1 Jeremy Dutcher’s Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa

Music as a Vehicle for Revitalizing Indigenous Culture in Canada: Jeremy Dutcher’s Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa

Jeremy Dutcher

Jeremy Dutcher is a Two-Spirit Wolastoqi tenor, composer, ethnomusicologist, and activist from the Tobique Nation in New Brunswick, Canada. Dutcher currently resides in Montreal and continues to create works which celebrate Indigenous and queer identities; most recently, he released his sophomore album, Metowolonuwok, in 2024. Dutcher is also the only person to have won the Polaris Prize twice: first in 2018 for his album Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa, and then again in 2024 for Metowolonuwok[.footnote]“Jeremy Dutcher wins the 2024 Polaris Music Prize”, CBC Music, last updated 20 September 2024, accessed 20 December 2024, https://cbc.ca/music/events/polaris/jeremy-dutcher-polaris-music-prize-winner-2024-1.7326386 .[/footnote] Dutcher’s discography, music videos, and public appearances culminate to send a beautifully articulated message of Indigenous pride, intersectionality, and reclamation. Since Dutcher became active in the Canadian music scene, he has used his art as a platform to advocate for as well as to celebrate Indigenous culture.

Beginnings

“I was very lucky from a young age to be mentored and guided and shown the importance of song not as a form of entertainment but as a form of healing, and as a communal practice. That was kind of built into how I thought about music.”^[1] Growing up, Dutcher’s family and mentors ensured that he was connected to his culture, helping to shape his relationship to music. Passamaquoddy elder and song keeper Maggie Paul  is someone Dutcher often credits as one of his most impactful mentors, as Paul has shared many traditional Indigenous songs with the artist over the years.^[2] Notably, Maggie Paul broadened Dutcher’s musical perspective by pointing the artist towards the 110-year-old recordings that inspired his first album, Wolastoqiyik Lintukatanowa.^[3]

Dutcher’s mother, Lisa Perley-Dutcher was also instrumental in her son’s musical upbringing, ensuring he knew about his Wolastoqiyik heritage and the role music plays within their culture.  While the artist shares that “[he] didn’t grow up making classical music or studying an instrument”, Perley-Dutcher made music a consistent part of her children’s lives and often would play Indigenous music to ensure they felt that connection to their culture. “[My mother] really made sure that we knew our songs and our culture and our language… and really played us Indigenous music growing up, so it just became a fabric of my life,” said Dutcher in a 2020 interview regarding his mother’s efforts to educate himself and his brothers about their heritage.^[4] From a young age, the foregrounding of Indigenous perspectives and culture within Dutcher’s relationship to music helped ensure the artist’s perspective on music considered not only music’s capacity to amuse, but also its power to impact others.

Advocacy for Indigenous voices within Western Classical Music

While studying music and anthropology at Dalhousie University, Dutcher was confronted with a lack of Indigenous representation within Western art music. Describing his experience, Dutcher recalls, “some of my colleagues and friends had been singing in choirs and playing in orchestras since they were kids, so I had to find my way through that and see if there was any classical music that incorporated Indigenous Identity. I didn’t see too much of it out there at the time.”^[5]  The fact that Dutcher felt less represented than his peers who had more experience in choral and orchestral music – two forms of musical expression common within Western art music – is no accident. Art music’s foundation is exclusionary: its history is marked by both racism and sexism, and is also inextricably bound to the privileging of European perspectives. Writing about Indigenous voices within classical music, musicologist Alexa Woloshyn elucidates how music schools are complicit in the privileging of Western art music over diverse musics, explaining that “racialized, classist, and sexist foundations of Euro-American classical music and its place in Canadian society remain unmarked and unnamed…our music programs and institutions perpetuate these beliefs implicitly.”^[6] With the history of Western art music in mind, it is evident that Dutcher’s experience of facing a lack of representation is a direct reflection of how institutions in Canada – including universities – uphold European norms as standard, further maintaining the harmful rhetoric which positions European culture as standard and Indigenous culture as othered.

Faced with a lack of voices that reflected his community within Western art music, Dutcher set out to create art music from a uniquely Indigenous point of view through his first album, Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa.  “It’s about recognizing the gaps and then letting that inform your creativity to create something new”, the artist expressed in a 2018 interview in reference to creating space for Indigenous voices within Western art music.^[7] Dutcher would go on to create music that would not only fill the art music landscape with more Indigenous representation but that would also advocate for important causes such as Indigenous language reclamation, Indigenous cultural resurgence, and more.

