Nuanced. - 231. Kiva MH: What It Really Means to Come From the Rez

Episode Date: April 2, 2026

Indigenous rapper Kiva Morgan Hall joins Aaron Pete to discuss healing through hip hop, sobriety, rez life, youth mentorship, and resilience. They explore what it means to come from the rez, the realities many Indigenous communities still face, and how music can become medicine for the next generation.Send us Fan MailSupport the shownuancedmedia.ca

What does it mean to come from the rest though? There's not always an understanding of what it means to come from the rest. I come back and it's black water. My grandpa never got to experience it. He had to drive 45 minutes just to go get a clean shower. What are you seeing in those youth? What are the challenges that they're facing? Nine out of ten communities, it's going to be a sad song.

It's going to be about loss, feelings of abandonment. I'm just wondering if you can share some of the things you've overcome. Can you talk about what that experience was like and being able to come back from that edge? I came to a point where I was hurting my family. I was scaring my family, and I came to a point where if I'm gonna continue drinking, how would I do this? The thought went like, oh, you can go hitchhike to the nearest city and find enough money to get a bottle and you'll be on the street.

How much of it is like real pain, but how much of it is also trying to balance not wanting to be pitied? I use music as healing. Music is medicine. I'm over a year sober now, but back before I would use other substances to numb that feeling. And now that I'm having to work through these feelings, music has just become my go-to. What does resiliency look like when you're in that moment? Like, how do you act that out, when you're struggling, when your life is chaos?

Where the cops go now, I'm trying to break bread and how the cops close. I don't see none of that drama. People be biting like fighting piranhas. I take a beating like I'm opinion. Kiva, thank you so much for joining us at the Reach Art Gallery. This is such an amazing place to record. Would you mind first introducing yourself for people who aren't acquainted?

Yes, of course. Cook's Jam, Waite Kiva, Chesquest, to Stuktaos, Ratzta Aqwen, to Rehn Keeha, Mika Morgan, that's quest, and Kitsa, Rob Hall, that's quests. Hello everybody, my name is Kiva Morgan Hall.

I am Mika Morgan is my mother and Rob Hall is my father. I'm from Stectal's territory. I am Newtunov and Suclepnepin as well as Scottish, English, Irish and French. Beautiful. Would you mind first starting? You're a rapper. That's how I discovered you. But I'd be interested in a little bit of your background. You have this line in there. I came from the res. And I'm hoping you can frame that for listeners.

When I'm getting bread, there is nothing common that denominated gets greater. I said, fuck it, I came from the res. I came for the snakes to assimilators. You watcher to wait and get put on your heads. No taking breaks. I'm done giving favors. You sleep on me shit, you can sleep when you can't sleep when you can. Um, yeah, I came from the res.

It's funny, I grew up in a small town called Ashcroft, British Columbia. So I was technically grew up in a town. Um, in the song, I also say came from a place called Cash Creek. I spent a lot of time in Cache Creek and I knew that everyone would know where Cache Creek was. Ashcroft, maybe not so much. So it was definitely a marketing ploy to throw that in there. But growing up, I was very close with my grandfather and I would also go on the summers to my grandmother's territory, Tocquat territory near Euclut, BC.

So I would go up to Upper Hat Creek, my grandfather's reservation, especially the last few years of his life and I'd spend a lot of time up there. So also just to kind of like throw it out there I came from the res like you can you can come from the res and make something too I really like to focus on you don't have to leave the reservation to build success you can create success within your community what does it mean to come from the res though what is for somebody who's never been like I'm sure you know people who've never been on a res they don't know what that means they there's assumptions about guns there's

violence, like there's not always an understanding of what it means to come from the rest. So what does it mean for you? For me, it means quite like literally to come from a reservation. So somewhere where when colonization happened and the indigenous people were forced to be put into these tiny little areas, which were called reservations, and only be allowed to leave when an Indian agent would come and give permission and that Indian agent would only come maybe once a month. So they weren't really allowed to leave those reservations. And with the people who relies on hunting and fishing for food,

that can become detrimental to the way of living. So to come from the res means quite literally to come from an Indian reservation, which is the deologically where those places are. But it's more of like a statement. Like I came from the res and you can come from the res too and do it every way. want. Yeah, I just think about like our own community. We have five different reservations and the challenges we're trying to overcome is poverty and the living conditions. Like I know in being a chief, the quality of those homes were never built up to provincial code because provincial code doesn't

