizenor's sentiments also describe the location of the Native gangster within master narratives.

Many tragedies represent a tale with which the audience is likely to be

familiar. The tragic tribal tales in this sense, are simulations for an audience

familiar with manifest manners and the literature of dominance. Decidedly, the

stories that turn the tribes tragic are not their own stories. (Vizenor, 1994, p. 16)

The gangster figure, as a figure within tragic tales, has not been construed to mirror a realistic account of those whom it attempts to define. Rather, as figures contextualized within the popular imagination, the gangster's otherness - implicit in his own wild, volatile, and unpredictable ways, suits the needs of dominance.

In contemporary tragic tribal tales (Vizenor, 1994), the Native gangster represents the vanishing Indian by embodying the demise of Indian people manifested in the marginalization and social segregation that it provokes. Representations of the gangster as the violent aggressor on the urban frontier maintain colonial amnesia by placing the focus on the deviant nature of the individual Native youth rather than the social context of racial barriers. The idea of the Native gangster is acted upon as a result of a set of conditions which include a multi-layered narrative stemming from urban ghettos; the construction of racialized geographies; and a general obsession with a threatening 'other.'

The threatening 'other' is also a construct with a direct relationship to this tradition of tragic victimry - gangsters are seen as violent aggressors which prey on the helpless.

Discourses of dominance manipulate the category of Native youth to the extent that it creates divisions within Native urban communities. This divisiveness is an indication of

129 the power that discourse holds in shaping our relationships with dominant society, and with each other as Native people.

Popular media illuminates the domain of the tragic victim as news media continue to narrate tragic victimry through the representation of young graffiti artists, for example, using the art form to escape their otherwise tragically-laden life courses as potential 'at risk' youth. This tradition in discourse strongly communicates an assumption that those

Native youth who 'make it' are the exceptional ones that succeed despite their race. The popular phrase, "hip-hop saved my life.. .1 could be on the streets right now gang banging" (Cappo, personal communication, 2007), is representative of an adopted narrative of the language of dominance, where gang affiliation delineates a hallmark of being 'lost.' Within these dominant frames of thought, the 'exceptional Indians' are represented alongside a totalizing description of those obstacles that needed to be overcome such as drug addiction and alcoholism. These descriptors are answering a call towards the need for a contemporary personification of the tragic victim in order to maintain the tradition of dominance. The idea that Aboriginal youth embody a pack- mentality which threatens the moral order of contemporary urban society is an indication that this attitude remains. The Native gangster is useful in maintaining the status quo, as it relies on the previous belief that Cree, Storlo, and other First Nation individuals suffer from cultural displacement within city environments. Without these socially constructed bench markers, how can we recognize our own success as Aboriginal people? In fact, how can we recognize our own Aboriginality? In essence, the system is laid out so that we become more real as we shape ourselves according to these markers of tragic victims.

Without signifiers such as the lost designation, or the Native gangster label,

130 dominant non-Indigenous identities would be lost because these represent signifiers upon which they shape their identities. Edward Said's foundational work Orientalism (1979), describes the importance of the 'other' in shaping self-identities. He argues that the production of the 'other' has facilitated the development of the 'West' and Europe's key institutions of power. Said wrote that identity "involves the construction of opposites and

'others' whose actuality is always subject to the continuous interpretation and re- interpretation of their differences from 'us'" (Said, 1979, p. 332). The present social order needs its gangsters to embody the tragic victimry of Native peoples necessary to legitimize the existence of Western-derived social institutions, systems, and assertions of claims to land.

What is required is a paradigmatic shift where we can come to understand the lived realities of urban youth for what they present to us through their narratives, their testimonials and their storying. Many of the emcees that I spoke with had a relationship with people involved in gangs; they were their cousins or members of their family, all struggling in their own ways to tell their stories of survivance. The construction of the gangster within narratives of dominance is determined through the lack of a desire and the fetishization of the anti-self. The life narratives of urban youth fall outside discursive manipulation in that they convey a multi-faceted reality in which gang experiences still play a role, but are not definitive bench markers of one's Indigenous identity.

The reinterpretation of an 'African American identity' within discourses of dominance embraced by urban youth themselves produces a desire to mirror certain patterns of dominance such as the absorption of a capitalistic ethic of consumption. This capitalistic ethic is incorporated in desirable signifiers such as 'bling' (shiny adornments),

131 and more importantly, contributes towards the exploitation of women. Chyann Oliver

(2007) comments on this aspect of the capitalist ethic's effects on the position of women in hip-hop:

A music that is a unique and rich form of Black cultural production, which stems

from a reclamation of space and identity, has now become co-opted; with this

misappropriation, a consequence of an incessant desire for capital, comes the

hyper-hetero-sexualization and commodification of the Black female body.

(Oliver, 2007, p. 249)

In a similar fashion to the hyper-sexualized portrayal of Black women through rap videos for example, Native women are portrayed as overtly sexual through practices of the newspapers associating Native women with prostitution, decontextualized by the failure to offer an adequate social critique stating the reasons for Native women's presence of city streets. The capitalist ethic of consumption, in other words, exploits women of colour and marginalizes them from the rest of society. It is also within the realm of hip- hop itself that the misogynistic portrayal of women impact the relationships between and amongst a community of listeners, which include Native youth engaged in hip-hop. Hip- hop as an important social movement amongst Native and African American youth, has witnessed the emergence of a new form of hip-hop feminism which has arisen to respond to the misogynistic representations of primarily black women. This variant of feminism has been described by Patricia Collin's in From Black power to hip-hop: racism, nationalism, and feminism, as:

132 those Black women who have managed to develop a feminist analysis recognize

the need to use the art form of rap as a forum to reach young women who have no

other means of finding feminism. (Collins, 2006, p. 192)

However, as Collin's also points out, "representations that remain untethered to actual social movements make it difficult for popular-culture consumers to tell whether they are participating in a new form of feminist politics or merely being entertained by it"

(Collins, 2006, p. 193). This response represents one of the many tensions that exist within hip-hop whereby activist messagings are being received and distributed through a popular cultural forum that has yet to dismantle racialized/gendered constructions.

Commodification overshadows the exposure of racist and gendered practices in a capitalist society. Emcees participating in my research project openly acknowledge that these tensions exist. For example, in response to the effects of popular media culture and its impact on youth, emcee Daybi claims:

"Like I'm telling ya, it's really bad, like I'm not just sayin it...people are like

really affected by the music, movies, and the way that they are and television. It's

really bad...it's actually depressing to actually be able to say that and to have it

be true." (Daybi, personal communication, July 28th, 2007)

Youth participating in hip-hop are responding within a culture mediated by various forms of misleading media representation, such as the hyper-sexualization of women. These practices have created what bell hooks would described as an 'anti-self,' a product of capitalism's exploitation of women of colour. According to hooks, this practice reflects the desires of mainstream society and represents a journey into the realm of the 'other'

(hooks, 1992).

133 Within the area of representation, the cultural construction of gangster' discourse has impacted both Native American and African American youth with associations to gangster, or rap music, as a demonized form of music. I apologize to my readers for the weaving between African American and Native representations in this section; however, this is intentional in that it recognizes the between space that Native youth have entered into with an embrace of hip-hop culture. Also, the following analysis represents an attempt to begin a dialogue within Indigenous Studies concerning this space between

Native and popular cultural constructions of 'otherness.'

The gangster stereotype produces a social world that is fascinated with consumption, specifically the practice of consuming 'others' as in those who are 'visibly' a minority and who are constructed to possess desired characteristics. As such, the construction of the desire to emulate gangster life is a product of the desires of mainstream society. In some cases these models fulfilled the need of European processes of self-identification wherein the 'other' would be created to stand for everything that the

Euro-Canadian was not. The 'other,' as the stereotype of the Native gangster is a product of the media which feeds desires and yearnings for difference achieved through power and success, benchmarked and determined through the media. Daybi's reflections mirror these cannibalistic imprints on the practice, "they [young people] can't get their minds outside of all the media that is eating them up. And it's really a barrier" (Daybi, personal communication, July 28th, 2007).

Hip-hop cultural norms have adopted internal strategies that deter the practice of cannibalistic consumption otherwise known as biting. Biting represents a strategy which carries meaning within a Cree cultural context as it draws parallels with practices of the

134 wihtikow as a central figure in Cree cosmology as one who embodies the spirit of the cannibal, or 'a being who attacks other people because of greed' (McLeod, 2000).

Emcees articulate a collective disapproval of biting, a term which describes one's intent to lyrically or physically consume a reality that is not one's own. Biting represents a practice of stealing someone else's name, lyrics, or movements. These symbolic acts of cannibalism are frowned upon within the hip-hop scene. In the following narrative

Eekwol responds to this practice:

"When you come from a smaller area like Saskatoon, a lot of times there's not

much of an understanding of what hip-hop is and some people find what's cool

and trendy and just kinda jump on it not knowing the history. So you know,

actually, this other girl started calling herself lowkee and writing it all over the

walls so like you know, she didn't understand that like you know that's not

how it works in hip-hop you know what I mean? It's like my name, get your

own." (Eekwol, personal communication, July 29th, 2007)

We have to be cognizant of the way the American corporate 'gangster narrative' impacts our visionings of street culture, contemporary urban realities, and the positioning practices that Native youth are achieving within these contested spaces. The urge to manipulate one's self-image in order to reflect popular culture's directives of youth, is strong, and for Indigenous youth, it may have the negative effect of denying one's history. The effects of this particular 'cultural bomb' is to produce an environment that discourages youth from seeing their own cultures as rich storehouses of knowledge.

Rather:

135 It makes them see their past as one wasteland of non-achievement, and it

makes them want to distance themselves from that wasteland. It makes them

want to identify with that which is furthest removed from themselves.. .It

makes them identify with that which is decadent and reactionary, all those

forces which would stop their own springs of life. (Ngugi Wa Thiong'o, 1986,

p.3)

This pattern has been prolific in the lives of Native people in Canada, affecting Native youth in the passed-down shame central to the experience of residential schools.

Implanted in the policies shaping the residential school's implementation of cultural genocide, the cultural bomb's veracity is captured in the clear mission of the schools - 'to kill the Indian in the child' - a vision boldly articulated by Deputy Superintendent of

Indian Affairs, Duncan Campbell Scott (1920) and captured in Canadian Prime Minister

Stephen Harper's (2008) apology on behalf of Canadians for the Indian residential schools system (Harper, 2008).

The effects of the cultural bomb echoes with familiarity within experiences of contemporary Aboriginal youth desiring certain elements of rap. Daybi's narrative touches upon the relationship between a desire towards 'otherness,' and the present effects of Aboriginal experiences of the cultural bomb.

"They wanna be...they are trying to emulate something, they are trying to

identify with something to them they think is cool, to identify with being a

murderer, selling drugs you know? Which is really sad because that says a lot

about the actual culture because it's not starting off maybe as influential or

something." (Daybi, personal communication, July 28th, 2007)

136 Practices mirroring Ngugi's (1986) articulation of the 'cultural bomb,' read in conjunction with Vizenor's interpretations of discourses of dominance, provide an explanation for the need to fill the absences with an overt embrace of the authentic

Indian. Consider the following narrative which was shared during an interview with Wab

Kinew:

"I grew up in Winnipeg right? I have nothing to prove to anybody all of these

other guys who are like from the rez, and they start talking black, like they are

a joke to me. You know what I mean and like, I think it's ridiculous you know

like they are like trying to be gangster you know...some of the well known

native rappers who basically talk about you know selling drugs or you know

being a super thug it's like... 'buddy- you're fucking from the rez, you are not a

gangster and like you know, you don't get into fights and you don't thug it out,

so why do you do that in your music?" (Wab Kinew, personal communication,

July 16th, 2008)

The adoption of the authentic Indian presents itself within this narrative through the binary produced within the statement, 'buddy - you're fucking from the rez, you are not a gangster.' Notably, his declaration that certain Natives are tryin to be gangsters when they are on the rez, illuminates another element of the discourse in that it helps to maintain racialized/spatial geographies within urban spaces. Lyricists participating in my study have critiqued rappers for 'wanting to be anything but Native' (Dallas Arcand). A form of gate-keeping, this practice creates the alter-ego, the authentic Indian whose function is to delineate boundaries. Within this particular context, an accusation of 'tryin

137 to be gangster' represents a discursive strategy which offers an internal critique amongst certain emcees intent on stringently maintaining a 'keepin' it real' ethic within hip-hop.

Some emcees accuse youth for, in their own words, 'acting black,' or 'tryin to be black.' This internal critique is usually accompanied by a similar accusation of 'tryin to be gangsta' as in Kinew's statement above. This can be problematic in that, when stripped of its foundations as a popular cultural construction, such assertions maintain colonial structures. Amongst the many impacts of this imperialistic arsenal, the cultural bomb glorifies divisiveness amongst communities between black and red people whose struggles have commonalities. Freire (1970) refers to this process as horizontal violence.

This response conceptualized as 'tryin to be black,' while perhaps attempting to illuminate colonial hierarchies, actually ends up supporting them through an increased divisiveness through racialization. In other words, while they are blaming other emcees for frontin,' the speaker is simultaneously consuming others through secularizing blackness. Dr. Eric Watts (Wake Forest University) succinctly describes this process when he states, "the spectacle is fully realized when the enhanced appearance of the image becomes more significant than the social world it previously represented" (Watts,

2004, p.594).

Within the public discourse, mainstream rap music has been a vehicle through which identities can be consumed by a mostly white, middle-class, suburban youth constituency, bell hooks describes how, through a commodified consumption of rap music, liberal white people can be perceived as transgressive and radical while maintaining an ability to drop their interest in a perceived blackness to go back to their daily lives (hooks, 1996). In this context, liberal white people's border crossing

138 tendencies also allow for the reintegration of a sense of self with interests in capitalism and imperialism. The ability to transgress boundaries, I would argue, is not an option for

Aboriginal youth accused for their embrace of this 'authentic' identity construction housed within discourses of dominance. This condition some would argue is representative of a continued colonialism in that it denies the impact of a Native youth's relationship to the experience with racism.

As explained by bell hooks (1996) there exists a difference between the consumption of blackness as a way to exercise ownership and control, where white people can remain conservative while their actions can go unnoticed through a veil of

'interest' in a dangerous, edgy form of music; and a social engagement with the culture where one can be a participant transformed by what one is consuming. The discourse of dominance accommodates the movement of dominant society between romanticized versions of an identity that they have constructed and their own identities. Since these authentic versions are based upon an absence of the 'real,' they take, or rather consume from rap music those characteristics that are most desired. In addition to hook's critique,

I would argue that there is an empathy coming from dominant society, and that through an act of listening, there is a longing for a better world. However, I would also point out that an engagement with black understandings of struggle in conjunction with an inability to transgress outside of a power-imbued colonial relationship between the self and the state, represents the defining moment of Native experience with hip-hop culture.

By no means is this analysis, in response to hook's argument, meant to deny that

Native youth are not participating in the consumption of a commodified construction of an authentic African American identity; they probably are. However, in their consuming

139 practices, their positionings deny them an easy transgression into white spaces of privilege. They are consuming as part of their participation in challenging these structures. Consequently, urban youth are able to use some of those tools of mimicry rooted in a form of oral traditionality coming from a fusion of African and Native oral storytelling and performance, in order to highlight important elements inherent in their multi-layered realities.

In the following narrative, Daybi critiques the strategy of embracing authenticity, used as a form of gate-keeping in maintaining an authentic Native communal identity.

This particular story speaks of the entrenched relationships between African Americans and Aboriginal peoples that continue to manifest in the cities, and in certain cases, run blood deep as there are many people that identify as a fusion of African, Caribbean,

Native, embracing rich combinations. This narrative also speaks of the aforementioned divisiveness producing disturbances within Native communities in a search for authenticity.

"Within my experiences with America - I've never had any problems. I've had

more problems in the north end of Winnipeg than I've ever had in Brooklyn or

L.A. It's my people who give me the grief and the problems and the fights,

whereas, I've lived in South Central L.A. and in the nice parts, I've lived in

Beverly Hills, Silver Lake, you know what I mean? The only problems I've

ever really had in my life is with other Natives. The black experience, Native

people- some black people would come up to me and say I have a little bit of

Blackfoot in me, I have some Cherokee, oh yeah, it's a common thing for

black people to come up to me and say they have some Native blood in me.

140 And um. Yeah..they're like, they embrace it right, and they support. So it's

always been a positive experience for me." (Daybi, personal communication,

July 28th, 2007)

The relationship between Native and African Americans in the form of similar practices stemming from oral traditions, and similar experiences with struggle create between space where communities separated by divisive tactics can create voicings strong enough to transform the social landscape. Central to my work is the recognition that this visioning of a different kind of reality is going to be a challenge to actualize due to the impacts of the 'cultural bomb' manifested in the consumption practices of corporate

America.

Through this discussion I hope to have initiated a dialogue concerning emcees' responses to discourses of dominance articulated through the use of mimicry to emulate a reinterpretation of a constructed/authenticized 'African American identity.' I also hope to have shown that there does exist this transformational space within which Native and

African American youth can voice visionary messagings which challenge static/authentic positioning practices, thereby carving out spaces for the creation of new interpretations and meanings coming from a common ground.

I would suggest that emcees are involved in a consumption-based enterprise borrowing from elements within popular culture to transgress the border zones of their positioning by social institutions. For example, Brett Lashua (2006) in Just another

Native? Soundscapes, chorasters, and borderlands explores the idea that popular culture itself provides both the social space, as well as the transformative means for the critique of power within those very sites:

141 Rather than holding a single, fixed meaning, popular culture serves as a bank

of resources from which young people may actively choose, appropriating

from cultural raw materials to use in specific ways in their day-to-day lives.

(Sweetman, 2001; Lashua, 2006, p. 395)

Lashua points out that young people employ 'tactics' as strategies to subvert the dominant social text, through the use of popular cultural consumption in creative, imaginative ways. He suggests that "tactics operate as important processes that allow people to make and remake popular artifacts such as films, music, clothes, and recreation into meaningful aspects of their everyday lives" (Lashua, 2006, p.396). Such an analysis has implications for how we interpret an embrace of a popular cultural version of

'blackness.' The adoption of these constructions by Native youth can be viewed as acts which meaningfully subvert dominant social texts, while allowing for the creation of fusion-based conceptions of identity. Lashua's concern with the everyday lived experience of Aboriginal youth represents a major turning point in how we come to view

Aboriginal youth identities as transgressors of space. He sees the intersection between identity construction and popular culture as representative of a border zone, as "a site of multiple tensions that occur as young people resist, embrace, and negotiate issues of race, class, age, ability, sex and gender" (Lashua, 2006, p. 394). This embrace of a commodified 'blackness' reveals the tensions embedded within the intersections of poetics and politics and the use of technologies to highlight lived realities. Tryin- 2- b black represents an illuminating field of vision comprising the language to critically engage this creative space, thus opening up the potential for the emergence of new ideas and social criticisms. This creative space that emcees occupy and embody is both rich

142 and complex. In chapter four entitled The transgressional space of hip-hop imbued with a

Native/Indigenous flavour, I examine emcees' unique relationship to this transformative, and sometimes difficult space.

143 CHAPTER FOUR:

THE TRANSGRESSIONAL SPACE OF HIP-HOP IMBUED WITH A

NATIVE/INDIGENOUS FLAVOUR

Our voicings do not follow the 'traditional' western melodic stylez, but rather,

artfully integrate the break beats, the ruptures, to reflect our experience and

visionings. (Emcee Treatise, ©fafte-Recollet, 2009)

This chapter will begin with a discussion of the spaces from which emcees speak, focusing on creative techniques which derive from between spaces. Within this discussion I will explore how metaphor, signification, and wordplay represent emcee strategies which embody 'rupture,' accommodate alternative visions and illustrate the ways in which realities can be different. I will also discuss the creation process that inspires emcees to reflect upon their spiritual and physical environment. In latter sections of this chapter, I explore creative techniques which include: delving into an 'ethical space' conceptualized as 'the deep end' (Daybi, 2009); the embrace of sampling technology to layer between past and present voicings; and the emcee strategy of

'knowin' ur history' as a necessary vehicle for the production of conscious hip-hop.

Lastly, I will reveal how the contradictions implicit within the spatial realm of the local impact the types of choices emcees make in creating visionings through hip-hop music.

The Spaces from which Emcees Speak

Emcee voicings emerge from a space whose internal framework is as critical and complex as the external world which it critically analyzes. As an art form encompassing this space, the cultural/stylistic priorities of hip-hop include elements of rupture and

'breaks,' challenging traditional 'western' melodic styles of composition.

144 The word 'rupture' describes a break in narratives of dominance. 'Rupture' represents an Indigenous critical theory that disrupts hegemonic patterns and stereotypes such as the construction of the authentic Indian. It represents an interruption in the dominant narrative through the critical intervention of emcee praxis. 'Rupture' could also include the insertion of Native names, as in the repetition of an emcee name within a song. This naming is a necessary move given the previously discussed absence of

Aboriginal namings in the constructed historical memory. The new Indian in hip-hop narratives has been described by artist Wab Kinew as 'intelligent,' and 'cocky' (personal communication, Wab Kinew, 2008). The position of the contemporary emcee rises above others in order to assert a presence that is to be taken seriously. In order to illustrate how emcees disrupt the tradition of erasing contemporary forms of Indigeneity by lyrically glorifying one's name and voice, I include the lyrics of Edmonton, Alberta-based, Doug

Bedard's aka Plex's song Better Days:

"I'm coming up and ain't showing no mercy

keep spittin' until my esophagus hurts me

been here for days and nobody has faith

now when you turn on your radio, I'm up in your face

voted most unlikely, but ain't nobody like me

not even all these weak emcees that bite me

though my records sell, and my head might swell

what's the matter if the world ends in 2012

it must be true, I saw it on youtube

you really don't have any vision do you

145 I'm sendin' all my good energy to you

And if you ain't receptive to it, screw you

I've been around for way too long to vest into this music,

give it up and be gone

Plex will never steer you wrong

Package up some bullshit and then put it in song

No chance

Everybody sounds the same

Everybody needs some fame

Music's clearly seen better days."

(Plex featuring Leemai, 2009, "Better Days," Brainstorm)

These sentiments, 'voted most unlikely, but ain't nobody like me' is an insertion that represents a 'break' in a social narrative that presents race-based barriers which challenge the success of Aboriginal youth. Further, through inserting his name into lyrics, Plex strategically interrogates a colonial legacy that produces the absence of Indigenous peoples through a failure to name.

The practice of rupture can also be a technological strategy enacted through the insertion of samplings of other voices, tempo changes, soundscapes, or even the production of silences. These strategies create a symbolic image-based language offering alternatives to the monochromatic recording of a constructed Aboriginally within discourses of dominance. Further, these technologies are echoes of similar strategies of resistance used by our ancestors and housed within oral traditions, such as the poetry of

Cree/Metis writer Louise Bernice Halfe. Halfe's Blue marrow (2004) surfaces the voices

146 of grandmothers and grandfathers through inserting their voices into her poetry. In the following piece, Halfe narrates the spoken words of'nameless mama' towards her daughter as she chews wihkes- a bitter root:

"Arms empty like mine when you leave.

An when you come, you still gone.

Da words you speak, da man you marry, da dress you wear,

Not da bush I dought I plant in your feet. An you ask about

doze days. I dell you I milk dem cows good, squirt mild pail

like no business, mak strong head cheese, da ukraniums

daught me bore-sh, an bake sin a min roll, jelly roll. Hokay."

(Halfe, L. Blue marrow, p. 90)

Indigenous poetics through sampling disrupts discourses of dominance through the strategic use of intertexuality. This intertextuality takes the form of the French Metis- accented words of a mama sampled into a contemporary narrative form.

The foundations informing emcee storytelling illuminate how emcees are working through (in some instances alongside) the 'cultural bomb' in order to meaningfully engage their world. Plains Cree emcee Daybi, through metaphor, highlights the processes of negotiating between spaces to create. In this song entitled, The Deep End,

Daybi represents his ability to voice that space as an energy flow composed of multiple layerings and lucidity.

147 "Inspiration surfaces, (grind) and clean

Shiny or mean, and sometimes I don't know what it means

it comes in dreams, it leaves, it even gleams at the end of a tunnel

When it wants to-1 mean,

I leave it up to it just to channel it and find you

Colouring the air, in your space over there

Wherever you may be I'm there

I'm just letting you feel it in the form that I dare

My multi-plex universe gets very real

When I please to kick and stare

Some people see it in my face so they stare

But even so where I've been and where I go

It will never betray me

The deep end.

And this is why I do what I do,

It's usually for me, but today it's for you

You're in the deep end

(come along for the ride)

You're in the deep end."

(Daybi, The Deep End, First Contact, 2009)

Daybi speaks of this between space whereby the intersection of inspiration and movement nurtures new thoughts to create different worlds. The lyrics 'my multi-plex universe gets very real,' shows an acceptance of the idea that we exist within multiple

148 world(s) simultaneous of each other. This vision of existence manifests within the fluid, layered nature of the spoken words within this lyricism. "It comes in dreams, shiny or mean.. .and sometimes I don't know what it means" (Daybi, "The deep end," First

Contact, 2009).

Daybi's voicing reveals a multi-plexed universe where the 'deep end' can be interpreted as a space of transgression between air/water and sky/ocean, located somewhere in between our conscious and unconscious mind. Many artists convey a similar idea of this space that Daybi conceptualizes as the 'deep end.' Through occupying a similar thought space, artists are able to creatively tap in to the feeling of the moment, with the ability to see the wider layout of the cities, their systems and structures. The ability to both name historical injustices, and to introduce new patterns of thought, is brought about through one's entrance into the transformational space described in the language of hip-hop lyricism. Consider the following lyrics which reveal the nature of these tactical shifts which are both historically and contemporarily rooted with survival.

"We survived, crow walked and we learned to fly

Flutter away to the battle

Bring it back to what matters in an instant

The gifted shift the axis"

(Daybi, The Quickening, First Contact, 2009)

Lyrical 'soul travelling' captures the flow of transgressing spaces; moving and travelling, to arrive on top of buildings to gaze down at the patterns below. The concept soul travelling was introduced through Daybi's poetic lyrics ingrained in the song 'the

Quickening.'

149 "My full circle is never complete

I don't participate, partake, or even compete

I collide on the outside of space and time

to finality, my anger, my totality

It's just the beginning

like I said soul travelling

can happen in an instant

It's all here in your face and at a distance."

(Daybi, The Quickening)

Daybi's concept 'soul travelling' depicts a positioning beyond distractions which accommodates freedom of thought. This process reflects Smith's (2003) interpretation of

Indigenous theory which, according to him, needs to transcend a defensive mode where

Indigenous people are stuck reacting to external power structures. The gains of freeing of

Indigenous thought space is depicted in Daybi's verse, "now I breeze without limit in your city when I'm in it" (The Quickening, Daybi). Soul travelling is descriptive of a methodology to generate consciousness through overcoming obstacles in order to free

Indigenous minds. It outlines a process whereby youth can recognize the possibilities of in-the-moment transcendence.

The spatial significance of the 'deep end' experienced through 'soul travelling' is that it functions as an incubator of higher consciousness, sending shifts of air to challenge those systems that generate complacency. Within this space of creativity, pauses and silences are regenerations of thoughts and ideas. They represent reflective pauses in the

150 dominant narrative with the potential for creating alternative actions in presenting a different sort of reality. These silences represent breaks to produce spaces within which new possibilities can emerge.

Within the literature, the concept border crossing has been used to describe the literal, physical, and symbolic positioning practices of Aboriginal youth. For example,

Gail MacKay, author of The city as home: the sense of belonging among Aboriginal youth in Saskatoon (2005), mentions that Saskatchewan youth are transgressing the borders between rural and urban, posing a challenge to the traditional dichotomous thinking which positions youth as occupiers of either urban or rural spaces.

Within the structural form of hip-hop music composition, this border crossing takes the form of sampling which is a technology adopted by deejays, and emcees which involves "taking a section of a song or a sound and copying it for use in another composition" (Lashua, 2006, p.5). According to Michael Eric Dyson (2004), "sampling permits a rap creator to reconfigure voices and rhythms in creating an alternative code of cultural exchange" (p. 67). The sample captures the mood of a particular lived experience through drawing upon a previously produced song. In this way, one's present is connected to one's past in the emergence of old school samplings to articulate the moment of transgression in narrating the lives of urban Aboriginal youth. Adding a

Native/Indigenous flavour in hip-hop entails a relationship with the old school through bringing out the voicings of traditional pow wow singers, for example and incorporating

Indigenous languages into contemporary lyricism. Quese IMC layers traditional singing into various songs in his album the Betty Lena Project (2005). As well, Eekwol and her brother Mil's album Apprentice to the Mystery (2004) also mixes samplings of pow wow

151 music in order to deliver their messages. These insertions assist in articulating contemporary issues and experiences through bringing older knowledges and concepts rooted in the voicings of previous generations of spoken word. In her song entitled Ohtaw

Napepawees, Eekwol incorporates a phrase/concept stemming from her Plains Cree language to communicate the idea that sometimes in life we just have to accept that

'that's just the way it is.'

"Had eyes that laugh without smiling

Cree style

If life and love were lyrics he would be a freestyle

I guess that's why you were so caught up

didn't figure out that you weren't the only one

cause he made her laugh just a little harder

didn't hurt that she was educated and a chiefs daughter

he was all about her

you were all about him

you were in it to lose

he was in it to win

sometimes things don't play out the way they should

if they did better things would happen to the good

but they don't and we won't

be able to explain it

Ohtaw Napepawees

That's the way they say it

152 Ohtaw Napepawees

That's just the way it goes

For you and me

Don't expect, just accept

That it is what it is

The only sure thing in life is that you live."

(Eekwol, 2009, "Ohtaw Napepawees" Niso)

These insertions are a means of which lyricists cross social and cultural borders in offering new knowledges and insights into present experiences. Oftentimes, in

Indigenous hip-hop, sampling can be interpreted as an act of paying homage to other artists. For example, in the following statement, emcee Kinnie Starr discusses her process of sampling Indigenous acoustic trio Ulali in her song Red96X.

"One of the most important decisions I made as a hip-hop producer on one of my

earlier beats was sampling the group Ulali to create the song "Red96X," a widely

received song that has traveled further that I have. Eight years later this song

still resonates with Natives I meet all over Canada and the U.S.A., and for that I

am grateful. I chose to sample Ulali because this group of women influenced me

heavily in the decision to be proud of who I am, despite my impurities. To this

day, they are the only sample I have ever used. I feel so lucky to share a song

with them." (Starr, K. Blood of our heart beats for change)

My research has indicated that emcees articulate a spatial consciousness that incorporates transgressions and border crossings both in physical and paradigmatic terms. Wabs

Whitebird, for example, illustrates a transgression of space whereby the spatial locator for

153 struggle as 'under the bridge' evokes a variety of conceptual sites, not just the ghetto or the rez. This is important because it means that the ideas that we commonly hold regarding the experience of these spaces is constantly shifting. Youth are continuously challenging the ways in which the spatial geography of cities has been named. As a consequence, this impacts the positioning of people within these environments.