“Psi-te npomawsuwinuwok, kiluwaw yut”: Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa

Dutcher’s debut album Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa features innovative re-imaginings of traditional Wolastoqey songs which incorporate elements of Western classical music, helping to fill the gaps of representation in the art music world. The album was the culmination of five years of work for Dutcher and exists largely as a testament to the artist’s community. In reference to his first album, Dutcher often states in interviews: “Psi-te npomawsuwinuwok, kiluwaw yut,” which in English, translates to “All my people, this is for you.”^[8] Through Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa, Dutcher created an acclaimed work which asserts the revitalization of the Wolastoqey language, advocates for the resurgence of Indigenous culture, and creates more space for Indigenous voices in art music.

Sound is so direct in touching people and reaching people.  That can be a catalyst, and it has been in our territory for language revitalization; bringing the dances back into our community and restoring the ways we’d traditionally gather in our communities. The center of this project is reclamation and resurgence.”^[9] Dutcher’s work on Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa conveys a powerful statement of sovereignty and resurgence for Indigenous populations.  His belief in music’s innate ability to spark positive change is clear, as he credits the medium’s role in inciting reclamation and resurgence within his community. Dutcher’s  use of music as a tool to advocate for change exists all throughout Wolastoqiyik Lintukonawa; by singing his own renditions of Wolastoqey songs to further raise awareness for the language, Dutcher advocates for a revitalization of Indigenous languages. Dutcher sonically reache back in history, using 110-year-old recordings to create art in present-day, asserting a space for Indigenous voices within today’s art music environment.

Inspiration

Dutcher came across the songs featured on Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa through the guidance of Passamaquoddy Edler Maggie Paul, who encouraged the artist to visit Canada’s National Archives in pursuit of further knowledge regarding his research.^[10] In the archives, Dutcher found a collection of over 100 Wolastoqey songs, all of which had been recorded onwax cylinder wax cylinders.^[11]  The recordings themselves were more than 100 years old at the time of Dutcher’s visit and contained the songs and stories of the Wolastoq people from all along the Wolastoq river and were obtained over the span of 7 years.^[12]  Dutcher explains the impact of coming across the recordings, stating: “When I first got to hear these voices, that work for me was a profoundly transformational moment in my life.”^[13] Dutcher was so moved by the recordings that they became the inspirational basis for his first album.

The information preserved on the wax cylinders is significant, as Dutcher recounts in an interview with the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts that all but one of the songs found on the wax cylinders were no longer sung.^[14] Understanding the importance of the recordings and the rarity of their content in present-day, Dutcher sought to make this information accessible to others within his community, stating: “As a young person I didn’t know about this collection and these songs. So, for me, I felt such a responsibility to go and share that with other young people.”^[15] Dutcher’s drive to share the songs he heard at the archives with others is largely what moved him to shape his first album around them.

Process

In order to remain faithful to the original recordings, Dutcher’s creation process for Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa was intricate, involving many hours of deep listening and transcription. How Dutcher let the original melodies shape his creative process can be heard all throughout Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa, as the artist interweaves pieces of the original 110-year-old recordings in with his re-imaginings of the songs.

YouTube

The process of recording and creating the album also required Dutcher to re-examine how he sang, letting go of some of the operatic technique he had been taught “to honour the way in which [the] recordings brought forward the voices of [his] ancestors, which was in a playful way, in a raw…breath-filled hearty way.”^[16] Through Dutcher’s musical talent and meticulous commitment to ensuring he conveyed the songs in a manner that felt true to their source materials, Dutcher ensured that the cultural information imbued within the original recordings would be carried over onto his album.

Making Space“I kind of struggle in [the Western Art Music] world too, of this operatic canon…The music might be nice, but sometimes the stories are rather misogynist or racist. They carry a lot of baggage with them. So, all the time, I’m trying to tell better stories. I was raised with these beautiful philosophies and this language and this understanding, so how do I bring that into this space?”^[17]

Dutcher openly interfaces with the dissonance of being an Indigenous voice within the study and performance of Western art music. Dutcher counters the racism and misogyny present in classical music through his advocacy for the inclusion of more diverse perspectives and ways of knowing to be incorporated into the artform. Through weaving elements of Western art music into Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa, Dutcher led by example, showcasing the capacity for more Indigenous voices to exist within art music.

While the album is based around traditional Wolastoq songs, it nonetheless holds clear evidence of art music as an influence. One of the most evident examples is a musical nod to a motif from Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring Dutcher includes on the song Essuwonike.

“Essuwonike” YouTube Audio Recording. Jeremy Dutcher, Secret City Records Inc.  ℗ 2018 CIHP Inc. under exclusive license to Secret City Records Inc. via YouTube ^[18]

Through interweaving his settings of Wolastoqey songs with elements of Western classical, Dutcher places Indigenous music and Western art music on a level playing field, refusing to be complicit in the unwarranted privileging of Western classical above diverse musics. In doing so, Dutcher does not denigrate art music; instead, he deftly articulates through his craft that both genres are capable of being revered as high forms of art.