apply on federal land. And so the quality of the housing can often be subpar. And then because you don't really own your house in the same way you do in a municipality, there's not the same investment in upkeep. Like the cost to maintain a whole house is a lot of money. And so a lot of our members go, I don't have $80,000 to put into renovations. And so the quality of living conditions can often be more challenging, lower. And that's why investments in supporter needed in reconciliation in order to address the standard of living. Do you have any reflections on now? Of course, 100%. My grandfather lived on reservation, the house that I'm talking about, and he never got to experience clean drinking water. So as part of the, you know, promise from past prime ministers to get clean water, my grandpa

never got to experience that luxury. He would go up to his house and I remember him pouring a bath for himself and always wondering why he would come down to our Ashcroft house to shower and going and pouring the bath and coming back to check on it and I come back and it's black water, like not brown, like black. And I was just like almost in tears because of realizing that my grandfather has been living with this, his whole life, and really hit heavy when I took over the house years later after he had passed, and we finally got the clean drinking water. Finally, that was promised years and years and years ago,

and my grandpa never got to experience it. He had to drive 45 minutes just to go get a clean shower. When we talk about the challenges you've overcome in your music, I'm wondering about how much of it is, like, real pain that you're able to experience and share with people who listen. music, but how much of it is also trying to balance not wanting to be pitied and that you overcame those things. I find that to be like a really challenging thing to balance, honoring the real hardship you face with not also getting stuck there. And I'm wondering how you process that

because music seems to be a tool to kind of digest those experiences. That's a really good question. Yeah, 100%. I use music as healing. Like to me, music is medicine. And, um, in ways, in so many ways that I can't even understand. Like I was writing a song the other night. And it was just because I was starting to feel so overwhelmed with life. And over a year sober now, but back before when I wasn't sober, I would use other substances to numb that, you know, that feeling. And now that I'm having to work through these feelings, music has just become my like, my go-to. So I was writing, I was feeling very overwhelmed and I sat down and with my guitar and

and I just started writing music. And what you were saying, how to not have people petty you is, that's really interesting that you kind of pick up on that in music because when I'm writing, I'm very cautious with what I will say. Like, I won't go deep into my traumas or my personal, my very personal things, which a lot of, some artists will do that, you know. They will go super deep into there. I like to make mine a little bit more broad saying I am struggling.

I am in pain, but I'm going to push through it. You know, just to give a broader audience that sense of relief and understanding. Like, if I get really specific, maybe only a few are affected or like, oh, I went through that exactly. And it really affects them. Or I can just slightly, you know, affect a lot more people by being like, damn. You know, it does, it does, it is tough sometimes. And how do you balance that with what your audience or what you know will hit versus, what's what you feel comfortable sharing, right?

Because you look at really prominent artists like NF who share a lot of their emotions with the general public. But that takes something from you, right? Like I interviewed NK47, who's a rapper down in Arizona. And he was talking, like, one of his songs is about how, like, all you want me to do is yell into the mic and share, like, put my heart on the song. Like, that's all they want from you while also trying to balance how much do you feel comfortable sharing?

What is too personal? What are things you're still working through? That's another amazing question. With the new, like it is hard because you want to sound trendy, right? You want to be appealing to the younger audience, every audience, and have that sound that everyone's looking for while also staying true to yourself and making sure that you're maintaining that authenticity as an artist and as just a person, like person-to-person connection.

Every time somebody's listening to your song, whether it be a surface level listener or an in-depth listener, they're getting something and they're picking up something from what you're saying or the way that you're saying it. So when I write music, I really like to focus on how to sound cool. You want to sound cool, right? You want to sound good.

But also making sure that I'm staying true to who I am as a person and not leaving things out because of certain reasons. like oh I'm not going to get too political because I want this to be on the radio or I'm not going to say native or I'm not going to even Bring up any fact that I'm indigenous because I want this to get on the radio No, I'm not going to do that. I'm gonna I'm gonna try and represent my culture in every song I can In a music video it's pretty easy to tell so but I try yeah I try and stay true to myself with my lyrics and not get too caught up in what will blow and like what's going to be trendy, what's going to sound good. But there is a very fine line because you do have to appeal and you also want to be true to

who you are as a person. Okay. This is going to be one of my tougher questions and it gets more into the indigenous culture piece and how to balance things. And it's a genuine question that I'm asking because I'm trying to think these issues through. One of the challenges that I worry a lot about is a potential entitlement of First Nation people in certain regards. And one example I'll give is we're working through in our community some specific claims.