"No matter where you are you can come up with your influence [for your

music]. It's like for real. We're on Queens Quay and Spadina but go under the

Gardiner and you can surely find yourself a homeless person and someone

who's probably addicted to crack or another drug. You don't necessarily have

to live in the hood anymore you can live anywhere and it's still the same

problem that's going on. So I don't really have to walk through the hood to get

my inspiration or on the reserve. I see it looking out of my window. I look out

at the water on Harbourfront, at those islands. I see all these million dollar

boats and I think of Miami, but then I turn behind me and there's the city. You

know what I mean? You don't really have to go far to get your influence for

what I do, you can just go under the bridge." (Wabs Whitebird, personal

communication, July 15, 2007)

In a similar fashion, Secwepemc emcee Capitol G-Geo illustrates the transgressions of spaces from city to reserve, where the trees are captured as a forest of interlaced graffitti- like looped lines, and looming residential school buildings create shadows which threaten the land below. Both Ignace (2005) and Mackay (2005) focus on youth occupying space between the city and the reserve, although Ignace's work specifically highlights the relationship between the practice of graffiti writing and the experiences of growing up on

154 margins between rural reserve and city. Ignace reflects upon how meanings underlying the graffiti images, rather than the form itself, represent a fusion between the world of the

Aboriginal reserve culture and the world of the city. The underlying images represent new iconographies symbolizing a new spatial consciousness communicated through

Geo's representation of 'kidz with canz.' In the following critique of her son's graffiti work entitled Inner city bandits II- kids with cans (2003), Marianne Ignace describes the imagery,

the 'kidz with cans' on the left are the Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal youth who

react to the frustration, grief, and anger into this landscape informed by

destruction, the encroachment of the city, and the fact that those in power play

dice in the large city with the fate of the kids with cans. (Ignace, 2005, p. 20)

Ignace's reading of Geo's graffiti art reveals that his work illustrates a connection with social meanings of Aboriginal and Secwempemc culture through the use of'cyclical connections,' and a concern with landscape which is described as a contemporary

Indigenous landscape fused to the urban landscape of buildings. Ignace makes a statement regarding the presence of a relationship between the past practice of Indigenous rock art amongst Secwepemc elders to record the 'soul' travellings to faraway places, with modern-styled graffiti as messages left on urban or reserve landscapes "representing clues to the travels and experiences of urban Aboriginal youth" (Ignace, 2005, p. 16).

Part of this spatial consciousness has been illustrated by Geo as a peripheral positioning of self which reflects an awareness of the systematic (dis)placement of

Aboriginality within city landscapes. The peripheral positioning of Aboriginal youth is a product of a long legacy of colonial mapping. Mary Louise Pratt and Louis Owens, have

155 offered concepts which hold particular salience in naming these spaces. Contact zones have been described by Pratt to embody 'social spaces where cultures meet, clash and grapple with each other, often in highly asymmetrical relations of power such as colonialism" (Pratt, 1992, p. 34). This naming of space is in contrast with ethical space

(Ermine, 2005) which is a space of possibility and potential. She refers to contact zones as the spaces in which people historically and geographically separated from each other

"establish ongoing relations, usually involving conditions of coercion, radical inequality, and intractable conflict" (Pratt, 1992, p.6). Emcee messagings have begun to name, and visualize these contact zones through lyrics which capture the feeling and mood of these spaces.

"Stare down the barrel

Seen the terror

getting caught in the trenches

Reloading the arrow

Shootin the arrow

Just to breathe for a minute

Now I breathe without limit in your city when I'm in it

The concrete greets me and knows me well

Stories that live and stories that tell."

(Daybi, 2009, The Quickening)

Through considering these spaces as contact zones, we can begin to acknowledge the nature of the movements that are taking shape in contested spaces such as the non-neutral ground of high schools, shopping malls, and on city streets. A recognition of contact

156 zones has inspired artists such as Daybi to produce mappings of how to move and

navigate these spaces. Daybi's song, for example, appropriately titled "Navigator" is a

letter to his son, describing the processes that Daybi had to go through in life to survive

the experiences of Indigeneity in an environment that didn't encourage such difference.

"Yo, I grew up fast, never looked back

burned up bridges for a purpose

this is self-preservation, cold, calculating

you thought I never knew, but I'm smarter than you

never doubt what I do, from criminal to charity

clarity is there

leaves in the air in the autumn breeze where

sky meets heaven

I'm restin' the mind-state, 11 years late, still feelin' great

I wait for nothin' and no one, cause no one waits for you

and Indians are even treated worse by far

What is it worth

this heaven or hell on earth

can you find who you are

navigational stars and sunshine

let you know where you are - never far."

(Daybi, 2009, Navigator, First Contact)

Like Pratt, Owens provides a language rooted within the academy to describe

interactions/movements within this contested space that is difficult to define. His concept

157 'frontier space' describes an environment where 'wordplay' makes sense to challenge and subvert meta-narratives constraining youth movement. According to Owens, frontier space is "always unstable, multidirectional, hybridized, characterized by heteroglossia, and indeterminate - a carnivalesque space standing in sharp contrast to a static territory such as the infamous Indian Territory, which is designed to contain and control wild

Indigenes" (Owens, 2002, p. 260).

Carnivalesque is a meaningful description of the spaces from which emcees speak. This Bakhtinian concept is rooted within the marketplace, which is actualized as:

The center of all that is unofficial: it enjoyed a certain extraterritoriality in a

world of official order and official ideology, it always remained with the

people. ( Bakhtin,1984, p. 153)

The marketplace of the medieval festival was a space where collectivities could gather uninhibited by classism and hierarchal order. Within this space, the narratives of officialdom could be critiqued and questioned, and new concepts could be derived through the voices of the people. In the market-place new language, concepts and ideas could be disseminated and would gain legitimacy amongst 'the people.' This space might be read as the deep end, as an ethical space (Ermine, 2005), as the source of creativity; it could also capture the resonance of those spaces underneath bridges in cities, basement studios, the street, and basically anywhere where crew collectivities gather to create. The crew embodies the energy of the marketplace to formulate a new historical consciousness in a safe space challenging authoritative naming practices of Indigenous youth. While these transgressions may occur in city spaces that are in effect owned by someone else, the energy of the movement, and the cockiness of the resistance transcends physical

158 space and produces work which raises itself to the level of consciousness. Crews meet within and claim the spaces which mirror certain qualities as the marketplace. These are spaces where creativity and artistry reign supreme in reflecting these processes of discovery and dialogue. These spaces are magical and meaningful manifestations of the marketplace in contemporary urban form. The occupation of such spaces between coincides with a status of marginality. In her 1975 article entitled 'A tolerated mess': the trickster and his tales reconsidered, Barbara Babcock-Abrahams illuminates this position:

He lives above or below ground but not as normal mortals on earth. Marginal

figures also tend to be associated with marketplaces, cross roads and other open

spaces 'betwixt and between' clearly defined social statuses and spaces.

(Bobcock, 1975, p. 155)

This relationship to 'betwixt and between spaces' accommodates different types of discourses and ideologies to emerge, encouraging the breakdown of social hierarchies.

Similarly, frontier space provides a context wherein 'chance' (Vizenor, 1989), can come into play through language practices such as the unexpected in-the-moment wordplay which can both shock and destabilize authoritarian powers. Within these environments, emcees can use their own wit to ensure a greater freedom of movement, effectively blocking others from positioning them with any form of confidence.

The spaces from which emcees speak are fluid and non-translatable to those looking for definitive subjective positionings. Oftentimes this process of enforcing singular positionings on Native youth, carries the impact of marginalizing youth to effectively take up 'no-where spaces' whereby they cease to feel that they have any

159 agency in determining the nature of the ground on which they stand. Consider the following lyrics from Eekwol's song Reluctant Warrior,

"Forgive me for acting abnormal sometimes

Wish I didn't know

Wish I couldn't see

Wish I wasn't shown

Wish I could take back,

all the reading-writing up all night,

Deciding where I stand,

Nowhere, Nowhere we stand."

(Eekwol, 2004)

Within these lyrics, Eekwol acknowledges her occupation of a liminal or 'abnormal' space - a result of reaching a higher consciousness. For her, self-reflexivity is expressed through "reading-writing up all night, deciding where I stand." The space of tension and instability can also be seen as a powerful space through which to speak.

Now that we have explored the spaces from which emcee's speak, I now turn to those actual voicings. The following section explores how the art form embraces everyday/real-lived experiences through voice which can be reflected in gestures, movements, and other expressions of style.

The Significance of Emcee Voicing

Hip-hop communities embrace a complex and comprehensive understanding of

'voice' which is reflected in their multi-faceted make-up described by emcee Daybi in the following narrative:

160 "The hip-hop community to me is basically 5 elements. And that is the

graffiti, and the deejay, b-boy, or b-girl (those are the break dancers), the

emcee and the beat boxer. And the hip-hop community is made up of all those

elements equally you know. If you don't have the graff artists, you know you

don't have the visuals: without people dancing to the music you can't really

see how the music moves people, without the deejay you got no beat. Without

the emcee you've got no words, and of course beat box comes from the streets

where people didn't have money for stereos or beats or anything and they had

to make all the music themselves and of course that's where the beat box

comes from." (Daybi, personal communication, July 28th, 2007)

Hip-hop has been conceptualized as a series of practices and strategies with an evolved history. As an art form, it cannot be reducible to a singular origin story. The art form finds expression in a variety of oral/discursive forms of transmission which involve body positions, clothes, gestures, glances, and other stylistic elements.

Consequently, emcees have conceptualized hip-hop strategies such as voicing to reflect this variety of oral/discursive strategies. In other words, voice has been shaped through the art form to encompass aural, physical, and visual expressionings in transmitting key experiences within the movement. Sto:lo emcee, Carrielynn Victor's description of voice, reflects this relationship:

161 "Voice is, it's not just rooted in the music or what I'm saying with my, like

voice box you know what I mean.. .like it comes out in the way that I move my

hands when I speak, it comes out in my writing, it comes out in the way that I

live my life...it comes out in my eyes if I really feel connected, and it comes

out in the creation process." (Carrielynn Victor, personal communication,

October 18th, 2007)

Within this narrative, 'style' is manifested through voice. Emcee expressions of style pose a challenge to transform the imaginary, authentic Indian into a colourful, contemporary urban Aboriginal within the mindset of dominant culture. Within hip-hop, style is achieved through the combination of seemingly unrelated visual/oral components, to produce a way of voicing and moving about the world that is unique and original. In approaching hip-hop as a series of practices and strategies, style becomes a text descriptive of an action. This is meaningful, in that the function of style is to transform our everyday realities through a voicing of situation, self, and action. This voicing can take the form of a gesture, signal or dance, as embodiments of text. Mathew

CreeAsian's description of hip-hop/b-boy moves expresses a similar interpretation of voicings to include movements and gestures. Mathew CreeAsian (deejay, b-boy) described to me a move whereby he circulates his body low to the ground, while simultaneously drawing in the air around him as though he were 'smudging,' all the while dancing to the break beat. This illustration provides an indication that b-boys such as Mathew CreeAsian are using these alternative voicings, through gesture and movement, in order to literally transform the nature of the space within which they operate. Emcee creativity is linked to expressions of one's unique style and is present in

162 the tattoos that may adorn them, and the ways that they move their bodies through gestures and movements. Style is also embedded within their voicings. These strategies are not new, as the realm of the symbolic has had a long history of use through

Aboriginal and African forms oral performance, Indigenous poetics, and narrative traditions. This symbolism, expressed as an element of style within a hip-hop context, is very much related to the cultural/traditional aesthetics of Indigenous poetics.

These practices are ingrained in the work of Indigenous poets such as Louise Halfe, and mix-blood Cree/Metis poet Gregory Scofield who's poem This is my blanket captures the symbolism in 'the blanket' which is seeped in the historical memory of his family.

"I am nothing without my blanket

This is the key to my aunty's house

She got raped here

On this blanket

Spectaculary hued, wildly patterned

The end of Indian wars

The man who did it

Was federally licensed

Now her blanket is a living, breathing textile."

(Scofield, Kipochikan, 2009)

Like the tattooing of bodies, the symbolic piecing together of this blanket through

Scofield's narrative prose illuminating the gendered violence of colonialism, belongs within an Indigenous tradition which embraces symbolism as a strategy of orality. This

163 symbolism is actuated within the creation process which involves tapping into the realm of spiritual. This next section represents a culmination of thoughts and insights shared, which speak of this important process.

Cree-ation

We are fully voiced, sensual writers and lyricists, very aware of the feeling of

the moment. And through our 'feeling' we produce a movement that entices

others to move with us. (Emcee Treatise, Brane-Recollet, 2009)

Emcee 'in-spirit-ation' derives out of a willingness to position oneself in seemingly difficult spaces. I use the concept of 'in-spirit,'7 with the understanding that inspiration comes through the ability to tap into the life energies of our spirit. Creating requires being in-the-moment in order to capture the mood, flow, and feeling of a particular experience. As 'reluctant warriors' (Eekwol, 2005) emcees are positioning in vulnerable, liminal spaces of struggle to do the self-reflexive work that is necessary in creating alternative visionings and narrating experience. Sometimes, emcees are compelled to write and create as they observe social conditions which perpetuate violence against women, teenage suicides, and other abuses that affect us in our communities, families and personal circumstances. In their voicings, emcee creative processes involve transgressing borders - a physical and ideological travelling necessary for the messagings to find voice. Social change transpires from these travellings which are as familiar as the transitioning from hurt to love in our everyday lives. Many of the emcees are doing self- reflexive work through journaling first to voice their experiences. These voicings reflect the aural/oral and visually inspired landscapes and are achieved through tapping into a life force, or mamatowisowin (Ermine, 1995).

164 Creativity is linked to capturing the moment through using emcee gifts as vehicles of the moment's expression. As such, uniquely styled testimonials produced through emcee praxis, record the resonance of our age, creating an archive of storied experience for those who come after. They capture the moment while at the same time transcend the moment through a rich wordplay that shapes visionings of different realities. Anishinaabe

Elder Edna Manitowabi once shared a version of the creation story with me, which described that out of darkness, creation manifested in the sound of the rattle. Within the same narrative she articulated that thoughts and ideas were spread into the world through breath resonating within a conk shell. Native youth's engagement with syncopated rhythms (the original beat) and voicing (through breath) create world(s) through connecting with that impulse to create, that space between that Ermine (1995) speaks of as mamatowisowin. Oftentimes these spaces resemble the confusions, contradictions, and indeterminations that are captured in Owen's (2002) conceptualization of frontier space.

Consider the following lyrics expressed by Eekwol as she engages this confusing space.

"And I am going nowhere all alone in this chair

And the room keeps spinnin toward the beginning

I'm cool to ask for help this time around

It's alright to be wrong this time around

And I need to be strong this time around

And what I really need is just a little patience yeah."

(Eekwol, 2004, "That's Just Me," Apprentice to the Mystery)

The necessary challenge of being in-the-moment requires that we as Indigenous people sit in those spaces of instability, confusion and much vulnerability. Emcees voice the

165 spaces that they enter, and sometimes this is difficult to achieve. Sometimes the best that they can do is just to be there in-the-moment and throw analysis up into the wind. As

Indigenous people, even our best analyses may not make the reality of our situations any easier, as previous knowledge of the immensity of what we are up against can actually silence us into this realm of wordlessness. The search towards how to have the words and the language to express these conditions sometimes becomes a barrier. Feeling helpless and weak in the face of what we are called upon to do can be a humbling experience. If anything, I know that we are humble people, because the things that we are called upon to deal with sometimes are so immense that we come to face the fact that there are no words, just feelings, smiles, and laughter. In a world of immense feeling, smiles and laughter are the bravest, most consciously real, most honest responses articulating the feeling of the moment.

"I beg the Creator please give me a sign or a signal

Tears in mother's eyes from babies' cries it's lookin' so dismal

Let her shine like a crystal, half millennium and waitin'

Bring a paradigm shift no more killin' and hatin.'"

(Ostwelve, 2008, "R.Evolution," Anti-Gravity Dinosaurs)

Connecting with the creative space allows one to express fears and vulnerabilities which disrupt the discourses of dominance that are reliant upon a disembodied construction of historical memory to inform our present consciousness. It is difficult to reach those places to voice, and although hip-hop certainly accommodates voice, I am not convinced that hip-hop as an art form alone can take the credit for the spiritual element that is communicated through the music. Rather the integrity of the artists and their abilities to

166 express a true reflection of their experience moves people. The following 'chat session' with Sto:lo emcee Ostwelve, illustrates this integrity.

"Something comes over me when I write...I do picture that darkness...sometimes

the hangover is harsh, but I cope with staying positive and quite secluded. My

vulnerability is required to feel the total experience of this conscience. So I have

no guns, no weapons, just me and my word. But I'm quite sure that I'm protected

from the other side.. .I've been in some pretty crazy places and have faired

well...hoods, ghettos, reserves. But I'm quite aware of the danger in

it... but. .whatever, no risk, no victory, yeah.. .people can fake real fast...if I'm

scared I just say it." (Ostwelve, personal communication, March, 2009)

Many of the emcees have described to me their fears and anxieties associated with creating a space through which to voice without being 'shot down by what they know'

(Theresa Seymour, personal communication, October 17 , 2007). Their narratives that address the contradictions and vulnerabilities embedded in music creation reflect contemporary processes of Indigenous orality. Kinnie Starr spoke to me of her fears and vulnerabilities as they present themselves before she gets on stage, where it gets so bad that she seriously considers planning situations that would get in the way of allowing her to perform. Her vulnerabilities reside in an ability to be 'open' to receive the energies of the crowd in creating a show that breaks down barriers, as her praxis creates an atmosphere where no barriers exist between the spectator and herself as the creator of sounds and visionings.

167 Carrielynn Victor expressed an aspect of creation that others have referenced, as they come to question whether or not they are deserving, or whether their experiences in life are worth sharing with others, as she states below:

"I was questioning 'why do I have to suffer to create?' I had a chance at the

performing arts school that Theresa and I attended to create a solo, it was

called a self-portrait. So I was like if I want to create a self-portrait piece I

want to find out why I have to suffer in order to create and yeah I found this

little bad guy in my head saying 'no you can't, you're such a liar, you suck and

nobody likes you, why are you doing that' and I was like o.k well there's that

guy but there is another side of me that is not that guy, not that girl,

whatever... and then I saw that girl and she was like 'I love you, you are

beautiful, I love this world, I'm so deserving' and she's way on the other side

of everything that this other guy is on so I would just work through that and

then naturally found a middle and created this piece and just lived the entire

piece in the three months of creation. And now I find that I don't suffer to

create, my music is taking a whole other spin." (Carrielynn Victor, personal

communication, October 18th, 2007)

Struggles such as these are produced by the messagings created by dominant societal mechanisms which have incited these questionings of 'worth' amongst First Nations people.

Sometimes emcees create out of necessity when they feel compelled by the enormity of the social injustices inflicted upon people within our communities and families, and experienced through our bodies. Many messages from dominant society

168 have laid the foundation for acts of violence against Aboriginal women, girls, and youth, and the systems which perpetuate these messagings have been called out by emcees. As noted in an earlier discussion, one of the main narratives within Canadian historical memory has been the idea of Aboriginal women as contagions. In a racialized manner, this designation served the purposes of 'protecting' white settler society from an impure influence of Native women. In order to secure their marginalization, Native women within discourses of dominance were perceived as threats to the idealized purity of settler society. In Capturing women: the manipulation of cultural imagery in Canada's prairie

West (1997), Sarah Carter observes that throughout the history of Aboriginal and white social relations, Native women have been thought about and named within the dominant social narrative as "dangerous and immoral; as a threat to the emerging non-Aboriginal community" (p.8). The same discourse that perpetuated the idea that Native women represented the moral breakdown of settler society has been absorbed by a more recent mentality of urbanization, legitimizing their/our marginality away from certain city areas.

Contemporary holding patterns in the dominant narrative position Aboriginal women according to racial/spatial geographies (Razack, 2002) such as the stroll. Today, this practice of'pushing' women out of cars on prairie highways and other such violences are a constant reminder to Native women of their marginalized status as they attempt to simply survive and live in urban areas. Christine Welsh's documentary entitled Finding

Dawn (2006) illustrates the historical, social, and economic factors that contribute to violence against Native women in Canada. As Welsh's documentary illustrates, contemporary holding patterns for Aboriginal women include marginalization and discrimination. This documentary illustrates the lives and disappearances of three Native

169 women, Dawn Crey, Ramona Wilson, and Daleen Bosse whose marginal status was mirrored in the circumstances of their deaths and disappearances- where their bodies were placed by the perpetrators at the outskirts of town.

The discourse which identifies Native women as contagions reaffirms the stereotype of the promiscuous woman, deeming Aboriginal women as prostitutes. These attitudes have led to the current context where Aboriginal women are seen as expendable, thus leading to practices of dehumanizing and violent treatment towards such women who move within urban spaces.

This marginalization has been influenced through a history of absence highlighted by the silencing of female youth specifically within the colonial narrative. Shaped within discourses of dominance, youth discourse has neglected to adequately account for the contributions of young women in narrating their own 'lived-experiences' (Cruickshank

2000,1990). Consequently, Driscoll (2002) has noted the "erased history of girls as indices of'youth'" (p.l 1). This absence of young women's experiences as part of the narratives shaping modern interpretations of youth culture has been commented on within the field of Indigenous Studies by scholars Gail Mackay (2005) and Yale Belanger et al.

(2003). They each expressed this lack through articulating a need for further exploration into the implications of gender on Aboriginal youth identity construction. Within the narratives of dominance, young women are being portrayed as non-agentic while young men belong within a category of resistance to the status quo.

The erasure of Native women is achieved through the visibility produced through the ways in which dominant society sees and recognizes difference.

170 There exists a long colonial history of the use of difference in the maintenance of boundaries. Ann Stoler, in Making empire respectable: the politics of race and sexual

morality in 2&h-century colonial cultures (1989), describes how this narrative was used

within the colonial project of exercising power and control over Native peoples in the

colonies. She asserts that the idea of 'difference' has been around a long time and that it

is linked to fears of contagion, moral breakdown and physical danger. Difference,

according to Stoler, was made manifest through an overlapping set of discourses which

worked together to produce a certain type of subject. Difference and its demarcations had

specific purposes within the colonies to ensure the maintenance of social and sexual

boundaries. Under this strategy, men were seen as violent aggressors against the purity

and innocence of white women, and Native women were treated as contagions,

threatening the internal cohesion of communities. This idea of Native women as

contagion is a practice that is still alive and well, determining the shape of relationships

between Native and non-native societies. The landscape that makes up contemporary

urban spaces have been affected by this boundary maintenance, through fears of

contagion, as certain city areas are designated racialized and gendered spaces (e.g.

downtown East Vancouver). Sherene Razack's (2002) chapter entitled 'Gendered

violence and spatialized justice: the murder of Pamela George' in Race, space, and the

law likewise explores how spatial/racialized geographies within cities impact on the lives

of Aboriginal women. She identifies the murder of Pamela George, a Saulteaux woman

from Saskatchewan by two white-middle class males as an act of gendered, racial and

colonial violence. Through observing a form of spatialized justice manifest in the

171 leniency given by the court system for Pamela's murder, Razack describes a pattern whereby:

The men's and the court's capacity to dehumanize Pamela George came from

their understanding of her as the (gendered) racial Other whose degredation

confirmed their own identities as white- that is, as men entitled to the land and the

full benefits of citizenship. (Razack, 2002, p. 126)

This need to base one's own identity upon a racialized and gendered Other is rooted within earlier historical patterns of conquest. Also, it is administered through a system of surveillance. Foucault, in his article entitled 'The eye of power' (1980) explains that this system of surveillance involves very little effort.

There is no need for arms, physical violence, material constraints. Just a gaze. An

inspecting gaze, a gaze which each individual under its weight will end by

interiorizing to the point that he is his own overseer (observer), each individual

thus exercising this surveillance over, and against himself. (Foucault, 1980,

p.155)

This surveillance calls upon Indigenous peoples to perhaps mimic certain behaviours.

This is expressed as the internalization of messages inherent within the process of marking bodies of 'difference.'

I mention this surveillance in order to express the incredible force that dominant narratives have on Indigenous bodies, especially female bodies. For example, this surveillance has a way of ingraining into peoples' heads, the notion that Indigenous women's bodies are available for consumption (hooks, 1992). The 'marking' of women's bodies within literatures of dominance is linked to the historical placement of

172 women as contagion. Today, emcees are posing challenges to this construction through the hip-hop strategy of mimicry' embedded within African and Native oral traditions. In a previous discussion, Kinnie Starr introduced mimicry as a useful strategy to disrupt gendered representations of women in popular hip-hop lyricism through the revisionist strategy of female emcees over-sexualizing men in their music. This strategy of subversion represents an entrance into the dialogical space of critical communication in order to disrupt misogynist patterns similar to those espoused within hip-hop feminism.

The practice of erasure of women's presence and an over-spectacularization of the white male presence, has been noted in the storying of emcee experiences of city spaces.

When I asked emcee Kinnie Starr about her earlier experiences with hip-hop cultural forms, she began by sharing with me some of her anger and frustrations with male dominance related to male violence and war. Kinnie described how she made visible the erasure of Native presence by effacing the monumentalized 'heroism' symbolized by bronzed statues of'war heroes' surrounding the ports of British Columbia. The following narrative traces her movements and responses toward the discourses of dominance manifest through buildings and monuments valorizing colonial slavery and domination.

Interestingly, as you will see, the 'official' reaction of (white) washing her tags, had the effect of reinforcing her message!

"I was living at the time in Victoria B.C. and one of the first hotels that was

built in Victoria was The Empress. It's this massive structure. Victoria was

one of the earlier colonial ports and so there's a big statue of a guy, a war hero

and he is in front of this big, big structure. So I used to go to the other side of

it and write COLONIZING THIEVERY. This was in the early 90's right? All

173 of these tourists would see that. And there's another part of Victoria. It was a

big port and I was really offended by a lot of the war propaganda. I guess it

was the municipal building. On the statue of that building I would write H-E-

R-O with a big question mark on this big dude with a gun. And then the city

would come around to clean it off, but they would just smudge it, so I would

go back there and put the line on thicker so that that word would actually get

bigger!" (Kinnie Starr, personal communication, August 4th, 2007)

The placement of the statue in front of the Empress, illustrates once again how white men are meant to stand as the protectors of the innocence of white women, guarding her ports, and thereby maintaining a boundary which keeps Aboriginally out. Inherent within her very act of tagging, Kinnie interrogated this racialized and gendered spectacle of colonization, calling into question a narrative which glorifies the gendered, sexualized violence of conquest symbolized by the 'war hero.' Through this narrative, Kinnie maps out how she negotiated a space decorated with symbolically misogynistic war propaganda, and shares her process of travelling this space through producing boundary markers of her own making.

These individual acts of voicing are necessary given the context of broader social narratives determining Aboriginal identities. Victim-based discourses represent a common thread within discourses of dominance, challenging Aboriginal youth's negotiation of urban spaces. These discourses have functioned within the narratives of dominance to legitimate state and social control. Although the effects of the narratives are felt by Aboriginal people as a collective, the response has been to direct our attention to individual pathologies. Basically, the state has responded to its own exercises of

174 institutionalized violence through inventing individual pathologies to explain the conditions of Aboriginal people. It has constructed a social outlook whereby we ourselves are responsible for our own social location in marginal spaces. The case of

Robert Pickton represents a prime example of how wider societal issues become downplayed through a concentrated focus on the social pathology of one individual. This case involves a convicted murderer of numerous women missing from Vancouver's downtown Eastside districts. An analysis of this case would reveal that the media focus on the social pathology of one individual has accommodated an erasure of the systemic racism and gender discrimination that sits at the heart of Canada's indifference towards the lives of First Nations women. The narrative also upholds the idea that these are risky women, women whose very identities have been sold to us as deviant, criminal, and degenerate. The ways in which these women have been portrayed to us as nothing but mere 'prostitutes,' legitimizes their erasure in the eyes of dominant society. They have been deemed undesirable and it is no surprise that these acts of violence and neglect are continuing to happen, while televisions continue to freeze-frame Pickton's sinisterism as spectacle, contributing to the mind-numbing that allows these practices to go on.

Emcee strategies disrupt discourses of dominance by naming, or calling out predators. For example, Ostwelve who produced the song 'Ed Gein Dreams,' which appropriately names Ed Gein to call out the practices of a Wisconsin serial killer of women. His song is dedicated to Tamera Keepness, a young Aboriginal girl who has been missed by her family in Regina, Saskatchewan since May 7, 2004.

175 "Spirits molested, their ghosts run sleepless

I wrote this for the soul of Tamera Keepness

And those who keep this and died on the pig farms

I'm preying on the predators who caused this harm

My crew come in big swarms, righteous and conscious

We fight back evil 'til it's back on its haunches

Trumpets and conches

Hand drums and rattles

Crash symbols, scallop shells, war paint and battles

My peeps raise their paddles

Their hopes and their children round these criminals who tattle

Tryin to break what we're building

Forgin and guildin' a shield for the oppressed

Yo, this song goes out to all the women of the downtown Eastside

And across Canada who have gone missing or died

Without police fucking intervention

Because they had dreams too."

(Ostwelve, 2006, "Ed Gein Dreams")

"Ed Gein Dreams" illustrates a movement within hip-hop whereby our young men are strategically discrediting practices which allow for the continuation of pushing women to boundary places. They achieve a critique of such practices through naming and voicing these women. Ostwelve, for example, uses his lyricism in order to place missing

Aboriginal women in the forefront by naming the women and girls themselves. Through

176 a failure to name the Robert Picktons of the nation, such artists are challenging the continual practice of erasure. Further, Ostwelve combines both the technologies of hip- hop and Sto:lo traditional culture, in exemplifying what it means to be a warrior - both as a word warrior and as a member of a 'crew' that uses Storlo means of 'fighting back evil.'

In a similar messaging practice, emcee Eekwol felt compelled to create her song

'Too Sick' which visibilizes the practice of gender violence in the home. For her, this song emerged as a response towards witnessing some of her loved ones in unhealthy, abusive relationships (Eekwol, 2007). This song conceptualizes 'warrior' to be rooted within Cree historical memory in order to accentuate an absence of healthy practices of relating within contemporary relationships.

"When the sun stood high in my ancestors eyes

A warrior sat on the earth with a smile

The rays reflected his frame shadowing his profile

I was prepared to share my life with his mind and ability

The forest, plains fires all structures in community

The roles to raise a family traditionally

Now it's 2004 what remains are the traces of that history

Blind as his compliments, commitments to me rolled off his tongue

My perfection was the foundation of his words, I was the one

His past was filled with loneliness and misery

As the violence and neglect plagued his memory

177 Drunken lessons informed his life, knowledgeable branches in the tree of

questions

I asked he would confess them

He believed and I believed we were above and fought the past he was safe with

me and I loved it.

But it leaked out a little as the pain came in trickles

I was caught in the middle of his pride and his riddles

I couldn't figure out shouting with the shout and I tried to understand as he

pushed me to get them out

I was quick to recoup I took the falls finding nice posters for the holes in the walls

Too sick to stop the cycle hammer this nail into my head living in the cost of a

culture lost

Some say I'm better off dead."

