Indigenous Opera: Reclamations in Storytelling

We are joined by writer T’set kwei Vera Starbard and musician Shaaḵindustóow Ed Littlefield to discuss their path to becoming an Emmy-nominated writer, playwright, editor, professional percussionist, educator, and composer. They also talk about their experiences as the librettist, translator, and composer of an upcoming Lingít opera about Sheetkʼá (Sitka) and battles for land rights and safety that took place in the early 1800s. This episode includes short clips of the opera, which will premiere on stages within the next couple of years. They also discuss their daily creative lives and advice for aspiring Creative Natives. Check out Vera Starbard at https://verastarbard.com and Ed Littlefield at https://edlittlefield.com Songs from the upcoming opera courtesy of Sealaska Heritage Institute.

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, hey, hey, bay.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Up the.

Speaker 3 (00:25):
Side, ray, I don't bust money.

Speaker 1 (00:33):
Let's study.

Speaker 3 (00:38):
Hey it's Funciday like a B Bundy.

Speaker 1 (00:50):
Let's nothing.

Speaker 3 (00:55):
Study Hey.

Speaker 1 (01:02):
Pay to b.

Speaker 3 (01:14):
B busy way of Fay boost by fast pasqual.

Speaker 1 (01:31):
The yata the way, the.

Speaker 3 (01:42):
Fast classicuel a.

Speaker 4 (01:59):
He They tried to colonizzes, try to genocide.

Speaker 5 (02:19):
Yet we're still here with the tongue on broke and
just to cut you on Ti yagi, just to cut
at ling flingit christi at Chi tin a k. Welcome

(02:42):
to the tongue unbroken, folks. I'm so glad that we
are together. One time, Norah mark Stenhauer, she told me
you could tell the entire history of Lingett people through
our songs. And from a long time ago, we've had
incredible storytellers who've been among us, who have kept stories

(03:03):
going without needing to ever write anything down, which is amazing.
There was this one speaker who told me I could
tell you a story that takes ten days to tell,
and I was blown away. But now we have taken
our storytelling and our songwriting into all kinds of different directions,
all kinds of different media. And I'm so happy today

(03:23):
to have two of my close friends and people I
just admire so much, even though they tease me maybe
a little too much sometimes, But Vera Badard and Ed
Littlefielder here and they are wonderful people who are involved
in storytelling music. And we got a project that we're
going to talk about in a little bit that we've

(03:44):
been working on. It's very sneaky and secretive, and I
think it's gonna be amazing, although I should be careful
because we're the ones working on it. But I was
just blown away by the collaboration of everybody and how
these visions have come to be in terms of the
visual representation, the song, the audio, the singing. It's just incredible.

(04:05):
So I'm excited about this episode and I want to
hear from you folks. Cad you tell the people who
you are and what kinds of creative things you do.

Speaker 1 (04:17):
Yes, good LUs geeesh.

Speaker 6 (04:20):
I so appreciate you having us both here. Vera Starboard,
Riah Badard do a sack. As Cluna mentioned, my married
name is Vera Bdard, my professional name is Vera Starboard.
My clinging name is t Quay. I'm trying for as
many as I can in true clanket fashion. I am

(04:41):
Clinkett and Danina from the Flunati clan. I was born
in Craig, but I actually grew up all over Alaska.
My dad is an Alaska State trooper, so we would
spend one year here, one year or there. Sort of
a Alaska version of a military brat, so I got
to see a lot of Alaska that way. I am
an editor, a playwright, a librettist, now an opera writer.

(05:07):
I am a TV writer, journalism. I'll do it all
anything to do with writing. I'm always excited to try
something new. I am right now sort of all of
those things at once. What I'm just a professional writer
is usually what I'll tell people.

Speaker 2 (05:23):
Cheese and ed cheese, shadaswantiti shea kwandak nohratsity.

Speaker 7 (05:34):
My name is shakindus to and Ed Littlefield. I was
born and raised in Sheetka, Sitka, and I grew up
being brought to the Sitka Native Education Program classes for years,
and I was lucky enough to have great teachers such
as at Charlie Joseph and Dostia Ethel McKinnon helped me

(05:58):
connect with Thinet culture in two different ways. So one
thing that I guess different or special or exciting depending
on how you think about it. Is that I got
two kind of worlds is what I talk about, you know,
two ways of learning brought into me. So there's a
picture of me, my mom carrying me when I'm like

(06:18):
five months old in a basket. So I had that
when I started, you know, just really connected with the
culture and going to kuik and ceremonies. And then when
I was six, I actually or five, I actually waltzed
into the Search Medical There was a little like open
space over in Cinca on the island, and I walked

(06:40):
into about twenty five people kids my age playing violin,
and I went, what the heck is that thing? Like
I had no idea what that was. And I begged
my mom. I said, I want to try that. I
want to do that, and she said no. So my
brothers had already started that, and they kind of, you know,

(07:00):
just stopped and she said, ask me in A year
and a year later, when I was six, I started
playing taking lessons on the violin, and that kind of
created not necessarily a divide, but a you know a
separation of these two kind of worlds that I'm living in.
So I'm still studying with Dostia at the SNEP program

(07:22):
sid Canada Education Program. But I'm also doing this way
different Western music, which I didn't think they would ever combine.
So I started playing violin. I still play the violin.
I picked up percussion in fifth grade. Then I went
to college for music and an interesting thing happened in
college where I kind of for about two years or so,

(07:46):
I said I want to do this. I want to
do jazz drumming. And there was no connection between culture
and how I grew up and what I did. And
it's kind of an interesting thing to think about how
I could separate myself like that for years, for two
years because I wanted to do something else. And then
a friend of mine said, why don't you do a

(08:06):
jazz lingott song? And I was like, what, No, no, never,
that's not ever going to work. But after having a
dream about the hook song and where I was playing
drum set and singing the melody to the hook song
in that dream, I woke up. I wrote an arrangement
in about a day and a half, and so that

(08:27):
started me on my journey where I'm at right now,
which is playing music professionally around the country, around the world.
Composing and teaching students about contemporary ling ittt art and
different ways of kind of different ways of doing the
same thing that we used to but bringing it into
a contemporary way.

Speaker 2 (08:45):
Good is cheese.

Speaker 5 (08:46):
And it's so wonderful to engage in the stuff that
both of you create, Like I really love the things
that you write, I love your plays, I love the
shows that you write, I love your music. And then
to just sort of think about this path that sort
of got you here, which had shared a little bit.
And so when I was younger, we didn't have We

(09:08):
had a rough go So alcohol was a very powerful
thing in my family, so we're drugs. My parents did
the best that they can, and I love them, but
we had a pretty rough environment growing up. And so
for me, creativity was a way to escape from some
of that stuff, whether it was music or writing or artwork,
and so I found I would dive into those things
to kind of get away from the world sometimes. And

(09:31):
then I started to connect with other people who were creative,
and luckily I had gotten into a college in Minnesota,
and then I decided, maybe I'll wait a year and
just be free and just do whatever. And I have
an anti Julie Kitka, who gave me a plane ticket
and said, go get out here. And I'm really glad
that she did. But I went into college as a

(09:52):
math and science major, and luckily I had a terrible
I don't know if it was lucky, but I had
a terrible advisor at college who said, Okay, we've taken
math up to this level, but this is college, so
you have to start at the beginning. So he rolled
me back like four years in mathematics and that has
taken stuff. And I thought, I can't do all of
this again. I'm gonna end up nowhere. And I saw

(10:12):
someone else walking along with giant books of math and
back was very hunched, and I thought, I don't think
that's really for me. And I took a creative writing
class and I just really loved it. And then I
went up to the University of Minnesota, took more creative
writing classes, started learning about indigenous musicians and started thinking
maybe I could do that. We formed. I had some friends.

