On January 7th of this year, ASFA had the privilege of hosting well-renowned Native American hoop dancer Eric Hernandez to see him perform and to interact with him and his fiancee Pyet DeSpain throughout the week. The day following his spectacular performance, Hernandez came to speak with the staff of The Star and Student Council members, President Aubrey Segars and Vice President Voelle Jones, as we initially discussed the inclusion of a land acknowledgement for the school on our website (see below). As we began discussing a variety of other topics, I asked him if he had any media created by Native artists that he wanted to recommend. Among the things he listed, one artist stood out to me, a musical group called The Halluci Nation. Hernandez had performed to a song of theirs as well, so I decided to dig a little deeper and listen to part of their discography.
The Halluci Nation, formerly known as A Tribe Called Red, is a Canadian electronic music group that combines genres like hip hop, dubstep, and other electronic genres with traditional First Nations music, who are the indigenous groups of Canada. The Halluci Nation’s music had been labelled as a genre called “powwow-step,” a contemporary style of powwow music in the First Nations dance club scene. I found their combination of different music genres very interesting and quite unique, as it’s not something I had seen or heard of before until Hernandez’s recommendation.
The first thing I listened to was their first album titled A Tribe Called Red, titled after the group’s original name. I was thoroughly enthralled by the style of music and enjoyed the entire album. However, one song stood out to me from the very beginning. The fourth song, “Woodcarver”, was a little bit different from the rest. It begins with an unsettling audio recording of a man yelling “Hey, hey, hey!” and asking someone to put a knife down, before four gunshots ring out offscreen. This was an audio recording of police dashcam footage from the shooting of Native American woodcarver, John T. Williams, in Seattle, Washington in 2010.
The song includes, alongside the audio of the dashcam footage, interviews and news reports from witnesses and family members of the deceased. In the music video, the actual dashcam footage is used and looped over and over. The shooting is not seen on camera, but you can hear it all the same. I think the fact that the recordings of the dashcam footage and parts of new reports were looped make the reality of that even sink in even more. You heard it over and over again, and if you missed certain parts of it the first time, you’d get those missing bits the second time around. I thought it was a very clever way to present the information while still sticking to the structure of a song. The topic of the piece alone sends a powerful message, but the inclusion of the actual shooting packs a punch in which I haven’t heard or seen in a song before.
The sad story of the John T. Williams' shooting began when officer Ian Birk shot Williams in the back four times because he thought the man was holding an unsheathed knife in a menacing manner. It was later reported that Williams was deaf in one ear, had under five seconds to respond to Officer Birk, and his carving knife was in fact closed during the entire thing. In the legal aftermath, the shooting was ruled “unjustified,” and while the officer was not reprimanded for his actions, he quit the force soon after.
Even though this song and shooting were from a while ago, I still find it to be important and relevant. Telling stories of prejudice and discrimination through other mediums of art is a powerful way to shed light on the horrible things that have happened and are happening to minority groups not only across the United States, but the world.
Further reading:
The Star's Land Acknowledgment as adapted from the acknowledgment drafted by Ms. Simmons and ASFA StuCo President Aubrey Segars and adopted by the ASFA Student Council:
The Star is a student-run media platform affiliated with the Alabama School of Fine Arts, which is located on the traditional ancestral land of the Muscogee Creek and the Shawnee People. As artists and scholars, we commit ourselves to honoring the land itself and the people who have cared for it. We will serve as stewards of this land and preserve its history for future generations.
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