(Eekwol, 2004, "Too Sick," Apprentice to the Mystery)

These emcees are activists, formulating resistance strategies while examining the effects of how 'the violence and neglect plagued his memory' (Eekwol, 2004) in a culturally infused history. The erasure of Native women fits within the colonial narrative of nation building which assumes that Native people constitute a vanishing race. This represents a troubling presence/absence as Native people are being pushed into border places.

Consequently, the fact that a lot of these 'missing' women are being found along the sides of highways, connecting city to country is not surprising. The erasure of Native women articulated through the active presence/absence of missing Aboriginal women not only accommodates Canada's narrative of the vanishing race, but this violent erasure is

178 actively pushing Native girls and women into border spaces where they become virtually invisible. This violent positioning practice is illustrative of the sexist/racist belief that

Native women and girls have no definitive belonging to a place, or home within Canada.

Female emcees are challenging these positioning practices that continue to influence relationships within the emcee world. As noted earlier, during our interview

Eekwol, for example, used the term 'brodeo' to critique the practice of gender exclusion, stemming from a 'jock mentality' that downplays women's contributions within the scene. Female emcees are also establishing themselves as skilled lyricists amongst a community of mostly male practitioners who are starting to show their support for the articulation of female voicing.

The context within which hip-hop is situated becomes a motivating factor for hip- hop's messagings, where the compulsion to create stems from hip-hop's location at a

'crossroads between lack and desire' (Rose, 1994, p.21). Rose describes this space from which hip-hop emerges as a result of the "deindustrialization meltdown where social alienation, prophetic imagination, and yearning intersect" (Rose, 1994, p.21). One's positioning at the crossroads between lack and desire creates a prophetic imaginative desire to create change and transformation - prophetic in the sense that emcees, much like the visionaries and leaders that continue to face and fight policies of Indigenous removal and assimilation, express alternative conceptualizations of the world free of cultural fragmentation and absence. Some of the strategies that are adopted in transforming the ways that we perceive the world involve activism that take the shape of social movements when applied on a wider scale. Reminiscent of Harjo's 1996 poem The creation story,

Sto:lo emcee Carrielynn Victor describes the transition from hurt to love as a site of

179 transformation. Embedded within the creation process, transitioning from hurt to love requires that one enter that space between to connect with the Cree notion of mamatowisowin (Ermine, 1995) as a source of creativity. When one works within this space, it opens up a range of possibilities for the transformation of our situations, as illustrated below:

"A lot of my music comes from.. .if we are going to talk about space, a hurt

definitely. I might have gone through that process where I found that middle

road away from having to be suffering to write. But I still find that I take one

song from that place of hurt to that place of love. This transformation in a

song is a huge feeling." (Carrielynn Victor, October 18th, 2007, personal

communication)

These same processes that emcees are utilizing in their creative process in transitioning from hurt to love, can be seen as shaping blueprints for creating strategies for social change. In fact, the 'transitioning from that space of hurt to love' can serve as a potential mandate informing youth social movements and represents how emcees are engaging in a form of Indigenous critical theory through an ability to create out of a space of rupture.

Carrielynn's narrative presents a sophisticated account of what social change looks,

sounds, and feels like when grounded within youth philosophy and praxis.

Motion is central to emcee creation processes. Emcees are creatively inspired through a process of transgressing spaces and transforming their environments. Many of the lyricists/emcees that I have spoken with draw inspiration from travelling within cities, towards peripheries, and in spaces in-between. For example, during our interview, emcee

Kinnie Starr expressed a need for being outside of the city in order to find inspiration.

180 Likewise, Carrielynn Victor prefers to create while travelling in her vehicle where she is

'quiet and rested, ready for inspiration' (Carrielynn Victor, personal communication,

October 18th, 2007). Not only is it that emcees are mobile, but the technologies that they bring with them, such as laptops and mini-recorders on cell phones, accommodate the voicings of travel and feed into the orality of the cities.

In the following narrative Kinnie Starr explains the ways in which being outside facilitates her need to create:

"When I hear nature, I'll hear wind or birds, ocean or river at the same time.

And sometimes it sounds like a symphony and I'll be like tripping and be like

is that a full string section? Like there's been times when I am like, is there an

orchestra out there? Like, I can't separate it in my head. It's music, it's such a

beautiful experience and I get that a lot and that's the major.. .but um that is

usually the thing that pushes me into music or to write. Like when I get that

feeling like I get outta the city and all of a sudden there's this peace, but it

sounds like songs... I definitely try to mimic the way the rivers sound, at least

how they feel in my body." (Kinnie Starr, personal communication, August 4th,

2007)

The creation of spaces is deeply rooted within the same process as creating music for artists that maintain the strong relationship between the imaginary and the physical. Hip- hop artist Daybi, in describing his process, illustrates the significance of imagery and visuals. As part of a visual culture that exists within the consciousness of artists, emcees begin to see visuals through music that moves them, inspiring them to write those worlds into being. Much like the experience that Kinnie would have in envisioning an orchestra

181 when listening to natural landscapes, Daybi visualizes patterns and layerings of colours and lights reflective of the mood of the songs. His song 'Sunday' {First Contact) incorporates these multiple dimensions, repetitions and layerings that have the effect of producing rich visuals for the listener, "white sand turquoise H2o of the drink ink dot splatter the page in the form of waves, Sunday spiral into the mix a lyrical made in the shade of silhouette plays infinite rays." The song maintains that mood through lyricism capturing that visual element, "colouring the air in your space over there, wherever you may be I'm there, in the form that I dare, my capable capture ultrasaturated on Sundays."

Daybi's process of producing visuals, alongside Kinnie's ability to tap into aural landscapes, stand as reminders of the spiritual nature of the creative process. In fact, some artists have said that they stand as mere conduits to the spiritual energy that is, in a sense, greater than themselves.

"I truly believe that none of this that I'm doing has anything really to do with

me. Yeah. I totally don't. I don't even take credit for it.. .Sometimes I feel

like I am a conduit to something bigger.. .and I have to remain humble,

otherwise in a second it could be all gone. So I know that there's a big

spiritual, there's spiritual things happening and it's all...in everything that any

of us do.. .there's something driving us.. .And it's something that I always

thank." (Eekwol, personal communication, July 29l , 2007)

Even though there is this connection between the creative process and tapping into spiritual energies, some artists choose to create a distance between the two in the voicing of their music. Emcee Theresa Seymour (Sto:lo) would claim there is much work to be done in preparing the world to receive music which incorporates these aspects of

182 ourselves. Envisioning, in this particular instance, takes the shape of a different type of reality where spirituality can be safely carried by a healthy social world.

"I find that creation, the feeling of creation comes from the same place as my

spirituality and they teach us not to exploit our, you know, our spiritual

practices so it's not directly connected, it's not on the outside connected but I

definitely feel that place you know what I mean like if I hear a song in the

wind while I'm by the river, maybe coming from the trees when I sing that

song...It feels like the same place inside myself that I feel when I'm writing a

song with English words and my emotions attached to it. It's very much

similar but I don't put, like I don't mix them, they feel separate yet they feel

the same in a way. Yeah I have a lot of respect for that, for that part of myself

and if the world was ready to accept that side of the music with the hip-hop

who knows right? It might go in that direction, but I don't feel ready myself,

at the same time." (Theresa Seymour, personal communication, October 17th,

2007)

The call to voice has been answered by emcees with a willingness to travel to those places within themselves in order to create, sometimes out of necessity. I remember a particular instance of an emcee sharing with me that he created music out of a need to fill up dark spaces when he was left alone in the house as a young child. Other artists shared that creating music helped them overcome the struggle of contemplating suicide.

Transitioning from hurt to love represents an achievement of hip-hop musical creation that continues to maintain momentum as emcees create, sometimes at four in the morning, those voicings that connect us, reminding us of the beauty of imagination,

183 insight and youthful energy once again. This transitions also takes place in those spaces between where artists can connect with the impulse, spirit and life force.

Emcee Transgressions: Hip-hop Strategies for Movement

The emcee entrance into between spaces marks a transgression which produces new ways of thinking about the spaces that we occupy within ourselves and as travellers within our cities. It is my understanding that the concept of 'transgression,' when framed within certain Indigenous spiritual/cultural frameworks can mean something quite different than its intended use in this dissertation, which is similar to a post-structuralist and feminist approach to the term. 'Transgression,' within the context of this discussion, indicates that the movements emcees make, cross over limits produced by societal norms, norms that have their source in discourses of dominance. It is the function of critical thinking to challenge societal control mechanisms such as racism, sexism, homophobia, and other dominant control strategies. These strategies attempt to curtail our access to the creative source, or that ethical space that holds the potential to broaden our range of possibilities.

Consider the types of transgressions that Kinnie Starr produces as she creatively constructs alternative visionings of a world ideologically expanded to support a freedom of movement:

"I dream of a lovely time

Separate sense from the voice in my mind

I get wet thinking hypothetically

Break a sweat thinking I'm gonna get me

One on the front and back and both sides

184 Don't mean I don't get it good from my man's ride

It's just life loving all kinds

So many beautiful hearts and bright minds

So many ways to click and shoe shine

But it's so outlawed to dig it double time

But the sky is the skin and the eyes are the stars

I love it all it's just who I are I

Rock the boat! Don't sink float!

Rock the boat! Don't sink float."

(Kinnie Starr, "Rock the boat" feat. Skeena Reece and Manic, special guest

Swift.)

Since its source is that centre, or that life force, hip-hop can be seen as a vibration if you will, and an embodied force of movement which creates these alternative visionings which function to reduce hegemonic 'truthing' practices. Antonio Gramsci (1978) defined hegemony as "the use of culture by the ruling classes to regulate uncritical consent of and orthopraxy in civil society" (cited in Price, 2004, p. 2). In Maori scholar

Graham Smith's presentation paper entitled Transformative praxis: Indigenous reclaiming of the academy and higher education (2005), he describes hegemony as a way of thinking. According to Smith, hegemonic behaviour occurs when oppressed groups take on dominant thinking and ideas unintentionally and as 'common sense' even though those ideas may in fact be contributing to their own oppression. Further, Smith (2005) contemplates that what needs to happen is a freeing-up in our minds in the form of critical conscientisation transforming our perspectives about our needs and aspirations in

185 order to envision a different situation or world. This use of the concept conscientisation echoes Brazilian scholar Paulo Freire's (1970) application of the term to describe an emancipatory process of becoming critically aware of how oppressive systems and structures affect/limit the way Indigenous peoples see themselves and their relationships with others. Hip-hop culture has embraced this form of critical inquiry which represents a strategy for assessing our range of possibilities. Within the hip-hop community conscientisation has surfaced as a vehicle through which to expose hegemonic processes, while simultaneously providing the strategies and tools through which to create alternative visionings.

Hip-hop music not only envisions a different kind of reality, but it actually transforms the social order through providing 'glimpses' of different types of worlds. In this sense, emcees are doing purely theoretical work by not only offering a critique of social practices, but through creating a reality, a space where things can be different.

Through providing 'breaks' in the multiple discourses of dominance, hip-hop collectivities produce ideological and physical spaces within which transgressions occur as emcees shape new spaces. During the creative process, emcees literally locate themselves within these new spaces that they describe and proceed to create change from within. It's like they are calling on a different social order through the languaging that they employ. Daybi carries us through this process of creating alternative worlds which involves emcee transgressions which he describes as:

186 "Music, when I like it - it creates for me really strong visuals. And it takes me

to a certain place, it's almost like an imaginary world, well it is an imaginary

world and the landscapes and things that are happening it's not just

metaphorical but it's symbolic and then so it's usually in the music, music that

I write or music that I like that inspires me to write. And then it's within that

world that I tell that story right? I'm like o.k what would I say in this situation

or where does this visually take me and how could I create you know?"

(Daybi, personal communication, July 28th, 2007)

While emcees are envisioning different types of realities, they are not always working in response to colonialism by formulating a counter-position to discourses of dominance.

Rather they are moving beyond present inequalities to access different sources in order to nurture ideas which might imagine the world as different. In other words, it is not in every instance suitable to read their messagings as counter-narratives. Having stated this,

I do not mean to downplay the transformative significance of lyricism that does articulate responses to hegemonic systems. Consider, for example, the lyricism of R.D

Harris/Ostwelve in 'Birds of Thunder' which is a song formulated to be a direct response to military operations on Indigenous homelands.

"My heart's in the sky...My feet on the ground...

Tears in my eyes as they detonate another round

Burial mounds flooded where we used to pray

Where we used to hunt...where we used to play...

Might not go away because these raptors never rest

Chasing the game away and got elders under arrest

187 Another test...with hunting and fishing regulations

Trying to feed these kids with no money or occupations

Got us feeling more frustration...loss of honour and culture

Now the thunderbird has transformed into a vulture

That will assault ya...with toxins and chemicals

Cultural misplacement life threatening decibels

Even the best of those succumb to the madness

military operations generations of sadness

Wish we never had this...runway going this way or that way

Stand against machines like Elizabeth Penashue."

(Ostwelve, 2008 "Birds of Thunder," Anti-Gravity Dinosaurs)

'Rupture' is illustrated as a strategy within this narrative when we see the use of the

Thunderbird, a significant being within Aboriginal cultures oral traditions being transformed into a vulture. In this situation Ostwelve illustrates how cultural misplacement affects our symbolic universe as much as it does our physical reality. Also, we can see how these lyrics offer a break in the narratives of dominance through critiquing destructive practices that they evoke. As a musical form, hip-hop insights rupture through revealing external systems of control. Therefore, hip-hop is a mechanism for inciting understanding towards the impacts of cultural fragmentation through acts of colonization.

I have illustrated that emcee practices of signification and wordplay incite new actions and re-actions to transform reality. Further, the hip-hop cultural priority to keep it real assists in transforming the current social order through breaking up dominant texts.

188 The next section illuminates strategic forms of destabilizing harmful narratives, actualized through the emcee application of metaphor to produce subversive meanings.

Imani Perry in Prophets of the hood: politics and poetics in hip-hop (2004), explains that within hip-hop, 'tactical shifts occur within the style of metaphor' (p. 59).

'Metaphor' can be transmitted in a variety of ways, and functions in a multiplicity of discourses and oral forms that are rooted within many diverse cultures. Deriving from certain elements stemming from African Indigenous and Aboriginal Indigenous oral cultural forms, emcee strategies of disrupting dominant narratives have been expressed as forms of 'signifying.' Various emcees involved in this project have adapted wordplay as a form of'signifying.' Sam Floyd in The power of Black music: interpreting its history from Africa to the United States (1995) provides clarity of meaning:

Signifyin(g) is a way of saying one thing and meaning another; it is a

reinterpretation, a metaphor for the revision of previous texts and figures; it is

tropological thought, repetition with difference, the obscuring of meanings- all

to achieve or reverse power, to improve situations, and to achieve pleasing

results for the signifier. (Floyd Jr. S.A, 1995, p.95)

'Signifying,' as a complex strategy to reclaim power, requires intelligence, wit, and skill.

Emcee signification practices, such as the hyper-articulation of stereotypes, subvert dominant labeling practices. Emcees may mimic certain behaviours associated with the

'drunken Indian,' for example, in order to expose the absurdity behind dominant social narratives. This technique has been utilized to challenge assumptions and to reinterpret them to the advantage of the artist. Subversion, through signification, provides an opportunity for others to experience what it feels like to be 'locked in a stereotype.' Wab

189 Kinew illustrates the use of such a strategy in producing music for his crew, subversively named Dead Indians:

"The whole idea of Dead Indians is like reclaiming the imagery of the Native

person and just subverting it... like just saying yeah... all Natives are drunks

and party animals. But the thing is it's like if you listen to like the cadences

that we use in the music and the production and shit like that it's like really

we're probably one of the tighter crews in the Native hip-hop scene." (Wab

Kinew, personal communication, July 16th, 2008)

In this case, the revision of previous texts is accomplished through a strategic repetition of dominant stereotypes in order to reverse the initial power play generated by the name

'drunken Indian.'

Obscuring meaning through mimicry, as a strategy stemming from African and

Aboriginal forms of oral traditions, stands alongside other means of challenging discourses of dominance. Emcees also apply symbolic imagery and metaphor in their critiques of society. Basically, the practices ingrained in signification carry the power of rewriting the received order so that people can achieve a new positioning.

Structurally, hip-hop music's technological composition, the 'remix,' is illustrative of signification's abilities to rewrite the received order through establishing a presence. The remix challenges the linearity of the received textual tradition whose focus on 'progression' restricts the identities and experiences of Indigenous collectivities.

Through the use of sampling cultural raw materials, youth insert themselves onto urban environments creating spaces within which complex youth identities can be negotiated and re-envisioned. Brett Lashua's (2006) article, The arts of the remix: ethnography and

190 rap establishes connections between the art of the 'remix' within hip-hop technological practice, and the 'remixes' occurring as Indigenous youth compose lived realities and identities. These identities are produced while resisting linearity, and the re-fashioning of authentic Indigenous constructions.

Young people make and remake culture through appropriating the cultural

'raw materials' of life in order to construct meaning in their own specific

cultural localities. In as sense, they are 'sampling' from a broader popular

culture, and reworking what they can take into their own specific local

cultures. That is, the ways that young people sample drum rhythms and vocal

segments from songs may be thought of as analogous to the ways that they

sample from broader cultures (such as styles from USA hip-hop cultures),

modify or restructure it in some meaningful ways, and rework the

'compositions' of their own daily lives, including notions of

'identities.'(Lashua, 2006, p.6)

Within the realm of a broader social context, hip-hop falls prey to a certain amount of criticism stemming from an apparent lack of linearity and harmony within its structural components. Tricia Rose responds to this criticism of rap's lack of progression as an affront to black musical traditions and the communities who follow these traditions.

According to Rose, the critique stems from a racialized perception that black musical traditions represent a 'regression' from the 'building up'/sequential style of the more progressive music of the Western world (Rose, 1994). These linear indicators of social progress through musical form further foreground the significance of 'rupture' in challenging forms of oppression from within African American, African Canadian,

191 Caribbean, and Aboriginal community voicings. Narratives which have been used to dominate Aboriginal peoples have similarly been constructed in such a linear fashion.

Such a storyline fed the creation of the residential school system in North America. The

civilizing concepts and techniques of the residential school policies were ingrained in

linear narratives stating that the best way to civilize the Indians was to separate the

children from their parents whose traditional ways could only thwart assimilation. Such

legitimizing statements were protected through a linear/argumentative structure. This

linearity helped to shape the attitude that these early policies reflected 'taken for granted' truths. Contemporary practices of rupture delegitimize such 'truth' claims. Colonial

narratives are continuously being challenged through strategies embedded in lyricism and

technological form, achieved through a distinctively hip-hop-inspired aural aesthetic.

'Rupture,' actualized through these various elements embedded in hip-hop, allows for in-

the-moment interrogations of dominant colonial positioning practices affecting youth.

In producing a link between the structural elements of hip-hop as a musical form

and its impacts towards transforming the society's indifference, Rose analyzes Arthur

Jafa's identification of three conceptual continuities of hip-hop culture which include flow, layering, and ruptures in line (cited in Rose, 1994). Basically, Rose's analysis

draws a link between the elemental nuances of hip-hop cultural strategies and the

actualization of social resistance and transformation.

One can argue that they [hip-hop principles] create and sustain rhythmic

motion, continuity, and circularity via flow; accumulate, reinforce and

embellish this continuity through layering; and manage threats to these

narratives by building in ruptures that highlight the continuity as it

192 momentarily challenges it. These effects at the level of style and aesthetics

suggest affirmative ways in which profound social dislocation and rupture can

be managed and perhaps contested in the cultural arena. Let us imagine these

hip-hop principles as a blueprint for social resistance and affirmation; create

sustaining narratives, accumulate them, layer, embellish, and transform them.

However, be also prepared for rupture, find pleasure in it, in fact, plan on

social rupture. When these ruptures occur, use them in creative ways that will

prepare you for a future in which survival will demand a sudden shift in

ground tactics. (Rose, 1994, p. 39)

Rose's insights provide links between the structure of hip-hop with its qualities of flow, layering and building in ruptures, and its strategy to simultaneously maintain and challenge continuity. Rose argues for the creation of sustaining narratives that are culturally and physically affirming. She claims that a characteristic of narratives that are sustaining, is that they accommodate rupture, 'find pleasure in it' and downright depend on it (Rose, 1994). I would suggest that parody, mimicry, and comedy work - mimic the rupture that can inform one's experiences as an Aboriginal person in the city.

Rose illuminates the accommodation of rupture as an important emcee strategy in creating blueprints to envision a different kind of reality. The call towards 'finding pleasure' in these ruptures has been answered by emcees such as Ostwelve, who utilizes a sinister-like comedic feel to respond to the many forms of violence associated with

Native realities. The following lyrics to Storlo emcee Ostwelves's song 'Got Blood on

193 yah' illustrate how mimicry and comedy can be useful to disrupt the violence and 'tragic victimry' associated with the way discourses of dominance have 'storied' Native realities.

"Everybody's got a little bit of blood on them

Everybody's got a little bit of blood

Everybody's got a little bit of blood on them

Everybody's got a little bit of blood

Say..oops I got blood on yah

Say oops I got blood on yah."

(Ostwelve, "Got Blood on yah")

Ostwelve disempowers the significance of bloodshed by stating that 'everybody's got a little bit of blood on them.' His repletion of the phrase 'oops I got blood on yah' demonstrates an act of finding pleasure in a playful - almost innocent - game of tag. In turning the narrative of bloodshed into a child's game, Ostwelve disrupts the tragic victimry of colonial narratives. Ostwelve understands that you have to find pleasure in rupture. This act is necessary in order to maintain an edge in a world where laughter and comedy are techniques that have never been utilized as a method of control by authoritative state powers. The use of metaphor and comedy in writing rhymes is appealing to emcees who wish to challenge structures. For example, emcee Kinnie Starr in Blood of our heart beats for change writes:

194 "writing rhymes affords wordplay, metaphor and making light of huge topics like

not being connected to my Native ancestors. On my first album in '96 I wrote,

'the Big Boys went out of style/ and so Pavement lines the roads now/ with

indifferent reference to the past and preference/ of white pop trash and over

abundance/ but where are my ancestors? Jacks of Deep River? Jacks of which

trade though made up the depressor?'"

A challenge towards structures indifferent to ancestral lineage, is voiced in Kinnie's question 'but where are my ancestors?' This inquiry presents a 'rupture' to dominant narratives which comprise dominant interpretations of Indigenous history. Such ruptures are necessary to the process of creating visionings of worlds transformed which must be built in sustaining narratives, repeated, and layered. Emcees such as Kinnie Starr and

Ostwelve illustrate through their lyricism, that rupture is both realistic and achievable.

Techniques that emcees employ also reflect elements of urban realities, accentuated through over-hyping masculinity as a vehicle to speak back to police brutality. This use of masculinity and force is an example of how mimicry is employed as a strategy subverting the dominant text. Through these forms of signification, emcees expose inconsistencies and questionable practices - 'ruptures' existing within narratives of dominance.

At this point, we can pose the question, what does this stylistic break in the narrative look like when embedded in hip-hop musical form? Rose (1994) describes sampling technology that uses repetition and the reconfiguration of certain rhythmic elements in order to highlight the movements that happen between rhythmic patterns.

Within the musical form, the activities taking place in border spaces determine the

195 transformational end result. This means that the musical form of hip-hop itself encapsulates its own border zone. Transformations are taking place within the break beats. Consider how Kinnie Starr's storylines use spoken word as a vehicle to transgress acceptable ideas about 'Indian' identity. These lyrics illustrate the types of sequences that emerge from a border zone.

"You know I love to wear dresses of Victorian lace

love six shades of sex all up in my face

love lighting bonfires of contemplation

love beats that merge like a German Indian

pummeling the fields as the wagons roll in

red man white man ending beginning

now grown radiant and getting bolder

smile of a child held by strong shoulders

check the lessons in the shape of the land

even the strongest rock can become the sand

and can sift through the hands of a woman or a man

who steps long enough to listen

ear to the wind mind to the rain

blood of our heart beats for change."

(Starr, K. "Emerged")

B-girls and b-boys are natural transgressors of spaces; they work within the break beats in order to reconfigure acceptable Indigenous identities highlighted through the rhythmic elements, and accentuated by the break beats. These reconfigurations extend to creating

196 different types of spaces accommodating the production of different types of social relations; in Starr's lyricism the between space is created to include the voicings of cross- blooded identities.

Rupture, achieved through 'the cut' provides one pathway towards spaces in- between, those spaces of transgression from struggle to hope. The 'cut' is one of the techniques used in sampling technology that breaks the line or the social script if you will. An explanation of the cut indicates that rupture is built into the very form of rap music. According to Snead, the cut is:

An abrupt, seemingly unmotivated break (an accidental de capo) with a series

already in progress and a willed return to a prior series. [Within] black culture,

the 'cut,' 'builds' accidents into its coverage almost as if to control their

unpredictability. (Snead; Rose, 1994, p.69)

As a consequence of its nature, the 'cut' actually brings equilibrium while at the same time highlights points of rupture. This strategy makes sense when we consider the weight of some of the testimonials that give breadth to certain types of experiences. Such techniques allow for the willful switch from narrating the struggle, to emcees expressing transformative messagings within the same song. Cree emcee Blu from Prince Albert

Saskatchewan produced the song "No Way, No How," which conveys this transformation. This song provides an account of the issue of abuse against First Nations women.

197 "But how can we neglect it

Our women are abused

They're feeling unprotected

And feeling so confused

And all these other murders

They're uninvestigated

But still our spirit stays

Death can't even take this."

(Blu, 2007, "No way, No how")

The element of 'risk' as a cultural priority informing spatial geographies and practice within hip-hop captures the essence of rupture. Murray Forman contextualizes risk's relationship with hip-hop through his claim that hip-hop was and continues to be

'characterized by public actions that were, in many cases, simultaneously accompanied by risks of varying severity' (Forman, 2004, p.389). As an element of hip-hop culture, graffiti is an art form that encapsulates rupture through 'risk.' Daybi comments on the nature of graffiti writing within the following narrative:

"It's exciting. Graffiti always had and will always have this outlaw element to

it. I don't know, it's kinda like a rush you know, it's always like you're top

secret. It's highly competitive and it's just a whole different thing... it's just a

little more dirty, grimy, it's like you are always breaking the law, looking out

for cops, you are always full of ink or paint." (Daybi, personal communication,

July 28, 2007)

198 In speaking about her involvement with tagging, Eekwol shares a humorous story which further characterizes this sense of rupture as risk. This narrative illustrates the significance of 'naming' as 'rupture' which is a theoretical practice embraced by crew collectivities in producing a form of Indigenous oral narrative within unexpected, yet highly visible city spaces.

"I used to do a lot of tagging in the train yards, and stuff like that when I was

younger. I never really got to the caliber where it was graffiti art. I was more

into tagging and getting my name up anyway that I could. So, I'd always do

that with my cousins and my crew. I ended up having the gift of sound where I

could hear things that were going on so.. .we'd hear either dogs or cops or

something...I'd be like 'hey..hey..hey..lowkee..lowkee..we gotta go!' And

they'd be like 'what!' And they couldn't hear it and then they'd start hearing it.

But I always heard those things before anyone so that's my nick name and

that's how I became lowkee. You know I was kinda keeping six even though I

was you know more paranoid than the average person. Yeah I got us outta

trouble a few times." (Eekwol, personal communication, July 29th, 2007)

We can also see within this narrative how the strategy of comedy is being used to destabilize the presence of surveillance over activities of youth culture in the form of the watchful eyes of the police.

Ruptures through Wordplay

Hip-hop functions to question and interrogate colonial systems which rely upon a linear notion of progression and the repetition of messagings that reinforce the status quo.

Emcees unmask oppressive structures through the creation of in-the-moment messagings

199 which critique and offer alternative visionings through employing such strategies as wordplay. Wordplay facilitates these transgressions through its concern with language and the ability of the 'word' to construct world(s). Wordplay is a technique useful in the creation of these spaces transformed, as they work with pre-scribed meanings of words in order to subvert and shift their meanings into something new, critical, and transformative.

The creation of alternative visionings, therefore, rely upon forms of strategic wordplay as a vehicle of both interrogation and transformation.

Emcee Geo, from the Skeetchestn Reserve of the Secwepemc Nation in British

Columbia implements the interrogative strategy of wordplay in his song Beautiful B. C.

This song interrogates the dominant discourse of nation-building through reiterating the popular phrase 'welcome to beautiful B.C.' in a song about environmental and cultural destruction. This popular phrase adopted by Tourism Canada, is used to highlight discourses of dominance.

"So welcome to beautiful B.C.

where we got beautiful lakes and beautiful trees

where we got big mountains and beautiful streams

but I tell yeah this much, yo- it ain't what it seems

The culture's fadin' and my people be sleepin'

The language is down while my people be dreamin'

Money is power, with power comes respect

Everybody's out hustlin' while the world's getting wrecked

We got greenhouse gases, cities that be massive

Liquor stores and bars

200 My people getting plastered

So I sit there and think, of all the species extinct

Global warming is a warning and I'll write it in ink

So welcome to beautiful B.C.

where we got beautiful lakes and beautiful trees

where we got big mountains and beautiful streams

but I tell yeah this much, yo- it ain't what it seems."

(The Capitol G. Geo, 2007, "Beautiful B.C.")

In this particular example, Geo's play on words is meant as a subversive strategy expressing an alternative view of Canada's environmental policies and their effects on

First Nations' communities.

Wordplay requires a deep consideration of words and their meanings. Bakhtin's

(1984) conceptualization of the 'double voiced word' achieves the same kind of subversive intentionality as the function of wordplay. The double-voiced word strives to make the original meanings of the word conditional through forcing it to lose its absolute power and single-voiced authority. Lyricists actualizing wordplay rely upon previous meanings in order to create new ones. Wordplay involves 'playing' with meanings that are understood as non-neutral and relies upon the value of those first words to transform their meaning in order to achieve a more critical gaze focused on the original intent. For emcees, this ability to play with words alters the patterns that languages of dominance create. Wordplay critiques the signified word, thereby it functions to reverse the original words' power and redirects its original meaning in order to create alternative realities. In short, wordplay is a strategy which offers breaks in discourses of dominance.

201 As an art form which has its own sophisticated practices to reverse power, as in the strategies stated above, hip-hop is also deeply concerned with the a demonstrated awareness of one's ideological and physical environment. Consequently, 'the local,' for emcees has become a critical theoretical space. The following discussion will highlight the importance of the emcee relationship to temporal and spatial geographies, illuminated by the concepts 'knowin' your history' and the functions of the 'crew collective.' The complex nature of emcee spaces produces an oftentimes contested terrain reminiscent of the significance of'rupture' within the cultural framework. As an outcome of this instability, the 'local' has also been proven to be a space of tension.

