Indigenous and punk rock

Music can be a lifesaver. It certainly has been for young Indigenous artists, serving as a creative outlet to explore difficult histories, generations of oppression, cycles of violence and addiction.

The hardcore scene can be exactly this too. It can be such an escape, or release, a vent to let out all the pent up steam that life builds inside us. It can be an all encompassing world to explore the fraught emotions we have as we grow up, and a way to find ourselves and connect to others, when we don’t feel like we fit in anywhere else. It’s political and affirming all at once.

But punk rock is pretty white, or has been historically.

The scene is a place where youth are free to express themselves without fear of discrimination. This, though, has been difficult for Carlin Blackrabbit and Curtis Lefthand, two young First Nations men exploring the punk rock scene in Calgary.

It’s not really a surprise that the scene might be exclusionary to people of Indigenous descent. Blackrabbit and Lefthand chalk much of these difficulties up to misunderstandings; the issues facing First Nations people in Canada aren’t really covered well in mainstream media, they told recently.

Lefthand is studying at Mount Royal University in Calgary and plays in an emo/post-punk band called Novelty 2015. Blackrabbit works with First Nations youth at Siksika’s Residential Youth Wellness Centre and the kids he works with have experienced troubling things in their young lives — drugs, alcohol and violence. He tries to being a punk show to Siksika once a month.

Lefthand with Novelty 2015, via noisey.vice.com

“Without these shows I probably would have been caught up in getting in trouble with the law, maybe as a drug addict,” he said in an interview with VICE. “So, I want to do this for the kids—expose these kids to something new because they’re always used to seeing the same old thing on the reserve, which isn’t good.”

And it’s not easy to trek to the city; it takes time and effort and money. And although it’s worth it, the exclusion is a heavy weight to bear.

“The weight we, as First Nations people, carry in our community, federally, it’s tough to fit in and be a part of a lot of other communities and subcultures because of this sort of disconnect,” Lefthand said. “Being ignored hurts us severely because we’re already perceived so negatively by the Canadian community.”

But music fans, and punk rock fans who feel so connected to the music, the music’s messages and the scene’s aesthetics, wouldn’t want to be anywhere else except at a punk show.

“A hardcore show is like Christmas morning,” Blackrabbit said. “When we’re there it’s the biggest thing that’s happened to us for maybe a month.”

Read the rest of VICE's interview with Lefthand and Blackrabbit here.