And for people who don't know, specific claims are where we're paid out a portion of money for a wrong that was committed historically. And then the community gets that money. And what we have are often called per capita distributions. And per capita distributions means that a portion of, say you get $10 million from the government for a claim where the indigenous community was treated wrong. A per capita distribution would be a portion of that goes to each member and they get a certain amount of money. the challenge that I see at times is there's such a focus on getting that money and a missed opportunity to understand the historical wrong that had taken place that your ancestors, your great great grandparents went through that you didn't go through. So are you owed that money or are you or should that be for communities benefit over the long term? How do you balance that with the reality that so many of our community members are in such poverty that it's hard to get out. It's hard when you have nothing, when you don't have enough food, the fridge to be able to rise up. And so to me, there's this balance that I'm trying to figure out for myself of how do I support members in their success. So there's no barriers to their success, while also not letting them think that they are just owed everything in life as a consequence of

what happened to their ancestors that was real. And I'm interested. You've seen this. You're a person who's giving people a pathway forward and say, you can rise up. You can be like me. You can start succeeding. It doesn't have to be about drugs. It doesn't have to be about staying in your pain. you can rise above that knowing that not everybody can get there. I'm just wondering, how do you think about the balance that we need to find with protecting our rights while also recognizing that people can get stuck in the bad things that have happened to them and their families? That's an amazing question because it's so within our community, right? There's so much pain in all of our communities and intergenerational trauma

from colonization, assimilation, and residential to residential schools has impacted our people on a detrimental level. And when you talk about the money coming in and the focus on becomes the money coming in and not why it's actually coming in. It's something that has been a really common theme within my life is focusing on the why. I'm taking a few programs right now and these conferences that I come come to. Everyone has been focused on the why. Why do you do what you do? And so I think that's really important.

And for when there are, there is money coming in, that the community really has time to sit with that. Because our people are hurting. And when you give a hurting people a bunch of money, what's going to happen, right? Like, we see it within our own communities. It's happened within our own communities. It's happened to me, you know.

Only, it's been such a short period. of time living like this for our people that are the way that we think about money is not you know we don't really know really what to do with it half the time and if we're going to invest it like it's not it's really hard it's really hard to um navigate that um which is why i do the work that i do with with with um create kind of creating opportunities to be like hey you can i don't like to like hey you could mess up and go through all these roads and then do it it's kind of more like hey why don't you just do this right away yeah like like focus on focus on the good and you don't have to go through that hurt in the music i think you do a good job of balancing the the real life culture in in indigenous

communities with also that that hope and i'm just wondering how there's there's people who will listen for the grit of like the reality of what it's like on the ground in first nation communities then there's people who are looking for that, like, rise above all of the challenges you've faced. You came from, like, my mother has FASD. I've never met my father. There's people who gravitate towards the story of, like, what you've been through. And then there's people who are interested in what it's like in First Nation communities. And I'm just wondering, how do you go about choosing what you pull into your music when you're doing that?

All about being authentic to who I am, because I've been, I've had struggles. We all have had struggles, right? But I know there's people out there that have really had struggles. I'm super blessed to have such an amazing family. My mother, both and my father in my lives, constantly supporting me and encouraging me my whole life, inspiring me to be artistic and to be a musician and chase what I really wanted to do in life,

always telling me I don't have to conform to society. And then from my mother, creating a whole music, empire with Two Rivers Remix Society and her all indigenous music festival that travels around to small remote communities bringing this giant show all for free and celebrating with these communities bringing these communities back together and showcasing indigenous artists as well and bringing me into that circle and constantly like building a such a huge empire for me to just absorb and absorb and absorb and for me to be so successful in the profession that I wanted to be.

Shout out to my mom, Mika Morgan. She's the artistic director of Two Rivers Remix. She's amazing. Many people call her Queen Nika. And also shout out to my dad. Rob Hall, he brought me on stage for the first time when I was like five years old. And we sung the Ramon Spider-Man song

with a live band and just rocked out. So my parents fully encouraged me so much without a drop of like, hey, maybe you shouldn't do this. It was more like, hey, we're doing this. Come on stage and do it with us and also do your own thing as well. So just like making sure to be true to who I am and not music is an art form, yes, but I don't want to be somebody who is like, oh, music is an art, don't take everything I say seriously because I find that words are extremely powerful. I've had instances where I write a song

and then the lyrics in that song will later unfold in life. So I find that words are so powerful. So don't really speak on things that you don't know too much about. Speaking of words, you've got this line, assimilator, snakes, and people biting like piranhas. Who or what are you fighting in those bars? people, systems, history. So I came for the snakes, the assimilators you watch out a way you get put on your head.

