And now:Ish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Date: Thu, 29 Jul 1999 22:49:37 -0400
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
From: Lynne Moss-Sharman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: "syncopated rage" at Lac Ste Anne Pilgrimage??
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29 July 1999 Black rap the soul music of young natives' rage
Ric Dolphin, Journal Staff Writer
The Edmonton Journal
Walk around the grounds at the Lac Ste. Anne pilgrimage and the
soundtrack, thanks to the scattered loudspeakers, is the prayers and hymns
originating at the big shrine that is the focal point of these
Catholic fields where 40,000 western Indians and Metis are camped.
Listen closer, though, and you will hear the unmistakeable
boom-shakka-lakka-lakka rasp of black American rap music played on the
boom boxes and Discmans of the plentiful young. This brand of syncopated
rage, much of it punctuated with obscenities, some
of it calling for rape and murder, has become the only music for many
native teenagers on reserves from Cold Lake to Fort Chipewyan to Laloche.
Artists such as Extreme, TLC and Tupac Shakur have quickly eclipsed the
country music that their parents hold dear. And if music means anything
about those who listen to it, the upcoming generation of Indians -- part of
an escalating baby boom currently estimated to be 70% greater than the
general Canadian one -- appear disaffected.
While the loudspeakers broadcast the prayer of a middle-aged Blackfoot man
-- "Let us pray for the spirit of healing in our family" -- the Tapuc
Shakur song Blasphemy could be heard coming from a CD player presided over
by two 17-year-old Grande Cache boys in trademark wrap-around sunglasses:
The preacher want me buried, why? I know he a liar/ have you ever seen a
crackhead? That's eternal fire./ Why you got these kids thinkin' that they
evil? /While the preacher being freaky you say honour God's people./Should
we cry when the Pope die? My request, we should if they cry /when we buried
Malcolm X. mama tell me am I wrong, is God just another cop /waitin' to
beat my ass if I don't go pop.
Karla Martin, 16, sometimes lives with family on the Fort Chip reserve, an
hour's plane trip north of the town of Fort Chipewyan and sometimes lives
with other family at the Cold Lake First Nations reserve. Dressed in a
low-cut white tank top, with a gold cross gleaming above cleavage, Karla
explains that the disaffection of rap's urban American authors strikes a
chord with young Indian audiences. Its popularity on the reserves also has
to do with fashion -- the same brand of fashion that dictates backwards
baseball caps or gangsta bandanas for the males. Karla, who is sitting in
the concession area with a handful of similarly aged
and inclined girls -- girls who say they've tried crack cocaine but prefer
pot, magic mushrooms and the favourite beverage of Cold Lake aboriginal
youth, Royal Reserve rye -- insists that she and her peers have no
intention of following through on the call to arms.
"We just like the way it sounds," she says. Asked to quote from her
favourite song, Karla starts rapping out the lyric to Shakur's, Hit 'Em Up,
which contains several obscenities and speaks of killing a woman.
The dark corollary to this fashion is the increase of Indian gangs.
Modelled on their black American counterparts, with colours and tattoos,
these drug-trafficking groups originated in Manitoba with the Indian Posse
and Manitoba Warriors. They have spread to Edmonton, both in the jails and
in the streets, where gangs such as Red Alert, West Side and the Magoo Crew
have recruited young teenagers, deal in cocaine and occasionally have
fights involving knives and machetes. Their numbers have gone to an
estimated 500 in Edmonton in four years. While most of the teens from the
further-flung reserves say they know of no such heavy-duty gang recruitment
at home, there is talk of small wannabe gangs such as the English Bay Boys
and the QBRWS, a female gang.
If there is a gang presence at Lac Ste. Anne, it's not overt. A couple of
red bandanas, typical of the Red Alert, are spotted, but their occupants
naturally admit -- smilingly -- to no such affiliation. RCMP officers
report seeing a few funny handshakes and suspect attire, but are unaware of
any gang-related infractions. Fights between teenaged boys occur, but are
mostly over teenaged girls. The perception among the young is sometimes
different, even if it's just hearsay. "You come to Ste. Anne now and it's
this chick got raped and this chick got stabbed," says Crystal Collins, 20,
an apprentice cook from the Elizabeth Metis Settlement near Grand Centre
who, like most youths here, has been coming to the pilgrimage since she was
a baby. "It's not the same as it was then. It's very violent." She and her
friends are not among the aspiring gangstas -- a tendency they say is more
prevalent among the full-blooded Indians, where the accidental death rates,
the unemployment and the number of broken homes are greater than at
Elizabeth.
Asked why the Indians are inclined to gangs, Collins' friend Delaney Blyn,
17, doesn't hesitate: "It's because of rap."
"Let Us Consider The Human Brain As
A Very Complex Photographic Plate"
1957 G.H. Estabrooks
www.angelfire.com/mn/mcap/bc.html
FOR K A R E N #01182
who died fighting 4/23/99
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
www.aches-mc.org
807-622-5407