(10:32):
We formed a little rock band called aim Baby. We
played I think three shows. It was so fun. But
then I came up here and then I started meeting
other people who were very creative and just thinking about
the steps that it takes to sort of develop your
own ability as an artist, to develop your confidence to
put stuff out there and vera. I'd love to hear
a little bit more about your journey and how you

(10:55):
got to where you are, because you're on some big
stages and it's really amazing.

Speaker 6 (11:00):
It's interesting to me here your your college journey, because
that actually surprises me that you that you even took
a year off in contrast to your math. In your
math journey. One of my very first classes freshman year
was biology one hundred, not even one on one, Like
I looked up the absolute minimum math and science requirements
I had to go to be in English. I was
actually deciding between like education and English journalism and he

(11:24):
kept the professor comes in and he's like, welcome to
dummy biology, and I was so offended. But then he
starts going, so everyone in here, I'm guessing English major journalist.
We got some media people in here, Yeah, this is
this is all you'll need to know to get through
the next year of your life. And then you're done.
And I was like, Okay, well maybe that's true. It's dummyology.

(11:49):
So science was not my route and that's that's all.

Speaker 2 (11:52):
No.

Speaker 6 (11:52):
I think in some ways my journey it is when
people sort of ask, like, when did you first know
you wanted to be a writer, When did you get
into in writing? It's kind of boring because it's literally
since I could read and write four or five years old.
In kindergarten, I was telling people I wanted to be
a writer when I grew up. I actually was telling
people I want to be a poet when I grew up,
And like, God, bless my parents for not telling me,

(12:14):
you know, that's that's never gonna make you a living.
They just encouraged it, gave me some you know, pens
and papers and lots and lots of books, and all
through elementary, middle school, high school, I not only knew
I wanted to be a writer, but I one actively wrote.
I wrote just a lot, I think, similar to your story.

(12:35):
Arts in school were my sort of routes out of
abuse situations, childhood, sexual abuse, just trauma in general. And
I always went straight for that, and in high school
got into journalism. Freshman year, I was you know, sort
of deciding. It wasn't deciding whether I wanted to be
a writer. In college, it was I had at that

(12:57):
point researched enough that I knew it would be very,
very tough. Even New York best selling authors are rarely
just writing. Almost all of them have the sort of
day job and the writing is the side job. So
I kind of knew I needed to choose something to
do while I was going to create a career as

(13:17):
a writer. So it was very strategic. I think the
arts is very dinged for being sort of this flufy,
like I don't know what I'll do, so maybe I'll
try this, but had an incredibly strategic sort of route
to becoming a professional writer, where now I am paid
to write and it's a dream come true. It's also

(13:38):
very hard. I creative writing was still quite a ways
off as far as people paying you to do. That's
the that's sort of sort of the highest bar is
like no one really will just like give you a
job and creative writing right off the bat right like
you have to prove yourself. So I did journalism for
quite a while, and even those are more often my
side jobs. I wasn't a professional full time journal until

(14:01):
oh gosh, ten fifteen years later. Meanwhile, one of the
best pieces of advice I had in high school. I
was following which I had asked this journalist of the
anchorsch Daily News at the time.

Speaker 7 (14:12):
Like what should I do? What should I go to
school for?

Speaker 6 (14:15):
You know, like if this is what I want to do,
like what should I take classes in? And he goes,
you know what, you just need to know everything about everything,
and it was such a well that sucks, that's not
good adviceor that's not possible. But I actually understand what
he means now and it's not so much that I

(14:35):
know everything about everything, but just you have to be curious.
If you are interested in this thing, go learn everything
about it. And so many of the sort of like
side quests in my life became tools, became resources, became
huge parts of my life. So for instance, I was
a head start teacher and a nanny for quite a

(14:57):
few years. And how does that relate to writing the time?

Speaker 7 (15:00):
That's not what I was thinking.

Speaker 6 (15:01):
I was thinking of, you know, paying rent, but then
working and writing for Malli of Denali, which is on
PBS kids, and they use you know, these really intense
actually sometimes learning requirements and educational requirements for it, and
you do you need to understand how to write for children.
That all came in handy really like all of that.

(15:22):
Getting my child development associates was absolutely worth it in
my writing career, and not just for mally, for several
other things. So in some ways it was roundabout. I
sort of like went through all of these other jobs.
Public relations was massively, massively useful. I did that for
eight years and it was hugely useful for what I

(15:42):
do now. It was all these roundabout ways. And then
finally the start of my being paid to just be
a creative writer was I saw an ad on Facebook
for the Alaskan Aadi Playwright Project, which is they were
just going to give you a year. You were required
to write a play, a full length play during that time,
and you'd have a mentor. And at the time I

(16:02):
just finished my book, I wrote a novel and I
wasn't really happy with the dialogue. And so this is
very me. This is like the very nerd part of
me of like, oh, I know, I'll go into a
year long thing of learning how to write a play
just so I can do better dialogue, so my book
can be better. And that was all I really wanted
to do with that. I had no interest actually in
theater like I thought, it was very much for extroverted

(16:25):
people who liked being on stage, and for the most part, honestly,
it is, but not the playwright. And so I went
into that.

Speaker 7 (16:32):
I met my.

Speaker 6 (16:34):
Mentor, Larisa fast Horse, and met quite a few other
amazing professional playwrights and actors, and I for some reason
chose to write about my childhood sexual abuse as my
first run at the Gate, and boy that I ended
up having to sort of live in that for the
next couple of years. That choice, I go what was

(16:56):
I thinking? It was a rough year, but it was
also incredibly trans formative. At the end of that year,
I had decided, actually in that first there was a
ten day intensive to start that year off. In that
ten day intensive, I decided I was going to be
quitting my job and just pursuing it full time, like
it was time I was ready. So I sort of
premiered my little workshopped play, and that's all I ever

(17:18):
thought I was going to do with it. And I
knew I was quitting about a month later to pursue
just writing full time, but I didn't think anything was
coming of the play. The play sort of took off.
It went to La for a workshop at Native Voices,
It went to New York for a reading, It went
to Here to Do, and while I had never thought
it would come of anything, I was hooked. I was

(17:40):
hooked at just the workshop process about how these directors
and actors and costume and music they made my story
so much better. Like it was just so much better
and I loved it. I was just like I thought,
collaboration because theater, TV movies, they're incredibly collaborative. You have
to be collaborative. I thought I would hate it because

(18:02):
it's like, this is my story and you want to
protect it. But when you work with really great people,
oh my gosh, they can just make that little story
you thought was something and make it so much more
than what you ever thought it could be. And that's
what hooked me really, was all of these other people
that were also loving to tell stories and experts in
their own thing. So that was sort of the beginning

(18:24):
of the end. Like my playwriting, when Mallivdnali was looking
for Alaska Native TV writers, they found out that wasn't
really something that existed, but because I'd written plays, they
you know, asked me to come and write that first season.
Malliv Denali led to other animation work, which led to
TV work like I should say live action TV work

(18:48):
like ABC Prime Time. It also led into the opera.
We started trying these new things. So that's my very
roundabout way of I've always wanted to do this, and
yet it's been such a long journey to get to
this point. And honestly, even though I knew I wanted
to be a writer, I never thought i'd be this
like this. This wasn't the dream because I never knew

(19:10):
this could be a dream. I never knew a native
writer could write for TV. I never knew a native
writer could write for animation. I certainly never knew a
native writer could write an opera. That wasn't the dream,
because that wasn't what I thought was attainable. So it's
it's pretty exciting, and I kind of love doing what I.