“I wanted to create a world where our language and our music was elevated to the heights of the classical greats like Beethoven… if we can value ourselves just as much as they value themselves…wow. We would change the world.”^[19]

Advocacy for Indigenous Language and Cultural Revitalisation:
Together We Emerge

Dutcher advocates for language reclamation through Wolastoqiyik Lintwakonawa, using his work to ignite conversations surrounding Indigenous language revitalisation. The album is sung entirely in Wolastoqey, an endangered language with approximately 220 mother-tongue speakers as of 2024.^[20] Dutcher’s choice to spotlight the endangered language within his work was highly intentional. There’s lots of people singing music in English, but we don’t have a lot of singers in Wolastoqey. We critically need our resources for language learners and people that just want to turn on the radio and hear a culture. For me, that’s an exciting prospect to get to create at that intersection.^[21]

Through releasing an album in the Wolastoqey language, Dutcher has created a widely accessible cultural resource for individuals to connect to the language. The existence of more art in the Wolastoqey language means that there is more potential that individuals of Indigenous descent will feel incentivized to learn the language. Combatting the vital cultural losses that colonialism has inflicted, Dutcher’s Wolastoqiyik Lintwakonawa opens a door for individuals to either acquaint or re-familiarize themselves with the Wolastoqey language, through song.

In interviews, Dutcher expresses his desire to make others aware of how Canada has irradicated Indigenous language and culture, explaining that “it’s important for people to understand artistry and what’s actually happened and what continues to happen in this country. Around the systematic devaluing of Indigenous language and culture.”^[22] Dutcher’s call to action for others to understand the oppression of Canada’s Indigenous population remains relevant. Even today as the 94 Calls to Action attempt to further Truth and Reconciliation efforts for Indigenous communities,^[23], the efforts to promote and support Indigenous Language revitalisation which exist within said calls remain incomplete.^[24]  Faced with a lack of government support for Wolastoqey language revitalization,  Dutcher has used his art as a medium to highlight the language.

As Dutcher stated in an interview with Don Amero for the Podcast/ YouTube series Through the Fire, “[his] language did not just get up and walk away.”^[25] Indigenous languages – including Wolastoqey – were one of the many elements of Indigenous culture Residential Schools sought to erase in efforts to facilitate Indigenous assimilation into settler European culture. Government measures of forced assimilation such as Residential Schools resulted in many Indigenous people losing their connection to their cultures, evident through the lack of Wolastoqey speakers today. Dutcher describes his experience learning the Wolastoqey language as a process which deepened his connection to his culture and furthered his understanding of himself, sharing: “When I came to a better understanding of my language, Wolastoquyik, I started to understand my place in the world a little better and started to relate to the world around me a little differently.”^[26] Dutcher is forthright about how his own connection to his language has positively impacted him, and through Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa, invites others of his community to connect to the language.

Cultural Resurgence: Uniting Community Through Song

Language revitalization was not the sole motivation for Dutcher’s exclusive use of the Wolastoqey language on Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa, there was also a cultural incentive behind his work.  As Dutcher has explained, his goal was to create an album that spoke directly to the Wolastoq population: “I really wanted to ensure that it was all Wolastoqey for the first record that I put into the world, I wanted it to be…really directed to my people.”.^[27] By aiming his first album at an audience of Wolastoqey speakers and Indigenous Canadians, Dutcher cast a spotlight upon Indigenous Canada.

Through platforming traditional Wolastoqey songs on Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa, Dutcher helped connect Indigenous Canadians to their past.  In interviews, Dutcher shares anecdotes about visiting the East Coast (where the songs from the archives had originally been recorded) and experiencing individuals tell him that they knew a song from the record because a family member had sung it.^[28] Dutcher recalls, “one time somebody came up and was like, that’s my great-great grandfather on that recording that you’re playing!”^[29] Such examples illuminate the impact that Dutcher is making, and showcase the ability of Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa to connect individuals to both their culture and their collective past.

Out From Safekeeping: Advocating for Indigenous Renaissance & Rights

Oftentimes, Settler-Colonialism attempts to deny Indigenous culture a modernity, leading narratives to develop which deem Indigenous culture as an element of the past.^[30] Dutcher combats this rhetoric through interweaving the wax recordings which inspired Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa into many of the tracks on the album. “Putting the voice of the ancestor right up against my own in this sort of contemporary interpretation of these songs I think was a very intentional conversation…nothing ever died, and it never went anywhere, you know, it just went away for safe keeping for a little while and it’s all gonna come out now.”^[31] By making the deliberate choice to breathe new life into the wax cylinder recordings, Dutcher refutes narratives that deny Indigenous Culture a contemporary identity, asserting that the songs have a place in the here and now.