Is because the line, it goes the lines before that, like blah, blah, blah. Effid, I came from the res. But I came from the res. I came from the res. So where am I now? So I came from the res. I'm in the city now. That's like kind of what's that.

Like I'm in your city now. I came for the snakes. And I came from the res. I came for the snakes, the assimilators. So you better watch out or a wage. It's kind of like, like don't be proper. Be a good human, right? Do you see a lot of those people in the work that you do?

And how do you spot those types of people? In the work that I do, no, because I've created work that is very understanding and just opening to learn about these subjects. And they want to bring me into. teach the youth about these subjects. I also work predominantly with indigenous youth. So there's already an understanding beforehand. But sorry, can you repeat the question? I'm wondering, like, you talk about, like, assimilators and these types of people. Like, do you see those in, in the work that you're doing? I would say I seen them. I say I grew up around a lot of,

and I won't like, I don't like to name college generally, but I grew up. up in a more predominantly white, in high school, racist town. Like I was taught to make fun, kind of make fun of who I was. Like, ah, I'm a chug, ha ha, ha, and laugh about stuff like that in order to fit in. And it wasn't until I graduated high school that I became proud to be in a family band. I wouldn't tell anybody I was in a family band because I'm in a band with my mom and dad called the Malaman Collective. We just dropped an album called Fire in the Lake and it's a very available on all streaming platforms, so check it out.

We're about to go on tour, starting on March 14th, Vancouver Island, and we'll end at the end of March. You're pretty good at these plugs. I guess I would just follow up and just, like, you're talking about the youth. What are you seeing in those youth? What are the challenges that they're facing? Every community is different. I've worked with organizations going into doing workshops. I've worked with my mom doing workshops from when I was a very, like a youth youth.

And now I do my own workshops with a combination of all these workshops that I've taken over the years and kind of made my own. So every community is different. Many communities, nine out of 10 communities, it's gonna be a sad song, it's gonna be about loss, about abandonment, feelings of abandonment.

And then some songs will be happy. There was a song that I did at my home territory, Stuck Touse. We did, we came in, we did a song, a music video, and a canvas the week before my mother came in with Two Rivers Remix Festival and brought the whole festival to our community. So we got to make this song and then we got to showcase all these kids at the festival and they got to bring all their families to the festival and then bring them on stage. That song was about loss. It was called Lost Spirits and I was working with a group of youth from, sucked house in surrounding areas. There was about three nations, three to four nations that were involved and one of the kids when I was writing with him, he, I was looking at his work and I took a piece that he had written and I was showing him

how it would flow and if you were gonna wrap it and the bars were like came up on your came up on our land with your big guns and your damn drugs killed my mom feel the pain in this song and I did that to him I wrapped it to him a little bit more rapy and he looked at me and he said when you when you said that i felt something in my heart and i like had to like be like whoa we kept writing but that was that healing that's why i call it healing through hip-hop when workshops because he was getting that healing from losing his mother from a drug overdose um i got to for that workshop i got to work with my late brother Lyle Morgan's son and he was one of my biggest inspirations.

The first person to ever do a song with me and give me time, even though I was just a young boy and a little rascal, he gave me his time and he made a song with me. And he passed away a few years ago and I got to bring his son into that workshop and show him and do his first song with his son when his dad was the one who showed me. how to do my first song and his dad's has now passed away RIP my brother Lyle so that healing is just so

amazing but with communities it'll change so you come in and you kind of ask like what's going on in this community what are there what are some struggles and you ask beforehand and you kind of figure out so you can always push them towards a direction but the kids always choose what they want to rap about like the last song it was called good vibes and they're all talking about good vibes and ice cream and yeah it was great so it varies. One thing I think artists, one question I have that I think a lot about is that I think artists at their strongest often go to an edge of an understanding of something and bring back what they know.