Speaker 5 (19:28):
Do Kaka Kuzzi, and you're very good at it. So
when Mali off Danelle was nominated for an Emmy Award,
it was for an episode that you wrote about Elizabeth
Paratovitch some people say Piatrovic. And it was a fabulous
episode and it was incredibly well done and it was

(19:49):
a shining example of Malli of Danelle. So for clarity,
I decide I wanted to take a year off when
I was eighteen years old that had no idea what
I was doing. And my anti Julie k has said, no,
that's a bad idea. Here's a plane ticket, go to school.
And I'm so thankful because I don't think I really
would have gone. I would have just made a bunch
of bad decisions. And getting into a new environment was

(20:12):
very helpful. And I thought about going the path of
journalism as well, but luckily, like luckily, there was more
bad luck. And so I had an intro to journalism
class and there were two things that really bothered me.
Thing number one was the teacher would say, Okay, go
read chapter one. I would go reach chapter one, and
I'd come to class and she would open the book
and say, okay, chapter one and she would read us

(20:33):
chapter one, and I thought, no, is this a bit?
Is this is this a joke? And then I think
they said, if you're famous, your life belongs to the public.
And I just didn't like those two things. And so
thinking about your path on how you became a professional
musician at like to get to not just hone your

(20:53):
own abilities because you're a drummer, Like you're like an
amazing drummer, and drumming takes you got to move like
all four limbs at this same time. It never works
for me. I have these I was like, it's going
to sound like this, and then all of a sudden,
it's just like it's very bad. It sounds like there's
four toddlers who are playing their own jams, and so

(21:13):
I'm so oppressed with what you can do and how
did you both work on your craft and then turn
into this as a living.

Speaker 7 (21:20):
Yeah, sometimes I sound like four toddlers too, So it's
all good, that's totally fine. I love the word that
Vera said about collaboration. I think that is something that
we always have to keep in mind as artists, is
that most of the time, it's not just us, you know,
doing our thing. It's the connections you make with other musicians,

(21:44):
specifically the collaborations you make during a show. Like you
meet somebody backstage and you go, hey, you want to play,
and that turns into it yet another project, and then
all of a sudden, you got five or six projects
going just because you played a show with them. Once
you know years ago, So yeah, I think collaboration with

(22:04):
the Cogwantan clan of Sitka was my first kind of
delving into that little challenge. And I remember I wrote
I did write a choir piece, so two different choir pieces.
One was in ninety seven for the ninety seven I think,
for the Amba Ands Convention in Sitka, and it took

(22:25):
me about two months to get permission just to write
the arrangement from my own clan. So you know, we're
talking twenty five plus years ago now, and so that
took a really long time to get that. Once we
got it, they said, oh, yeah, you have to burn
the copies and no recording of it, so I actually
don't have the music or the recording of it. Fast

(22:48):
forward a couple of years later, I wrote a piece
for Paul Jackson, and this ties into the opera. He goes,
I want a choir piece of Auntie, and I was like, WHOA,
that would be super cool, and so I wrote that one.
In the Sitka High School choir sang it at one
of the Region five music festivals, and I was so

(23:11):
proud just to see Clingett people, native people, non native
people singing in a choir Plingett music and he spoke
during during the whole song. He was like calling out
giving all the song callings during the show, and it
was very powerful. I had. I was like, this is
what this is what it should be. And then I

(23:31):
had that dream about playing drums and just connecting with
some friends that said, oh you should do this. I
was like, oh, yeah, I probably should do that anyway,
and then going on and meeting more people. And so
I get to play with a band called Kuik, which
is Presston Singletary's band. It's a Native funk band. It's
got Gene Taga band and Sondra Segundo in it. So

(23:53):
we got some Flingott and height of people in there,
and Rob Ludgate who is blackfeet, and that's one expression
that I get to do, just be having all those
other interactions. I get to play in a funk band.

Speaker 3 (24:06):
Now.

Speaker 7 (24:07):
I've also got my own group called the Native Jazz
Quartet Native Jazz Trio, which we primarily do material from
our cultures. So I have a Filipino, Swedish and fling
Get person in that group, and so we do material
just from that from our backgrounds. I also play with
the Inuit band Bumua, which I just came back from

(24:27):
New Zealand and it's spent a great week down there
with the Maori tribes and I was like, this is
just like fish camp, actually sleeping on the floor and
all that stuff. So it was just beautiful. So I
get to play with that group. And now I also
get to play with the Julie Keith Indigenous Big Band
and we're headlining a show in Washington, DC, a big

(24:50):
music jazz festival with Esperanza Spalding who want to Grammy
a few years ago, so she's singing and playing with
the band. What I'm trying to get at is those
connections that I made twenty years ago working with elders
learning songs, working with other musicians learning songs. That's what
got me to the place that I'm at right now,

(25:10):
which is essentially all the groups that I work with
are Indigenous groups. And I think that's one of my
goals in life, is just the lay indigenous.

Speaker 5 (25:18):
Music, Kodachique and gulchies for mentioning clan. Paul Jackson who
was one of my Clinget language teachers, and he was
he was like an og hardcore uncle because he would
say he'd just say something to me and clingett and
I'd say keek rose ku, which is I don't know,
and this is pretty early in my language journey. And
then he'd look at me real sternly and he'll say

(25:38):
do you not know or do not understand? And I'd
say I don't understand, and he says, then you say
klek ach da yakushuskit. Don't say cleek rose ku, because
what if I'm saying, who's your mother and you're saying
I don't know? And maybe you don't know, but then
you don't know what you're saying when you say I
don't know. I was like, okay. They take out my
little notebook and I start writing it down. He says,

(26:00):
write it down, you have to remember, like okay, you
know and so but it was kind of intimidating, but
it was also there was these high expectations. And the
one thing with learning from uncles in that era is
even though they were they had high expectations for you
and they would sometimes give you the business. They were
proud of you and they loved you because they would

(26:21):
he would say, my nephew's going to speak to you,
and then he would kind of just push me out there,
and I'd be very scared, but I would be forced
to use the language in some sort of performative way.
And then later he'd say he did a good job.
And and so there was a lot of mileage in
these compliments because there was took a lot of work
to get there. And so speaking of taking a lot
of work to get there, we're going to take a break,

(26:43):
and before we do, we're going to give you guys
a little taste of something that's coming up, just a
little sample, and we'll talk about that when we're back
from the break. Chieh plain.

Speaker 8 (27:07):
Cheap cheap.

Speaker 3 (27:17):
Cheap my chapel to nothing chee cheap my cha to.

Speaker 8 (28:03):
M we said coos to call host y'all to watland.

Speaker 1 (28:33):
Short live away.

Speaker 8 (28:35):
Has cous coucoff do tea short live away has cause
cougof doty.

Speaker 9 (28:56):
Eighteen unique cuff got duty, nick heart pity it henik
your nick heard pity Push to your yo to woodlang.

Speaker 10 (29:45):
Posh to your puyout woodlands do.

Speaker 1 (30:00):
Your out.

Speaker 5 (30:21):
Away, look at you on you woujin dot. So we're
gonna start working again, folks. And the work that we
do is collaborative, and we have a project that we've
been working on, which I'll ask Bira to introduce and

(30:44):
then ed to sort of talk about. And it's something
that you folks have just heard and it's pretty wild.
It's so fun to see it coming to life. And Bira,
what is it?

