(soulful music)

♪ I thrive on my pain

♪ My pain, I feel the rain

♪ Cleansing this place

(speaking Ojibwe)

- My name is Jada, I'm affiliated with

the Turtle Mountain Band of Ojibwe

and I'm a singer, vocalist and spoken word poet.

♪ Make sense of this mess

♪ Hard to impress your heart

♪ To impress

♪ Your heart

For me, personally, I feel like all my art

is political in a sense because with the microphone

comes power.

So, as an artist it's how you're thinking about using that

power and speaking out against things

that have been silenced.

♪ It dealt in his hands

♪ Oh in his hands

♪ Evil does its way

As an artist I identify as Ojibwe and also mixed race.

In my music I'm navigating those same paths of understanding

myself and my family and my community and my environment.

I feel like my responsibility, as something

that I really value, is that communication

to your audience and like, open up that common ground.

♪ And so I carve out a sense

♪ For healing

♪ To be myself again

(acoustic guitar playing)

♪ Oh

♪ Am my I my head

♪ I find

♪ Fragments

♪ Of a broken past, oh

I feel as native peoples we're always

kind of put in a box of who we are.

In music we could be reduced down to, like,

a certain, like, our traditional music

or powwow music, but I do R&B blues, alternative, rock,

soul and it's kind of pushes those boundaries

of what people set upon you.

I hope that it gives representation.

♪ All those blending all the time ♪

♪ Just helps her feel a little better inside ♪

- My name is Glenny Blackson, I'm a Lakota Sioux

from Rosebud Reservation there in South Dakota.

- We just met here and I feel like music

brings people together, especially when

you don't have no other place to go.

That's what I like about music, it's a common language

to speak.

And we learned a lot of different styles

'cause Glenny's a seasoned musician.

♪ Dare

♪ Not

♪ Oh not

♪ Race on

♪ Oh

(cheerful acoustic guitar music)

My fluidity is an affinity, to creation.

I'm infinite beyond imagination.

I'm mystery when you thought you had seen it all.

Tender, soft driven, skin licking,

sweet like ode'imin.

Soul dipped in wisdom, happiness, curiosity,

feelings of doubt and depression.

But it's all heaven, all the time.

I think in my art I really focus on healing

and so I hope that it is reciprocated.

I think resiliency in my art is speaking

or sharing the stories and truths of myself and family

and community and environment.

And just that single act of speaking up

and with that voice is resiliency.

So we free it, with long drawn-out kisses

trying to remember our own senses,

stripped away by the violences in our childhood

and teenage essence.

So let us entangle ourselves and love in reciprocity.

Healing together, forever and always.