'Know u'r History': an Analysis of Temporal & Spatial Geographies

The roots of hip-hop become fused with the historical roots of 'the people,' as artists tap into and recreate a historical consciousness for their listeners. In order to be taken seriously within the scene, emcees have to do their homework. The emcees participating in my study distinguish a tru head based upon whether or not certain emcees carried knowledge about the history of hip-hop. The required history includes knowledge pertaining to the early practitioners (the founding fathers) of hip-hop and also required an understanding of the movement's roots which determine from what set of ideas/ideals it came. For emcees (imbued with an Indigenous/Native flavour) knowing one's own history is blended with knowing 'the history' of hip-hop. Africaa Bombaataa and Grand

Master Flash occupy important spatial realms within hip-hop's historical consciousness.

For Native emcees these founding fathers stand alongside Big Bear, Poundmaker, Louis

Riel, Anna Mae Aquash - leaders and activists whose struggle for Indigenous justice,

202 represent rememberings of the past which inspire contemporary responses toward struggle.

Knowing the history as a performer entails familiarizing oneself with the ideological landscape in order to assess the range of possibilities for the music. The relationship between the history of hip-hop and First Nations history is balanced by hip- hop artists who claim that they are uniquely styled. For example, when asked to describe her style, Eekwol responded, "it's definitely respecting hip-hop roots and also respecting our own Indigenous roots" (Eekwol, personal communication, July 29th, 2007).

A popular criticism of the contemporary hip-hop movement by established hip- hop artists, is that it is "overwrought with kids that don't know. Kids that don't understand the history and the struggle" (Eekwol, personal communication, July, 29th,

2007). Eekwol stated that these kids ruin the movement, but assured that the tru headz are still around and still producing conscious music.

Basically, knowing your history becomes synonymous with 'walking with integrity' as a hip-hop emcee. One familiar with the history is careful to 'keep it as real as possible,' to avoid frontin' by trying to represent yourself authentically to the world.

'Walking with integrity' requires one to be as unique and original as possible, aware that any form of copycatting stems from a lack of knowledge and personal respect. Emcees that have experienced copy-catters (who take other people's names because they are cool or trendy) claim that those who do so are ignorant of the culture. Interestingly, rather than viewed solely as an act of copycatting, sampling as a form of reintegrating beats and lyrical hooks from music from the past, has been credited as "a 'high tech' and highly selective archiving" (Bartlett, 1994, p. 647). Sampling fits within a genre concerned with

203 overlapping and layered phrases, beats, and ideas. Further, sampling contains a relationship to the 'vibrant connectedness in historical relation to African American aesthetics' (Bartlett, 1994, p. 650). Tricia Rose, for example, voices that hip-hop's sampling tradition "contains the power of Black collective memory" (Rose, 199, p. 286).

In hip-hop, a knowledge of one's history expressed through the selective use of sampling, and the intent to represent oneself authentically- challenges notions from dominant discourses that youth express themselves ahistorically. To be respected as a true head requires a deep spatial awareness embedded within an historical consciousness of struggle. This awareness would then provide the strategies useful to overcome struggle such as keeping things as real as possible. In order to illustrate the process of developing a critical historical consciousness, Cree emcee Rex Smallboy speaks of his experience which demystifies this oftentimes painful process:

"The case was that I just felt so strongly about things that were wrong in my

community that I felt they needed to be addressed and looked at so I wrote

about it. It was all based from identity you know I wanted to feel good about

myself but there was things in the way you know that were not allowing me to

feel good about myself and my identity.. .at the community level as a Native

person you know what I mean? Cause I wanted to look at myself as a Native

person, but the more I looked at myself as a Native person the more so many

different things came up you know, I was a having a hard time accepting you

know like ah.. .geez.. .ah.. .just the state of our people.. .so what it then.. .it put

me on a journey to learn you know, history and um you know I started talking

to elders you know about what happened you know.. .why are we like this,

204 why are things the way they are? And um, hip-hop was always there beside me

while this was all going on this identity crisis that I was having and then I

started learning the history you know about what happened you know with the

reserves being formed.. .like on my reserve the RCMP went house to house

and they took our bundles and our pipes and you know, they made a big

bonfire by the church and burnt all our sacred things and so I started to gain an

understanding of why things were the way they were, you know, why our

people were struggling with these you know things like drugs and alcohol you

know, they never got over a lot of things that happened to them you know they

never grieved over that and this was all like a learning process.. .you know

learning from so many different angles." (Rex Smallboy, personal

communication, July 15 ,2008)

Rex's narrative challenges the ahistorical Indian as a creation of the discourse of dominance because he expresses a critical historical memory which destabilizes the idea that Aboriginal historical memory can only assume a romanticized form. Rex's story contests the idea that with urbanization, Aboriginal peoples automatically threw away their historical memory, essentially expressing a desire to assimilate into mainstream culture. According to Newhouse, moving to the city automatically inscribed in dominant society's minds that people turned their back on their culture (Newhouse and Peters

2003).

Keeping things as original as possible through expressing one's experiences in their truest form, as well as knowing your history are both important elements to walking with integrity as a hip-hop emcee and 'tru head.' These concepts, amongst others are

205 linked to new ways of thinking about spatial territories such as 'the rez,' and 'the community.' Emcees offer new namings of spatial locators within hip-hop like 'the ghetto,' 'the rez,' 'East end,' and 'West end' help one to consciously navigate movements. As a result of a keepin' it real mentality, criticism ensues for those representing a false lived-experience such as 'growing up street.' As a consequence, works must be truly autobiographical and mirror one's own experience.

Within the spatial realm of hip-hop, 'the street' is a consciousness expressed as a set of ideas and/or conceptualizations. In hip-hop culture, place takes on a tangible form within the realm of consciousness. At the same time, there are symbolic and physical transgressions occurring at these border spaces between city and rez which function to break down boundaries as youth chart new spatial territories. The concepts community, culture and identity are constantly shifting. For example, Hladki (1998) in Power and struggle in educational research: interrogating the unity in community, questions the meta-narrative which has treated these concepts as monoliths with singular, uncomplicated meanings.

Scholars have increasingly come to view them (concepts of community,

culture, and identity) as hybrid, and contradictory concepts, constantly

produced and reproduced in relation to shifting constellations of knowledge

(e.g. racializing discourses) and power with the larger society. (Hladki, 1998,

p.2)

Literature has embraced static representations of Native people in order to legitimize control and surveillance. The mobility that youth are embodying in order to transgress physical and ideological boundary markers can be viewed as a decolonizing strategy.

206 Furthermore, a focus on origins which is commonplace amongst people in Native communities is being driven to include a consciousness that Indigenous urban youth can occupy multiple sites simultaneous of each other. The complexities of urban environments, for example, are being expressed through the lyrics and stylistic choices that emcees are articulating. Popular conceptualizations of'the rez,' and 'Indigenous territory,' are starting to incorporate city environments thereby imbuing the concept

'urban' with an Indigenous/Native flavour. Eekwol's narrative illustrates the unsettling relationship between dominant constructions of Indian space and First Nations understandings of territory within the city of Saskatoon.

"I don't really use the term reserve either like I know there's reserves but to me

those aren't traditional territories right? I'm sure you know that too, and it's

more like here where we are sitting [downtown Saskatoon] is Cree territory, so

I'm still on my homeland, still in our natural place so that's an experience that

I like to point out. And I tell that to a lot of kids and that's how I feel cause

they always think either off the rez or on the rez and that's like way after the

fact you know, that's way after you know all of the history has unfolded."

(Eekwol, personal communication, July 29th, 2007)

Emcee articulations of space and territory (such as the relationship between reserve and urban spaces), trouble others' ideas of what constitutes First Nations' homelands. In other words, Eekwol's narrative challenges the idea of reserves as authentic Indian territory, a representative practice upheld through the discourse of dominance. The insertion of

Native people into the historical memory of cities alters dominant views of them as

'strangers in their own homelands' (Newhouse and Peters 2003). Implanted in emcee

207 dialogue, the understanding of the city as Indigenous space is altering the dominant consciousness and is carving out the spaces within which these spatial geographies can be used to critique the practices of marginalization within urban spaces.

"Not too long ago, there was someone here from the province and she said, 'do

you wanna come and perform this show where we're getting kids to come up

from their traditional communities?' [implying kids coming up from the

reserves.] So I said, do you mean land.. .no she said from the reserve, from

Muskoday reserve.. .1 said well that's not their traditional territory.. .there are

Saulteaux kids and Cree kids. And she just said she didn't want to hear

anything about it and I never heard from her again. Yeah..so I offended her.

But I totally didn't mean to, I was just you know, saying what I believe is

truth." (Eekwol, personal communication. July 29* , 2007)

Within Eekwols' counter-narrative, the insertion of oneself into the history of place is a resistance strategy that confronts a legacy of leaving Indigenous people out of historical memory. Through claiming entire cities as traditional territories, a critical historical consciousness disrupts colonial patterns of claiming lands. In this case, the assertion of homeland in Saskatoon formulates a historical consciousness that fights against imperialist amnesia that erases Native presence from city landscapes. The embrace of hip-hop culture which strives towards the re-inscription of youth namings and bodies through graffiti art, dancing, beat making and voicings, is a sophisticated movement embodying a reclamation of traditional territories in urban spaces. This reclamation has been necessary given the history of urbanization which is characterized by the social, cultural, and economical marginalization of Native people within Canadian cities.

208 Emcees have constructed their own narratives as they re-position territoriality to insert a Native presence. Dominant ideas surrounding territory are challenged through emcee-voiced spatial transgressions. Whether they are creating music in basements of downtown Eastside houses, or reserve settings, Aboriginal hip-hop artists represent

Indigenous territory with much integrity.

According to Murray Forman in his article 'Represent': race, space, and place in rap music (2004), a focus on locality and place is what defines hip-hop culture as distinct within popular youth culture. There is a long history of rap cartographies and a situating of selves within distinctive communities. There are meanings that are associated with place and space, such as the loaded concept 'the ghetto.' These spaces are characterized through their associations with violence, and other gangster-like activities. Conversely, those most familiar with these lived spaces may see it as a shifting, constantly negotiated space filled with much meaning and life.

Hip-hop culture embraces the practice of using one's physical presence to claim public spaces. The production of graffiti art, for example, involves the artists' own personal stylistic imprints on city walls, trains and other landmarks. Some of the concerns of Native youth are physically being implanted on city spaces where they can be seen and considered. As a counter-discourse, graffiti art literally rubs up against societal messagings of dominance and control. Some of these lived realities are physically claiming a public forum on concrete. They indicate youth are concerned with suicides, drug addiction, and the violence against women that are pressing into their everyday lived-realities in youth social spaces. Further, emcees Geo (Secwepemc) and Ostwelve

209 (Storlo) illustrate that youth are also concerned with bio-hazards, threats of nuclear war, and the impact of 911.

The messages of graffiti and claiming space give voice to the conditions of youth experience. For example, break dancing reclaims the right to occupy space in urban areas.

Break dancing's sweeping movements close to the land illustrate a way of 'being' on the streets through the use of symbolic and, in a sense, 'hidden' languages.

Aboriginal youth in urban settings are occupying complex spaces often simultaneously. They may be self-positioning in a multiplicity of communities, each one shaping them in different ways. Aboriginal youth may also be finding themselves occupying positions in-between any number of communities, as expressions of more liminal spaces. For example, they locate themselves and find expression through digital technology, recording on digital recorders while riding subways in downtown Toronto.

Today youth occupying urban marginal spaces, or un-spaces if you will, rely on interactions and connections with cities which may evade the eyes of dominant society.

While emcees are starting to challenge the ways in which the dominant narrative shapes certain spaces, as in the 'rez' as Indigenous space, and the 'city' a non-Indigenous space, their movements to embrace a variety of sites is being challenged internally.

People are still hanging onto spatialized geographies that maintain boundaries. For example, Toronto-based Cree/Mi'kmaq emcee Wabs Whitebird has experienced criticism coming from other Native youth for not 'growing up reserve' and still proclaiming to voice 'Native' experience.

210 "I get a lot of criticism. I'm not that big of an artist but you know the Native

community is small regardless of where you are...Me not being from

reserve.. .1 get a lot of criticism because I never grew up there.. .a lot of people

don't think that there's Aboriginal people in the city, that's why I named my

new Album Chief of the Concrete City cause I'm the Aboriginal guy doing my

think in Toronto you know what I mean? I'm the Native person here and I'm

just trying to show them that I don't have to be from a reserve or reservation

you know. We have the same issues... people in the city there going through

the same stuff as people on the reserve so, we're all struggling. I just think that

that's my biggest influence and I do this to show just people on reserve/off

reserve, wherever you may be, that we're all struggling together. (Wabs

Whitebird, personal communication, July 15th, 2007)

The beauty of the movement itself lies in its potential to enable emcees to construct the spaces around them through languaging practices that imbue new meanings to spaces such as the rez, Indigenous territory, friendship centres, and other Indigenous spaces. The stories that emcees tell through their lyrics and messaging practices create and give meaning to place. In other words, emcees construct the spaces around them through stories. Seesequasis offers an important distinction which may help to inform the context of Wab's experience with being fronted upon because he never grew up on a reserve:

Place exists only in the imagination and is expressed through the spoken words

of people. This distinction is lost on many who forget that the places are

imagined and made sacred by stories, by being sacred in themselves. The oral

211 mythologies then, must remain ever-changing and free, lest they become

confineable simulations. (Seeseequasis, 1998, p. 162)

Emcee voicings are important purveyors of urban oral traditions, creating territories while simultaneously breaking down conceptual barriers.

The space informing a collective consciousness has facilitated a 'hidden text' which achieves (amongst other desired outcomes) a subversion of authority through ignoring the rules of engagement of dominant texts. Emcee strategies connect with text on a variety of levels, which include non-verbal movements, signs, signals, gestures, dance, and the production of visual imagery through the use of symbolic language inspired by urban forms of Indigenous poetics.

Hip-hop communities are spaces which embody contention, struggle, contradiction, hope, intelligence, and movement. They can act as sites of resistance and power. As part of the practices of these spaces, hip-hop music and emcee voicing have created a contemporary discourse telling us about how they position and envision their world(s) around them. Some of the new narratives that are being shaped are coming out of groups like the 'Red Power Squad' founded in 1988 by emcee Conway Kootenay in

Alberta, Canada. This group was designed to 'give inner city youth a way out of all the negativity that they faced on a daily basis' (Indigen, 2009). This crew combines traditional Native dance with emcee, b-boy and b-girl skills. They are using between spaces, between traditional pow wow and contemporary b-boying, to create new narratives and conceptualizations. These new discursive traditions are located above and between those previously articulated, and describe Indigenous space as something other than rooted in history, for example.

212 Crews represent a challenge to the discourse of dominance that asserts that cities are not 'Indigenous spaces.' The types of activities that take place in crew collectivities also challenge ideas that urban Aboriginal people are cut off culturally from Aboriginal ways of relating within families. For example, hip-hop collectivities represent an extended family for emcees. Crews constitute important repositories of transformative energy. As communities held together through a collective activism, these spaces can also create social movements. According to Tricia Rose,

Identity in hip-hop is deeply rooted in the specific, the local experience, and

one's attachment to and status in a local group or family. These crews are new

kinds of families forged with intercultural bonds that, like the social formation

of gangs, provide insulation and support in a complex and unyielding

environment that may serve as the basis for new social movements. (Rose,

1994, p.34)

Processes that take place within the 'crew' as a collective space are incredibly rich and serve as starting points for youth in urban centers. These repositories of youth energy and ways of being in the world inspire visionings of the future which can be useful to carving out spaces for youth in cities. As important elements in youth social movements, crews represent a physical space with kin-based mentalities, oftentimes built on actual familial relationships between cousins, brothers and sisters (as in hip-hop practiced amongst

Native youth). The ability to voice through the family is an element of strength inciting hip-hop's transcendence of struggle.

Basically, the crew can be seen as constituting physical and ideological spaces for the transcendence of struggle. They represent ideological spaces in the sense that they

213 nurture concepts and meanings which are used in interpreting and expressing new ideas within the orality that emcees produce. The 'crew' way of life incorporates a practice of watching each other's back. It serves as a mechanism for creating dialogue in a safe space that accommodates the transmission of otherwise difficult testimonials. As Carrielynn

Victor explains:

"Hip-hop is a source of self-expression at its foundation, for me, but also, it's a

way of connecting with people and connecting people to each other. Starting a

dialogue up so that people can talk about those things I mean bring them out

into the open because when things are closed off, behind doors and in closets,

often they get worse with time and people need to heal, we need to talk about

things whether we like it or not." (Carrielynn Victor, personal communication,

October 18th, 2007)

Crew activities such as the creation of dialogue leading to transformation, challenge the dominant stereotypes of Aboriginal youth collectivities as gangs and Aboriginal youth as gangsters. Effectually the types of practices that take place in these spaces destabilize this stereotype of Aboriginal youth as gangsters. Paul Butler, for example, in Much respect: toward a hip-hop theory of punishment (2004), claims: "representation is an important theme in hip-hop culture. One 'represents' by conducting himself or herself in a way that makes the community proud" (p. 1013). Crews are safe spaces of dialogue for the germination of concepts and ideas reinvigorated, in some instances, from oral traditions and imbued on city landscapes. They are the incubators of intelligence, preserving memory and creating new referents for oralities in the city.

214 An important practice of the 'crew' is the negotiation and repetition of one's emcee name, which is also a source of identity whose voiced recognition helps to establish one's place in the world. One's emcee name (as an extension of their gifts) hold a tremendously important function, especially to Native youth whose parents and ancestors' names have been erased and recreated for them through both the treaty and residential school systems. The crew can be read as an empowering space where Native people can name themselves based upon their own positioning. To represent your gift through your name is, I believe, a way of celebrating one's life and being responsive towards the struggle. The names that these youth embody stand as a direct challenge to the colonial practices that produced the Mary's and the Joshua's of the residential school system. They also challenge the fact that Aboriginal peoples were written to exist outside of history in the sense that a naming of Aboriginality represents a counter-narrative to the discourse of dominance.

Hip-hop crews are supportive bodies which can actually work to affirm one's identity as an extension of their gifts. Quese IMC and Krazy Kree are emcees whose names reflect those given through grandfathers and other family members. Many emcees, in articulating their crew names, acknowledge their relationship with family members and spiritual beings by using their traditional names to inform their Aboriginal emcee identity. Quese IMC adopts such a strategy in that his name Tira 'kis means 'bow' in his

Pawnee language (personal communication Quese IMC, 2009). The fact that these men are getting acknowledgement within the hip-hop community as representing their grandfathers, and their grandparent's language illustrates that the movement incorporates intergenerational knowledge(s) passed on through namings.

215 Crew-Speak: the Hidden Text

During an interview in 2005, Gustavo Esteva spoke of the Zapatistas' approach to resistance whereby they would use one discourse for themselves and adopt another when talking with others outside of their social movement. This practice of utilizing a hidden text has been a main dialogical strategy within crew collectivities.

More central to each narrative however, is the way in which the raps place at

the center stage the generally submerged social group hidden text, placing it in

direct confrontation to the official one. (Rose, 1994, p. 114)

Through an active embrace of African and Aboriginal oral traditions, hip-hop as a form of music contains its own practices of keeping the hidden text masked. It achieves this through a strategy in languaging whereby metaphor and symbolism become tools through which to keep certain messagings within a community of knowers. These messagings can be conveyed through the use of oral strategies involving parody, call-and-response, and mimicry. Such adopted traditions of both African and Aboriginal orality, keep the meanings and collective knowledges within communities, and allow for the creation of complex responses through activism towards external pressures. As a characteristic of a hidden text used in resisting various forms of oppression, the strength of hip-hop lies within its lyrical complexity. Meanings articulated within hip-hop are often multi- layered and have a firm grounding within the community speak.

Perry (2004) accurately describes the space of hip-hop as public yet interior; knowledge production and dissemination rely upon a local thought space and a collectivity of listeners and creators. One of the functions of hip-hop is to empower the local community through using a language that outsiders cannot understand. Basically,

216 the hidden text echoes those languages that were used by the ancestors in empowering and protecting their communities through expressing both struggle and celebration within a cultural context. These same activities are being shaped by contemporary emcees, as indicated in the lyricism of Ostwelve's 'R. Evolution' In order to comprehend his reference to Moccasin Flats, one would have to know that Musqueam reserve is called the flats by people in Vancouver. Also, the reference 'moccasin flats' alludes to the locally construed name given to the hood in Regina.

"the flats whether it's Musqueam or Moccasin

they count us as stats

and treat us like rats, welfare cheez,

what happened to dying on your feet,

now you're living on your knees."

(Ostwelve, 2008 "R. Evolution," Anti-Gravity Dinosaurs)

Ostwelve's use of the term 'lyrical uzi' within "R-Evolution" reveals that props are given to those that incorporate the lyrical complexity of which both Imani Perry (2004), and

Tricia Rose (1994) speak.

Those engaged in hip-hop studies refer to the predominance of the black oral cultural form of call-response as a stylistic priority whose functions rely upon a collective community knowledge base (Perry, 2004). Those who do not share the same cultural knowledges may not be able to participate, as the lines of communication are in some sense 'ruptured' through an inability to catch onto locally derived references. This form of musical communication relies upon people sharing similar positionalities- both philosophically and socially. For those situated on the 'outside' of call-and-response

217 interaction, 'rupture' takes the form of a break in comprehension, where their accessibility to insider knowledge is literally cut off. The hidden text starts to make sense for communities that need to strategize ways to interrogate dominant forms of control.

Clarity in thought and words become easy access points for community-based knowledge sources, meaning that once ideas and concepts become part of the public domain, the people whose consciousness they reflect can then be managed and controlled. As a protective strategy within communities that have a history with being watched and their movements controlled, lyricists will include lyrics which are complexly rooted in local history, thus making them incomprehensible to outsiders. In a sense, expressing ideas and thoughts with clarity can also be thought of as laying out limitations in terms of what can be said, thereby restricting mobility.

Perry (2004) claims that obfuscation is an element stemming from within an

African practice of relating oral tradition, whereby difficulty is seen as a strategy. She states that "listeners who are not members of the black community will not often possess such collective memory and will be less likely to intuitively understand the intertextuality of hip-hop" (Perry, 2004, p.57). It is possible that this practice is linked to pre-civil rights practices of containment necessary under the influence of systems of slavery and its accompanying watchful ears and eyes. Insider knowledge maintained through the difficulty of wordplay and use of a hidden text, is embraced by hip-hop artists from First

Nations communities. These practices of strategic indecipherability function to call back power to those claiming these 'crew' spaces in creating in-the-moment messagings expressive of everyday lived experiences.

218 Spatial locations and concepts such as the rez, city, and territory are undergoing change as a result of their interactions within crew praxis and meaning making. For example, the terms East side or East end are now names for Indigenous territories both in the cities and on reserves. To give a further example, the reserve in which I was born has both a West side and an East side, mimicking popular designations of territory within crew ways of thinking. Further, historical consciousness is being communicated and shaped through modern day messaging practices where rupture, interrogation and breaks are the norm, as was pointed out through Rex Smallboy's narrative sharing how connected our history is in informing the ways in which we express ourselves as

Aboriginal people. In a fusion of naming practices with geographical and ideological spatial locators, emcee texts are spaces of transgression imbued with much intelligence.

For the collectivity of Native b-boys, b-girls, deejays, emcees, and graffiti writers, hip- hop carries on that legacy of movement, inspiration and creativity that continues to create a historical consciousness for others to follow after this particular moment has come to pass. This consciousness is articulated through a variety of practices which include those unfolding from a careful fusion of African and Aboriginal oral traditions, and an embrace of popular cultural forms of digital media. The hip-hop movement respects its roots, while at the same time extends outwards to create ideas, concepts and visionings of the future that disrupt the ways in which narratives of dominance have constructed our world(s).

Transgressive/liminal spaces which can serve as highly creative spaces can also be spaces of struggle and tension. The following section describes the significance of the

'local' as both a powerful, and contested space.

219 The Local: a Contested Space

The popularity of hip-hop reveals contradictions stemming from internal tensions within communities caused by class inequities. Hip-hop music has been devalued by those who believe that it expresses ghetto sensibilities, or that it never deviates from the status of gangster rap. This designation carries the potential to further marginalize hip- hop's voiced activism. In fact, the marginalization and devaluation of hip-hop has become a 'class' issue which, according to Michael Eric Dyson, is illuminated by a listenership determined by class differentials. Dyson, in The culture of hip-hop (2004), has observed that the same process of devaluation towards hip-hop has parallels with that of blues music amongst the black middle class. Consequently, the embrace of musical forms such as hip-hop and the blues have been impacted by class tensions within communities of difference, created through the same acts of marginalization that socially conscious hip-hop critiques. Dyson illustrates the similar functions of blues music and hip-hop, and adopts the perspective that musical threats to systematic inequalities have historically been shunned by a rigid class-based social structure.

The blues functioned for another generation of blacks much as rap functions

today, as a source of racial identity, permitting forms of boasting and asserting

machismo for devalued black men suffering from social degradation, allowing

commentary on social and personal conditions in uncensored language, and

fostering the ability to transform hurt and anguish into art and commerce.

(Dyson, 2004, p.64)

Class tensions undoubtedly also have an effect on Native-produced, urban hip-hop. As with black communities, there exists not one homogenous/static urban Aboriginal

220 community within downtown Toronto, for example. Consequently, the processes of class differentiation within localities produce a situation whereby hip-hop and rap have become a devalued, underclass phenomenon as middle-to-upper class Native populations emerge within urban centers. It is important to keep in mind that these class differentials manifest within Native communities and come to represent themselves through the emergence of certain kinds of music.

Despite its critics, rap and hip-hop have been praised for their functionality in exposing certain realities and for their ability to convey healthy visionings of transformed social worlds. Scholars such as Dyson (2004), Demitriadis (2004), and Forman (2004) have made the claim that hip-hop constitutes an artistic practice which fosters solidarity and social change. Dyson, in speaking passionately of the role and function of rap music brings this point to the forefront:

Besides being the most powerful form of black musical expression today, rap

projects a style of self into the world that generates forms of cultural resistance

and transforms the ugly terrain of ghetto existence into a searing portrait of life

as it must be lived by millions of voiceless people. For that reason alone, rap

deserves attention and should be taken seriously; and for its productive and

healthy moments, it should be promoted as a worthy form of artistic expression

and cultural projection and an enabling source of black juvenile and communal

solidarity. (Dyson, 2004, p. 68)

The complexities and tensions of hip-hop provide richness, securing it as an art form.

These tensions are played out in the realm of the 'local.' Hip-hop challenges us to consider alternative ways of thinking about ourselves and the social environments within

221 which we operate. Perry (2004) views hip-hop as constituting a unique art form for its refusal to be set up on a pedestal as the moral conscience of a nation. Echoing these tensions, language produced by hip-hop communities is unique and expressive of a very specific way of relating to urban environments.

In considering the socio/cultural spaces within which emcees create their beats and lyrics, the local finds expression through specifically rooted languaging practices which are then incorporated into the music. One such example is the fluctuating use of the concept 'the ghetto' to refer to both spaces within contemporary reserve communities, as well as those racialized geographies in the cities (Ignace, 2005). The use of a 'hidden transcript,' or a coded language maintains this connection to region and locality. For example, within his lyricism, Daun Pechawis (Mass) refers to 'going back to the home of the Big Child.' The term Big Child references his home reserve Mistawasis (whose Cree translation, for those in the know, is Big Child). This is a broad example of how accessibility is determined through one's connection to languaging practices whose meanings may evade those positioned on the outside. The 'local' can encompass peoples' conceptions of Indigenous space and territory. Aboriginal interpretations of city and rural communities as localized geographies, broadens our understandings to include the notion of Indigenous space where locality is produced through ones connections to specific lands.

Diverse and dynamic processes shape localities which are often misunderstood within the dominant social narrative as static, conflict-free spatial entities. According to

Perry, "where an artist comes from proves incredibly important in hip-hop, but more so as a symbolic affiliation, rather than as a clear and specific historical truth" (Perry, 2004,

222 p.21). However, this positionality gets challenged when we think about the nature of spaces as articulated by emcees when 'going back to the home of the Big Child' illustrates a connection with one's roots, and one's cultural affiliation. While it is important to acknowledge that spaces are fluid and consistently changing, there is still this draw towards certain spaces as connectors to culture, family, and home. Bennett's

(1999) discussion reflects these tensions.

It is easy to overlook the fact that in the context of contemporary society, the

'local' has become not simply a highly complex, but also a highly contested

space, subject to a surge of struggling and often oppositional ideals, (p. 80)

This reflects an earlier description of actual 'space' related to the star world as an environment full of explosions, and characterized as volcanic and volatile. Spaces, including local spaces, do not follow one singular harmonious trajectory, but are oftentimes accompanied by struggle. In a previous example, Daybi shared his experience of increased struggle while living in his home territory of Winnipeg,

Manitoba amongst other Native people, over that experienced in some of the 'hardest' neighborhoods in the United States.

The local is becoming a dialogical space inciting debate within hip-hop communities themselves. For example, the designation of 'Native hip-hop' is influenced by the contested nature of localized spatial designations, informing a discursive divide between those who self-identify as producing 'Native hip-hop,' and those that self- represent as 'I produce good hip-hop, I just happen to be Native' (Daybi, 2007). Native hip-hop is a contested term by being rooted within a cultural space (Native) while encompassing a historical memory that recognizes the ways in which discourses of

223 dominance have over-stereotyped the authentic Indian into a position of immobility.

Consequently, those emcees that challenge the term 'Native hip-hop' are weary of being pigeon-holed into a form of music that carries the potential to be treated in a like-fashion, as a static/commoditized form. Through this act of denial, emcees choosing not to represent 'Native hip-hop' are possibly resisting classifications reducing them to a set of political issues. This designation is often achieved at the expense of recognizing emcees as skilled lyricists. Some artists are also responding to the fetishistic aspects of dominant representational practices. Theresa Seymour, for example, consciously tries not to over- hype the Nativeness through a keepin' it real strategy.

"In my music I feel who I am and I know who I am but it's not about saying

that over and over and over, it's not about proving that to people or having you

know a drum beat in the background at all times. I'm a Native person as well

right? You know I don't need to be putting it in people's face like I'm Native,

I'm Native, I'm Native." (Theresa Seymour, personal communication, October

17th, 2007)

Seymour's account of keepin' it real entails moving into that 'ethical space' that Ermine

(2005) expresses as a dialogical space. Emcees working from this centre articulate true selves in providing alternative visionings of possible realities.

Within hip-hop cultural practice, keepin' it real means paying attention to the ways in which personal practice could unintentionally set up boundaries and borders in spaces where they need not exist. This represents a complete transformation of thought, where a humbling, dignified practice of keepin' it real, has replaced the need for loud, in your face reclamations of Aboriginality. Perhaps this response takes shape through

224 witnessing the imprisoning effects of fixed identity constructions, accompanied by an analysis of a consumption-driven society. Keepin' it real can also be maintained through an unwillingness to use visual or symbolic imagery of commodified, constructed

'Nativeness,' or Indigeneity in the music. Emcee traditions evoking contemporary urban orality hold tight to a practice which favours keepin' it real as a strategy in order to avoid conceptual imprisonment. This practice also infers that emcees are comfortable with who they are as gifted lyricists as they re-fashion what it means to voice Nativeness in naming their realities.