Speaker 6 (30:55):
It is Clinging opera, and I don't even think we
have to say anymore that we think it is. We
know it's the first Clinket opera that's ever been created
in Clinket, the topic being the Battles of Sitka, which
most Clinkett people are either at least somewhat and some
are very familiar with. But it is two huge battles really,

(31:19):
it's whole campaign, but especially two battles that happened in
eighteen oh two and eighteen oh four in which the
Sitka Clinketts and other Clinkets, as you will see in
the opera that I know you'll all see, kicked out
the Russians and then had another pretty major battle when
the Russians came back for vengeance. And it's just such

(31:40):
a ripe perfect topic or an opera. It's very melodramatic.
Even in the Wikipedia, if you go look up the
Wikipedia version, even that is just like so much melodrama.
And we're doing that in partnership with ci Leati Heritage
Institute and Perseverets Theater, and we've been working on that
for I don't know, like one hundred and fifty years now.

(32:00):
I've been working on this a really long time. But
it's really exciting to see it really taking shape.

Speaker 5 (32:05):
Now, good geesh. And as we're working on it, like,
it's been so fun to see you are the writer, like,
this is what you do, so you're the librettist, and
it's so fun to see you sort of like you
vanish and then all of a sudden you come back
with pages like, look at these pages. It's just so
much fun. And then you hand them to Ed, and
then Ed comes back with these incredible compositions and so like,

(32:28):
as we're going through, I'm fortunate to be involved with this,
saying I've been involved with this story actively since two
thousand and seven, when I was taken a class with
Nora Marx Dalenhower why Richard Dowenhower, and we were translating
a Clingett version that was told by Sally Hopkins into English,
and so it was so fun to sit in the room.
So we had Norah in the room. We had a

(32:50):
couple other speakers in the junior area in the room
they're on the phone with Sitka, and then Sika had
speakers in the room. It was just so even that
was so collaborative because the speakers would all figure out
like what they're saying, and and it was so fun
because if you knew Richard and Norah Dowenhower, they were
a married couple. They taught Flingett. She was a Clingett

(33:11):
birth speaker and an incredible storyteller and translator and recorder
of the language. And Richard Dowenhower was not ling It,
and so we had this linguistic background and he learned
cling It. But it was so fun because sometimes we
would translate stuff and then he would just go off
on this like long, wonderful explanation of what's going on
with the language. And then when he was done, Norah'd say,

(33:33):
that's not right. It means this, you know. So it
would get it would and so we'd be sitting there
in class and we studied with him for a long
time and I'd look at it and someone else like
mom and dad are fighting. But they were so incredible,
like the dynamic of them. They were so good. They
brought so much to the table, and at Littlefield brings
a lot to the table. So like to can you
talk a bit about like how you turn this these

(33:55):
story ideas which get usually like we get the lines
in English, we translate them into thinget we sort of
use the original stories as a lot of reference points
and find metaphors and other sort of things, and then
you work the music magic.

Speaker 7 (34:09):
Yeah, and thank you Clune for translating all of that too.
There's a step that was not mentioned in there very much,
which is very important because I get I get the
translation in English, then I get the direct translation of
what Lune does, and then I get what it should be.

(34:31):
So there are three columns in that, and I really
like seeing the evolution of it because we can direct
translate and it doesn't quite make sense, but then kind
of shaping it, that third column is what we actually use.
So in an opera there are scenes just like a
just like a theater piece, and there's sort of a

(34:53):
story arc, or there is a story arc that we
like to follow that makes sense, and that's with the
words the story, but also with the music. So right
now we've been working on the act one and building
up to you might have to look up the Wikipedia.
In the act after act seven, something happens. I don't

(35:13):
know if we can talk about it, but there's something
big and so that whole story arc if you want
to talk music. So the piece begins with a pretty
traditional piece that I wrote based on some lyrics an
intro that we got and so those words were put
into a pretty traditional Linget style piece of music, and
that's you know, we've got a verse. We've got a

(35:35):
melody verse one verse one, melody verse two, verse two
tag ending. That's a very standard linget form of music.
And then as the piece goes along, as the act
goes along, it gets more and more dissonant. So the
notes get tighter together, the rhythms get more i should say,

(35:56):
less clinget sounding, and it's builds tension as we go
through the act. And then the last act, sorry, the
last scene is when it's getting down to business and
we kind of have this. It comes back to a
kind of a more formal clinget style thing. So creating
music that fits, creating Clinget music that is put into

(36:21):
a Western art form. I always have to think about
my old songs like the old songs that I've learned,
and that is something that keeps me grounded and doesn't
let me kind of go off course and to be like,
oh right. So I tried to make every melody line
a standalone clinget song, but the additions of other voices

(36:43):
and different instrumentation is what makes it different. So we
have in our orchestra. It's a small orchestra, so it's violin, cello,
french horn, clarinet, piano, and one or two percussionists, and
that's our instrumentation. So that's kind of how I go
about it. You know, we think about a phrase or

(37:05):
a melody. I say, I look at those flingkett words
that are on the page, and I kind of, you know,
look at the translation of what it means, and a
line comes out, and I start singing in my head
for a little while. And we have to do this
kind of quickly, you know, it's a kind of a
quick turnaround. So I jot that melody down and I
put it in my music program, and then maybe like

(37:26):
a day or two later, I go back in and
fill it out with that melody, with other voices, other harmony,
creative background. So it's all based on that initial Flingkeet
Melody or the creation of the first ever cling Get opera.

Speaker 5 (37:40):
Lookin of Cheese. Yeah, so we said no spoilers, and
so thank you for tactfully talking around. But I think
you did give away the title, which is something big happens.
And so I'm just kidding this this the other titles like,
but this is such a fun thing to do. I
remember one time, okay, I saw this thing in Hawaii.
So we went to this five day intensive teacher language training.

(38:02):
We hadn't learned Hawaiian yet and this thing, it was
all in Hawaiian. We had a translator with us the
whole time. And they were so hardcore. They'd get up
at six in the morning. At seven in the morning,
they would meet and I'll walk a lap or two
around the building for a little bit of exercise, and
go and have breakfast and then then go get working,
have lunch, go work, have dinner, go work. And they're

(38:24):
done at like nine o'clock at night. And then they
goes in these cabins and you know, visit in stuff
till twelve in the morning, two in the morning, and
then they'd get up and do it again. And I
was like, how do you guys do this? But one
of the things that happened towards the end was they
took this Hawaiian story and they divided it into pieces
and then they all did a re enactment of it

(38:44):
and they sat these they call them their copuna. They're elders,
These big time elders sat down as like a panel
of judges. And I thought, this whole thing feels intimidating.
I know who these people are, they're big time people.
But what they were doing is they had to rein
the story that they all knew, and it was all
in Hawaiian and whoever got the panelists to laugh the

(39:05):
most were the winners. And they took this like traditional
and as I watched them just own this story and
they were taking it in all these different directions, and
it was so fun because it was using modern out
They had a hoop de car at one point and stuff,
and it was completely sort of taking control of it,
and it was in a closed environment. But I bring
this up because I came home and I tried to

(39:26):
do that. We had this fun story called Raven and Blueberries.
It's a fun story and we start telling it and
everybody takes parts and they split into groups, and everybody's
reenacting it and trying to be funny. And somebody there
got really upset and said, that's not how this story goes,
and you're doing it wrong and sort of brought something
up and I said, Oh, I thought to myself, that's

(39:46):
a different story that they're thinking of, and why kill
the vibe?

Speaker 3 (39:49):
Like this is just us here.