And the example I often use is Juice World because he talked a lot about drug use, addiction, what he was struggling with. And in many ways, if you listen to the album he made before he died, he talks in multiple songs like i don't think i'm going to be here anymore i don't think i'm going to make it out of this i don't think i'm going to get through this like i think my like this is the end of my life and he foreshadowed his own passing due to drug use and so but there's there's such a melancholy energy to that i that listeners experience the because he went there to almost come back to tell listeners where he where he was struggling with and that's a weight but it's also such a gift to give

to listeners who don't have a voice. And when you talk about children who are trying to find somebody who's going to repeat back to them what they're experiencing, it's a heavy weight. And I think you've been through that a lot. And you've shared that on another podcast. And I'm just wondering if you can share some of the things you've overcome because I think in that last interview that you had done, you had talked about being at that edge and realize, oh, my gosh, I'm okay with myself dying. Like, like, I can foresee that? Can you talk about what that experience was like and being able to come back from that edge? Yeah, I mean, like I said earlier, words to me are powerful.

Juice World said once, what's the 27 Club? We make it past 21. All of his friends were dying before 21. He died at 21. He spoke that into existence. I wrote a verse about crashing my car at going 160, and I never even released that. And I had a bad feeling because my mom always told me, but words are powerful.

so don't write things that are like that. And I never even released that song. I never even recorded it. And I ended up crashing my car going 160 kilometers per hour. Struggles for me being young and being a young skateboarder, hip hop, musician, touring around. And my parents tried to keep a, you know, keep a tight leash on me, but I'm a young 14-year-old boy at a festival with a bunch of other festival kids. And we're all having fun.

I definitely struggled with mental health growing up. And wasn't too sure what that was until my later teens. and at that time I had already been introduced to alcohol and alcohol just really kind of numbs everything right and it kind of just gets you going so for for a long time I I numbed myself with alcohol

and wasn't really thinking about all these emotions that I was shoving down that were going to have to come out eventually and it came to a point where I was hurting my family I was scaring my family My career wasn't going to go anywhere And I just knew that I wasn't going to do anything If I continued down this road And I came to a point where

I was I had You know I thought about if I'm going to continue drinking How would I do this? And my parents wouldn't have me drink in the house And like I couldn't drink at either of their places and like, you know, there was people I wasn't allowed. So it was like, oh, where can I drink?

And the thought went like, oh, you can go hitchhike to the nearest city and find enough money to get a bottle and you'll be on the street. And when my brain went there, I was like, damn. My brain went there and the thought of that as an option. And I was like, no, you need to go get yourself in check. And you have a lot to give to these youth. You know, I have a lot of youth. I was also seeing youth because I'm getting to that age

where the youth that used to look up to me are starting to get into their teams. And I was seeing that cycle go around again. And I was seeing that I was contributing to that cycle. And that even though I'm rapping about all this stuff and I'm doing all this good work, I'm not acting in a good way. And they're seeing that.

And it's now onto them. And I was seeing patterns that I was creating in the younger generation. I didn't like that. either. I wanted to inspire the younger generation. I wanted to be a good influence and if I was going to hang around people, I wanted them to come out better than they were before, not come out worse. I found that was a very constant theme with how chaotic my life was. I was just all over the place doing so many things and being like, oh, I'm so busy, it's fine, I'm doing so much. I wasn't

taking care of myself and I was actually harming people around me through being so chaotic. So I wanted to kind of like honed in, bring it in and just be successful for the for myself and as well for the youth to show them like, hey, you guys can do it too. I think that ties into like the seven generations principle, right? Of like what are you doing to honor the past, but what are you doing moving forward? What does resiliency look like when you're in that moment? Like how do you act to that out? When you're struggling, when your life is chaos, what does resilience look like you? Turning to any, turning to whatever it is that helps. you that isn't like substances or something that's going to harm you or somebody else.

Whether that's culture, whether that's music, whether that's anything that helps you, is just making that choice when you have those urges, whether it's to hurt people or to drink or do drugs, or just to be destructive in general. And to make the choice to do the other thing, it's always hard. Every day, every day and it never gets easier. never gets easier. It does get easier, but there's never less opportunities to do the fun, but probably the more damaging thing. It's always going to be right in your face kind of like pulling at your, pulling at your legs a little bit, saying like, come on, come on, let's do that.

But the thing that you're like, oh, but I should probably do this, that's usually where the success lies. What aspects of your life did you have to find? enough peace in in order to move forward. I think being alone is something I struggled with a lot, freshly out of sobriety and just in general. A lot of people, a lot of people in the party scene will realize that a common thing is to like, what are you doing when you're partying?

You're inviting and you're being social and you're constantly creating a little blanket of comfort through substances and other people's presence where you're not forced to sit with yourself and work through these emotions that you've been holding in your whole life maybe. So just kind of like working through them and I'm just learning it as well too

to sit and just be with those emotions. I have a lot of younger cousins in there, they'll text me and ask me for advice and I give them advice just as I'm learning it, you know? Just like you got to sit with those emotions. I'll be in my truck sometimes, I'm shedding a couple tears, but it's okay, you know.

