By Poppy Philbrook
Expo Reporter
OSAKA, Japan – Plains Cree artist Joel Wood says he hopes audience members who heard him perform during a week-long gig here at Expo 2025 came away with the feeling of having experienced something powerful.
“We want them to feel like they’ve experienced and were a part of something sacred and alive,” Wood said in an interview with his partner in both life and music – Tonia Jo Hall – just before the last performance of their Expo run.
Part of this power comes from Wood’s use of the Cree language throughout his discography.
“This style of music never arrived by boat. These instruments that we use, the drum, the flute, the rattle, they originated right here on the land, and so did our language,” Wood said.
Wood and Hall took to the Expo 2025 stage for a week of sharing traditional songs, dances, and prayers with Expo attendees across the event site. The pair’s time at Expo culminated on National Indigenous Peoples Day, June 21, marking the start of Celebrate Canada Week here at the Canada Pavilion.
“Us being able to come here to the Expo, I truly believe that because of our praying together and our spirituality and our culture, it brought us here,” Hall said during the joint interview with Wood.
Wood got his start in music as a youth in Maskwacîs, Alberta, growing up the son of Steve Wood, co-founder of Northern Cree, a world-renowned drum and singing group.
“Singing has always been a really good outlet for me. It’s been a healing tool as well,” Wood said.
It wasn’t until the 2020 lockdown and COVID-19 pandemic, however, that Wood began sharing his craft with the public, a change he attributes entirely to Hall.
“During the pandemic, we were all at home. We didn’t have anything to do, couldn’t go anywhere. My wife, she’d be on social media just visiting her followers, and I’d be sitting off camera with her. It started to get to ‘Hey, would you mind singing a song?’ And I’m like, ‘I’ve never sung in front of anybody before by myself,’ Wood said, smiling as the memories came back.
Although getting over stage fright was a hurdle for Wood, the appreciative comments that came in during his time on screen pushed him to keep going.
“This style of music never arrived by boat. These instruments that we use, the drum, the flute, the rattle, they originated right here on the land, and so did our language.”
Cree artist Joel Wood
“It eventually evolved into something that my wife created for us. We called it ‘Coffee and Stories with Auntie’ and ‘Singalong and Smudge with Uncle.’ We would have coffee. We would sing songs, tell stories,” Wood said.
Soon enough, viewers began asking where they could listen to Hall and Wood’s singing outside of the livestream setting.
Wood released his debut album, Singing Is Healing, in December 2020, which saw him achieve his first Juno Award nomination for Traditional Indigenous Artist of the Year in 2022. Wood has since gone on to win a Juno Award last year, 2024, in the same category for his 2023 album, Sing. Pray. Love.
Hall, whose voice is heavily featured throughout Wood’s works, says Sing. Pray. Love. embodies what the couple hopes audiences take away from their time on stage.
“Our hope is always that there is someone in the crowd who might be going through a hard time, or maybe they’re just feeling gratitude for our singing–we want to give them the good medicine that we’re receiving too, from singing,” Hall said.
Wood wants to make sure that speaking Cree is a source of immense pride, healing, and strength for the next generation of Cree musicians and youth at large.
“I want to include my language in my songs because I want to show the younger people that it’s cool. It’s cool to be who you are. It’s cool to say if you grew up on the rez,” he said.
“Our languages have medicine in them. Not only my tribe, but my wife’s tribe too. She comes from the Lakota, Dakota, and Hidatsa people, and they have their own language. It’s just as beautiful, just as powerful,” Wood continued.
Although a language barrier is inevitable for all non-Japanese-speaking artists while performing in Japan, Hall and Wood’s impact on viewers is undeniable, and Hall knows it.
“The energy don’t lie, right?” Hall smiled, noting that the proof is in the audience reaction.
“They say singing is the universal love language for everyone. And as long as they’re coming up with a smile or some kind of good feeling that we can recognize, our job is done. We’re on the right track,” she added, referring to the opportunities viewers had to meet the couple after their time on stage.
In the crowd during their scorching June 18 performance was Osaka resident and Expo attendee, Teruto Sato.
“I felt happy while watching them,” Sato said, cooling herself down with a hand fan.
“Their dances, I have a few problems in my body, but I was feeling better afterwards,” she continued. Her husband, Masanobu Sato, agreed, saying he felt energized following Hall and Wood’s time on stage despite the day’s suffocating heat.
But Hall reminds audiences that what was shared with Expo attendees – from compositions written by Wood on traditional Cree instruments like the drum and flute, to the story of the jingle dress worn by Hall, and the Grass Dance Wood demonstrated – aren’t solely done as performance.
“We don’t just do this as a performance,” Hall said.
“We do this in our home, with our family, our kids, and in private with our cultural ceremonies,” she continued, sharing the same sentiment as Wood on the songs and dances they share being a tool for connection and healing.
Joel Wood hopes that through his work, songs, prayers, and dance, the next generation of Cree and Indigenous youth will take pride in their identities as he has, finding power and healing in self-expression along the way.
“If you believe in who you are, where you come from, your identity, your language, it’ll take you to places that you’ve never even dreamed of,” Wood said, reciting an iconic quote of his father’s, as a testament to the drive that put Hall and Wood in Osaka.