However, this refashioning requires skill and the ability to negotiate tricky terrains in the realm of identity politics. The issue of representation gets played out in an arena that is filled with contradictions. Daybi's narrative speaks to this divide and the self-positioning that is a reflection of these contested spaces:

"[the industry] doesn't accept it as just hip-hop you know what I mean, they

wanna call it Native hip-hop, Caucasian hip-hop, um Latino hip-hop, um... to

me I find that um... I guess I would say that even myself I am not into Native

hip-hop you know what I mean? Cause I'm just into hip-hop. So if someone

comes out with good music and they're Native then I just like them because

it's hip-hop, whatever, rap. Um for one thing I would say that a lot of Native

hip-hop like, people call it Native hip-hop, say they are rap artists. I wouldn't

say they are Native hip-hop artists more like rap artists you know what I mean?

They are just trying to emulate like popular America or Canada. I wouldn't say

that they have like the background a hip-hop artist would have. They are just

kinda like pick up a microphone and write some raps. Talk about like prisons,

225 drugs, which are things, I think one of the reasons why Native rappers feel

compelled to do that is because our experience is similar to the black people in

the States. That's why it resonates with us because we relate to that because the

poverty, the crime, the drug abuse, alcohol abuse and those kinds of things so

that's why we relate to it, that's why the Native community has latched onto to

it more than any other music, especially in the city because it's city music

right?" (Daybi, personal communication, July 28, 2007)

City music is 'gritty' in that it reflects the 'ruptures' and contradictions that shape the manifold interpretations of one's experiences within city spaces. The types of oralities that are being produced within these spaces reflect a heightened ability to observe patterns and mimic these patterns through an embrace of digitization. The stylistic elements of hip-hop as an art form such as the ethic of keepin' it real, necessitate that we think deeply about the ways in which we represent our Aboriginality through contemplating how positionings will be received and categorized.

In destabilizing dominant narratives such as the authentic Indian, and the expressed idea that the reserve constitutes authentic Indian territory, emcee strategies stem from both African and Aboriginal cultural traditions of orality which include mimicry, parody, and comedy. Emcees are invoking tactical shifts in creating new realities. These realities are produced as they connect with the creative source - a transgression into an 'ethical space' fostering dialogue which illuminates all that is possible. Through strategies of signification, emcees are able to offer breaks in the narratives and are embodying the new theories that they project.

226 CHAPTER FIVE:

NOW YOU SEE ME, NOW YOU DON'T - RAPPING PRESENCE WHILE

BORDERING ABSENCE

Chapter five explains the construction of the idea of the authentic Indian - a product of socially dominant narratives. My discussion shows the complex field of representation that Native youth must negotiate. In this chapter I highlight emcee strategies of transgression, border crossing, and fusion as they disrupt static representations of authentic Native identities. I also examine marginalization tactics involving the production of difference, and the placement of Natives in anachronistic space (McClintock, 1995). Since emcees are producing responses to external positionings, I will illuminate emcee strategies which reinsert Aboriginal struggle within the dominant historical consciousness. Native youth have been represented as incapable, underdeveloped, and undeserving; therefore, I will show how emcees discredit these labels which attempt to marginalize them.

My discussion explores emcee disruptive strategies, such as 'embodiment,' which challenge stereotypes through voicing colonial struggle. I also unveil the techniques of producing both invisibility and visibility simultaneously in the production of stereotypes such as 'visible minority.' I examine, for instance, how 'visible minority' produces a seen difference used to justify surveillance and control by dominant social forces. Finally, chapter five explores the idea that Aboriginal youth are embodiments of the threatening and dangerous environments that they are forced to negotiate. It outlines complex responses of youth operating within this space of asymmetrical power relationships

227 (Pratt, 1992) where youth are drawn to emulate these stereotypes in order to have a presence.

The Authentic Indian:

Essentialism

Predominant narratives use essentialist practice to ensure Native identities remain static. The positioning of Indigenous youth through essentialist frameworks produces an absence of the "tribal real" (Vizenor, 1989), and over-simplifies emcee identities and social worlds, masking their multi-plexed (Daybi, 2007) nature. By instilling the term

'tribal real,' Vizenor makes reference to the present day realities of tribal culture, realities which may reflect the multi-layering of diverse experiences, of which Cree emcee Daybi refers. Essentialist positioning practices produce a category of completely 'knowable' people - conveyed through the phrase, "that's the way they are." As an extension of this strategy, young people are labeled as naturally deviant despite the huge impact of discourses in shaping identities. Essentialist 'truthing' practices aimed towards

Indigenous people fosters the societal acceptance of the idea that Indigenous youth engage in criminal activities. The label downplays the socio/cultural context that maintains the status quo. Davies's Constituting the feminist subject in poststructuralist discourse (2006) critiques this process:

The essentialized, unique, universal and unhistorical subject believes itself to be

creating itself and is blind to the constitutive effects of discourse and systems of

thought. (Davies, et al., p.89)

The creation of strictly coded essentialisms legitimate behaviours of social segregation.

As an extension of this practice, Aboriginal youth have been vilified within dominant

228 social/cultural texts as criminals to justify increased surveillance and continued ill- treatment by institutions of justice. Essentialist-inspired positionings related to the tradition of constructing the authentic Indian in predominant literatures, narratives and policies, erase youth from the field of vision. Weaver (2001) illustrates the effects of these practices when she states,

Those who are relatively powerless to represent themselves as complex human

beings against the backdrop of degrading stereotypes become invisible and

nameless, (p.242)

This invisibility operates with visibility simultaneously in this contested space where stereotyping visible minorities becomes an act of marking people, a practice of creating socially meaningful labels. Consequently, the very act of marking the person as a stereotype erases the realities of that person as they function within this present social and cultural world.

In challenging essentialist practices of predominant narratives, emcees are also destabilizing the continuation of the authentic Indian meant to mirror contemporary urban Native life. In the above statement, Weaver explores how practices of erasure dominate within narratives of dominance. This invisibility has been actualized through the forced positioning of youth within discourses of dominance which perceive youth as threats towards social order, thereby legitimizing their marginalization. Such discourses function within a space of asymmetrical relations of power, a strategy of the aforementioned 'contact zone' (Pratt, 1992). A broader social acceptance of the new emcee languages created within crews will recognize the multi-plexed world(s) and non- essentialist inspired spaces from which youth voice their realities and critique institutions.

229 During my interviewing process with emcees I noticed a commonality in their refusal to be objectified. Labeled and stereotyped, Indigenous youth have learned that to be seen in a colonial social environment means to be known in ways that they can't know themselves. Constructed within the narrative of dominance as simulations, contemporary

Native youth are confronted by the practices of erasure within a deep rooted national historical consciousness.

In troubling neat categories of the authentic Indian, emcees position themselves between defined spaces and fuse various experiences to produce an identity that disrupts supposed authenticities. As previously mentioned, the multi-layered context informing

Native youth expressions of oral tradition defies the one-dimensional, singular narratives of a historical textual tradition. For this reason, it is important to critique out-dated terms which categorically imprison youth and dishonour their fluidity. For example, dominant society has misunderstood the position of Native youth in between spaces, as locked/caught between two worlds. Deyhle illustrates this misconception producing a narrative supportive of deficiency and victimry characterized as being "caught between two worlds." Both Deyhle (1998); and Spears (2004) illustrate this cultural conflict used by theorists (using linear models) in describing complex relationships and spatial locators of between spaces. The bicultural model of being "caught between two worlds" describes

Native youth as desperately straddling two boats in a sea of chaos.

Early literatures imposed mixed-bloodedness into the dominant consciousness, as in the representation of mixed blood identities in Morning Dove's book Cogewea, the half blood (1981). This book, the first novel to be written by a Native American woman offered an early representation of the 'half-blood caught in between two worlds' theme.

230 According to Rayna Green's (1982) review of the New Edition of Cogewea, Morning

Dove represented a woman 'who rejects and defies the white world's attempts to define and confine her.' Also, Susan Bernardin's article Mixed messages: authority and authorship in Morning Dove's Cogewa, the half blood: a depiction of the great Montana

Cattle Range (1995), claimed that Cogewea illustrated the "liminality of mixblood identity" (p.490). Contemporary Native American scholars, such as Louis Owens (2001) contribute to this tradition of altering this 'tragic' image, as do contemporary emcees within the hip-hop community. Consider, for example, the words of emcee Kinnie Starr in articulating a mixed-blood identity. This narrative disrupts colonial narratives of the

'caught in between two worlds' stereotype that threaten healthy and sustaining narratives of mixed bloodedness.

"To a woman who carries Native blood but is mostly white by blood quantum, hip

hop is a world where story-telling allows me to be frank about my questions, my

spirit, and my life mission, which is that people should come together. There is a

huge portion of Canada's population carrying Native blood that does not associate

with Native culture or stand behind Native causes as a result of the elitism, which

often comes from what one filmmaker refers to as 'Club Native.' Those who are

not full blood don't know much about their family, don't have status or are not

from the reserve, are often ridiculed or ostracized if they come forward to identify

as Native. This imported European attitude disenfranchises what could be a

massive Native presence in the Americas. Some estimate there are over 200,000

people in Canada with Native blood but not all identify as Native. Imagine if all

231 these people stood up and rallied in defense of Indigenous movements." (Starr, K.

Blood of our heart beats for change)

This contemporary voicing challenges the divisiveness of leading narratives such as the

'caught between two worlds' narrative, and illustrates its effects within Native communities. This critique follows a strong tradition of mixed-blood messages derivative of a legacy of transgressors.

Transgression and Border Crossing

Activities taking place in between spaces challenge the view of Indigenous youth as fixed, thereby disrupting the function of the authentic Indian as a discourse of dominance. Instead, they offer a representation embracing fluidity and complex multiplicity. Border crossing strategies, for example, illustrate the nature of Native realities as multi-layered. Within the literature there is a clearly stated relationship between border zones (such as those between spaces produced through fusion) and identity construction. This relationship is expressed by both Richard Jenkins in Social identity (1996) and Henry Giroux in Border crossings (1992), who claim that identity is constructed in transactions which occur at and across boundaries. Consequently, style can be perceived as a product of identity.

Lashua, in 'Just another Native?' soundscapes, chorasters, and borderlands in

Edmonton, Alberta, Canada (2006), draws from the work of Giroux (1992), hooks

(1989), and Anzaldua (1994) to inform how border crossing technologies pattern the movements of youth. He eloquently captures the meaning of border lands as a concept that "opens space for decentered subjects capable of creating meaning across boundaries"

(Lashua, 2006, p. 403). His insights into youth border crossers stem from experiences of

232 working with Edmonton-based Aboriginal youth in his project entitled The beat of Boyle

Street.

The young people in The Beat of Boyle Street embody their identities in a

variety of complex, hybridized ways; through their style of dress, hair style, in

their tattoos, with the way they speak, the ways that they dance, and their

attitudes about being Aboriginal-Canadian. 'Who they are' is a polyfugue of

cultural forces collaged from how they have been positioned within (as

'Indians'; as poor, under educated; as criminals, or as victims; as the 'other'

of the White, middle-class, professional male) as well as from their experiences

as agents for change, resisting the assignment of subject positions by means of

transgressing borders. (Lashua, 2006, p. 402)

Border crossing has been labeled a strategy of resistance (Lashua, 2006; Wyn and Harris,

2004), as youth involved in transgressing boundaries creatively construct selves and collectivities. Lashua's research has assisted in naming the space out of which hip-hop emerges within a Canadian context. My research adds to Lashua's scholarship through the use the lyrics and personal narratives of Native artists in illustrating how, through the production of storylines, they employ hip-hop as a vehicle to create meaning.

Aboriginality Pushed Outside of History

Essentialist-inspired discourses pose challenges to Aboriginal people in carving out spaces to move within a contemporary landscape. Similar to Vizenor's (1994) interpretations of the absences produced through the authentic Indian discourse,

Valaskakis claims that Aboriginal identities have become "constructed in stereotypes which are removed from the cultural and political reality of contemporary Indian life"

233 (Valaskakis, 1993, p.2). This process can be understood as a push to occupy anachronistic space which involves the spatial positioning of Aboriginal bodies as part of the historical past (McClintock, 1995). McClintock's analysis in Imperial leather: race, gender and sexuality in the colonial contest suggests that not only are Aboriginal peoples being positioned outside of the contemporary spatial realm, but they have been strategically pushed outside of history and placed into the realm of pre-history, the archaic. McClintock (1995) describes the entrance into the trope of anachronism as a journey whereby the "white Victorian middle class time traveller travels through imperial progress backward to a time of prehistoric archaic existence" (p.40). A positioning within anachronistic space thereby represents a shift which symbolically and literally pushes Native youth into the margins of social life.

The positioning of Aboriginal peoples within anachronistic space accommodates a belief that Aboriginal people no longer exist as Aboriginal - culturally or traditionally.

This attitude has been kept alive through various technologies in the circulation of public attitudes through the media. For example, American radio and television writer Andrew

(Andy) Rooney's column which appeared in the Sacramento Union (1992), entitled

Indians seek a role in modern U.S., uses this concept to legitimize American occupation of Indigenous lands.

"The real problem is, we took the country away from the Indians, they want it

back and we're not going to give it to them the two million American Indians

alive today are reluctant to concede that it's no longer practical to maintain a

lifestyle that is an anachronism. The time for the way Indians lived is gone and

it's doubly sad because they refuse to accept it. They hang onto remnants of their

234 religion and superstitions that may have been useful to savages 500 years ago but

which are meaningless in 1992." (Rooney, A., 1992)

This discourse, supported by early attitudes of Native urbanization, was based upon the idea that since a particular/recognizable Aboriginality is invisible in the contemporary landscape, Aboriginal title to land becomes a myth.

In an act of re-writing the nation's historical consciousness, emcees insert themselves onto the landscape through hip-hop lyricism and languaging practices. This act demands that the presence of Native youth be seen within the contemporary social/ historical consciousness of the larger society. In ghost-like fashion, emcees, graffiti writers, taggers, and b-girls/b-boys are visibilizing themselves amidst a backdrop of a legacy of forced exclusion from history. Emcee Joey Stylez, for example, created a video for his song Living Proof which layers ghost-like images of past residential school students onto a contemporary urban street atmosphere. Other artists also engage in this activity of highlighting historical injustice of residential schooling. Consider Wabs

Whitebird's song Whatcha know as it dauntingly represents a history lesson examining the effects of residential schools:

"I'm like the ghost of Christmas past

here to show ya what they forgot in history class."

(Wabs Whitebird, "Whatcha Know")

Cree artist Blu's song "No way, no how" provides another example of the inserted presence of an Indigenous historical memory:

235 "look at our Native elders

how can you hurt em' more

removed em' from their family

and even worse, with force

our land was good enough

but still they tried to take what's best

to try discourage our traditions

was a failing test

which led to punishment

and some were left deceased

so many others lived

but abused mentally

the residential schools

my Natives still tear

we made them look like fools

cause we're still here."

(Blu, "No way, no how")

Emcee Daybi's phrase "we survived, we crow walked and we learned to fly, flutter away to the battle" (Daybi, The Quickening) illustrates how hip-hop emcees insert survival processes into the historical memory of Indigenous society. Such indicators challenge the act of positioning Native youth outside of history and instead reveal that they are much more fluid time travellers, weaving between and amongst different spatial realms simultaneously.

236 Lyrically fashioned, counter-narratives or testimonios are created within between spaces as spaces of transgression. When applied to the messaging practices of emcees, the term testimonio, in referring to a process of bearing witness as an activistic practice, has particular salience. This concept embodies the intent of Indigenous oral traditions to move people into action. It echoes the practices of Aboriginal leaders who were, and are called to social activism in their daily lives. According to Norman Denzin in

Emancipatory discourses and the ethics and politics of interpretation, one of the purposes of the testimonio is "to raise political consciousness by bearing witness to social injustices experienced at the group level" (Denzin, 2005, p. 947). This practice of bearing witness is a strategy of 'unmasking' practices rooted in both contemporary and historical consciousness. In a similar vein, Giroux reveals that "bearing witness always implicates one in the past and gives rise to conditions that govern how youth act and are acted upon within a myriad of public sites, cultures, and institutions" (Giroux, 1996, p. 9).

The strategies employed by dominant societal discourse, such as the imposition of words to replace reality, impacts youth as they negotiate urban spaces and attempt to carve out new spaces for themselves in Winnipeg, Calgary, Toronto, and Saskatoon, for example. These Canadian cities are spaces of colonial encounter wherein the non-

Aboriginal person is confronted with an obvious presence which wakens them from a dormant state of Native absence. This absence is created through the use of words to replace a real Native presence. How dominant society deals with this threat to social order is through a carefully constructed containment strategy which produces this obvious 'difference' as something that is safe, non-threatening, and easily digestible.

237 Emcee/radio broadcast journalist Wab Kinew shares a poignant story illustrating the intent and impact of 'the nation's' use of coded language to create Aboriginality as a safe, non-threatening difference. Kinew's actions and testimony described below, reinsert

Aboriginal lived-experiences into history. He explains how the Canadian Broadcasting

Corporation attempted to marginalize Aboriginal experience from history through downplaying the significance of the residential school experience on survivors. This narrative shared by Wab Kinew represents a story of survivance (Vizenor, 1998), which destabilized the category 'former student,' a category which diminished the significance of residential school survivors' experiences within Canada's historical memory.

An internal directive was sent throughout the CBC, preceding their coverage of

Stephen Harper's (2008) "residential school apology" acknowledging that Native people suffered as a consequence of this policy meant to "kill the Indian in the child." To confine and contain difference within a nationalistic politic, they used the technology of an edict to communicate to all journalists two weeks prior to the apology, that they would employ the term former student when referring to those who attended residential school.

They included the Webster's dictionary definition of survivor in order to back their argument. With the intention to cover up the 'genocidaF implications accompanying the term residential school survivor, the CBC's directive was to produce languaging that represented a safe, non-threatening difference. In fact, through the edict, the CBC clearly instructed people not to employ the concept of survivor, insinuating that acts of genocide never occurred. This practice reflects the position that 'inclusivity' relies upon a careful selection of language to produce identities that don't interrogate Canada's conception of

238 itself. Kinew's narrative illustrates his response to this practice of safe-guarding language to communicate a nationally-embraced historical consciousness.

"CBC's like 'yeah so we are going to have two weeks of special coverage of

the residential school apology and you know, we are gonna own this story, and

that pissed me off cause like, how the fuck can you guys own this story, like

my dad owns this story, my uncles own this story and my grandpa who died

before the compensation came out, he owns this story. Language is the most

important thing as part of framing people's understanding of issues. And it's

like o.k we've got this moment that's going to be historic, it's never going to

happen again, the residential school story is never going to be bigger than it is

going to be at this moment." (Wab Kinew, personal communication, July 16th,

2008)

Kinew declared that the attempted white-washing of history through the written policy statement to use the term former student, 'sold him out' as a Native employee. His narrative reveals that in this particular instance, being included in this corporation as a

First Nations person carried the price of being kept at a distance when it came to making major decisions that would affect First Nations communities. He took a firm stance through exclaiming, "no way are you gonna sell my people out" (Kinew, 2008).

The nation's messagings of inclusivity means that people of colour can act as symbolic icons representing the nation, but are excluded from the actual processes of government. In a powerful play of positioning, Native youth are "typically constructed as the symbolic bearers of the nation, but are denied a direct relation to national agency"

(McClintock, 1995; Gosine, 2002, p.8).

239 Kinew's response illustrates the significance of voicing contemporary Native perspectives within the historical narrative. Kinew interrogated institutional power through claiming that his family owned the story, not the national institution. Through his actions Kinew inserted his family as part of the historical consciousness. This illustration signifies that while Native youth have suffered a cultural/social displacement from the historical narratives shaping this country, they are now determining how they themselves and their families will be storied. Such indicators of this phenomenon are revealed in

Wab Kinew's plea to the CBC to "get the story right.. .you have to get it right."

"If it says 'former students' now people are gonna look like in 20 or 30 years

from now when they research the residential schools they are gonna see

'former student' and they are gonna subconsciously in the back of their heads

think oh yeah 'former students' so what was the big deal, the Natives went to

school, so what, you know what I mean? And I was like, no! Survivors,

survivors, survivors, survivors. It even says that in legal documents you know,

like the Canadian Bar Association, the Aboriginal Healing Foundation, and the

Assembly of First Nations. 'Survivor' is a term that is used and I was like, it's

pretty fucked up that you guys would try to change the language right before

the apology, you know what I mean." (Wab Kinew, personal communication,

July 16th, 2008)

The category former student discursively functions to maintain the collective amnesia necessary for Canada to represent itself as an inclusive nation. Emcees are inserting themselves into the historical consciousness and formulating their own voiced critiques of the genocidal functioning of residential schools. Kinew interrogated this narrative of

240 collective amnesia through his efforts of challenging the use of former student when in fact residential school survivors did survive genocidal practices. A produced history of inclusiveness must operate through a collective amnesia surrounding the treatment of

Aboriginal people, a function achieved through the use of languaging practices. Of course the experiences of Native people within Canada illustrate that inclusivity is selective and acknowledges only 'acceptable' expressions of Aboriginality. In his response to the edict, Kinew drew upon his experiences of formulating arguments to challenge CBC's use of the Webster's definition of survivor as a legitimatizing practice for altering the language. Thus one of the arguments that Kinew made in achieving a recognition that the term survivor applies in this case, was simply that Native people are people.

"I just explained using the Webster's definition, and hopefully we are all on

the same page and we agree that Natives are people now right? Even though it

wasn't the case in the Privy Council during the St. Catherine's Milling decision

where the Privy Council said that we are heathens and savages, where during

the residential school era we are like you know apparently you can save a man

but kill an Indian. So I was like now, so we're a people right so that satisfies

the first clause of the person, plant or animal." (Wab Kinew, personal

communication, July 16th, 2008)

He further went on to describe the significance of the practice of surviving:

"'Surviving'- so the people who came out of schools survived a genocide.

There was a tuberculosis epidemic, they are uncovering mass graves, so many

kids died and it was a disaster, this was a fucking disaster! Stephen Harper's

241 not going to get up into the House of Commons for like a small mistake. He's

apologizing for a disaster. I was like, Survivor, Survivor, Survivor, Survivor."

(Wab Kinew, personal communication, July 16th, 2008)

Wab Kinew's narrative exposes the layers of language constructs employed by dominant institutions such as the CBC, in creating a linear and legitimizing version of Canadian history. Through challenging the use of the phrase former student, Kinew's narrative illustrates that inclusivity is a myth. Further the production of former student is revealed as a vehicle of 'imperialist nostalgia' (Rosaldo, 1989) where it accommodates a vision of

Aboriginally belonging within a national pristine past. According to Renato Rosaldo in

Culture and truth: the remaking of social analysis (1989), imperialist nostalgia reflects "a particular form of nostalgia, often found under imperialism, where people mourn the passing of what they themselves have transformed" (Rosaldo, p. 69). Further, he states that, "imperialist nostalgia uses a pose of 'innocent yearning' both to capture people's imaginations and to conceal its complicity with often brutal domination" (Rosaldo, R. p.70). In this particular case, the former student identification conceals socially and culturally destructive practices. Within the context of imperialist nostalgia, individuals from the dominant class base their desire on only certain aspects of a perceived

Indigeneity, such as the belief that all Indigenous people are natural environmentalists, or in this case, the idea that residential school survivors were simply 'former students.' Such coordinated public perceptions of Indians are conveyed through institutional means.

The representation of safe, non-threatening Indians (as former students) does not challenge Canada's 'inherent' rights to claim Indian lands, nor does it expose the significance of these acts. Through assuming control of a particular identity construct

242 (former student), Canada can claim a collective ownership over Aboriginally based upon the continual production of historical/contemporary iconography that embraces the notion of'our Aboriginal peoples.' In a 'birthing' process, Canada continues to shape languages to construct a reality that doesn't exist in order to further their claims to the bodies, lands, and stories of Indigenous peoples.

The forced exclusion of Indigenous peoples from the historical consciousness of

Canada positions youth in marginal spaces. Border zones have also been criticized for not allowing a freedom for individuals to express themselves completely. The space between has been described as a marginal space, a symbolic consequence of the very real practice of pushing youth away from the centre to occupy the fringes of society. This forced marginalization restricts youth from actively executing voice or participating as full citizens within this society. Ironically, in a manipulation of power, youth occupy the fringes, while at the same time represent the centre of the Western world through an active campaign of commodification through practices of the media. Basically, this marginalization ensues despite the fact that youth are the most commoditized segment of society used to feed into global capitalism. In the literature, Driscoll's (2002) analysis in

Girls: feminine adolescence in popular culture and cultural theory, describes the commodification and fetishization of young girls as a practice serving the interests of mass production. The demonization of youth and youth forms of expression maintains borders through pushing youth away from the symbolic centre. According to this process, youth function as scapegoats in order to mask the effects of globalization, such as individualization and the violence of poverty.

243 The next section illustrates how dominant socially construed narratives use the youth deficiency model to maintain their invisibility through marginalization, thereby producing an absence of Native youth in the cities. As previously noted, articulated through popular culture, youth represents the 'dangerous' element of society and mirrors a constant state of underdevelopment. Hence Native youth fall into a precarious position as a result of their age and status as minority youth. Associations with underdevelopment have produced the idea that youth are not quite full human beings with thoughts, critical consciousness, and self awareness. Consequently, youth, as a contested space, is synonymous with an inability to know oneself. Driscoll (2002) observes that youth serves as a measuring stick to assess the fully developed subject. Articulated as a perceived inability to know oneself, this stigma has been challenged by Indigenous scholars working within the field of Indigenous Studies. For example, Gail Mackay's

(2005) report concerning urban Aboriginal youth and their sense of belonging in

Saskatoon revealed that Aboriginal youth's abilities to know and express themselves represent highly complex processes generating a sophisticated sense of self-awareness.

Emcees are responding to this war waged against youth through voicing and critiquing the imposed positioning inherent within this concept. From her particular vantage point, emcee Carrielynn Victor shares how these externally produced messagings sound when communicated through the social script, "you're Native, you're young, you don't deserve to be here" (Carrielynn Victor, personal communication, October 18th,

2007).

Emcees are very aware of the constructions which shape the landscape within which they must navigate. They are observing patterns and creating languages through

244 wordplay to carve out spaces for themselves in a symbolic and physical repositioning.

The new activism, articulated by Wab Kinew for example, is concerned with reshaping the concept youth to highlight the intelligence and self-assuredness of this powerful positioning.

"I'm just trying to represent for me. And I think that's what the new activism

sounds like it's like young cocky, intelligent, fucking talented, really good at what

I do and just bring it without really caring, or worrying about what people are

going to think about it." (Wab Kinew, personal communication, July 16 , 2008)

The act of transforming from the older, disempowering conceptualizations of youth within research and literature, is displaced by an articulation of empowered, self- actualized visioning. It is my hope that my study's concern with the symbolic languaging and thought practices of youth in positioning themselves will contribute towards shaping such understandings.

Emcees disrupt the assumptions ingrained in the category youth through characterizing themselves as innovators with the abilities to push things forward revealing a new range of possibilities. For example, Daybi reflects that the same elements embraced by hip-hop as an art form, can be used to describe youth culture. He points to the descriptors 'capable,' 'skilled,' 'talented,' and 'creative' to capture this relationship.

"It's a young art form so you can always push it further and further. It depends

on how creative you are being. Being a musician, I use this techno sampling

technology, like I can do it all by myself that's one thing. If there's no one else

245 here I could just get on my computer, get on my guitar, get on my sampler, just

start producing all that myself. Put the lyrics in, it doesn't take that much. So

that's why, it's a young, it's a young art form. I could do it by myself, it's

young so there's always innovation, pushing things forward so you can

function within it, be creative and, it's fresh to me." (Daybi, personal

communication, July 28, 2007)

Youth energy reclaimed involves a process of carving out space to create songs so that young people can function well. Daybi's insights may lead to new understandings challenging perceptions of youth as incapable. Given that language creates realities

(Berger and Luckmann,1967; Weedon, 1987), Daybi's description of youth as capable, skilled, talented and creative indicate that change is already taking place. New understandings shaped through emcee languaging practices push the musical form forward, thereby changing present realities. The constrained and bounded official youth discourse reflects an outdated approach which misinterprets the movements that young people are currently making to shape their everyday lives.

Illuminating Difference

In the following narrative, Sto:lo emcee Theresa Seymour expresses the experiences of struggle that she faces in every day life- struggles that fail to be recognized by dominant discourses because of the construction of stereotypes. Identity struggles result from a 'feeling' of residential school abuses which contemporarily manifest as the colonial weight of passed down grieving.

"Struggle is in everyday life. It's a struggle to understand. It's a struggle to

discover your identity. It's a struggle to be equal with other people when

246 oftentimes you feel like you're not. You know, equal as a woman and equal as an Indigenous person. You are always trying to prove yourself. And for me, a lot of Native people struggle with the same issues over and over again. Those issues about identity and about being o.k with this skin and this body and the situation that we've been placed in you know. We struggle in a lot of ways because of what our parents went through, because the alcoholism we see in our uncles and our aunties and our cousins, because of the abuse that happens in the communities. That's some heavy shit to get over you know. And whether or not you have direct contact with those issues in your community, and I'll tell you this, 95% of people do have direct contact with it. You know, and those 5% of people are people who grew up in suburban homes. But it's not as if they don't feel the colonial weight. You know, that passed down..like even though you didn't go through residential school, you feel the weight of your parents or your grandparents having to deal with it. It's like this passed down grieving and to me, every young person struggles with that. I look at my little cousins, and my sisters and brother, and you know they are going through the same stuff that I went through.

They are trying to run away from who they are essentially. And what they don't realize is 'yo everytime you run away you are right there.' You can't run away from who you are because that's what's always going to be chasing you. I see this happening every day. We run away from ourselves because we can't stand the sight of what we see in the mirror every morning.

That doesn't make us happy. We feel bad because we are victims, you know,

247 we feel bad because we indulge in alcohol and drug addictions. We feel bad

because we are bad people because we made the wrong choices and because,

we're not good enough for the rest of mainstream society.

You know Native people have a lot of negative connotations attached

to who they are and what you come to realize is that it's not your fault. You

know and it takes a long time to get to that place and I'm lucky that I had

enough support from my family and from my mom and dad to put in my place

and say 'yo, you're o.k, it's o.k to be who you are. It's o.k to love yourself. It's

not bad. You're not bad as a person.' I mean a lot of times people aren't ready

to hear that. You tell someone that, they'll break down and cry right because

that's not what they believe, and that's not what they've been taught. And not

necessarily by your parents or your whole family, but I do know a lot of

Indigenous people who get shit from their own family and their parents and the

people who are supposed to love you first when you come into this world."

