Evan nindizhinikaaz

A note from the musician:

For the last few years I didn't think there was much reason to pursue music anymore. I was in the middle of a personal reckoning and struggling to make sense of the life I had lived up until that point. That next step slowly revealed itself as I began writing about my own history. I started weaving my lived experiences into the music I grew up listening to. The highway songs and FM radio that covered northern Ontario and the small reserve, of Mississaugi First Nation #8, where I was raised. It was a refuge for me to return to my own stories. A spiritual break from the weight of living in the city. But even those moments were still so few and far between because I was battling addiction in the process. Back and forth between pushing myself forward and falling back into a darker pattern. I still struggle with it no doubt, but it's been through this process of getting these stories out, that have been able to finally find some balance. In a genre that is woefully white and largely underrepresented, this is a record by me, for my people. It's an artifact and extension of our oral histories for the next seven generations to pick up. But it's also a record for those who may want to understand us better. Who may not know why some of us struggle to survive in a country that fights to see our own oblivion. I'm super proud of this collection of songs. And am humbled by the distance that has gotten me here. It took a reckoning to push me down to the bottom, but it'll be the art that will push me forward. 

So here's to those who could not tell their stories. Who could not live to fight their way back out from Oblivion. Special thanks for @victorypoolmusic seeing the bigger picture with me. And shoutouts to the first full length on

@bigvoicerecordings

Produced and recorded by @hellolincolncounty