I grew up in a small, indigenous community called Buffalo Lake Métis Settlement https://buffalolakems.ca/, located about 2.5 hours northeast of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. The population is about 1,200 people. It’s a beautiful, remote land, full of lush woods, peaceful lakes, and wildlife. It was a great place to grow up. Everyone knows everyone, and everyone knows who your family is. I grew up listening to classic Country and Cree Gospel, always playing in my living room and in my dad’s Chevy everywhere we went. I was raised by my grandparents on my mother's side from 2 months old, so I call grandma and grandpa “mom and dad”. 

All the kids of the community went to a school in a nearby hamlet called Caslan. Caslan School was small, with maybe 100 kids from kindergarten to grade 9. The school experienced sporadic attendance and low morale due to some of the hardships that plagued our community. The children of a community will tell a story of the state of the environment. We needed to belong to something. We needed purpose, and to be connected to our culture. We had no outlet for our pain. 

At 11 years old, I got my hands on a guitar and wrote some poems which I made into songs. I remember bringing my sheets of handwritten lyrics onto my 2-hour bus ride to sing my songs to an older high-school girl who loved hearing me sing. She encouraged me to keep writing and to use my voice. I still think about her to this day, grateful for her kindness. My older brother introduced me to hip-hop and rap while we cooked spaghetti before Mom and Dad came home from their work days, and I fell in love with pop-punk and rock music through late-night Much Music & MTV (back when they were actually about music). I hated school, kids were mean and I felt like learning was difficult for me. If I could, I would just stay home, listen to music and play my Gameboy. 

In fall of 2003, the school division implemented a program called ArtSmarts. Each month or so, the school brought in a variety of artists to teach the kids different types of art. Musicians, dancers, actors, filmmakers, muralists, potters - pretty much every kind of artist you can think of. They also brought in Gerald White, from a neighboring Métis Settlement, and Gilbert Anderson, from Edmonton to teach the kids traditional Métis dance and how to play the fiddle. At the time, I didn’t know the life-changing impact these two individuals would have on my life as a young indigenous person.

My first fiddle lesson was a Monday. I remember it vividly. It was in a millisecond that my world turned from the greyest of grays to 4K color. Gilbert, who we called “Mooshum” (meaning Grandfather in Cree) placed a ¾ size fiddle on my shoulder and put a bow in my right hand. One of 6 or so in the group, I felt so awkward and nervous. It was an excited type of nerves, like getting behind the wheel of a car for the first time. We trudged through a squeaky Twinkle Twinkle Little Star for what felt like weeks. I brought my fiddle home to practice every night, excited to show my parents what I learned. Bless them and their strength to smile and clap after their ears were assaulted by the squeaking.

Within a month, I started to become excited to go to school. School became fun. My friends and I had something to look forward to. I wondered what tune I was going to learn next. I remember Mooshum having to replace the White-Out lines painted on my fingerboard that indicated where the notes are. They wore off and turned into a weird, gray goo that stuck to my fingers. He smiled while he painted, telling me that it was a good thing. One day, they just disappeared and I didn’t need them anymore. We called them “training wheels”. There was a palpable energy shift in the halls. We were smiling, laughing, and getting good grades. Student art and murals covered every wall of the school, traditional music echoed from every other room, and a sense of belonging was born.

Next to my fiddle lessons, my favorite part of my week was dance class. Gerald taught us how to jig, and walked us through learning square-dancing, the Duck Dance, the Drops of Brandy, and of course, the Red River Jig. One of the classrooms had all the furniture removed and was made into the dance room. I bet the floors are still worn down to this day. Some kids got really good quickly and learned more advanced steps. They would later make up the first members of the Buffalo Lake Reelers, an official performing and traveling square dance group that went on to compete in high-caliber competitions in other provinces and perform all across Alberta. Some of them are still dancing professionally today. If one of you is reading this - I’m proud of you. Keep going.

Not only did my love for music take root in this time, this was also when the acting bug bit me. I can’t remember the name of the actor that came in for a residency, but the week that we made a little short film was one of my favourites. I played a girl getting kidnapped (I know, pretty grim concept for kids to come up with) and I cringed a bit while we watched the scenes back after editing. There was a particular close-up on my face while being grabbed that was at the time hilarious, but the teacher said, “notice how the close-up shot captures the believable emotion on her face. You’ll see this all the time when you watch movies and TV.” From that point on, I watched movies and TV differently. I dreamed of being in movies and traveling the world. I annoyed my friends when I pointed out a cool shot or an impressive stunt. “Just watch the movie, D.” they said in unison.

In 2004, with a year or so of fiddling under my belt, I started taking one-on-one lessons while traveling around performing with the dance group. My mom started getting phone calls from organizations wanting to invite me out to their events to play my fiddle. She quickly took on the role of managing me and my dad would drive me everywhere I needed to go. I’d sit in the back seat, playing my fiddle along to Hank Williams and Charlie Pride. I still remember the smell of my dad’s handmade, beaded leather coat while I practiced. My weekends were no longer spent playing video games in my Hello Kitty pajamas, they were now stacked from Friday to Sunday playing at Old-Time dances, talent shows, and jamborees all over northern Alberta. I started making money, and that was an awesome feeling knowing I could save up to buy the newest Harry Potter book as soon as it came out. My first big purchase was my first 4/4 size fiddle, painted a fiery red.

When I started high school, I knew what I was going to do with my life. I tuned out when teachers and adults started talking about “careers” and “jobs”. I didn’t have anything against it, I just had my thing already figured out. People laughed when I said I was going to be a professional musician. “What can you do with that? How will you afford to live?” This was the first time someone challenged me about what I was doing. I still had Gerald and Mooshum’s voices in my head and theirs were louder. I got a call when I was 15 to fly out to Ottawa, ON to perform for the International Polar Year Launch at the Museum of Civilization. I missed a week of school for it. My mom, Mooshum and I flew out and were treated to a 4-star dinner, hotel accommodations that intimidated the hell out of me, and the most nerve wracking 10 minute set of my life. On Monday, girls at school would stop me in the halls to excitedly tell me they saw me on TV the night before. 

I recorded my first fiddle album when I was 16, funded completely by performing. My mom and dad drove me to Edmonton every weekend while still gigging at night. I was also teaching fiddle part time through the Native Friendship Centre in Lac La Biche. I was busy and I loved every second of it. I started playing with local Country bands and learning more from seasoned fiddle players about how to play backup and make people want to dance. I was on the radio, in newspapers, and people regularly approached me already knowing who I was (the girl with the red fiddle).

My high school experience was different from my friends’. They were going out to parties, joining sports teams, and figuring out what to do after graduation. While I did go out to parties and socialize, my entire senior year was dedicated to ensuring that I got accepted into the music program at Grant MacEwan University in Edmonton. I had a problem, though. I could fill a dance floor but I couldn’t read music. A mentor found me a music tutor to teach me music theory and how to read it in exchange for fiddle lessons for her niece. It took me two tries, but I got accepted into the program. I was ecstatic.

In August of 2010, 2 months after grad, I started packing up my belongings to move to Edmonton. I was shaking like a leaf. This was my dream but I had never been away from my family or on my own before. I stuffed everything I owned into my 2009 Dodge Avenger and headed out to the city. I had never even driven in the city before. My nerves went away when I realized that I could get fries at the drive-thru at 2am. I settled into my tiny, 1-bedroom apartment a block away from the MacEwan arts campus (now known as the Orange Hub). My long-haired, bearded neighbour Rob, blared the Eagles so loud that it shook my walls. I had a box of clothes, $500, no furniture, a suitcase full of CDs, and my fiddle. But I had never felt more alive.