NORTH BATTLEFORD — In Canada, people have spent considerable time discussing what reconciliation means and what the future looks like for all Canadians.
For Jaaji and Chelsey June, the married couple who make up Twin Flames, reconciliation means simple conversations.
Their recent Saskatchewan tour and their message of togetherness, reconciliation, and conversation came to a close Nov. 30 with a show in Indian Head after visiting Prince Albert, North Battleford, Estevan, Yorkton, Swift Current and 10 other towns and cities across the province.
“We’re (Canada) making baby steps, and we’re going forward in this country, hopefully, more in unity, and that’s a really beautiful thing,” June said during one of their 17 Saskatchewan shows spread across 28 days.
“... we literally get to see, I think, every nook and cranny of Saskatchewan. Apparently, we’ve even played in one of the smallest towns, which was also very cool.”
Jaaji and Chelsey June met around a campfire on a television show eight years ago, and ever since, they’ve lived life to the fullest. Playing about 300 shows a year in Canada and abroad, they meet hundreds of people during their journeys as they tell their stories through songs and touch the country with their hope of healing and togetherness.
Plane Song
When award-winning Indigenous singers Twin Flames started touring, most of their journeys were in the Canadian Arctic, in fly-in only communities. Chelsey June, who describes herself as a Heinz 57, felt extremely privileged to see where her husband was born but also spent time reflecting on where she belongs.
“I struggled with that a lot because it’s hard to feel like you belong somewhere when you have so many pieces that connect your puzzle.”
But June wondered if people in the north feel more pride and connection to their culture. She quickly learned that due to colonialism and the churches, Inuit living in their own lands and homes often lack that pride in their identity and where they came from.
One of their songs, titled Plane Song, is a reminder that no matter who you are or where you come from, everyone deserves the fundamental right to be proud of their stories and not have to pick a side.
Porch Light
As songwriters, they also use music are their way to process life and their emotions.
“Sometimes, we write songs that we never actually plan to release; this is definitely one of those songs,” June said.
Porch Light was written after they met a gentleman in Winnipeg during the Indigenous Songwriters Awards. He asked if he and his sister could take a selfie with them, to which they agreed.
The man returned moments later with a photo of his sister that he’s carried with him for 20 years, hoping that one day she’d return or that there would be answers, desperate to keep her memory alive.
“Neither of us knew how to smile in a photograph like that.”
Living in Ottawa, they were frequently asked to perform during meetings for the national inquiry into missing and murdered women and girls. Sitting in the back of the room, listening to hundreds and hundreds of families telling the stories, missing their loved ones, forever changes how a person sees Canada, they say.
After returning home to Ottawa after the Indigenous Music Awards, they wrote the song and sent it to the man with the photo of his sister, never planning to release it. But, he asked to use it for a national campaign for awareness of missing women and girls.
“We never want to gain any kind of fame off the tragedies that happened in our communities, and to our family members or to our community members, and so we just figured sometimes songs come through us, maybe they were never ours, to begin with.”
Native by Nature
June feels that part of their responsibility in having a platform where people are actually listening is to help Canadians understand.
“It’s never a blame game, which is Jaaji’s line usually. When we invite people into our shows, it’s just about sharing. And I think that sharing and communicating together is how Canada will be a more beautiful country for future generations,” June says.
“The narrative of the youth has really changed. They feel very embarrassed about the last 500 years. But, we assure them, like everybody else that feels responsible, that it is not your fault.”
Jaaji says he believes realizing why Indigenous people in Canada are struggling is essential.
“Our people struggle with a lot of different things that are out of our control, like residential schools, clean drinking water, pipelines and trees being cut down,” he said.
“It was a lot of change in a short amount of time.”
Giants
“Both Jaaji and I have lost family members who unfortunately chose to take their own lives. It’s something that stays with you forever. So many of our people, our community members, and our young people chose to end their lives,” says June.
“We have more people in our region than anywhere else in the world that end their lives before 20. And so, as musicians, we wanted to write a song that reminds people that no matter how hard things get, we must find that inner strength.
“When we go through hard times, if we use those moments as lessons, we can hopefully help the next people going through it.”