Speaker 5 (39:51):
So there, as you take this story, there's a lot
of pressure to you know, we don't have to tell
the story right. We have to tell the story that
exists in the story that we sort of envision and see,
and there's many different ways to tell this. But how
do you sort of balance that thing between like what
we know happened and what you want to put in
there creatively?

Speaker 6 (40:12):
That has absolutely been the hardest part of this, and
lots and lots of literal nightmares, you know about I
think it's all overcoming for me sort of like what
I choose to do with it, because it is it
is a choice, and we could make this anything we wanted,
you know, we could make the sort of like quote

(40:32):
unquote Hollywood treatment and overdramatize something, although honestly, like the
real story is so dramatic, but it honestly, the hard
part has been what to choose from it. The challenge
with an opera is there's only so much story you
can tell because first and foremost, like the music needs

(40:52):
to be there. It is a story put to music
more than anything. And how I've been kind of seeing
it is like as a Brettest, I'm writing a skeleton
of this sort of creation that we're doing, and whunay,
you know, you're putting in the like the blood, the
circulation system. Ed's got to put all the muscle on,

(41:12):
He's got to do all this stuff that really makes
shape for it, and you can be sort of singing
the same verse for five minutes, you know, it takes
so long. So it's funny how little I have to write,
Like if we if we did like word count on this,
it'd be ridiculous. More of my writing is actually in
the description the stage, the stage directions than anything, and

(41:36):
having to write these lyrics that can mean many things
so that Ed can use it for what he needs
to use it for. For the choreographers, they could use
it for what they need to use it for. So
it's sort of how do I how do I say
nothing and everything at the same time, you know, like,
how can this you know be a double triple quadruple

(41:56):
meeting if needed, because it's the same lyric that they're
going to be singing or the same verse they'll be
singing for ten minutes on stage where all a lot's
going on, So that's getting the history right, and then
how to do that with such short actual story time
for words? Anyways, there's gonna be a lot of story
time for music and movement, but very little for words.

(42:18):
For my choice specifically for this is actually sort of
a tool I keep reaching for, which is I don't
think it's a spoiler to say, like the main character
I've chosen is a fictional one. We're seeing this through
the perspective of someone who kind of existed in reference
in that there was an interpreter and many interpreters probably involved.

(42:38):
But I've chosen like a specific character who would have
been there for a lot of this, but who wasn't
actually the one making the decisions and doing the action,
so she could she could be involved, but not quite
as directly as sort of these big, larger like literally
larger than life, not character they weren't. They're real people
who existed and who fought for us and who fought

(43:00):
against us. So that's probably been the most useful choice,
is that I could put words in someone's mouth who
didn't exist and not sort of get in trouble for
that versus if I put them into sort of Kasian
who is sort of the sort of biggest name that
came out of this besides possibly brought off the sort
of get warrior who is leading this. We don't have

(43:21):
him saying anything, we have his actions that we know
what he did. It's very difficult to actually put words
to someone who you know existed and you don't want
to mess that up. So the opera is very nice
and that he's very central to the story, but he
doesn't have to say anything. I should say he's he
is singing with Gusto, but as far as him actually

(43:47):
directing the lyrics, that doesn't have to be And it's
still ongoing like it's still it's still a challenge as
far as wanting to make sure that we're respecting the history,
We're respecting the clans that were involved work, respecting the
descendants of those individuals, including by the way at is
one of them, which is very funny. I want to

(44:08):
put that in and we haven't figured out how to
do that yet, but it's a really careful dance. And
if I've ever say I've nailed it, I'm totally lying,
because you're not a second. I felt like I've totally
nailed like doing the history right on this. This is
definitely like the most sensitive project I've ever.

Speaker 5 (44:28):
Worked Onyata.

Speaker 2 (44:35):
On.

Speaker 5 (44:36):
So we we highly admire the people that we are
talking about in this play. Do this work with respect
and love. So if anybody's nervous about this, it is
a massive undertaking, but it's also something weird studying. We've
already studied the history of this so much and Ed
you grew up in Sitka, like you've been around all
of the places where this thing's where these things happen,

(44:57):
and also have heard like so many versions of this,
And so as we do this work, we do it
with a lot of care and a lot of intention
just to say, like, this is one way we can
tell this story and look at the emotions that are
involved in what happened. And I just want to give
some mad props to Hoot's Elementary in Sitka, which had

(45:19):
a name of some Russian dude on it for a
while until recently. And it's really nice to see like
Clinget coming in and saying, hey we instead of like
some colonizer's name, Like what if we just gave things
cling get names on plinget Land And so it's really wonderful.
So ed like, as you sort of go through your
process of creating the music for this and envisioning how

(45:40):
to incorporate all this stuff, what'sn't been like to see it?
Because we had a workshop here in Juno, what was
it like to see your vision? And I should also
mention there's a big team of wonderful talented people. They're
having so many conversations about stuff that's just really helping
to make sure this is as excellent as it could be.
So what was it like to see what you thought
it would would be like and then to see it

(46:01):
being performed in front of you and to make adjustments
as it was happening.

Speaker 7 (46:05):
Yeah, well I had an insight into what vera fear
feels every time she puts like paper, like a like
a play into somebody's hands and then says, go for it.
You know, we we spend all this time months you know,
if not years developing ideas and then you let the
birds fly and send it up and see how it goes.

(46:25):
But I really had an amazing time hearing the language
being sung, you know, in a little different way and
with harmonies. And I think that was the biggest change
Because I was talking about melody earlier. It's like the
melody's there, like you can, you can take that melody
out and it's but it's the harmonies that you know,

(46:46):
the different Western harmonies, you know, that really make it
a difference. And so I was just really proud of
the group that we got and you were talking about
the team that we've got. Oh my gosh, it definitely
takes a village to to create something to this, So
that was beautiful.

Speaker 2 (47:01):
You know.

Speaker 7 (47:02):
I learned a lot for the future writing about how
to write opera music for singers and instrumentalists, and that
was amazing. I wanted to bring up a line that
lives with me that Vera wrote for Devilfish, speaking of
how we can you know, how we're doing our best
and we can't not sweat the little things, but it

(47:23):
can't let the little things get us down. And there's
a line that's always.

Speaker 2 (47:27):
Stuck with me.

Speaker 7 (47:28):
And I'm sort of paraphrasing, but it's not that we
get everything right, it's that we don't get everything wrong.
And that really is my mindset going forward, is that
we're going to ask the right questions, We're going to
connect with the right people. We're going to go in
there with a positive spirit, a mindful spirit, and do

(47:49):
the best we can. And you know, sometimes we make mistakes,
but we know in our hearts that we are doing
this for the betterment of Clingett culture, the betterment of
the world culture. Because this is you know, this is
amazing for everyone to hear, and it brings me back
to you know, I was not working in theater at

(48:09):
this time, but una you didn't think it Macbeth and
that you know, when I heard about that, I that
was like, here's my view right here, and it was
like way left field, I went, what is going on?
And so this is you know, we're not doing anything new,
We're just continuing what other people have been doing, like
yourself and you know Paul Jackson what he wanted. You know,

(48:33):
we're continuing that love of bringing the culture alive. And
there's another quote that I heard from in the seventies go.
There's a lot of legok that I know, children's lullabies,
and I always wondered why we would sang those all
this time. And I heard a speech that he gave
about those lullabies, and he said, I'm going to add

(48:55):
a drum beat to these, even though they weren't before,
even though they were never song like this, they were
never danced to. So our children and our children's children
can learn to sing and dance. So he made that
choice to add a drum beat. So these are easier songs,
you know, the less ceremonial meeting. And so I think
we're just continuing on that tradition to uplift Blinket culture

(49:19):
and bringing it to a living art form.