(Theresa Seymour, October 17th, 2007, personal communication)

Contemporary struggles surface as grieving that takes place in the body. Theresa expresses a struggle with being "o.k. in this skin and this body, and the situation that we've been placed in," which implies that youth are embodying forms of colonialism accentuated through the colonial weight of passed down grieving. Discourses of dominance identify Aboriginal peoples to embody the conditions of historical injustices through naming them as marginal - as alcoholics, addicted to drugs, and not good enough for mainstream society. These labels all are related to an absence. Theresa illustrates how through embodiment and voicing emcees are able to navigate and destabilize the naming

248 of Native people based on their environments. This is actualized through the use of inwardness (Ermine, 1995) and embodiment illustrated in the phrase, "yo, you're o.k, it's o.k to be who you are. It's o.k to love yourself. It's not bad. You're not bad as a person"

(Theresa Seymour, 2007).

This voicing, like Wab Kinew's moment of articulating survivor, represents modern activism through an approach which stems from inside the body - extending outward to facilitate institutional change. Theresa expresses this inward activism through the term 'colonial weight' which illustrates the feel of colonialism and incorporates a new way of conceptualizing historical consciousness as embodied. Hip-hop lexicons support an embodied emotionality that can negotiate this sensory-based complex understanding of the effects of colonialism.

Theresa's narrative also illuminates a seen difference achieved through the construction of the visible minority. The label visible minority implies a method looking at someone in order to identify difference, thus it makes Aboriginality visible. Theresa illustrates how emcee stories reflect experiences of living this difference.

"You are told that you're not good enough by society, you are told that by the

way that that lady behind the counter looks at you when you walk into a store

cause she's wondering if you are going to steal something. You know you are

told that by the look that the cop gives you when you drive by with a nice car

because he doesn't think that you should be driving that car, obviously you

249 stole it. You know what I'm saying, these are the struggles, these are the

everyday struggles. You know you are told that by the people who are in your

office when you walk in you are young you know, you are Native and they

wonder what credentials you have to be there. And these are the struggles that

you face when you are visibly a minority. And even past that point when

people find out that you are Native, people are like, 'oh, you're Native?' There

must be some kinda hang up, there must be something, you know, like they

expect it. (Theresa Seymour, personal communication, October 17 , 2007)

The seen difference, accomplished through the stereotype visible minority, legitimizes added surveillance on people of colour. Difference has been carefully conceived and executed in order to maintain existing hierarchies. In describing the function of difference within racialized discourses, Giroux offers the following insight,

Far from producing new languages through which youth can critically rewrite

their relationships to the world, difference is often stripped of any critical content.

In this scenario, difference functions primarily to generate new markets and

expanding patterns of consumption, asserts itself with rigid

cultural boundaries and serves to deepen strains of racial and class antagonisms.

(Giroux, 1996, p. 13)

An increased surveillance, made more concrete through the observing eye of store clerks and police officers, produces the 'visible' in visible minority. Theresa's narrative identifies the stereotype that Native youth are incapable, a position which conveniently supports an underlying message securing white people as capable. These processes of surveillance and control accommodated by the category visible minority, are then carried

250 out by a -workforce, and a police force - infringing on the lives of Native peoples in their everyday lived experience. Theresa's narrative deflects a system that continues to mind control youth into self-hate, as in hating your own skin. The societal impact of stereotyping is reflected in her statement 'oh, you're Native, there must be some kinda hang up, there must be something, you know, like they expect it' (Seymour, T., 2007).

Theresa's words echo a familiar narrative whereby being a visible minority means that we are at all times aware of the ways our movements are being watched within our daily lives. Further, McClintock's (1995) refers to "fears of moral breakdown" actualized through a populace that continues to uphold race-based practices of boundary maintenance. These practices support the belief that Native people are thieves, ready at all times to steal store items, cars, and jobs.

Implications of the colonial consciousness have affected the way young people move within cities. In the following voicing, Theresa Seymour expresses her insightful critique of dominant messages and their impact on families. Theresa exposes that racism induces youth to experience shame and shyness as a result of the historical and contemporary colonial experience.

"You know we are really suffering from this colonial hangover and from us as

a people being beaten down and told 'you're crap,' 'you're not good enough,'

'you need to change,' 'you need to assimilate,' 'you need to be more white,'

'you need to conform to white standards.' It's all of those things and when

you're constantly told that over a long period of time, people begin to believe

251 that. Not only do they believe it, their kids believe it you know- they pass that

insecurity, that shyness, and shame onto their children unknowingly of

course." (Theresa Seymour, personal communication, October 17th, 2007)

Forcing 'others' to assimilate through social discursive strategies and political acts solidified that whiteness was right and Nativeness was wrong. St. Denis and Schick in,

Troubling national discourses in anti-racist curricular planning, convey that

'whiteness' constitutes a privilege to carry the ability to pass invisibly for the norm

(St.Denis and Schick, 2005). The status of 'whiteness' depends on the marginalized identities against which the norm can be compared. Ironically, the very marginalization processes, illustrated through phrases like 'you need to change'

'you're not good enough' while highlighting the deficiency of otherness, also communicates that otherness should not exist. St. Denis and Schick (2005) describe that visible minority status is achieved when "a dominant group is positioned to define itself as a blank, unmarked space vs. a marked outside 'other' " (p.299). Such practices shape difference as safe and non-threatening towards a system created to ensure that Native 'others' have only partial access to privileges granted to full citizens. Native peoples have had to endure a marginal positionality whereby 'visible minority' status assures a particular distance.

The designation of'difference' is related to the social construction of privilege. In order to maintain a certain lifestyle one has to see oneself as deserving; this reflects a perception of self which can only be achieved through identifying one's status in relation to identifiable 'others.' Theresa perceives the implications of this practice as a process of passing insecurities onto children. Further, this desire to be the other, a function of

252 imperialist nostalgia, also excuses and masks the ways in which powerful populations in society get to maintain that power. Ortega expresses how one's desires play a major role in the process of constructing, in this context women of colour, which could be applied to a similar construction of the 'other' as Indigenous people of colour.

Imagining isn't the same thing as knowing, nor tolerance the same as

welcoming; neither shows curiosity and openness to learning what may be

disadvantageous to one's closely guarded position of privilege... our

recognition of this need of knowing women of colour [or Native peoples] must

be matched by an awareness of how the legacies of our privilege appear in

ways we may try to satisfy that need; in our confusing imagining women with

knowing them; in priding ourselves on tolerance; and in appropriating others'

identities through our desperate rush to find similarity. (Ortega, 2006, p. 67)

Masked as 'tolerance' and 'difference,' appropriating Native identities fulfill a desire while, at the same time, protecting comfortable positions of privilege. In the following narrative, St.Denis and Schick illustrate how Canada's expression of tolerance towards

Aboriginal peoples is related to appropriations of land.

The heroic story of Canadian nationalism needs this image of a welcoming and

tolerant place. In popular imagery, Canada is constructed as generous and

tolerant by 'giving away' land to white settlers. The image is necessary to cover

over and forget that the land was taken by coercive means through a process

that depended on inferiorizing and racializing a people. (St.Denis, V. and C.

Schick, 2005, p. 302)

253 As St. Denis and Schick point out, the element of desire is linked to maintaining prevailing patterns of social inequality. Through desiring safe and non-threatening doses of Aboriginal culture, dominant culture's focus on 'difference' is structured to shield people from seeing the actual realities that are direct impacts of social/economic privilege.

The emcee community's embrace of'unity' challenges a seen difference created by stereotypes. 'Unity' is a conceptualization coming from within hip-hop culture which destabilizes approaches to difference that rely upon one social group being privileged at the expense of another.

"I believe in unity and the idea of crossing those barriers that we've been

placed in. You know we've been taught that you're brown and you're white,

you're Asian, you're this or you're that, but there should be no barriers. You

know that's one of the main things, one of the main messages that I put into

my music, and hope people understand." (Theresa Seymour, personal

communication, October 17th, 2007)

Hip-hop produced by Native people depends upon a unification of voice produced by emcees with a local aesthetic. For example, Wabs Whitebird and Eekwol's vision of unity questions socially enforced boundary markers through an ability to create common ground. Unity, as a strategy to downplay the significance of divisive labeling, such as visible minority, has been achieved through the artist's focus on the struggle as a common experience. Hip-hop's recognition of the universality of'the struggle' challenges dominant structures upholding inequalities.

254 "Not just black people know straggle, not just Native people know straggle,

Chinese, like Pakistani people...people from third world countries come here

to the city. Like I'm saying, we have a lot of culture here. And it's just

embraced me, and that's basically my influence, is because it's not just one

culture straggling here, it's all of us. You know what I mean?" (Wabs

Whitebird, personal communication, July 15th, 2007)

As emcee Wabs Whitebird observes, the shared experiences of the struggle draw people together in producing deeper connections to the city. The struggle, in effect, is what makes the city definable, knowable, rich, and raw. All of these elements are incorporated into his music.

Consider the following statement expressed by Theresa Seymour wherein the universality of the straggle is presented alongside unity which, according to her perspective, mirrors equality.

"I think that hip-hop has a huge relationship with straggle and that straggle is

in everyday life, it's a straggle to understand, it's a straggle to discover your

identity. It's a struggle to be equal with other people when oftentimes you feel

like you're not. You know equal as a woman, equal as an Indigenous person.

Equal in so many ways you know. And I feel like that's all a part of our

personal straggle as a Native person. It's about credibility right?" (Theresa

Seymour, personal communication, October 17th, 2007)

The phrase "it's a straggle to be equal" implies that the nation's intentions behind its promotion of inclusivity and difference are not supporting visible minorities in achieving equality. Equality is the straggle faced by young Native people whose complex elements

255 continue to be revealed by emcees. Cree emcee Lindsay Knight, for example, also identified unity as symbolic of achieving equality during a discussion that we shared concerning her emcee name 'Eekwol.' In the following narrative, Lindsay Knight challenges the popular understanding that we live within an 'inclusive' society:

"Eekwol stands for equality...because that's what I deal with everyday on the

streets. Hip-hop, being Indigenous you know, it's all about equality."

(Eekwol, personal communication, July 29, 2007)

'Eekwol' represents an embodied theoretical approach in the sense that her very name offers a critique of society, while at the same time imagines a world in which things could be different. Through her very being, she exposes the realities of systems whereby certain segments of society are privileged at the expense of others.

'Eekwolity' used in conjunction with "what I deal with daily on the streets" conveys the racism and the systemic inequalities that shape the landscape for youth culture.

Within this context, equality is not being used uncritically, but rather as a means to subvert and challenge dominant framing practices within discourses of dominance.

Hip-hop communities seem to have embraced the understanding that it is easier to establish unity when you don't hold clear social and class distinctions. For example,

Cree emcee Dallas Arcand's hip-hop philosophy holds the maintenance of social equilibrium in high regard.

"Hip-hop is an equilibrium, it's an equal way to share music, to share

experiences, because everybody's on the level if you're in a healthy hip-hop

environment." (Dallas Arcand, personal communication, August 5, 2007)

256 This concept equality stems also from the keepin' it real aesthetic which is conveyed in

Eekwol's description of her practice:

"I think it's weird - the term artist. Sometimes I get a little confused, or

intimidated by it because there's so many people that are great artists. But me,

I just write and rap lyrics, and I love listening to hip-hop. I appreciate the

art...all of the different art forms that are involved in hip-hop." (Eekwol,

personal communication, July 29, 2007)

For emcees, unity challenges dominant narratives through breaking down barriers to ensure that certain people don't exercise privilege at the expense of others. Eekwol's process of embodying theory reflects a strategy in maintaining equilibrium similar to that which was previously voiced by Dallas. The illumination of these strategies help us understand how dominant society could learn from new conceptualizations brought about by youth and youth praxis. Unity within the narratives of emcees is a border crossing practice, therefore signifying a freedom of movement away from the boundedness of contemporary forms of policing 'difference.' As a concept, unity responds to practices of exclusion and absence achieved through categorizing difference and visible minority.

An understanding of unity challenges individualizing policies geared towards

First Nations youth. For example, it questions the integrity of role modeling programs, such as the National Aboriginal Role Model Program Lead your way (2008) sponsored by Health Canada. Emcees Rex Smallboy, Eekwol, and Dallas Arcand have each critiqued the individualizing and exclusionary practice of role modeling for contradicting and upsetting the balance of 'unity' within hip-hop communities. Through highlighting only certain socially deemed 'exceptional Indians,' this system depends upon

257 determinations of success based upon a Western-derived model geared towards maintaining the status quo.

Since this difference is meant to maintain existing power relationships, role modeling represents a movement whereby credibility depends upon how successfully one operates within the dominant social/cultural system. Hence, seen difference is highlighted only when safe, non-threatening and easily digestible. This movement to embrace "our Aboriginal youth" doesn't threaten these already existent power relationships because the system remains the same. Such discourses deny that systems of poverty exist. This is accomplished through a focus on 'success stories' indicating that poverty can be overcome because others have done so. Such moves to highlight those

'success stories' downplay the influence of living within an unjust social order, and remind us that when analyzing the effectiveness of the role modeling campaign hitting

First Nations communities, factors of agency and oppression must go hand in hand (Rose,

1994; St. Denis, 2004). Further, working within the system always risks co-optation by the status quo and fosters an ethic capable of disrupting alternative visionings voiced by youth. These tensions of working within the present system represent yet another instance where "the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house" (Lorde, A. 1983). The storyline of mislead intentions, that is the tradition of producing 'exceptional' Indians has been exposed and critiqued by writers of Native prose and literature. For example,

D'Arcy McNickle's Train time (1992) narrates the selection of one 'exceptional' Native boy, Eneas to be taken to a residential school for a 'proper education.' The ideology informing the apprehension of students reflected models of'success' which were equated with assimilation. The process of equating young people as the categorical construction

258 of youth foundationalizes their perceived deficiencies and therefore, feeds into the idea that strong, intelligent First Nations young people, represent the exception. In the

following prose, McNickle's character Major Miles, a representative of the state contracted to apprehend children for residential school, describes his intentions for Eneas who is deemed as an 'exceptional' boy:

" 'Eneas,' he said, 'I'm going to help you. I'll see that the old folks are taken care

of, so you won't have to think about them. Maybe the old man won't have

rheumatism next year, anyhow. If he does, I'll find a family where he and the old

lady can move in and be looked after. Don't worry about them. Just think about

yourself and what I'm going to do for you. Eneas, when it comes school time,

I'm going to send you away. How do you like that?' The Major smiled at his

own happy idea." (McNickle, D. 1992, p.50)

The individualization in this familiar storyline is apparent through the phrase 'just think

about yourself and what I'm going to do for you.' The language that we use to inspire

youth has been too individualized and has directed our focus away from the processes

embedded within hip-hop culture for living well, voicing well, and for developing a

positive self-image which involves a collective consciousness. This individualization

addressed earlier, produces an environment wherein youth themselves have been treated

as the problem rather than their social context. A simplistic reversal, whereby only

certain young people are upheld as 'successful, cool, and glossy' follows this model, and

once again, fails to recognize the transformative movements of emcees in shaping a

different way of conceptualizing our worlds. While this strategy probably contributes to

the ability of dominant society to view Native people as 'other' than the stereotype, it

259 represents a mere reversal of the binaries which have been observed to fail to change existing power relationships. As Stuart Hall mentions in "The spectacle of the 'other":

The problem with the positive/negative strategy is that adding positive images

to the largely negative repertoire of the dominant regime of representation

increases the diversity of the ways in which 'being black' [or being Native/

Aboriginal] is represented, but does not necessarily displace the negative.

Since the binaries remain in place, meaning continues to be framed by them.

The strategy challenges the binaries - but it does not undermine them. (Hall,

1997, p. 274)

In discourses of dominance, Aboriginal peoples exist as an absent presence. Meant to represent all that is Canada, Aboriginal people have simultaneously been systematically removed from homelands and territories. Seen in this light, Aboriginal presence takes on the form of a racialized spectacle, defined by Margot Francis (2000) as a condition in which Native peoples' own interest in the politics of land are overshadowed by a magnificent non-presence. A repeated absent presence produced through media representation is necessary in order for certain misconstrued depictions of Aboriginality to remain within the dominant consciousness. Brochures offering national programming for youth, for example, continue to present images of young and successful Indians, yet it has been a practice of governments to exclude Native peoples from the processes of formulating those same policies and programs that they represent.

The production of contradictory signifiers of Aboriginal citizenship dispel the effects of the nation's identities of difference. These effects, whether seen or unseen, haunt Canada's own imaginings of its self-identity. In a "fetishistic displacement of

260 difference" (McClintock, 1995, p.375), the idea of Canada becomes overcompensated through spectacle and fetishism. These practices are useful in that they mask gender, racial and class related tensions. Artists themselves have responded to these spectacle- producing practices as indicated in Eekwol's concerns over the manipulation of her own image as a novelty. Eekwol's narrative makes us keenly aware of how these discourses of dominance shape the interpretation of emcee performance as spectacle.

"With hip-hop and being Indigenous, being a woman, it's something that I

always worry sometimes that I'm the novelty. Because I'm always kinda sittin'

on the fence thinking like you know do they just like me because of that or do

they actually feel those lyrics and feel the message? And a lot of times that's

my own personal struggle. It's something that I have to get over I guess, but I

think that it's important with hip-hop to always keep things as original as

possible above and beyond who you are and just totally with abandon. Any

type of music, anything you do - if you have an art or anything, just do it with

abandon and do not worry about what people are thinking, and don't worry

about the histories that can suppress or oppress. You know, that's what I

always have to remind myself because otherwise I'll fall off the fence on the

wrong side and just give up because I'll say 'yeah, I knew they just liked me

because I'm a woman you know just tap dancing and rapping on stage.' "

(Eekwol, personal communication, July 29, 2007)

The hip-hop ethic oikeepin' it real, in this case, expressed as "keeping things as original as possible," offers a way to combat the impacts of discourses of dominance such as tolerance and difference. Also, her proclamation to 'just do with abandon' infers a

261 strategy that transcends the boundaries of constricted vision and therefore opens up possibilities for social change. Such strategies are immensely important, and carry the potential to inform youth social movements.

Youth as Threat? /or/ Dangerous Environments?

I have already noted that dominant social narratives support the idea that

Aboriginal youth are embodiments of'risk.' This is actualized through the common perception that a group of Aboriginal males walking down the street are to be feared as

'gangsters.' This mentality coincides with the way of thinking that initiated the Indian

Act's enforced ban of Native people gathering in groups often or more by the Canadian government in the late 1800's through Indian Act legislation. We are witnessing a revival of these attitudes embedding themselves within the dominant social consciousness, as groups of Native youth in city spaces are treated as gangs by police. This attitude towards young people, as embodying social threat (linked to the assertion that First Nations youth are deficient), has been critiqued by a variety of scholars including Bennett (2002), and

Hampton and Longman (2002). Instead of creating an awareness of environments characterized as dangerous, such historical discourses have produced a context whereby

First Nations youth themselves have been constructed to embody that danger, threat, and/or risk through the discursive vehicle of associating youth themselves and youth forms of expression as deviant. This way of thinking has been maintained through a number of societal institutions including the educational, health, and the social work systems whose programming reaches out to 'at risk' youth. This concept has used as a tool within educational, social, and health policy to reference those individuals that are foreseen to be 'at risk' of either suicide, dropping out of school, or of being abused. This

262 discursive category is particularly powerful in that it triggers state involvement in the lives of youth and families. The societal embrace of perceiving youth as threats to society has aided processes of domesticity and marginalization, verifying increased control over Aboriginal bodies. The focus on youth themselves as the problem curtails open discussions of systematic violence against Aboriginal youth, such as police brutality against Native males. In the Western Prairie provinces, for example, such violence has been actualized through 'twilight tours.' 'Twilight tours' is a name given to the practice of Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers driving Native men to the outskirts of

Saskatoon, Saskatchewan and leaving them on the roadside in below freezing temperatures, thereby forcing them to freeze to death. Cree filmmaker Tasha Hubbard's

2005 documentary entitled Two worlds colliding documents the First Nation's communities mistrust, exposing the systematically imposed erasure of Native presence in

Canada's western cities. Practices of the forceful placement of Aboriginal bodies on the outskirts of Canadian cities are technologies of surveillance and control, and are linked to the removal of First Nations women from our urban landscapes. An analysis into the actual problems would indicate that racial profiling and other race-based symptoms ingrained within systems of justice, for example, constitute the conditions that make up

'the problem.'

Television, film, and print media have labeled youth as deviant, 'fugitive cultures' made hazardous through a construction not of their making. Speaking of the intersection of race, violence and youth, Henry Giroux claims that youth are 'fugitive cultures' not because they are oppositional, but rather because they 'often do not conform to the imperative of adults and mainstream culture. Youth as a self and social construction has

263 become indeterminate, alien, and sometimes hazardous in the public eye' (Giroux,1996, p.l 1). Youth may be drawn to emulate stereotypes in order to have a presence within this contact zone (Pratt, 1992) where asymmetrical power relationships produce limited access to power.

Emcee Daybi No Doubt describes the dangerous environment within which

Native youth have to make choices in order to negotiate its borders. Within this narrative, he describes how race and class converge on the streets, creating a precarious environment for Native youth. Notably, I have observed that in some instances the raw, edgy elements of hip-hop discourse mimics some of these realities:

"There's actually like the real drug dealers and criminals who are just out there

for money and it's pretty cut throat like that's the hip-hop street influence you

know - cause it's kinda the music that fuels it...and there's a lot of jealousy in

the community and a lot of competition. You know what I mean? Not a lot of

unity, you know there's always infighting. You know, so there's all these

different elements that just make it like you know, which you are always kinda

keeping your eye open for, kinda looking over your shoulder a bit. Money,

you know money's always an issue. Winnipeg, I love Winnipeg, that's where

I'm from, but it's just it's a totally different place. To me, honestly, it's not

just the Native community, it's everywhere. You know, it's becoming more of

a, I think it's becoming more about money now than about race there. It's not

just racism, it's classism." (Daybi, personal communication, July 28, 2009)

Daybi illustrated how the urban environment prompts youth to emulate people like 50 cent, a South Jamaican rapper criticized for espousing tenets of 'the hustle.' In a push-

264 and-pull play of representation, youth are being marginalized from urban spaces. At the same time, an embrace of an authentic representation of African American culture is desirable as a form of expression which mimics a version of the city that challenges the surveillance and control experienced through the police, for example. Gangsterism and

'the hustle' are associated with transgression and risk, as these characteristics emulate the city environments. These practices are being used by certain youth to engage these spaces. Further, this strategy may be connected with the relationship between the social body and the personal, physical body whereby youth are forced to participate in institutions via an act of the senses. In other words, they may be emulating 'the hustle' in attempts to change the nature of institutional violence through their own game of working from within a position of violence, to speak the institution's language.

At the same time, I would suggest that indicative in the voicings of the emcees that participated in my study, they are also trying to emulate the 'feeling' of other hip-hop artists such as Africaa Bombaataa of the Zulu Nation, and Jamaican-born Kool Here who espoused celebratory music. Contemporary urban mythologizing through hip-hop, as in the phrase in Daybi's work - 'we survived, we crow walked and we learned to fly' - echoes familiarity which challenges some of the backlash of hip-hop's association with gangsterism.

This tension between hip-hop as a visionary space where new worlds are grafted, and hip-hop as a contested space with gangster overtones, is perhaps what Joan Morgan was referring to when she commented that the hypocrisy of hip-hop forces us into that space of terrordome to confront what we'd all rather hide from (Morgan, 2004). The fact

265 that we may appreciate the rawness of the musical form, for better or worse, means that we too desire something a little different than the status quo.

Native youth's turn towards the influence of television and gangsta rap, potentially represents the vortex of power for those in otherwise powerless social positionings. Once again, Daybi's words speak of this context and the contradictions inherent within the discourses of perceiving young deviants within a dangerous environment. Within this particular narrative, it becomes obvious that dominant strategies of representation blur the lines between the two in a practice of power over those with limited access.

"We've been brought up, especially kids these days, have been brought up

where violence is like all over the movie screen, you know, it's on television,

it's everywhere. That's the entertainment today. So Native kids especially are

drawn into that and that's what they think is real. They can't distinguish that

that's entertainment. You know, 'sell some drugs and shoot people.' Right,

like that's the image he [50 cent] portrays and then we got some kid in [some

Northern community] in Manitoba who thinks that, oh. .that's cool..they think

that that's really what he does, they want to emulate that because there's

nothing else for them in terms of culture or like you know, a lot of them got

broken homes and stuff like that, so they latch on to these iconic images and

they try to recreate that." (Daybi, personal communication, July 28, 2007)

Criticism stemming from within hip-hop is meant to have universal application amongst

Indigenous communities including African American, Caribbean, and Native. The effect of dominant discourses in creating images based on authenticity and achieved through

266 absence, is that youth are drawn to emulate the absence through desiring certain characteristics of gangsterism, for example. This absent presence articulated through discourses of dominance and mirrored back by emcees as a strategy of negotiating city environments, is tremendously meaningful. This absent presence informs the space from which emcees speak and provides context for interpreting their self-representational practices. Emcee responses to the erasure of acts of genocide within Canada's historical memory through sanitized, non-threatening 'differences' produce strong, contemporarily relevant reinsertions that ensure a presence that cannot be ignored.

267 CHAPTER SIX:

CAUCASIAN FEATURES OR CHEEKBONES THAT CUT GLASS - EMCEE

NAMINGS, IDENTITIES AND CROSS-BLOODEDNESS

"Heat the heart of everything near you

Aboriginal I'm speaking to you

Full blood quarter third or sixteenth

Rez folk city folk blue eyes brown or green

Caucasian features or cheekbones that cut glass

Ignite the future joined by the past

Rise like the sun you already have begun

Blood boils even in the weakest of quantum

Stay strong help each other along

To every shade of red I dedicate this song

Just stay strong and

Rock the boat! Don't Sink, Float!

Rock the boat! Don't Sink, Float!"

(Kinnie Starr, Rock the Boat feat: Skeena Reece and Manik.. .special guest Swift.)

The transgressive element in hip-hop of a Native flavour is epitomized through the subject positioning of the 'mixed blood' as the quintessential border crosser. While not all emcees embrace this identity, for some are 'full blood, quarter, third or sixteenth,' the types of movements that occur in these spaces embody an emcee theoretical praxis. It has been shown throughout my dissertation, that between spaces represent safe localities for emcee messaging production. Positioning in these spaces enables emcees to evade the

268 'gaze' which marks bodies of 'difference' according to overly-simplistic categorizations and stereotypes. Through carefully negotiating this terrain, and embracing the knowledge and energy of border spaces, emcees are beginning to shape and express complex/ multi- layered identities. These identities are best articulated by their positioning of self and community through lyricism and emcee naming practices. According to Vizenor in

Earthdivers: tribal narratives on mixed descent, "the Metis, or mixed blood, dive into unknown urban places now, into the racial darkness in the cities, to create a new consciousness of coexistence." (Vizenor, 1981, p. ix) This positioning resonates strongly with the positioning practices of other imaginative metaphors such as 'astro emcees' expressed by Cree emcee Mass a.k.a Daun Pechawis, or emcee Daybi's designation of

'soul travellers.' Both concepts resonate with the original intent behind Vizenor's use of the earth diver metaphor to symbolize mixed-bloodedness. Perceiving emcees as 'astro- emcees' or 'soul travellers' carries on this legacy of cultural heroes, such as the 'earth diver,' that in this case, bring up the words of our ancestors transposed onto pavement.

While narratives of dominance have manipulated cross-bloodedness according to rights-based political agendas, hip-hop's embrace of fusion contextualizes a new interpretation of cross-bloodedness as a powerful position reflective of the multi-plexed world(s) youth occupy. Mixed blood identities have also been deemed powerful within other Indigenous literatures. Vizenor, for example, visions mixed bloodedness as those who are gifted to 'dream back the earth' (Vizenor, 1981, p. xvi). Emcee Kinnie Starr, for example, presents herself as a skillful navigator of this metaphorical and transformational space. Mixed blood emcees are physical manifestations of these complex and vision

269 inspiring borderlands. Owens (1998) contextualizes this powerful placement in speaking about mixed blood members of his family:

These people were crossing and erasing borders and boundaries. Together

these families embodied the 'borderland' that is such a popular cultural studies

topic today, and they did so unselfconsciously, purely, and out of human

instinct and need. (Owens, 1998, p. 147)

Owens presents a new approach to exploring border crossings in that oftentimes emcees enact these transgressions without conscious intent to do so; rather, they are engaging these spaces out of an inherent need. This insight is important to keep in mind. Sometimes border crossings are not strategic; they are oftentimes matters of survival. Emcee stories can be conceptualized as 'stories of survivance' reflecting and representing 'frontier zones.' Louis Owens would claim that such stories, echoing cross-blooded testimonials, are "powerful literatures of resistance, and represent a countervoice to the dominant discourse that would reduce Indians to artificial commodities useful to tourist industries" (Owens, 1998, p. 159).

Emcee names are stories of survival which map out contemporary Indigenous positions. According to Seesequasis (1998),

Post Indian autobiographies, the averments of tribal descent, and the assertion

of cross-blood identities are simulations in literature: theat names, nicknames,

and the shadows, (p. 14)

Emcee naming stories are already starting to inform tribal interpretations, as they collectively congregate as part of the contemporary oral tradition. These stories can be drawn upon to inform how youth are interpreting their contemporary contextual space,

270 and how they are positioning themselves within a collective historical consciousness.

Vizenor's insights on naming are helpful in deciphering the relationship between emcee naming as personal stories connecting them within their crew communities.

Tribal nicknames are the shadows heard in stories; the pleasures of nicknames,

even in translation, are an unmistakable celebration of personal identities.

Nicknames are personal stories that would, to be sure, trace the individual to tribal

communities rather than cause separations by pronouns of singular recognition.

(Vizenor, 1994, p.57)

Through emcee names, youth are inserting themselves into collective memory.

Emcee naming strategies become a way of positioning oneself as part of history - an urban history that reflects back on the past as it pushes forward to create new spaces.

Within emcee KrazyKree's contemporary 'story of survivance,' for example, he describes his emcee name an extension of his families' historical narrative.

"When I was growing up, my grandfather.. .he said in Cree to my mother that

she needed to do something with you, you know, find a way to discipline me,

set me straight because I was always getting into trouble with school and even

after school I would get in trouble with the law.. .and so he said in Cree to my

mother that I was gipots nehiyew and in Cree that means a Crazy Cree. Like a

crazy person you know. Cree like Nehiyew. So I remembered that, and when

I started my album nearly 4 years ago, it was the name that I chose to remind

myself of my humility, my childhood and my life. As an example, too, of

culture and reliving the stories, keeping my grandfather alive... that's how my

grandfather is still alive, by heart because that name really stuck to me and

271 now that he's gone now, he passed away you know when I was at his funeral I

remember saying that even though he passed away in this world, he still lives

in our hearts, and to me that's how he lives in my heart, by using his name.

KrazyKree, that's who KrazyKree is." (Dallas Arcand, personal

communication)

Many emcee names acknowledge their relationship with family members and with spiritual beings. For example, as previously mentioned, Quese IMC's (Pawnee/ Seminole emcee) name carries elements of his traditional name. Other emcees are representing alongside their family members, as is the case for Eekwol, who works with her brother

Mils who produces the beats.