What have you learned from the youth? Because I imagine you can see a bit of yourself in them. What do you take away when you're supporting them? I've learned to always, always act like somebody is watching you, but in a good way. You know, like always act like somebody is looking at you with this, ah, I'm going to be like that. because you never know who's watching and the things that you're doing how it's influencing. If it influences one kid, he can go home and, you know, tell his brothers, sisters, friends at school, that's 12. I think in the program I'm attending right now, they say if you can impact one student and you're reaching 12 other people.

So make it in a good way. How do you balance, this goes back to an earlier question, but how do you balance holding space, for them, making sure they feel seen, with also encouraging them to step up and do the things that they need to do. Because this one can often be the hard one for people to hear, which is pull yourself up by your bootstraps, go get after it. You can be more than this and you're capable of great things and we need you to rise to the occasion. And I think at times we focus too much on understanding and not enough on saying you're capable of better than this, of more than this. The way I run my workshops is why I've developed it the way it is because through watching my mom do it and being with other organizations, I've figured out it worked.

And that's why I've also brought in my cousins. Through Healing Through Hip Hop, we've created a five-day intensive workshop called Camp Sacred. So we come in, first thing, I lay down the beat, they pick out the beat. We paint the background of the giant collaborative canvas just to get like bare bones. This is what's going to be happening for the week. And then my cousin Dario will lead a medicine walk and we go up into the local area. We learn about the traditional plant knowledge,

the proper protocols of harvesting medicine, and just the importance of keeping local ecosystems intact. So right away, we just get them out. And the whole time we're listening to the beat and kind of feeling out the vibe. And we're telling them like, hey, think in your mind, what does this music speaking to you? And when we get back,

we're going to have a discussion. On that walk, they also pick up their stick for their rattle that they'll be making throughout the week. We come back, we get everyone sit down, and then we have a discussion, and we ask, what is the theme? What does this make you feel? Once we decide a theme, we go into writing and recording mode for the next two days. So that writing and recording mode, that's where you'll find a lot of, I don't want to do that.

I'm not going to write. So I just tell them like, hey, 10 minutes, I just want you to write about this theme. I don't care if it rhymes. I don't care if it anything. I just want you to write about this for 10 minutes. And then I go around 10 minutes and I look at their paper and I choose the strongest sentence that's the most like powerful. And I'm like, hey, this is what sticks out to me.

Are you all right if we start with this? We start with that. And then I make them pick out, I make them pick out three rhyme words from the end word of that sentence. They choose their words. And I say, hey, what's your favorite word out of that? They choose the word. And I say, okay, give me three.

sentences with that as an end word. They come out, they give me three sentences. I say, which one do you like the best? And they choose it. So through doing that, I'm not writing any of that lyrics. I will help with some of the lyrics if they're really, really stuck. You know, I'll give suggestions. But through doing that process, it's making them totally write the lyrics 100% themselves.

And they have this sense of like, well, I just did that. So that's how I do it. I kind of, I don't even ask them. I never even ask. I boss them right around. I'm like, hey, start writing, do this. And before they have the chance to question if they're comfortable really with it,

because a grown man going into a recording studio is going to be uncomfortable. A grown woman is going to be on. Anybody's going to be, especially if you've never heard your voice like that, that clear and that, like, whoa. So you just kind of shove them in there. And I do what's called a ghost track,

so I'll show them the flow. We'll work together on how, they want to do it and I'll be like are you happy with that and then we'll go in so I'll record the backing so they can practice listen to it listen to it and then they record and we'll take mine out after and they're left with that flow sounding like a total rapper and then after all the canvas and everything is complete we do two full days of filming on the land wherever their traditional territory is and we film the music video and then we come in and and depends if the community would like to or not.

We have like a celebration day where we show them a rough draft of the video. We bring in a live, old live cover band for the elders. We do a hip hop set for the youth and then ended it with like a DJ kind of dance party. So it's a big production that's constantly keeping them busy and not questioning, are you comfortable with this? Do you want to?

Of course if they say no, that's totally up to them. They're allowed to do whatever they want. We have the canvas, the rattle making, and the song for a reason. So if they're not into the song, they can work on the canvas. Maybe they want to work on the album artwork. Maybe they want to write some stuff for the music video. But they'll all be involved. And it's just like keep them working, keep them going.

Why hip-hop?