Speaker 5 (49:22):
Yeah, oh well yeah, oh and yeah. Clinkett Macbeth was
so much fun, like such incredible folks to learn so
many Clingett lines and to internalize them and to understand
the meaning of what they're saying. And ooh, Johnny Marx
did most of the translation for that. So they they
sort of took the play and they cut it down

(49:45):
quite a bit, and then once they had it boiled
down to this essential, they translated. Well, they first started
doing it as a cultural performance. It was a cultural
reenactment using English and then a few Clinget words, and
then the idea came to translate the whole thing. And
so by time this had already happened. By the time
I came on board, I had moved to Juneo. I'd
heard about it and and I went, I think. I

(50:06):
auditioned and I'm not an actor. I got it. I
got a part because I could speak cling It and
they said this guy could teach our actors how to
say the lines, and so but you know, I had
a few lines.

Speaker 7 (50:16):
I don't.

Speaker 5 (50:17):
It'll be interesting because they're going to show the film
this year at Celebration and I've talked to some of
the actors. We're all excited and a little nervous because
I think, what is You know? Remember one time it
was funny because when I would get my lines wrong,
I would say a different Clinget word, and one time
we went backstage, I was like, oh, I said this
thing instead of that thing. It was really interesting, like

(50:38):
no one in the audience when it was in Washington,
d C. But it was just perfect timing because our
stage manager came in and said, we really got to
work on the clingtt it's all over the place like it.
Right after I said that, I was like, that's hilarious.
And so it's such a wonderful thing to be part
of these projects with you folks, and I'm so happy
that we get to share a little bit with folks.
It's coming out. Was still a ways off in terms

(51:00):
of when this thing will be hitting the stage, but
it's coming along. We had singers who were indigenous to
a lot of different places. It was so neat to
see so many Native Americans and Pacific Islanders coming together
to sing and to hear professional singers too learn thlinget
and at least learn something at words and to sing them.
So we got another little sample and then we'll be

(51:22):
right back and we're going to close up by talking
about words of advice we have for the upcoming generation
of creative natives. So dream it, do it, chase it,
work on your craft, and we'll have some things to
say about that. So we'll be right backesh.

Speaker 1 (52:00):
U Muki sou sequel.

Speaker 3 (52:11):
Sha c to n.

Speaker 1 (52:18):
Coocast tea club hat gee.

Speaker 11 (52:28):
Hot more cust.

Speaker 1 (52:34):
The hat gel like love hose of si cool wisha
to tonock Cousteascus to.

Speaker 2 (53:13):
Knock CuO.

Speaker 11 (53:16):
Cosckcus scene where pass the pass I s Poway to

(53:47):
to put to the suny.

Speaker 1 (53:52):
Colling p Desia happy.

Speaker 7 (54:43):
And me.

Speaker 6 (54:46):
To jo.

Speaker 4 (55:00):
To kash.

Speaker 5 (56:07):
At a high. So the way that people create things
is really an interesting thing to talk about. To be creative,
whether you're talking about artwork, music, storytelling, there's so many
different ways that people can express themselves and to embrace
Indigenous artists and Indigenous musicians and storytellers. It's such a

(56:30):
fun thing to see right now and see television taking
off in terms of indigenous content and film continuing to
make strides with indigenous content creators and actors and writers,
and it's just an amazing time to see these transformations.
So to think about how we might send messages to
folks who are thinking about becoming a creative professional. What

(56:54):
does a typical day look like for you when you're
doing with you'rending this stuff out.

Speaker 6 (57:01):
Yeah, I love this question because it's I think for
all artists in general, it's sort of all over the
place at the same time very misunderstood. For writers specifically,
I think it's incredibly misunderstood, and at the same time
it's a complicated one, because it really does depend. That's
what some of what I love about the profession itself
is that there is no typical day like there's If I'm,

(57:25):
for instance, in a workshop for a play, I'm going
to be morning till midnight one am working, like whether
it's trying to get the actor's new pages before the
rehearsal that day, or meeting with the other collaboratives after
they've done that. It's it's that's the ground. I mean,
that's intense, and you give up trying to like eat

(57:46):
at normal times. You just really get food wherever you can.
It's a really intense time. It actually reminded me very
much when I was working on a TV show and
I was on set. They would pick me up, but
oh gosh, the earliest call I had was they picked
me up, but four forty five am, and then I
got back past ten pm or a five point fifteen
call the next morning, you know, and it's just relentless.

(58:08):
The good news is those are the shorter spurts. Those
are a week spurt, two week spurts that you just
that's just part of life. A writing day which I
will never do if I'm in workshop whatever I'll write
those pages, but it's not sort of a writing the
bulk of things day, A writing day. ED was just
joking that emails, it really is.

Speaker 3 (58:28):
You gotta get.

Speaker 6 (58:29):
Emails out of the way. For me, specifically, I almost
never write during the day, like there's too many emails.
There's meetings, and I might be meeting on three different
projects that day. I might be meeting on this opera,
which is immediately followed by a TV meeting, which is
immediately followed by a book meeting. Or I might have

(58:51):
six meetings on the same thing all day, and there's
just no way to when you're trying to think of
story and you're trying to be in it and think
on that perspective of those characters. You can't do that
while you're being sort of jerked around to two meetings,
to texts to your cat wants to fed, you know,
like it just doesn't work. So for me specifically, why

(59:14):
I knew I had to quit my job when I did,
way back whenever I should say quit my nine to
five was because I couldn't do a nine to five
with the kind of writing I do. I write this
actually isn't something I tell a lot of people, So
here we go, Here we go podcast. Actually I think
ed and who and I know this already. But I
write two, three, four or five in the morning, been

(59:34):
known to write six seven am. Like I write middle
of the night to early early morning because no one's
bugging me, like no one's bothering me at that point.
That's when I've always written. I've I wrote that way
in school. I still write that way. It's when I
feel the most creative and the most safe. And I
need to feel safe if I'm going to write things

(59:56):
that are very emotionally vulnerable. So my day can look
like a pretty boring like did you even do anything today?
But the night is just me looking like there's a
reason you don't actually see this dramatized really well in movies.
This is writers. It's actually very boring, Like you're just
like looking at a screen and thinking in space and
then writing and a little bit more on a computer.

(01:00:17):
But yeah, that's kind of a typical day of what
I'm doing. Actually, it's actually pretty close to what I
did yesterday. And I was up till four in the
morning or so, and then it's just a bunch of
like boring meetings and zoom calls. Honestly, the meetings aren't
even that boring, I should say boring meetings. They're pretty fun.
You get a meet with people like Ed and and
dream up these sort of wonderful worlds. But meeting spoiler

(01:00:41):
is not where artists really want to be, is it
where anyone wants to be?

Speaker 8 (01:00:45):
Yeah?

Speaker 5 (01:00:46):
Oh what good as cheese? And yeah, I can relate
so much because there's we have a ceremony called quote
and sometimes the Q will start at noon and it'll
go till ten am the next day or noon in
the next day, and you're up the whole You've probably
had three or four meals and a whole bunch of snacks,
and you've witnessed a whole bunch of and you've been

(01:01:06):
an audience member watching this ceremony. And there's a kind
of a punchiness at the end when you're putting all
the chairs away and you're done, and everybody's just really loopy,
and then you take a little nap and sometimes you've
got to catch a flight the next day, and there's
this kind of lightheadedness to it, but also this real
sense of accomplishment. And I feel that same thing if

(01:01:27):
I've stayed up all night, you know, trying to work
on something. But then I send it off and like,
to just finish something is such a huge part of
the job. It's envisioning it, sitting down and doing that thing,
and sometimes you got to get up and walk around.
Everyone's got their own process. But then to send that
off and say, wow, and the sun is up and

(01:01:48):
birds are chirping and I haven't slept and I feel
really punchy. But then then you take a little nap.
And it's a kind of an addictive part of the
process once you get into that, because it's it's your habit.
And so Ed, I know that you're a teaching artist
because usually when we're on these zoom calls, we're like,
where's Ed today? Like what part of thing get Donnie?