As previously discussed, the crew as the origin place of many emcee names, represents an empowering space within which Native people can name and insert themselves through orality into a historical memory. 'Naming' is a necessary practice which transmits knowledge about an individual and a community, and is rooted within

Indigenous forms of orality. Emcee naming, is as celebratory as it is responsive to the struggle, articulating a deep knowledge of oneself. Strategies of naming are informed through the priorities of hip-hop which integrate elements of fusion through creating

'remixes' reflecting multiple Indigenous positionings and experiences.

Coast Salish/Scottish emcee Carrielynn Victor, contributes to contemporary urban oralities through inserting her naming story into the 'mix.' In the following story, she describes how an elder named her Numinous One, to mirror her gifts:

272 "What is this numinous? So it's not a commonly used word right? Well, it's

an ancient word derived from the Latin word Numin and that means spiritual

or supernatural, but it goes beyond that into this whole like mysterious, artistic

expression, so one that is artistically expressive. And also the dictionary term

would be to 'arouse elevated feelings of honour and duty in life, sort of like

benevolence.' And I think that's pertaining to my duty as a creator because

I've always created you know, I've always...been singing you know since I

was tiny. I also saw images and things where no one was really seeing things.

Seeing images in everyday life right? It's like finding a duty and being a

creator." (Carrielynn Victor, personal communication, October 18, 2007)

The naming of Native youth within a hip-hop community functions to both highlight their creativity, as well as mirror the complex fusion of the different elements that embody the whole person. Hip-hop beat maker and b-boy Mathew CreeAsian, carries a name that illustrates a similar ways of thinking about the relationship between creativity embedded in hip-hop's artistic relevance, while formulating new interpretations of Indigeneity.

"I go by CreeAsian, like creation, creation on the floor, like the Creator's

creation. He created the grass, he created the trees for humans to breathe, plus

I'm half Cree and half Vietnamese, plus it's got some impact." (CreeAsian

interview with MacDonald, 2006)

Brett Lashua in The art of the remix: ethnography and rap (2006) responds to the symbolic and literal relevance of 'the remix' as an element of storytelling which describes how youth negotiate complex discourses meant to represent their identities.

Lashua's analysis situates itself within the contemporary framework of popular culture.

273 In illuminating positive discourses portraying difference, he uses the language of sampling to describe CreeAsian's naming story. This approach highlights the ways in which fusion informs many Indigenous identities; thus, it is an element of contemporary hip-hop urban oralities and mythologies. Mathew's discussion illustrates how his emcee identity 'remixes' his Cree ancestry with his Vietnamese ancestry:

"I'm half Native and half Vietnamese. So, my boy was sitting there, and he

knew that was half Native and half Asian, he was like 'yo, you know what

would be a sick name for you? Kree-Azn.' You know? Like, a word 'creative'

like 'creation' or two races that click together, you know, like, it does the same

with hip-hop, like, there's no certain race you have to be in hip-hop, there's no

certain skin colour, it's all about what's inside you, the creativity.' (KreeAzn;

Lashua, 2006, p.6)

Emcee naming practices state one's positioning within the hip-hop community as they approach the mic and enter into storytelling mode. This practice is symbolic in that, for the emcee, it also asserts the right for an individual or community to determine the mode of representation to reflect how they want to be seen. Through naming, emcees shape the context within which their messagings will be received. Further, in many instances, emcee names have come to reflect the transformational messages that use to inspire change, as in Eekwol, Numinous One, and CreeAsian.

Within border spaces, transformations are not only acceptable, but are expected.

Hip-hop transformations are caused by disruptions and breaks in the narratives which have an effect of transforming the order of things. Wab Kinew's break in the narrative

(through inserting the conceptualization of'survivor' to residential school discourse)

274 represents one such transformation. Embodied transformations find expression within lyricism which resonates strongly with shape-shifting practices. Daybi's lyric 'survived we crow walked and we learned to fly' epitomizes how this practice is lyrically constructed. Adopting trickster-like transgressions, b-girls and b-boys actualize the freeze which not only transforms the physical body, but transforms the spaces through insertions of self through style. Within hip-hop, identity is expressed as an element of style.

According to Sally Banes in Breaking (2004), the freeze encapsulates the most important part of the dance where the b-girl/ b-boy literally freezes, sometimes at a direct angle within the air to show something unique, tricky, in-your-face, with a flash of personal style.

In breaking as street competition, the freeze was the challenge that incited a

virtuosic performance as well as a symbol of identity. As each dancer

repeatedly took his turn, and through a series of strategic choices, built

excitement with a crescendo of complicated, meaning-packed freezes, he won

status and honour for himself and for his group. (Banes, 2004, p. 16)

The freeze takes us through a series of shape shifting that extends the notion that identities are seen as embodied subjects in progress, a concept expressed by Davies

(2006). An understanding of identities 'in progress' accepts the emcee as in constant motion, capable of moving in-between relations of power. This view of identity encourages a challenge to the fixed, stoic, and outdated construction of 'the Indian' as one who occupies the spaces outside of contemporary reality. Marianne Ignace's

Tagging, rapping and the voices of the ancestors: expressing Aboriginal identity between the small city and the rez (2005) represents this critical turn towards a more 'movement-

275 based' articulation of identity fostered by Native youth involved with hip-hop culture.

Ignace suggests that there are alternative approaches to constructing cultural identity rather than using 'traditionalism' as a foundation. Rather, she validates contemporary forms of Indigeneity expressing the fusion provided by urban-lived experiences amidst a contemporary context of globalization. Ignace directs our questioning to reflect upon whether seeing Aboriginal culture and identity in an elusive pristine past represents the only alternative to the cultural survival of Aboriginal youth. She meaningfully concedes that, while "the realities of contemporary life and the exposure to global culture have done their work, they can be put to power in creating new visions for new expressions of cultural identity" (Ignace, 2005, p. 8).

Within hip-hop, Indigeneity represents its own discursive space which, as mentioned in a previous chapter, doesn't require the designation of'Native hip-hop' nor is it reliant upon "the drum beat in the background." Respectively, this fluidity is also captured in Seesequasis's comments:

Being Native did not entail being stoic and spouting cliches about mother earth

or reliving past atrocities and mourning the loss of the traditional lifestyle. No,

through Vizenor, I came to the gleeful realization that being Native could be

undefinable, unimprisonable and outrageous. In short, it could be in the spirit

of the trickster. (Seesequasis, 1998, p. 147)

For emcees, libratory transgression entails an ability to fluidly occupy different types of spaces simultaneously. The following account illustrates the types of fusions that are happening where social/cultural priorities are fused together, informing a way of moving about the world that defies categorical boundedness.

276 "I'm like a pretty modern dude, like I grew up around the traditions..I was

raised around the drum and all these things, sweatlodge. I never had an

English name, exposed to my language, spoke my language before I spoke

English and ah... at the same time, I have a bachelors degree in economics. I

work with some of the brightest people in the country, and I compete with

some of the brightest people in the country. And I take meetings with the

CEO's and presidents of, you know, major corporations and I can hang with

those people you know, so for me, I'm not really concerned with trying to fit

into one box." (Wab Kinew, personal communication, July 16, 2008)

Fusions are typical of border spaces and allow a certain freedom for Native youth traversing across both city office spaces and rural ceremonial grounds. The practice of naming of selves and one's positionality through emcee naming strategies, blurr the boundaries between the individual and the collective. Further, the relationship between the self as individual and collective, including its contradictory nature, are embraced within hip-hop's musical form through call-and-response techniques where the audience and performer become one. Emcee Ostwelve describes the process whereby call-and- response incites an audience to 'move' with the artist on both a physical and ideological plane, "I see it [call-and-response] as a viable tool for mass concentration. You can get a mass of people to think and vibrate on the same frequency" (Ostwelve personal communication, 2009). Ostwelve suggests that there are many forms of call-and- response which could take the form of getting the crowd to clap. This motion, he describes 'can be made with the intent to heal' (Ostwelve, 2009).

277 Call-and-response depends upon the mind-set of the collective as opposed to the

individual. This is why 'intent' is important in the production of call-and-response

strategies. Ostwelve for example, claims that:

"the intent behind call-and-response becomes the paramount element to its

medicinal abilities... .but some folks use it to hype their own ego, like in the case

of getting a crowd to chant their name. The intent is important, some use it as a

filler, some as a tool to fuel an ego and to gauge the crowds' engagement."

(Ostwelve, personal communication, 2009)

The following section represents an exploration of how literatures pertaining to youth identity address the contradictions between the collective and the individual. This

discussion considers the impact of hip-hop's embrace of transgressional practices on the

production of these binaries.

There are those authors represented within the literature (see Valaskakis, 2005;

Giroux, 1997; Miller, 1999; and Gosine, 2002) that express the argument that

essentialized identities are being claimed, in some cases by Indigenous peoples

themselves in order to create 'communities of resistance.' These authors would argue that

a naming of a collective self serves as a useful strategy for social and political resistances

of systemic violence such as poverty. For example, within the context of marginalized urban African adolescents, the formation of group identities takes the form of a positive

stance (Miller, 1999). The importance of this position, as suggested by Miller, is that it

can be used to resist the creation of identities which have led to practices of marginalization and control. According to Miller's way of thinking, these adopted

communal identities within hip-hop crews can act as a buffer to an otherwise hostile

278 environment, and allow for one to belong within a specific community with defined differences between themselves and an authoritative power. In these situations collective identities become strengthened through the articulation of difference. I would suggest that

Indigenous urban youth are quite similarly, adopting 'communities of resistance' in the form of hip-hop and rap groups both in terms of dance, performance, and song production.

Researcher Gosine in Essentialism verses complexity: conceptions of racial identity construction in educational scholarship (2002), reveals the contradictions implicit within the process of building communities of resistance through adopting similar individual and group identities. The creation of a counter-hegemonic self- representation as static and fixed may leave teenagers ill-equipped to challenge dominant representations; furthermore, given the fluid nature of a shifting social context, youth still have to consistently renegotiate boundaries. Gosine (2002) argues that this process means that collective forms of consciousness are constantly being negotiated and transgressed by members within those very same communities. A process of homogenization could undermine the ability of Indigenous youth to creatively inform their identities. As stated by Gosine, a fixed notion of communal identity carries the destructive potential to "gloss over the unique, constantly shifting relationships individual members of such 'imagined communities' make with their own communities and aspects of the dominant society"

(2002, p. 7). By adopting communal identities, Indigenous youth run the risk of being pigeonholed into communities of resistance and subsequently stripped of their power and agency.

279 Within the literature pertaining to hip-hop studies, there seems to be a generalized acceptance of a healthy confluence of individuality and collectivity supported through the very form of the music itself, particularly its reliance on group history and individual style. According to Rose (1994),

The lyrical and musical texts in rap are a dynamic hybrid of oral traditions,

postliterate orality, and advanced technology. Rap lyrics are a critical part of a

rapper's identity, strongly suggesting the importance of authorship and

individuality in rap music. Yet sampling as it is used by rap artists indicates the

importance of collective identities and group histories, (p.95)

Rose stresses the importance of the community when she suggests that "the music is a complex cultural reformulation of a community's knowledge and memory of itself'

(Rose, 1994, p.95). Further, positionalities are being collectively reconstructed during the act of performance, particularly through the practice of call-and-response. Within an Aboriginal performative context, this includes both audience and emcee as participating in the voicing of a collective knowledge base. Call-and-response projects an articulation of the ideas, concepts and ideologies that make up the knowledge base within a particular community. Such an active engagement means that one is constantly reinterpreting what it means to feel and be Indigenous amidst a variety of hip-hop communal contexts. In helping to deliver the messages, the emcees articulate strong identities through practices of repetition and 'dissing' others, in order to negotiate a balancing act between the individual and the collective. However, it is important to 'check in' with one's intentions and keep the collective consciousness in mind.

280 Hip-hop strategies challenge dominant discursive strategies attempting to manipulate the location of Native youth. As an example, emcee names are stories which reinsert Aboriginal youth into a historical and contemporary consciousness according to

their own representations of how they view themselves and their gifts. As creators

engaged in a process of carving out spaces for themselves and others to follow, emcees

occupy transgressional spaces, with similar characteristics as the frontier spaces housing

'cross-blood' experiences.

281 EPILOGUE:

'SOUL TRAVELLING' WITH ABANDON - FROM WAGON ROADS TO 'RED

NOISE'

This is what our voice sounds like, feels like and looks like. This is what we

are doing. This is our voiced presence, originating from our world(s) -

effectively changing/mixing up the ways in which you see and experience

yours. (Emcee Treatise, Dfa»e-Recollet, 2009)

My epilogue to Aural traditions: Indigenous youth and the hip-hop movement in Canada acknowledges the previously mentioned power of the spoken word as a tremendously important resonator, producing vibrations which are changing the way that we perceive the worlds around us. For this reason, the writing of this epilogue is meant to illuminate the voice of emcees who are, to this moment, continuing to resist through messaging the importance of criticizing residential schools, for example. When writing from within between spaces there are no endings, just energy flows.

What I hope to have achieved within this dissertation is an illustration of the patterns of the hip-hop movement itself as it shifts consciousness and negotiates difficult, but emancipatory spaces in order to envision and actualize different realities. I have been inspired through emcee praxis which stems from a variety of sites reflective of their positionings within a multi-plexed universe. Some of the voices have impacted my process as I move about the world with a heightened consciousness of the new conceptualizations which can help me name my experiences of negotiating tricky terrain.

Emcee positionings are voiced through hip-hop lyrics, body movements, and other elements of style that have been described here as embodying a sophisticated

282 understanding of the lay of the land. 'Me and my sketchbook break dancing on rooftops' makes sense as a youthful transgression within heightened spaces, reflective of an analysis that is complex and meaningful.

Through emcee voicings, youth are offering new storylines which redefine

Nativeness by embracing a cultural form which values fusion and uniqueness in style.

The movements of emcees instruct us on how to negotiate and find rich meaning in transgressional spaces. The ideas and concepts deriving from these spaces carry the capacity to transform social/cultural environments so that institutional violence directed towards youth no longer hold any power. In fact, the languaging practices inspired from within crew collectivities are already transforming the ways in which we view the world(s) around us. These spaces, as incubators of intelligence, are re-constituting our ideas of'movement,' and reveal that processes of navigating our contemporary realities are embodied in physical form through the youth that we encounter everyday in our cities.

Many layers formulate the air around us when we are standing in-the-moment as occupiers of space that in itself has a history. Emcee voicings are capturing the essence of all that has led to this present reality. There is a deep-seated connection between peoples whose ancestral memories are transmitted through processes of an oral culture.

The relationship between and amongst Indigenous peoples throughout the world is revealed through mapping the hip-hop movement's embrace.

In a sense, spoken word/rap artists and ancestral orators have created an archive of contextually rich moments documenting processes of dealing with ruptures within transgressional spaces. Joan Morgan's assertion that "we need a voice like our music"

283 (2004) calls for hip-hop's representation of many diverse layers of experience through voicing. The technique 'sampling' fuses past and present voices in order to contemporize the past and make it meaningful and relevant for today's young people. The process of overlapping past and present mirrors the travels of Indigenous youth as 'earthdivers'

(Vizenor, 1981), who are surfacing knowledge onto urban platforms. Named after a prolithic being within Aboriginal creation stories, contemporary mixed blood

'earthdivers,' "dive into unknown urban places now, into the racial darkness in the cities, to create a new consciousness of coexistence (Vizenor, 1981, p. ix). This, I believe to be the role of the Indigenous emcee. The foundational act of travelling, for hip-hop emcees, is best identified through their creative process; their desire to create while physically crossing borders; their ascent to higher consciousness; their movements; their left behind tracings of a presence in cities through graffiti writings; and the navigational charts that they leave behind. Emcees know that 'soul travellings' are essential to transform our current realities. Voicing struggle through exposing the 'gritty of the city' (Daybi, personal communication, July 28, 2007) requires a strategic placement both within and above the conceptual realities that shape those spaces.

The Colonial Weight is Heavy: Emcees' Voicing Residential Schools

Emcee voicings through rap videos communicate the multi-layered expression€s of wordplay, body movement, and style in conveying messagings related to residential schools. Emcee Joey Stylez's video for the song entitled Living Proof illustrates how racialized/spatial geographies (Razack, 2002) accommodate violence against young people through visualizations of residential school children witnessing contemporary violence against Native youth on the streets. In his video, visuals of travelling through

284 streets in urban ghetto environments merge with the imagery of dirt road wagon rides of young children being taken to residential schools. Stylez's video also incorporates daunting, ghost-like images of students, nuns and priests in buildings, whose hallways are superimposed against the image of'gritty' city streets (both representative of transgressional spaces filled with violence, silences, and the tortuous treatments of Native youth). On top of these strong visuals on screen, the lyrics themselves are visually rich.

Consider the impact of Stylez's voicings as an emotionally charged testimonial communicative of the colonial weight of the modern day impact of residential schools.

"Tell me whatcha know about feeling hunger pains

This boiled blood burns wild deep inside my veins

This adversity fills the beat inside my heart

I spend my childhood -brothas scheming in the dark

Spent my childhood with the fella's in the dirt

On our own tryin to find a way to feed this thirst?"

At this point in the lyrics the music video portrays the image of children riding in the back of wagons on their dirt road journey to a residential school. Stylez's lyrics portray the resistance of Indigenous youth actualized in the ways that young people would secretly meet to provide a sense of kinship despite the strict control over their actions. He also posits a counter-narrative in the form of a child's prayer:

"Please protect me, yeah I'm battling while I sleep

In the darkness they tell me where the shadows creep

Please protect my every move that I'm gonna make

I pray above one day my soul you'll take

285 I pray above one day that the cycle stops

Little homie on the block, and they then pop..."

In this next section of 'Living Proof,' Stylez explores the intersection between racialized and specialized geographies through his use of the term 'the hood' meant to convey a colonial construct, and a condition of poverty. In the following lyrics, Stylez also references the honorable place of children within an Indigenous context.

"Never once left boyz in the hood

And then you wonder why there's boyz in the hood

Never once left boyz in the hood

And then you wonder why there's boyz in the hood."

(Joey Stylez, "Living Proof)

Through the implantation of visuals and metaphor Stylez contemporizes history and illustrates a connection between the racialized violence in residential schools and the violences that typify Native experiences in cities. There is a relationship between the contemporary practice of schooling young people and the disciplining of the body. The regimentation and disciplining of youth minds and bodies through institutions represent actions stemming from Indigenous youth's status as 'threats' to a particular social order.

In other words, the realities of contemporary Native life have been legitimated through the production of the 'fugitive' status of Aboriginal youth.

Through voicings, emcees are also questioning the colonial amnesia that has led us to the point where public institutions such as the CBC advocated for the use of the phrase former students in order to cover up the genocidal implications of the phrase residential school survivor (Wab Kinew, personal communication, July 16, 2008). Both

286 Wab Kinew and Wabs Whitebird have called into question such practices of historical amnesia. Consider, alongside the actions of Wab Kinew in restoring survivor into the dominant narrative, Wabs Whitebird's 'history lesson' which calls into question the historical amnesia as a tool of colonialism.

"What do you know about residential schools

The priests, the nuns having their fun

Taking us out mentally

One by one

What do you know about getting beat for speaking your tongue?

What do you know about getting raped and having nowhere to run?

Cause you're caged like an animal

Being devoured by hungry cannibals

Watcha know about disaffecting young minds years after

Even into the generations

Poverty and starvation

Patiently waitin for a voice to call out our names

Driving us insane

Scared to speak up cause we all have shame

Of something that wasn't our fault

But all these years after

We was taught it was all our fault."

(Wabs Whitebird, "Whatcha Know")

287 Contemporary emcee stories of the residential school experiences include the use of language to theorize in the form of an emotionally fused, body consciousness. This contrasts with the devaluation of colonialism's impacts on Native youth accompanying the condition of historical amnesia. Emcees are exposing these practices through the conceptual significance of an embodied colonialism expressed through the phrase, 'the colonial hangover is harsh' (Ostwelve, and Theresa Seymour). This insight expressed by both emcees, exposes this weight as 'a collective grieving that is passed down through parents, grandparents.' The practice of re-inscribing alternative meanings to 'colonialism' represents a significant move towards more real/critical space of examination and dialogue.

The residential school produced a liminal space between languagings of generations, where in some instances daughters feel the silences as mothers struggle for words to explain why they couldn't keep them. I have come to realize that the space left behind through the impact of the cultural bomb that was the residential school, is my space of destabilization. This is the space in between my words and my mother's words that knock me off my feet. So I turn to the languaging practices of emcees to provide me with the words. Being in a liminal space oftentimes means that we do not have the tools, that our experiences have not provided us with the foundation upon which to stand. We either fall off, or we work with stories that acknowledge the ruptures and provide processes within which we can brush ourselves off to move forward. This space can be a frightening, lonesome space because we are left standing in the immensity of the experiences of others. And it is heavy, this is a heavy space. Many of the emcees that I have spoken with reiterate this concept that the 'colonial weight' or the 'colonial

288 hangover' is harsh. This terminology reveals that we embody what has been passed on to us through the experiences of others. Theresa Seymour's observation that 'we pass that shyness and those insecurities onto our children' further attests to this colonial weight, which transitions between ourselves and members of our communities/families.

Spoken word, dub poetry and rap represent those processes of working with language in order to articulate relationships, visionings, and our experiences and to assist in determining where it is that we stand. Such artistic forms are making it easier for us to conceptualize to others our lived experiences. And this is tremendously helpful for those of us struggling to find the words to communicate with our loved ones. We need to pay attention to emcees because they are contemporary oral traditionalists deriving inspiration from urban territories. They are starting to create alternative lexicons that we can use in articulating our own voicings.

This dissertation began with a treatise, a statement of positionality as 'coming from the starz.' I have since come to understand that the travellings of emcees throughout different spaces in consciousness, as navigators within cities, reflect those original travellings of our ancestral activists. This time, our wagon trails have been replaced by concrete and digital highways producing testimonials that chart meaningfully divergent paths.

289 Emcee Treatise: Soul Travelling and Trans motion

The connotations of transmotion are creation stories, totemic visions,

reincarnations and sovenance; transmotion, that sense of native motion and an

active presence, is sui generis sovereignty. Native transmotion is survivance.

(Vizenor, 1998, p. 15)

My final treatise integrates Gerald Vizenor's understanding of transmotion to amplify the significance of emcee travellings through meanings and physical landscapes. The voices that inspired the creation of my treatise collectively negotiate a positioning of the post indian, of whom Vizenor identifies as one 'who must waver over the aesthetic ruins of indian simulations' (Vizenor, 1998, p. 15). Together these concepts transmotion and post indian echo the movements of urban emcees reflected in their stories of survivance. The stories that emcees are creating through hip-hop allow them to soul travel and earth dive, bringing up new questions about our contemporary world, and embodying older narratives through voicings which extend far beyond this physical realm. Emcees take on an active spiritual presence, encompassing what Vizenor would call 'spiritual motion'

(1998).

We are soul travellers. We come from above, we come from the stars. Our

movements are not the movements that you would expect to see. We can

see.. .we tap into those energies at night, embracing nighttime energy flows.

We are astro-emcees, charting new territories as we come to understand our

relationship with the world(s) of stars. We know the language that has been

used to describe our relationships with the star world through science and the

'speak' of traditional peoples in our communities. We understand the nature of

290 totem poles and medicine wheels as meaningful connectors to the star worlds.

We understand the theft that has occurred to our peoples as they have taken away our totem poles, displaced our medicine wheels and attempted to sever our relationships within the universe. Our new creation process nurtures our renewed connection to those beings that surround us both above and beyond.

Our practices of relating with each other and the worlds around us mimic the patterns that we observe in the star worlds. We are travellers and transmotors who practice a soul travelling through our creative process, patterning our lives amidst so much distraction brought about by globalization and the production of 'white noise.' We work with this 'white noiser' to embrace technology in developing our own transistors to connect with the star world.

We practice transmotion through our border crossing practices leaving behind navigational instructions on how to live within cities. Our Native motion starts with our intentionality and volition to move. And we move because we love.

Our transmotion is embedded within our creation stories, creating the types of worlds that we would like to see and our footprints mark the tracings of our presence as we travel. Our embrace of hip-hop provides rhythms to move.. .our movement music- shapes our feet and wings as a form of travel.

We are involved in a process of transmotion, leaving behind traces of a presence amidst the absences which have been the construction of dominant

291 media(ing) practices. Cree-ation.. ..we create the types of worlds that we want to see through our lyricism, our sweeping movements close to the ground, drawing energy through our smudge-like movements as we circle our bodies in prayer-like fashion. As we navigate these cities, we leave behind our mappings as our charted paths so that our trace - our presence is not an absence for our babies.

We are voicing creation stories which contain fragmentation, flow, contradiction and which voice a momentary consciousness that asserts our presence in these moments. Our creation stories are achieving transcendence in this very moment as they shape the types of worlds that we envision. Our creations of song as voiced consciousness embody our 'fugitive' motion. We embrace our 'fugitive' posing as they help us to negotiate our movements.

Also our 'fugitive' status makes our tracings and taggings all the more meaningful. Our fugitive positioning is an act of trickery and mimicry in order to actuate our 'stories of survivance.'

The sound of our voiced-experience is our presence; through hip-hop we come into being. Our Crews are our incubators of intelligence. They represent chambers echoing the whispers of our elders and children, with faint pulsations of a life-blood that we transpose into syncopated rhythms and lyricisms that we share with the cosmos. We open ourselves up to you in the hopes that the world will once again be right to come out from underneath bridges, subway

292 lines - out from the shadows. Our 'tracings' through graffiti writing on trains, tags and digital sound bytes will be those glyphs that transmit intelligence to future generations. We are the ancestors, and our voices are ancestral messagings.

Others have attempted to inscribe Native presence on the landscape through an absence. War hero monuments erected to celebrate the taking over of

Indigenous lands and bodies. We use our tracings and our graffiti tags to challenge these 'war hero' monuments. Like us, they were travellers too, although travellers desiring a home will produce much spectacle and pageantry in order to memorialize what was meant to be travelling...

Our stories are stories of survivance communicating processes of how to live.

We navigate city-scapes through our everyday actions which include thinking and creating while en route to the next city, producing beats with our crews in downstairs makeshift music studios, and create rich soundscapes while riding on subways.

We walk the cities as ancient time travellers in the wake of a representational holocaust, trying to evade the eye of that continual gaze that still asserts claim over our bodies, our voices.

293 We believe in our ancestors' abilities to see beings, to build relationships with other forces in the layerings that occupy our environments. We believe in them because we possess similar abilities of soul travel. Our consciousness is connected to those higher forms that choose to reveal themselves to us at certain times. We are astro-emcees who find comfort in spaces that might destabilize comfortable understandings of who we are. We are not afraid. We are strong, and we are everlasting.

294 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Alexander, B.K. (2005). Performance ethnography: the reenacting and inciting of culture.

In N. Denzin and Y. Lincoln (Eds.), The sage handbook of qualitative research

third edition (pp.411-441). Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.

Allen, L. (1999). Psychic unrest: poetry. Toronto, Ont.: Insomniac Press.

Alridge, D.P. (2005). From civil rights to hip hop: toward a nexus of ideas. The journal of

African American history, 90(3), 226-252.

Anzaldua, G. (1994). Borderlands/la frontera: the new mestiza. San Francisco:

Spinsters/Aunt Lute Press.

Armstrong, J.C. and Grauer, L. (Eds.), (2001). Native poetry in Canada. A contemporary

anthology. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press.

Babcock-Abrahams, B. (1975). 'A tolerated mess': the trickster and his tales

reconsidered. Journal of the folklore institute, 11(3), 147-186.

Bakhtin, M. (1984). Problems of Dostoevsky's poetics. (C. Emerson, Ed. and Trans.),

Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press.

Bakhtin, M. (1984). Rabelais and his world. (H. Iswolsky, Trans.), Bloomington: Indiana

University Press.

Bakhtin, M. (1981). The dialogical imagination: four essays. (M. Holquist, Ed.), (C.

Emerson & M. Holquist Trans.), Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press.

Banes, S. (2004). Breaking In M. Forman and M. Neal (Eds.), That's the joint, the hip-

hop studies reader (pp. 13-20). New York, London: Routledge.

Bartlett, A. (1994). Airshafts, loudspeakers, and the hip hop sample: contexts and

African American musical aesthetics. African American review, 28(4), 639-652.

295 Basso, K. (1979). Portraits of "the Whiteman ": linguistic play and cultural symbols

among the Western Apache. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Battiste, M. & J. S. Henderson. (2000). What is Indigenous knowledge. In M. Battiste

and J.S. Henderson (Eds.) Protecting Indigenous knowledge and heritage: a

global challenge (pp.35-56). Saskatoon: Purich Publishing.

Benicewicz, L. (2007). Searching for blues: missing link in Lumberton. Blues art journal,

Retrieved Oct, 19, 2009, from http://www.bluesartstudio.com/

NeueSeitan/Arch07.html.

Bennett, A. (1999). Hip hop am Main: the localization of rap music and hip hop culture

[Electronic version], Media, culture & society, 21, 77-91.

Berger, P.L., and T. Luckmann (1967). The social construction of reality: a

treatise in the sociology of knowledge. New York: Anchor Books.

Belanger, Y., L. Barren, C. McKay-Turnbull and M. Mills (2003). Urban Aboriginal

youth in Winnipeg: Culture and identity formation in cities. Department of

Canadian Heritage.

Bernardin, S.K. (1995). Mixed messages: authority and authorship in Mourning Dove's

Cogewa, the half blood: a depiction of the great Montana cattle range. American

literature, 67(3), 487-509.

Boyd, T. (2003). The new H.N.I.C. : the death of civil rights and the reign of hip hop.

New York and London: New York University.

Butler, P. (2004). Much respect: toward a hip-hop theory of punishment. Stanford law

review, 56(5), 983-1016.

Butler, J. (1997). Excitable speech: a politics of the performative. New York: Routledge.

296 Carter, S. (1997). Capturing women: the manipulation of cultural imagery in

Canada's prairie West. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University

Press.

Clarke, A. (2005). Situational analysis: grounded theory after the postmodern

turn. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.

Collins, P. (2006). From black power to hip hop: racism, nationalism, and

feminism. Philadelphia PA.: Temple University Press.

Conrad, D. (2002). Drama as arts-based pedagogy and research: media

advertising and inner-city youth. Alberta journal of educational research, 48(3),

254-268.

Cruickshank, J. (2000). Social life of stories: narrative and knowledge in Yukon Territory.

British Columbia: UBC Press.

Cruickshank, J. (1990). Life lived like a story: life stories of three Yukon elders. Nebraska:

University of Nebraska Press.

Damm, K and the Nishin spoken word project. (2009). Emergence, Retrieved June 13,

2009, from http://www.owensound.library.on.ca

Davies, J.B. et al. (2006). Constituting the feminist subject in poststructuralist

discourse. Feminism & psychology, 16(1), 87-103.

Deyhle, D. (1998). From break dancing to heavy metal: Navajo youth,

resistance, and identity. Youth & society, 30(1), 3-31.

297 Denzin, N.K. (2005). Emancipatory discourses and the ethics and politics of

interpretation. In N. Denzin and Y. Lincoln (Eds.), The sage handbook of

qualitative research third edition (pp.933-958). Thousand Oaks: Sage

Publications.

