This week on Minnesota Native News, a recap of the 2nd Annual Anishinaabe Music & Art Festival hosted by Leech Lake Nation’s KOJB radio station. Plus, the upcoming launch party for the new book, Sweetgrass and Soul Food, by Minneapolis author & educator Marique Moss.
Transcript
[sound element: Minnesota Native News theme]
Anchor Marie Rock: This is Minnesota Native News. I'm Marie Rock. Up first this week, a look at music from Indigenous artists across Minnesota, and Turtle Island. Deanna StandingCloud tells us more.
[sounds of Anishinaabe Music Festival crowds]
Deanna StandingCloud: The second annual Anishinaabe Music and Arts Festival was held at the Northern Lights Casino earlier this month, on Juneteenth. It showcased Indigenous music of all genres, and art vendors.
Chris Bedeau: The Arts and Music Festival was designed to give our local, regional, and national Native folks a platform to play their music and put their art out there.
Deanna StandingCloud: That's Chris Bedeau, member of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe, and general manager of KOJB radio in Cass Lake.
Chris Bedeau: I think it's important nowadays that we kind of brand our own folks out here and get our names out in all entertainment, arts, crafts, that kind of thing. I feel very strongly about that. As a musician myself, I find it hard to get played or airtime out here
Deanna StandingCloud: Bedeau planned the festival with support from community collaborators and funders.
Chris Bedeau: I thought it was important that we provide this particular outlet for our local talent and regional talent, and national, for that matter.
Deanna StandingCloud: For Chris, it was important that the festival highlight a range of genres within Indigenous music.
Chris Bedard: We got a lot of talent with different types of genres within our culture.
I like to make sure that that's expressed so the external community can understand who we are, what we are, and what we do.
Deanna StandingCloud: KOJB has plans to continue supporting musicians in the community.
Chris Bedeau: Off this, we're going to do an artist spotlight on KOJB. We're going to highlight a performer every month. And also we're building a recording studio down in the basement at KOJB.
[Music Festival Cheering/Applause]
Deanna StandingCloud: For Minnesota Native News, I'm Deanna StandingCloud.
Anchor Marie Rock: Up next, reporter Emma Needham has more about Indigenous author Marique Moss, & her new book, Sweetgrass and Soul Food.
[sound element: pen writing on paper]
Marique Moss: It started as just like scratching poems down. I didn't think that they were poems.
Emma Needham: That's Marique Moss, co-owner of Mashkiki Studios in Minneapolis, a creative and educational studio offering workshops on traditional Indigenous crafts.
Moss: To be honest, I'm not really somebody who would run to the poetry section in like a Barnes Noble or anything. But I would give it to my friends, and they're like, "that's poetry, Marika."
Needham: Earlier this month, Moss, who is Black, and an enrolled member of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara nation, released a memoir.
Moss: It's called Sweetgrass and Soul Food. It's a play on my identity of both my indigenous and Black side. So the inspiration was just basically, there's not that much literature from an Afro indigenous perspective out there.
so. I was just like, you know what? I'll just create it.
Needham: Moss will host a book launch party at Indigenous Roots Cultural Center in St. Paul next month.
Moss: that will be July 6th from 11 to 3 pm, so we're sort of doing like a barbecue brunch situation. There's gonna there's gonna be a bouncy house house photo booth. There's going to be a silent auction, and that is to benefit indigenous roots.
And there's gonna be Black and Native uncles on the grill, throwing down soul food.
[grill items sizzling, crowd gathering in background]
Needham: For more information on Moss's book and launch party, find Mashkiki Studios on social media.
Moss: I always say picking up the book is just a fun conversation with me while we drink lemonade on the front porch
Needham: For Minnesota Native News, I'm Emma Needham.
[sound element: flute music (Minnesota Native News theme)
Anchor Marie Rock: Minnesota Native News is produced by AMPERS, diverse radio for Minnesota's communities, made possible by funding from the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.