(01:02:09):
Is he enriching the children of the world and teaching
them how to be musicians themselves. So what does the
process and the day to day kind of stuff look
like for you?

Speaker 7 (01:02:19):
Well, first of all, there's no typical day. Let's start
off with that, where a typical day could last for
a week and then it could be a totally different
typical day for me. But in general, like you said,
I do a lot of teaching, so let's talk about that.
So in the artist residencies that I do, usually at

(01:02:40):
the school eight in the morning, you know, and we teach.
I teach for a few hours. Usually it's not like
two grinding it's not like six hours of teaching. It's
more like four or five hours of teaching. And I
get through that, have a quick snack, like Vera said,
hop on that email laptop machine and start cranking away
as best I can. And then you know, I've been, honestly,

(01:03:03):
I've been trying, like you said about walking around just
getting up, I've I've honestly been trying to do about
thirty to thirty minutes to an hour of exercise because
I feel that that actually, you know, just sitting down.
I play the drums, and so when I sit on
the drum set, it's could be for three hours that
I'm just sitting down not doing it. You know, it's
a little bit of work, but I've been doing it

(01:03:24):
so long that I'm not getting you know, a workout
from that. So finding time to get a little bit
of that wake up thirty minutes sixty minutes kind of
energy in there. And then usually when i'm teaching. Like
when I'm in ak Kan Juno, there's a lot of
events that I book myself to, So if it's a
jazz jam or a gig or a meeting, I kind

(01:03:45):
of do that in the evening, and if I'm lucky
in a typical day, I get to practice. So I've
got my drumsticks and my practice pad right here wherever
I'm traveling, and if I'm lucky, I get fifteen twenty
minutes practice. When I'm a tour with a group, it's
usually outreach stuff. So sometimes our calls were like, you know,

(01:04:06):
six in the morning, like Vera was saying, like we
got to go drive three hours to go do an
outreach in this small community and then we're going to
drive three hours back and play a show at night,
and so there's pretty much the day and it's all
spent in a bus in a van, you know. So
I like what Vera said. So that sounds we're kind
of sounding like it's a hard, difficult thing, But at

(01:04:29):
least for me, what Vera said about those spurts of
high intensity is something that I strive on and I
really love that. It's just like bam bam bam, cranking
out stuff and finishing things like so I'll have two
to three weeks of high intensity work, but you know what,
the week after, I got nothing to do, so I

(01:04:49):
get to spend time with my partner. I get to
go sleep in a little bit. So there is a
pro with all that work. That's you know, during the pandemic,
you know, like we all were. I was on for
three days. I think I figured it out. It was
nine am to ten pm at night. I was on
the computer with maybe an hour hour and a half break.
It was just like NonStop. But then a couple weeks

(01:05:11):
later I had four days off. So that's what I
want to share with that is like, if you want
to be an artist, it's kind of cool that we
have those days off as well.

Speaker 6 (01:05:21):
I would say, yeah, the flexibility of it is one
of the perks. Is like there's weeks, maybe months where
it's not very flexible. But for instance, I'm available right now.
My grandma's been needed to do these physical therapy appointments
twice a week in the middle of the day, you know,
and that's tough for people to sort of take off
their job and whatever. But I'm available, and that's kind

(01:05:42):
of nice. It's also I don't wort right in the
middle of the days because there's stuff like that comes out.
But that flexibility is really nice. And I also want
to say something that I feel like is a huge
part of my day. Writers' days, I'm sure musicians days
is you have to ingest a lot of art to
sort of work in the field and connect in the
field and know what you're talking about. So literally, reading

(01:06:04):
books is a huge part of what I need to do.
Obviously reading plays, but watching plays, going to Broadway shows
is like literally part of my job right now. Like
as a TV writer, I have to watch so much TV,
and that sounds so silly, I think to people or
that I'll watch the same pilot five times of a
show just to try and glean what I kind of
need out of it on a project I'm working on.

(01:06:25):
But I watch a lot of stuff. I listen. Actually
a huge part of my process is listening to music
when I'm in a writing When I'm doing the bulk
of my writing, I have actually songs for characters when
I need to get in the headspace of that character.
So just ingesting art is a huge part of it.

Speaker 5 (01:06:42):
Yeah, Well, I can energize by these conversations because sometimes
when you're doing the work as an artist as well,
like there's a loneliness to it sometimes because you got
to just sit there. It's like it's just you and
me computer or paper or instruments, right, And there's a
real satisfaction to making something. But sometimes there's a real
fear that you're not going to be able to do that,

(01:07:04):
or a lot of the work that I've been able
to do has happened because I've rebelled against what people
have told me. So when I was in high school,
I had a guidance counselor who I don't know why,
but everything I wanted to do, she would say, you're
not smart enough for that, like that's too difficult, and
I remember just thinking like wait, what, like what is
your job exactly to just make me feel bad, And

(01:07:26):
I remember I would sometimes talk to my dad and
he's like, what do you want to do? I was like, well,
I want to play music, and I want to write stories.
I want to drop pictures and I would just name
like all these things and he said, you can't do
all of that, and I just thought, wait a minute,
like you know, so I remember watching Lily Gladstone when
she got the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress, and
she said, this is for every little res kids, for

(01:07:47):
every little urban kids, this is for all the little
Native kids that are out there. And I thought, Okay,
you guys are a big time and you guys are amazing.
What advice do you have for folks? Like what's your
inspirational words? Or someone out there who's a young person
perhaps or you know that have to be a They
don't have to be a young person. We're not going
to exclude our older folks who are there. There's someone

(01:08:08):
who called me the day they said, we're doing a survey.
We want to know what people think. I was like,
all right, yeah, I'll do it. And they said are
you this age or this age or this age or
this age? I said, well, I'm the next one up
and they said, thank you, have a good night. So
we're not excluding like anybody who who hasn't gone into
the field yet as a professional, what's your advice for them?

(01:08:28):
As And this will be our wrap. This is how
we're closing it.

