By Sean Coombs
Expo Reporter
OSAKA, Japan — Performing at Expo during Indigenous Week, the Juno-award-winning group Digging Roots punctuated their music with spoken messages translated into Japanese about the injustices caused by residential schools and climate change.
In a star-studded week of performances organized by the Canada Pavilion, Digging Roots was one of the bands that came to embody the Indigenous representation and activism driving Indigenous Week across Expo.
Digging Roots had performances at prominent stages across the Expo site. The band, made up of ShoShona Kish, Raven Kanatakta, and their son Skye Polson used their platform to belt out ballads from their latest albums that spread awareness of the ongoing injustices facing Indigenous peoples.
For ShoShona Kish, songs like the ones from their latest album Zhawenim hold a deep personal significance as her family members were survivors of the residential school system.
Throughout Digging Roots’ performances, Kish would take time during intermissions and between songs to educate the Japanese audience about the colonial crimes committed against the Indigenous peoples of Canada.
During her performance on Friday for instance, she told the audience through an interpreter about how the residential school system worked and how it impacted the songs she sang.
“It’s important for us to talk about the hard things,”
— Digging Roots band member ShoShona Kish
Echoing the lyrics of the band’s song ‘AK47,’ Kish passionately told the audience “I wish I could load love into a gun, peace into a gun, hope into a gun, and fire at everyone.”
After the Friday show, Kish said in an interview that spreading activism through her singing at the Expo had been a fun and memorable experience.
“When we stand in truth and we tell our stories, magic happens,” she said. “I really believe in the magic of stories, because stories are a way of accounting who we have been and who we are right now.”
Kish said she hopes Japanese audience members are motivated by the performances to take action against the injustices facing the Indigenous peoples of Japan, like the Ainu who performed at the earlier Confluence event.
“It’s important for us to talk about the hard things,” she said. “Hopefully, that can be a catalyst to ensuring when we know and when we’re aware, we can ensure that these things don’t happen again.”
The week of Indigenous celebration featured famed members of the Indigenous community from coast to coast to coast, many of whom participated in the Canada Pavilion’s Confluence showcase event.
In addition to Digging Roots, some of the famed performers included Métis guitarist Amanda Rheaume, Inuit singer-songwriter Elisapie, and Neqotkuk singer-songwriter Jeremy Dutcher.
Apart from the performances, important discussions were hosted at the Canada Pavilion featuring the performers and Indigenous guests from other pavilions.
One such talk was a roundtable event about protecting Indigenous intellectual property rights featuring Jeremy Dutcher and National Art Centre artistic director Kevin Loring.
After the talk, Loring said in an interview that Indigenous intellectual property rights are an important issue that needs to be raised with industry groups.
“What we’re saying is: Nothing about us without us,” he said. “You can’t just come in and take our cultural items, our iconography, our languages, our songs, and profit off of it without involving us or even at all.”
Loring said the Indigenous artwork, performances, and history at the centre of the Canada Pavilion’s design and programming are an example of Indigenous intellectual property being used appropriately.
“If you’re going to talk about Canada, you can’t not talk about the Indigenous peoples,” he said. “I think it’s a vital aspect of anything that Canada does.”
As a major organizer behind all the Indigenous performances at the pavilion and at Confluence, Loring said that his role involved much cultural exchange with other Indigenous cultures.
“Expo and places like it can be a quite formal series of events, but to have those series of informal meetings and greetings is really quite wonderful,” he said.