Dimitriadis, G. (2004). Hip-hop live performance to mediated narrative. In M. Forman

and M. Neal (Eds.), That's the joint, the hip-hop studies reader (pp. 421-435).

New York, London: Routledge.

Driscoll, C. (2002). Girls: feminine adolescence in popular culture and cultural

theory. New York: Columbia University Press.

Du Bois, W.E.B. (1897). Strivings of the negro people. Atlantic Monthly, 80, 194-198.

Dyson, M.E. (2004). The culture of hip -hop. In M. Forman and M. Neal (Eds.), That's

the joint, the hip-hop studies reader, (pp. 61-68). New York, London: Routledge.

Ermine, W. (1995) Aboriginal epistemology In M. Battiste and J. Barman, (Eds.),

First Nations in Canada: the circle unfolds (pp. 101-112). Vancouver: University

of British Columbia Press.

Ermine. W., R. Sinclair and B. Jeffery. (2004). The ethics of research involving

Indigenous people: Report of the Indigenous peoples' health research centre to

the interagency advisory panel on research ethics. Saskatoon, Sk. Indigenous

Peoples' Health Research Centre.

Ermine, W, (2005). Ethical space: Transforming relations, Retrieved June, 2007, from

http://www.traditions.gc.ca/docs/docs_disc_ermine_e.cfm.

Fanon, F. (2008). Black skin white masks. New Edition. R. Philcoxx (trans.), New York:

Grove Press.

298 Favel Starr, F. (2005). The artificial tree: Native performance culture research, 1991-

1996. In R. Appleford (Ed.), Aboriginal drama and theatre. Critical perspectives

on Canadian theatre in English (1), Toronto, Canada: Playwrights Canada Press.

Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations (2003). Alter-Natives to non violence report:

Aboriginal youth gangs exploration - a community development process.

Retrieved Jan. 21, 2008 from

www.cantraining.org/BTC/docs/CanadianReferences/AboriginalYouth

Gangs.pdf.

Floyd Jr. S.A. (1995). The power of Black music: interpreting its history from Africa to

the United States. New York: Oxford University Press.

Forman, M. (2004). 'Represent': Race, space, and place in rap music In M. Forman and

M. Neal (Eds.), That's the joint, the hip-hop studies reader (pp.201-222). New

York, London: Routledge.

Forman, M. (2004). Looking for the perfect beat: Hip-hop aesthetics and technologies of

production. In M. Forman and M. Neal (Eds.), That's the joint, the hip-hop

studies reader (pp.389-392). New York, London: Routledge.

Foucault, M. (1980). The eye of power: A conversation with Jean-Pierre Barou and

Michelle Perrot. In C. Gorden (Ed.), C. Gorden, L. Marshall, J. Mepham and K.

Soper (Trans.), Power/knowledge: selected interviews and other writings: 1972-

1977, (pp. 146-165). New York: Pantheon Books.

Francis, M. (2002). City treaty: a long poem. Winnipeg, MB: Turnstone Press.

Francis, M. (2000). The lesbian national parks and services: reading sex, race, and the

nation in artistic performance. Canadian woman studies, 20(2), 131-136.

299 Freire, P. (2007) Dare to dream: toward a pedagogy of the unfinished. Boulder, CO:

Paradigm Publishers.

Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. Continuum: New York.

Gaunt, K. (2004). Translating double-dutch to hip hop: the musical vernacular of Black

girls' play In M. Forman and M. Neal (Eds.), That's the joint, the hip hop studies

reader (pp. 251-263). New York, London: Routledge.

Giroux, H. (1996). Fugitive cultures: race, violence and youth. New York:

Routledge.

Giroux, H. (1992). Border crossings: cultural workers and the politics of education.

London: Routledge.

Goodwill, J. and Sluman, N. (1982). John Tootoosis: biography of a Cree leader.

Ottawa: Golden Dog Press.

Gosine, K. (2002). Essentialism verses complexity: conceptions of racial identity

construction in educational scholarship. Canadian journal of education, 27(1), 81-

99.

Green, R. (1982). Untitled Review Cogewa: the half blood. Tulsa studies in

women's literature, 1(2), 217-221.

Hall, S. (1997). The spectacle of the 'other.' In S. Hall (Ed.), Representation: cultural

representations and signifying practices, (pp. 223-290). London: Sage

Publications.

Harjo, J. (1996). The woman who fell from the sky: poems. W.W. Norton.

Harjo, J. (1983). She Had Some Horses. New York: Thunders Mouth.

300 Harper, S. (2008). Prime Minister Harper offers full apology on behalf of Canadians for

the Indian residential school system. Office of the Prime Minister. Retrieved

Feb.6111, 2010 from www.pm.gc/eng/media.asp?id=2149.

Hidden in plain sight: contributions of Aboriginal peoples to Canadian identity and

culture.(2005) D. Newhouse, C. Voyageur, and D. Beavon (Eds.). Toronto:

University of Toronto Press Incorporated.

Highway, T. (2010). The time Tomson Highway went to Mameek and survived to tell the

tale. In P. DePasquale, R. Eigenbrod and E. LaRocque (Eds.), Across cultures

across borders: Canadian Aboriginal and Native American literatures, (pp.45-

56). Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview Press.

Highway, T. (2005). On Native mythology. In R. Appleford (Ed.), Aboriginal drama and

theatre. Critical perspectives on Canadian theatre in English (1), Toronto,

Canada: Playwrights Canada Press.

Hladki, J. (1998). Power and struggle in educational research: interrogating the

unity in community. Canadian women studies les cahiers de lafemme, 17 (4), 32-

37.

Hogan, L. (1987). The Two Lives. In Krupat, A. and B. Swann (Ed.), / tell you now:

autobiographical essays by Native American writers. Lincoln: University of

Nebraska Press.

Holman, M. (2004). The politics of graffiti. In M. Forman and M. Neal (Eds.), That's the

joint, the hip-hop studies reader (pp.31-39). New York, London: Routledge. hooks, b. (1989). Talking back: thinking feminist, thinking black. Boston: South End. hooks, b. (1992). Black looks: race and representation. Toronto: Between the Lines.

301 Ignace, M. and G. Ignace (2005). Tagging, rapping and the voices of the ancestors:

Expressing Aboriginal identity between the small city and the rez. In W. Garrett-

Petts (Ed.), The small cities book (pp.2-28). Vancouver: New Star Books.

Indigen (2009). Red power squad. Retrieved June, 2009, from

http://indigen.tumblr.eom/post/l 3067647/conway-k-spoken -word.

Jahner, E. (2000). The novel and oral tradition: an interview with Leslie Marmon Silko In

Arnold, L.E (Ed.),Conversations with Leslie Marmon Silko (pp. 46-51).

Mississippi: University press of Mississippi,

Jenkins, R. (1996). Social identity, London: Routledge.

Keyes, C. (2002). Rap music and street consciousness. Urbana: University of Illinois

Press.

Kruchak, M. (2003). No reservations In Exclaim. Retrieved February 2008, from

http ://www.hiphopcanada. com/si te/entertainment/articles/ent_art 105 .php

Lashua, B. (2006). Just another Native? Soundscapes, chorasters, and

borderlands in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada Cultural studies <=> critical

methodologies, 6, 391-410.

Lashua, B. (2006). The arts of the remix: ethnography and rap Anthropology

matters journal, 8(2). Retrieved September 12, 2009, from

http ://www.anthropologymatters. com/index.

Little Bear, L. (2000). Jagged worlds colliding. In M. Battiste (Ed.), Reclaiming

Indigenous voice and vision (pp.77-85), Vancouver: University of British

Columbia.

302 Lorde, A. (1983). The master's tools will never dismantle the Masters house. In C.

Moraga and G. Anzaldua (Eds.), This bridge called my back. New York: Third

Woman Press.

MacDonald, M. (2006) Showcase of dancers: Mathew Wood- CreeAsian- b-boy.

Retrieved May, 2009, from http://www.nativedance.ca/index.php/

Showcase/CreeAsian.

MacKay, G. (2005). The city as home: The sense of belonging among Aboriginal youth in

Saskatoon. Bridges and foundations project on urban Aboriginal housing.

Maracle, L. (2010). Toward a national literature: 'a body of writing' In P. DePasquale, R.

Eigenbrod and E. LaRocque (Eds.), Across cultures across borders: Canadian

Aboriginal and Native American literatures, (pp. 77-96). Peterborough, Ont.:

Broadview Press.

Maracle, S. (2003). The eagle has landed: Native women, leadership and community

development. In K. Anderson and B. Lawrence (Eds.), Strong women stories:

Native vision and community survival (pp. 70-80), Toronto: Sumach Press.

McClintock, A. (1995). Imperial leather: race, gender and sexuality in the colonial

contest. New York: Routledge.

McLeod, N. (2000). Plains Cree identity: Borderlands, ambiguous genealogies and

narrative irony. The Canadian journal of Native studies, xx(2), 437-454.

McNickle, D. (1992). Train time. The hawk is hungry (pp.47-52) The University of

Arizona Press.

Miller, D.B. (1999). Racial socialization and racial identity: can they promote

resiliency for African American adolescents? Adolescence, 34(135), 493-498.

303 Miller, J.R. (1990). Owen Glendower, Hotspur and Canadian Indian policy.

Ethnohistory, 37(4), (pp 386-415). North Carolina: Duke University Press.

Milloy, J. (1999). A national crime: the Canadian government and the residential school

system 1879 to 1986. Winnipeg, MB: University of Manitoba Press.

Momaday, N. S. (1997). Man made out of words: essays, stories, passages. New York:

St. Martins Press.

Morgan, J. (2004). Hip-Hop feminist In M. Forman and M. Neal (Eds.), That's the joint,

the hip-hop studies reader (pp.277-282). New York, London: Routledge.

Nelson. G. (2004). Hip-hop's founding fathers speak the truth. In M. Forman and M.

Neal (Eds.), That's the joint, the hip-hop studies reader (pp.45-60). New York,

London: Routledge.

Nic Paget-C. (2005) Interview with Gustavo Esteva: The society of the different.

Retrieved March 2009, from http://www.inmotionmagazine.com/global/

gestintl .html

Ngugi, Wa Thiong'o (1986). Decolonizing the mind: The politics of language in

African literature. London: Heinemann.

Newhouse, D. and E. Peters (Eds.), (2003). Not strangers in these parts: urban

Aboriginal peoples. Privy Council Office, Government of Canada.

Norris, M.J. and S. Clatworthy (2003). Aboriginal mobility and migration within

urban Canada: outcomes, factors and implications In D.Newhouse and E. Peters

(Eds.), Not strangers in these parts: urban Aboriginal peoples (pp.50-78) Privy

Council Office, Government of Canada.

304 Oliver, C. (2007). For sepia "colored girls" who have considered self/ when hip-hop is

enuf. In Home girls make some noise: hip hop feminism anthology (pp.248-270),

California: Parker Publishing, LLC.

Ostwelve. (March, 12, 2009). Message posted to http://www.facebook.com.

Ortega, M. (2006). Being lovingly, knowingly ignorant: White feminism

and women of colour. Hypatia, 21(3), 57-74.

Ortiz, S.J. (1977). A good journey. Tucson, Arizona: Sun Tracks and the University of

Arizona Press.

Owens, L. (2002). Moonwalking technoshamans and the shifting margin: decentering the

colonial classroom. In B. TuSmith and M. T. Reddy (Eds.), Race in the

classroom: pedagogy and politics (pp.253-263). New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers

VR.

Owens, L. (1998). Blood trails: Missing grandmothers and making worlds. In

Mixedblood messages: literature, film, family, place (pp. 135-166). Norman: U of

Oklahoma Press.

Parmer, P. (2009). Knowledge reigns supreme: the critical pedagogy of hip hop activist

KRS-One. Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense Publishers.

Perry, I. (2004). Prophets of the hood: Politics and poetics in hip hop. Durham &

London: Duke University Press.

Peters, E. (2004). Three myths about Aboriginals in cities. Canadian Federation for the

Humanities and Social Sciences.

305 Pitawanakwat, B. (2008). Bimaadziwin Oodenaang: a pathway to urban Nishnaabe

resurgence In L. Simpson (Ed.), Lighting the eighth fire: the liberation,

resurgence, and protection of Indigenous nations (pp.161-173). Winnipeg, Man.:

Arbeiter Ring Publishing.

Pratt, M.L. (1992). Imperial eyes: travel writing and transculturation. London:

Routledge.

Price Jr. R. (2005) Hegemony, hope, and the Harlem renaissance: Taking hip-hop culture

seriously Convergence, 38(2), 55-66.

Razack, S. (2002). Gendered violence and spatialized justice: the murder of Pamela

George. In Race, space, and the law: unmapping white settler society (pp. 121-

156). Toronto: Between the Lines.

Rice, J. (2003). The 1963 hip-hop machine: Hip-hop pedagogy as composition.

College composition and communication, 54(3), 453-471.

Rosaldo, R. (1989). Culture and truth: The remaking of social analysis (pp. 68-87).

Boston: Beacon Press.

Rose, T. (1994). Black Noise: rap music and black culture in contemporary America.

Hanover, N.H: Wesleyan University Press.

Rose. T. (1991). 'Fear of a Black planet': rap music and Black cultural politics in the

1990's. Journal of Negro education, 60(3), 276-290.

Said, E. (1979). Orientalism. New York: Random House Inc.

Saskatchewan Indian Federated College. (2003). Urban Aboriginal youth, barriers,

racism and youth empowered solutions final report. Project coordinators: E.

306 Hampton and S. Longman. Researchers: A. Weenie, H. Michell, and S. Pilatzke.

Retrieved June, 2006 from ProQuest Full text database.

Scofleld, G. (2009). Kipochikdn: poems new and selected. Gibsons, B.C.: Nightwood

Editions.

Seed, P. (1995). Ceremonies of possession in Europe's conquest of the New World, 1492-

1640. Cambridge University Press.

Seesequasis, P. (1998). Trick or treat? What kind of Indian are you? In H. Elton, B. Moon

and D. Obe (Eds.), Why are you telling me this? Eleven acts of intimate

journalism (pp. 143-163). Alberta: Banff Centre Press.

Smith, A. (2005). Conquest: sexual violence and American Indian genocide. Cambridge,

MA: South End Press.

Smith, G.H. (2005). Transformative praxis: Indigenous reclaiming of the

academy and higher education. CINS A presentation.

Smith, G.H. (2003). Indigenous struggle for the transformation of education and

schooling. Keynote address to the Alaskan Federation of Natives (AFN)

Convention. Anchorage, Alaska, U.S.

Smith, T. (Nov. 2008). POC gender talk: Decolonizing gender workshop. Decolonization

and racism coalition (DARC). Peterborough, Ontario.

Spears, S. (2004). Strong spirit, fractured identity: An Ojibway adoptee's

journey to wholeness. In K. Anderson and B. Lawrence (Eds.), Strong women

stories: Native vision and community survival (pp. 81-94). Toronto: Sumach

Press.

307 St. Denis, V. and Schick, C. (2005). Troubling national discourses in anti-racist curricular

planning. Canadian journal of education, 28 (3), 295-317.

St. Denis, V. (2004). Real Indians: Cultural revitalization and fundamentalism in

Aboriginal Education. In C. Schick, J. Jeffe, and A. Watkinson (Eds.), Contesting

fundamentalisms (pp.3 5-47). Halifax, NS: Fernwood.

Stoler, A.L. (1989). "Making empire respectable: the politics of race and sexual morality

in 20* -century colonial cultures. American Ethnologist, 16(4), 634-660.

The Hip hop Archive @ the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American

research. Online resource: http://hiphoparchive.org/

Toop, D. (1984). Rap Attack: African jive to New York hip hop. Boston: South End.

Urban Dictionary. Online resource: www.urbandictionary.com

Valaskakis, G. (2005). Indian country: Essays on contemporary Native country.

Waterloo: Wilfred Laurier University Press.

Valaskakis, G. (1993) Parallel voices: Indians and other, narratives of cultural struggle.

Canadian journal of communication, 18 (3), 283-296.

Vizenor, G. (1999). Preface Manifest manners: Narratives on postindian survivance.

Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press.

Vizenor, G. (1998). Fugitive poses: Native American Indian scenes of absence and

presence. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press.

Vizenor, G. (1994). Manifest manners: narratives on postindian survivance.

Lincoln & London: University of Nebraska Press.

Vizenor, G. (1990). Trickster discourse. American Indian quarterly 14(3), 277-288.

308 Vizenor, G. (1981). Earthdivers: tribal narratives on mixed descent. Minnesota: the

University of Minnesota Press.

Watts, E. (2004). An exploration of spectacular consumption: gangsta rap as cultural

commodity. In M. Forman and M. Neal (Eds.), That's the joint, the hip-hop

studies reader (pp.593-609). New York, London: Routledge.

Weaver, H. (2001). Indigenous identity: what is it, and who really has it? American

Indian Quarterly, 25(2), 240-256.

Weedon, C. (1987). Feminist practice & poststructuralist theory. Oxford,

U.K.: Basil Blackwell Inc.

Wodak, R. (Ed). (1997). Gender and discourse. California: Sage Publications.

Wyn, J. and A. Harris. (2004). Youth research in Australia and New

Zealand. Young: Nordic journal of youth research, 12(3), 271-289.

Documentaries

Jhally.S. (Producer), (1996), Cultural criticism and transformation Part 8: bell hooks

[Documentary film] Media Education Foundation, Northampton, MA.

Thompson, B. (Producer) and Hubbard, T. (Writer/Director) (2004). Two worlds

colliding. [Documentary film] Montreal, PQ.: National Film Board of Canada.

Eriksen, S.E. (Producer) and Welsh.C. (Writer/Director) (2006). Finding Dawn.

[Documentary film] Montreal, PQ.: National Film Board of Canada.

Discography

Blu "No way no how" 2007

Daybi "The Quickening" First Contact, 2009

Daybi "The Deep End" First Contact, 2009

309 Daybi "Navigator" First Contact, 2009

Eekwol. "That's Just Me." Apprentice to the mystery, 2004

Eekwol. "Reluctant Warrior" Apprentice to the mystery, 2004

Eekwol. "Too Sick" Apprentice to the mystery, 2004.

Eekwol. "Ohtaw Napepawees" Niso, 2009

Geo. "Beautiful B.C." 2007

Jb the FirstLady. "One Day" Indigenous Love, 2008

Joey Stylez "Living Proof

Kinnie Starr "Rock the Boat" Anything, 2006

Kinnie Starr "Red96X" Tune-Up, 2000

Ostwelve "For You I Ryde" Anti-Gravity Dinosaurs, 2008

Ostwelve "Ed Gein Dreams"

Ostwelve "Birds of Thunder" Anti-Gravity Dinosaurs, 2008

Ostwelve "Got Blood on yah" Anti-Gravity Dinosaurs, 2008

Ostwelve "R Evolution" Anti-Gravity Dinosaurs, 2008

Plex (featuring Leemai), "Better Days." Brainstorm, 2009

Plex (featuring Rellik, Touch, and Leemai). "Spare Change." Brainstorm. 2009

Plex (featuring Darp Malone). "Grateful." Brainstorm. 2009

Pura Fe "Red Black on Blues" Human Pride, to be released late 2009

Standing Ground (2004). Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm and the Nishin Spoken Word Project.

Nishin Productions, Cape Croker Reserve.

Wabs Whitebird "Whatcha Know"

310 APPENDIX A:

INTERVIEW SCHEDULE

Question 1: You situate yourself within your lyrics and your music, but I was wondering

if you could tell me a little bit about who you are as an artist?

Question 2: Where does your emcee name come from?

Question 3: How would you describe your style of music?

Question 4: How did you come to create hip-hop music?

Question 5: Can you describe to me how your music is influenced?

Question 6: What kinds of experiences issues do you rap about?

Question 7: Is there any particular song that stands out right now as being representative

of a particular issue or experience that you feel strongly about getting the word

out? Can you describe that song?

Question 8: Are there particular places that have meaning for you and your music? (by

this I mean home, or communities that you live in- the rez or the urban rez) and

how would you say you speak of these places in your music?

Question 9: Can you tell me a little bit about your process? How do you create lyrics for

a rap song? Are there any particular places that you can describe where it feels

most right for you to create lyrics?

Question 10: Why hip-hop? What is it about hip-hop that makes it a good choice for

getting the word out?

Question 11: How is Native hip-hop distinct from other forms of hip-hop?

311 Question 12: In your mind, is there a relationship between traditional Native forms of

music and the kinds of music that you are creating? Can you describe this

relationship?

Question 13: How do you see your music changing the ways in which Native youth live

and experience the world?

Question 14: Why do you think that it is important for Native people to have a voice

through hip-hop?

Question 15: Who do you like to create music with? What is it about you together that

makes this experience rich?

Question 16: What encourages you to keep doing this?

Question 17: What can people be doing to support this type of work that you are doing?

Question 18: Is there anything further that I have not covered in the interview questions

that you would like to say?

312 APPENDIX B:

EMCEE PROFILES

*The following emcee profiles have been compiled from information retrieved from Myspace.com, Facebook.com, and other public websites devised by the artists and/or their representatives.

Dallas Arcand is from the Alexander (Kipohtakaw) Cree Nation located near Edmonton, Alberta. He has a unique singing and songwriting style which he calls 'Indigenous hip- hop." He performs under the name Kray(Z)Kree a name given through his grandfather. Dallas is an insightful young man who, like many of his fellow emcees, occupies many roles as a father, dancer (world champion hoop dancer), motivational speaker, educator, flutist, and singer. He is strongly influenced by his beliefs in Native spirituality and traditional teachings. His debut CD REZalationzzz was released in April 2007. Within his music, Dallas speaks of the realities of growing up Native and 'speaks back' to those practices which have caused disillusionment and confusion amongst Native youth.

Doug Bedard, a.k.a Plex is an emcee, artist, and entrepreneur from Edmonton, Alberta. His emcee name Plex reflects a history of adolescence when he was known throughout the community as 'Doug from the Duplex.' He is the CEO and president of New Leaf Entertainment, a Toronto-based record and entertainment label which he created alongside Jay Laronde, Leemai Lafontaine, and Jennifer Podemski. Plex is an award- winning host and producer of the popular 'Plex Show,' a radio program airing on Aboriginal Voices Radio which provides a platform for global Indigenous artists,. Doug is one of the founding members of Wonl8, an Edmonton-based hip-hop group who, in 2006 released the album the Dirty Boulevard. Plex recently released his first solo album Brainstorm featuring 'Grateful.' Doug was also featured in the showcase 'Larger than Life: a celebration of Canadian Aboriginal musical talent' (2009) presented in CinePLEX Odeon Theatres nation-wide. Plex's commitment to Indigenous youth communities is expressed through his workshops and his involvement in mentoring young artists.

Barry Morin Jr. a.k.a. Blu was born in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan and raised on Big River First Nation, also known as Whitefish Lake Reserve. Blu's introduction to hip-hop took shape while in Slave Lake, Alberta amongst a community of like-minded, and talented youth. Blu's lyricism reflects his lived experiences growing up on Whitefish Lake reserve, and represents a process of thinking deeply about his surroundings and the history of family members, friends, and relationships with addictions and healing. Blu creates music that is meaningful to his life, carving out narratives which incorporate themes of resistance, inspiration and hope. His compositions are edgy and based out of real experiences. Blu's first album, Rez Life was released in 2007 and featured the song 'Struggle to Survive.' This album was nominated for the categories 'Debut Artist of the Year' and 'Best Hip-hop Recording' in the 2008 Native American Music Awards.

313 Mathew Creeasian is a Deejay, dancer (b-boy) and producer, whose home territory is Good Fish Lake. His crew is appropriately named 'Freshly Squeezed780,'to represent his territorial designation (area code) in Edmonton, Alberta. Mathew Creeasian embodies a fusion of hip-hop/indigenous identities in his break dancing and turntablism. He explains, "I try to imitate in my culture when we smudge with sweetgrass: we cleanse the mind, body, and soul. So I imitate that and wish this around my body before I go to the ground so it's like a blessing before I hit the ground." Mathew is a mentor to youth interested in deejaying and dancing. He is involved as a mentor in the 'Blueprint for Life Program' which has worked with over 1700 youth throughout northern Canada and in its inner cities. This program specializes in offering education, guidance and the development of youth through positive elements of hip-hop.

Daybi No Doubt (Cree) Daybi is a multi-skilled lyricist, videographer, and musician who, as both an independent and a collaborative artist, has produced various albums. He is a founding member of 'Slangblossom' alongside fellow emcees Wab Kinew (featured in this dissertation), P-Nut, and DJ Yann-Solo.'Slangblossom's' projects have included an album entitled Convulsions (Arbor/ EMI). Daybi collaborated with fellow producer Orik Terry in Tumivut 'our footsteps' (2008) to create a musical project blending the Inuit throat singing with multiple contemporary styles of music. First Contact (2009) is Daybi's first solo LP produced by Bombay Records.

Eekwol (Cree) is from the Muskoday First Nation in Saskatchewan. She is the co-owner of the independent label 'Mils Productions' alongside her brother - fellow producer/emcee. Through their original music they display their activist roots by supporting the production of socially conscious hip-hop infused with Indigenous sensibilities. Her musical projects include Apprentice to the mystery (2004), featuring 'Too sick,' and The List which was released in 2007. Her most recent album release is entitled Niso, and features the song 'Ohtaw Napepawees' which incorporates the Cree language. Eekwol holds an honours Bachelor of Arts, majoring in Indigenous Studies, from the First Nations University in Saskatchewan.

Joey Stylez (a.k.a Joey LaPlante) is a Cree emcee, originally from Moosomin First Nation, and raised in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.. As an independent artist, Stylez founded his own record label Stressed Street in 2004, releasing his first mixtapes. He also performed concert tour openers for 50 Cent and Snoop Dog (2004). Stylez's album release The Blackstar (2007) was honourably named after his grandmother whom, as Stylez describes, is "a traditional Plains Indian, she stood for the survival of First Nations people" He also describes "my whole message comes from my background - survive at all costs." His most recent release is his new single 'Kool Runnin.'

314 Ron Dean Harris (Ostwelve), is originally from the Sto:lo Territory of British Columbia (Fraser Valley). He grew up with grandparents until he was 13 and is currently based in Vancouver. His album Anti-Gravity Dinosaurs was released in 2008. Ostwelve/Osl2 is also an actor, appearing in the APTN/Showcase drama series "Moccasin Flats," as well as the feature film "Moccasin Flats: Redemption." Ron has travelled the world performing in international showcases such as the 'Nokia Jam' (2006), and the 'Global African Hip-hop Summit' in Johannesburg (2005). Ostwelve has also been an opener for internationally acclaimed hip-hop artists Snoop Dogg (2003) and Coolio (1999). Currently, he is the Editor in Chief of B.C's Indigenous youth publication RedWire magazine.

Numinous One (a.k.a Carrielynn Victor) is a Coast Salish/Scottish emcee belonging to the Cheam First Nation in Sto:lo Territory. She is both an independent emcee and also a co-owner alongside Theresa Seymour, of the Vancouver-based group 'Rapsure risin.' Together they write and perform music in and around British Columbia for conferences, workshops, fundraisers, community events, promotions and festivals. Rapsure Risin strives to raise awareness not only about issues concerning young Native women like themselves, but also about issues that affect families, communities and nations as a whole. Carrielynn's emcee name Numinous One was given to her by an elder and represents spiritual connection attained through creativity.

Rex Smallboy from Hobbema, Alberta is considered a trailblazer for inciting the emergence of hip-hop and rap music amongst First Nations people in Canada. Smallboy founded the group 'War Party' which he currently co-owns with fellow artist/emcee Cynthia Smallboy-Nicotine. 'War Party's' music video Feeling Reserved was the first Native rap video to be aired nationally on Much Music Canada. 'War Party's' debut album The Reign (1999) won the Canadian Aboriginal music award for Best Rap or Hip- hop Album in 2001. Their second release was 'The Greatest Natives from the North' (2003). Rex Smallboy performed in Japan for the 'Indigenous Language Conference' in Nagoya. War Party's latest release 'Resistance' features Chuck D from Public Enemy. Currently Smallboy is working on a new solo album due for release in fall 2010.

Quese Imc (a.k.a. Marcus Frejo LittleEagle) is a Pawnee/Seminole emcee, producer, and cultural activist. His artistic style mixes the modern substance of freestyling, hip-hop and funk with Native musical traditions. Quese Imc is the co-founder, alongside brother Brian Frejo (DJ Shock B), of "Culture Shock Camp," an Indigenous hip-hop group originally based in Oklahoma City. Quese is also a founding member of the National Native organization NVision, a youth mentorship program. Quese Imc is also a promotional spokesperson for the Native American Rights Fund. His most recent album is entitled Blue Light was released in 2008.

315 Theresa Seymour is from the Sto:lo Nation in British Columbia. Theresa is an independent and collaborative artist. She, alongside fellow emcee Carrielynn Victor, co- owns the Vancouver-based hip-hop duo "Rapsure Risin." Theresa is currently the host of "Vancity Vibez" a program on the award-winning B.C. radio station 102.7fm. She is featured on Setting Tha Precedence 2 (2009), a Native hip hop compilation produced by ThinkNDN.

Alida Kinnie Starr is an award-winning musician, poet, artist and actress. She was born and raised in Calgary, Alberta. Starr released her debut album entitled Tidy in 1996. She was also nominated for a Juno as the "best new artist" in 2003. In 2004 she sang and catwalked for Cirque Du Soleil's erotic cabaret 'Zumanity' in Las Vegas. Kinnie recently released her first book of poetry and photographs How I Learned to Run (2008), published by House of Parlance Media Inc. Kinnie Starr conducts hip-hop workshops in Native communities through such projects as the FourCornersproject (2007) engaging B.C. youth.

Wab Kinew is a musician, athlete, promoter, sundancer, and producer originally from Kenora, ON and raised with the traditions of the Lake of the Woods Anishinaabe. His debut album is entitled Live by the Drum (2009, Indie Ends Press,) and features the song "If this was Right." Kinew also produced the video for this song which aired in 2008. Kinew is currently the Winnipeg-based host of Canada Live on CBC radio. He graduated with a B.A. in Economics from the University of Manitoba.

Wabs Whitebird is a Cree/Mi'kmaq emcee, producer, community activist, and entrepreneur. Whitebird's most recent album entitled For the Love of Music (2009) was produced by Mr.Knia under the label Fluffy Records/CMP. Whitebird's other albums include Success is the Best Revenge, and Chief of the Concrete City. As a community activist and Entrepreneur, Wabs has been involved in youth programming at the Native Canadian Centre in Toronto, and intends to do more to revolutionize the urban Ogichidaa (warrior) through music to compel people to take action in their world(s).

316 APPENDIX C:

INTRODUCTORY TREATISE SOURCES

'We crow walked and we learned to fly." (Daybi, personal communication, July 28, 2007).

'Me and my sketchbook, break dancing on rooftops." (Ostwelve, For You I Ryde).

"We produce a movement that entices others to move with us." (Quese IMC, personal communication, August 4th, 2007).

'Multi-plexed universe." (Daybi, "The Deep End").

317