Speaker 6 (01:08:31):
Oh that age stuff is cutting hard lately. Yeah, like
me join those next age brackets up. I have like
three tiers to it, and one has stuck with me
since high school, and it's to me, it's like the
lowest hanging fruit. And yet, seriously, like the reason people
say to do this so much as writers is because
it's that important, which is you just have to ingest
that stuff like that's if you want to be a writer,

(01:08:53):
you need to read a lot of writing. If you
want to be a musician, you sure better you know
ingest a lot of music. And high school, there was
a quote that I wrote down that I think of
so much, which is reading as to writing, as inhaling
is to exhaling. And that's very much how I view
so much. What I do is what I'm taking in,
and that sort of like learning, you know, knowing everything

(01:09:15):
about everything is that it's I can only output what
I've taken in, so I try and take in as
much as I can. And in that way like that
that's usually given us, like you need to read, you
need to write. I find that most people want to
do that and are discouraged by it. I had the honestly,
like the huge, huge, fortunate experience of having two parents
who were incredibly supportive of me working in art and

(01:09:37):
I think honestly a culture that was very supportive of
me working in art, like culture is highly respects art.
And so for all of the sort of negative things
I hear about it in sort of Western culture where
don't waste your time reading even right now, like that's
such a huge sad thing right now, just being discouraged
to read read those comics books on a apologetically read

(01:10:00):
the comic books, unapologetically enjoy movies, enjoy TV shows, just
nerd out on them. Like I hope people will just
not just do it as this assignment, but if you
enjoy that, like that's where that's going to come from.
So that's like the most basic sort of advice usually
it's just just just start just take it in. The
next one is start saying yes to everything. There's stuff

(01:10:24):
that even even now as sort of someone who gets
paid to do this and I can reliably find that
work now, there's some stuff recently that like my agent
was like that doesn't pay that much, you know, but
I want to do it. I haven't done this before.
I want to do it, and I'm not doing it
to to network. I'm not doing this to see if
I can find a job there I just want to

(01:10:45):
do it because it sounds fun and it sounds cool.
And that's where art needs to come from, I think,
is just this place of like whether it's passion, whether
it's excitement, whether it's interest, and just that nerding out,
like it needs to come from there. And in retrospect,
so much of my work has come from people who
have worked from with me on other things and then
recommended me for something else. That's how I got Molly

(01:11:08):
of Denali. I had like three different people recommend me
to them because they'd worked with me on other things,
and I have so much of that experience. And then
the sort of final advice is like learn the business
of it. Like it's not the piece that like artists
want to really think about because it's like boring, and
taxes are involved, and like you can get in trouble

(01:11:29):
with you know, the tax Get can you tell I'm
thinking about taxes right now. But as a very young writer,
even in high school, I was reading books on the
profession of being a writer and how to query and
how to get your stuff to agents or editors or
what format you know they want to look in. What's
expected of you, I think, especially being an indigenous person.

(01:11:52):
We're raised in such a different environment of even the
art that when you go into the sort of like
quote unquote like professional writing artistic world, the expectations are
really different and they're not fair and they're not going
to be until you get in there and change it.
But you have to get in first. So yeah, learning
the business of it and the expectations part, and like

(01:12:13):
knowing what the assignment is, because it usually is an assignment,
whether it's framed that way. So yeah, those are sort
of my three tiers of advice for people who really
want to make it their life.

Speaker 7 (01:12:25):
What VERA said, good night, good night. I love all
of that, because as you were saying those things, I
could think, Yep, I did that, Yep, yep, I did that.
I did that, I did that. Oh yeah saying yes.
So I'll just say a couple quotes. There's a famous

(01:12:45):
jazz drummer named Jeff Hamilton. I said, can I have
a lesson? He goes no. I was like, oh, but
you can have dinner with me. So we went and
had dinner and he just he just asked questions. We're
just chatting and and he goes, what are you best at?
And I was like, Oh, I don't know. I guess
I'm best at big band drumming. He goes, great, who's

(01:13:06):
your favorite drummer? And I was like Shannon Powell? And
do you have all of Shannon Powell's records? And I went, uh,
I've got twenty two of them. And this is the
time of CDs, So I had twenty two. He plays
drums for Harry Connick Junior, and so I had twenty
two Shannon Powell records. He goes, that's not enough, and

(01:13:28):
that concept of there's always more that you can learn.
He goes, you do have all the live performances? Do
you have every single note that he's played on record?
So what VERA was talking about getting those records? And
this goes with what you said about books read if
you're listening to music, If you're a musician, listen to
all different types of music, and you kind of have

(01:13:50):
to get to a point where you're just always listening
because all of that information will learn, will teach you
and inform you your style of music after the while.
This is also with cling get specifically fling get music.
You actually have to listen to the old recordings and
get in there and then there's another Charles Mingus quote,
who was a famous bass player, and he was talking

(01:14:11):
about free jazz and he goes, you can't have nothing
without something. And what I take from that because it
was kind of a diss on free jazz people because
they were just playing notes, but he goes, you can't
have nothing without something, and that's something is all of
that previous knowledge that we have access to that we

(01:14:32):
need to pretty much engage with on a daily basis,
So listening to recordings, listening to video, or watching videos.
And I think that is my biggest advice for any field,
whether it's mathematics, whither it's science, whither it's the arts,
you have to And a lot of my favorite musicians

(01:14:53):
are say the same thing. So whatever it is you
want to do, find every just surround yourself by it,
and you will slowly get to that point where you
can say yes to lower paying gigs and you won't
feel bad about it, and you'll be able to say
no to things that don't fit your personal vision. And
that took me a long time. Probably took me about

(01:15:15):
fifteen years to be able to say no, because I
said yes to everything. Just like Vera. I was like, yes, yes, yes,
actually I don't need to do that right now, so yeah, continue,
And it's difficult work being an artist, but you know,
it's a special life that we live and very enriching
and helpful to the communities we visit.

Speaker 5 (01:15:35):
Cheesh I was once setting with an elder. We had
a class at the University of Minnesota one time where
these elders just came in and talked to us, and
I remember one of them said, if you're having a
hard time, help somebody else. And then that stuff it
goes out into the universe. And so I think about
that quite a bit because art is such a collaborative process,
and writing is a very collaborative process. When we write

(01:15:56):
for Olli of Denelli, you get a script back with
ten different people writing in their own colors, making their
comments about what their idea is and what it could be.
And I think you have to be receptive to that
and not be offended that someone has something that they
don't like something that you had, or they said that's
not going to work, and you have to just be
able to say, Okay, let's try a different approach, let's
try something different, and to not get so rigid in

(01:16:18):
this idea is that it has to be a certain way,
but to also understand where your vision is. It's a
balancing act for sure, so that you're not so rigid
to criticism that you'll never do something different, but also
that you're able to hold fast to what you can
see and what you know kind of.

Speaker 3 (01:16:35):
Needs to be there.

Speaker 5 (01:16:36):
And that's usually a bit of a negotiation. And if
you're on the other side giving feedback to someone else,
to try and do it with kindness and respect, because
maybe you're having a bad day and so your comment
comes off as a little bit harsh, and you don't
know where they're coming from when they're writing this. Maybe
this is something that happened to them, and maybe this
is something that they're super attached to. And so in
all of these collaborative and creative spaces, to just really

(01:16:59):
try and be someone who's always additive as well, and
to try and just be supportive and try not to
be in competition with anybody. Those are kind of the
things that I would think about. And you folks gave
such wonderful ideas, and so for you folks who are
out there, make the thing, dream about it, do the thing,
take those steps, take the risk. Continue to think about

(01:17:22):
things you can do to improve your knowledge base of things.
Most of the people that I learned the most from
they were never satisfied with what they knew, and when
you kind of ask them about it, they'd say, I
don't know, I'm still learning this stuff. And so to
always be curious and to always be looking for things.
So do the thing, folks. This has been the tongue unbroken.

(01:17:43):
We're brought to you by the iHeartMedia Network and the
Next Up Initiative, and we have wonderful indigenous voices in
Vera Starboard and Ed Littlefield. I appreciate you both. It's
so much fun. There's a thing get verb which is tish,
which is or you could say tshish go ah gee, that's.

Speaker 1 (01:18:01):
Boring to me.

Speaker 5 (01:18:02):
And this is not boring at all. This is the
funnest time hanging out with you. So keep being creative, folks,
stook Anita heen, believe in yourself, make the thing, and
I look forward to seeing what you folks are gonna create.
Check out the works of Ed Littlefield and you're a
Starboard out there. Go look for their stuff, watch their shows,
listen to their music. Gonna Chiesh Yeah Oway,