Dutcher confronts how Western colonialism often denies Indigenous culture a place in the present not only through his music, but also during his interviews. He expresses frustration with the projections and stories of antiquation that often cloud that public perception of Indigenous languages, stating in a 2019 interview, “even though a lot of narratives get applied to our languages, especially Wolastoqiyik, I don’t believe that to be true. They just go away for safekeeping.”^[32] Using music as a catalyst to assert Wolastoqey culture’s resurgence, Dutcher brought the Wolastoqey language out from its safekeeping in the archives on Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa, and returned to its people in a manner that asserts its capacity as a living language in present-day.

From Song to Speech: Advocacy as a Public Figure

Dutcher is no stranger to using his platform as an award-winning public figure to advocate for Indigenous Rights. Through the acclaim received by Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa, Dutcher has used his interviews and acceptance speeches as platforms to celebrate Indigenous culture, share the Wolastoqey language, and voice important issues pertaining to Indigenous rights in Canada.

Juno Acceptance Speech

 In 2019 when Dutcher won the Juno for best Indigenous artist or Group, the artist used the time provided as an opportunity to celebrate the Indigenous creators in the room, and to call attention to how the government was failing in the name of its relationship to the Indigenous population.

In his speech (which can be viewed on CBC Music’s YouTube channel), Dutcher calls for a celebration of his fellow Indigenous artists, asking them to stand, stating the collective importance of their work as they rose.^[33] Through Dutcher’s gesture, he emphasizes the importance of Indigenous artists being recognized, elevating them both in a figurative and literal sense. Dutcher also called attention to the Juno’s generalizing of Indigenous artists, stating that while he may have won the category for Best Indigenous Artist, Indigenous music “deserves to be considered outside of this [Indigenous album] category, because [Indigenous] music is not niche, [Indigenous] music is saying something”.^[34] By kicking off his speech with this gesture, Dutcher advocates for the celebration of Indigenous identity through the acknowledgement of his fellow nominees.

Dutcher then continued the speech by addressing the , Justin Trudeau. The artist addresses him directly stating: “Justin. A nation-to-nation relationship does not look like pipelines. And a nation-to-nation relationship does not look like sending a militarized police force into unceded territory.”^[35] Using his platform, Dutcher went on to identify several ways in which the Canadian government was mistreating the First-Nations communities during his speech, namely through the construction of pipelines on unceded territories^[36], and the disproportionately large use of police force present when dealing with Indigenous populations^[37]. Dutcher continued, calling attention to music’s role within the resurgence and reclamation of Indigenous identity. Dutcher stated that while reconciliation between Indigenous communities and Canada is a goal which will take a long time to come to fruition, they have hope that through various means – such as music- that goal can be attained^[38]. Sending home the message of resurgence of Indigenous culture, Dutcher ends the speech the same way they began it, in the Wolastoqey language.^[39]

Dutcher’s address to the crowd and press during the 2018 Juno awards marks a moment of Indigenous resistance and visibility within Canada’s culture. By addressing the crowd in the Wolastoqey without immediate translation, Dutcher interrupts a history of white settlers and scholars extracting indigenous knowledge and art while offering little in return.^[40] Through his address to the prime minister wherein they state their disapproval of how relations between Canada and it’s First-Nation population have been, Dutcher further platforms Indigenous people and culture through calling attention to the issues faced by said communities that might not receive that airtime elsewhere.

Indigenous Sovereignty

Dutcher asserts Indigenous sovereignty within his music through presenting lyrics in the Wolastoqey language on Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa without offering direct English translations. Through omitting non-Wolastoqey language speakers access to the cultural information, stories, and history embedded within Dutcher’s work, the artist does something author and scholar Dylan Robinson refers to as a refusal, or in other words: “[making a] corrective to the history of indigenous knowledge extraction, misrepresentation, and claiming of authority by settler scholars.”^[41] Robinson explains that by refusing those outside of Indigenous culture access to certain information as Dutcher has done, he is helping repair Canada’s long history of misrepresentation and extraction from Indigenous groups.

 Dutcher also advocates for Indigenous sovereignty through publicly addressing the necessity of repatriating Indigenous artifacts currently held in museums, archives, and other institutions. “It’s not just my nation’s archive and it’s not just songs. We’re talking about stories, and photographs, and material things…we are in a time now where that stuff is magic, and it needs to come out of those institutions.”^[42] Removing Indigenous artifacts from museums and returning them to the communities from which they were taken re-instates Indigenous communities’ control over things which were always theirs but were extracted. In an interview with Emily Robinson, Dutcher describes the difficult emotions associated with seeing artifacts in museums and similar institutions estranged from the communities are a part of, sharing that “we see those objects or items as our relatives. So, to see them in a kind of carceral space where they’re not able to be handled or cared for in our traditional way is upsetting.”^[43] Or, as Dutcher put it in an interview with Don Amero: “Museums create barriers.”^[44]