And when Jaaji and June can’t find that inner strength, they remind people to find it outwardly in other people. And so, in this chorus of their song Giants says, “we are bigger mountains, taller than giants and braver than lions.”
“It’s just that message that we can get through anything and that life does get better if we hold on long enough.”
You know how they always ask those questions if you could tell your younger self one thing, what would it be? June says she isn’t sure she could have dreamed she’d be on stage, sharing her story with people who want to listen.
“Even in stories of hardship, we can find stories of hope.”
Savage Daughter Cover
The word savage for June and her family is a multi-faceted one. In their family tree, many of their ancestors weren’t given names, or savage was written beside their names instead.
“… savage was used as a very derogatory word for a very long time. But when we think of the word savage itself, especially now, we want to describe something of power.”
She says she believes there is power in reclaiming words.
“I’m really proud to be my mother’s savage daughter and my grandmother’s savage granddaughter. I come from women who’d had to go through so much and had to have so much resilience.”
June’s grandmother came from a time when if you didn’t look Indigenous, you didn’t say it out loud. Due to her ancestry, her grandmother and her family weren’t allowed to live on a reservation because they weren’t Indigenous enough. Still, they weren’t allowed to live in the French catholic community because they were considered half-breeds.
“I think she never really felt like she belonged to one world or the other … the first chance she got, she moved to the big city, became a hairdresser, and dyed her hair blonde.”
On the other hand, June’s mom was raised by her great-grandmother. Her great-grandmother used to whisper,
“We need to have pride.”
Broke Down Ski’tuuq (Skidoo)
Jaaji’s parents were born in igloos. The Inuit were nomadic, travelling with the seasons and through that pattern, the Inuit were able to herd husky dogs.
“The Hudson’s Bay Company and the Canadian Government ordered the RCMP to slaughter all the husky dogs. And that immediately halted our nomadic ways. We were no longer allowed to have dogs.
“When you look up north, we went from igloos to the internet in 50 years. We had nothing but dog power and our legs, now we have Skidoos. We slept in igloos, now we sleep in big homes. That’s a lot of stuff to take in in a very short amount of time, and it affects people.”
Jaaji’s brother has worked tirelessly to bring husky dogs back to the north, and although there are breeding programs in place now, the dogs will never be precisely the same. Canada has, however, brought dogs from Antarctica, and Jaaji’s brother is involved in the programs that are rebuilding the presence of dogs in the arctic.
When June travelled north for the first time in 2015, she saw Jaaji’s brother cross the finish line of a two-week, 600-kilometre dog sled race.
“It was beautiful to see the dogs get to do what they were made to do. And seeing Inuks taking back that power is really inspirational,” she says.
But, those snowmobiles break down unlike husky dogs, and when Jaaji was nine, he was given life-changing advice on how to start a frozen engine. He can still recall his father’s advice.
“Pee on it.”
Battlefields
“I wish people would have known a little more about mental health and what it was when I was growing up,” June said.
“Everyone would always say, ‘oh, she’s just tired, or she’s just not herself today,’ but depression and anxiety are real.
“Thinking about everyone going through this pandemic, people who perhaps never felt a mental health problem in their entire life, were faced with literally the scariest scenarios, and it’s just a small window of what people with an actual mental health disorder feel on a daily basis.”
Their song, Battlefields, explains that everyone has battlefields in their minds, and according to Jaaji and June, we carry so much as human beings, and we forget that the next person is caring just as much, if not more.
“We can never measure our pain, or someone else’s because we can never truly understand what someone else is feeling. We can be empathetic to it, but we can never truly understand.”
Without Tears
Jaaji’s father once stood face-to-face with a polar bear for nine hours because he forgot to bring his gun. And when Jaaji was young, if he tried to cry to his father, he’d say, “No. Do not show emotion. Be a man.”
“I was a policeman for 12 years. And it’s not like down here when you’re a policeman, you can have backup very quickly. (Jaaji was) the kind of policeman where you’re isolated and may be alone. The next person to come and help you is a plane ride away.”
Eventually, Jaaji fell into alcohol. But, eight years ago, after drinking for a quarter-century, Jaaji decided to stop.
“I needed to take control of my life. When you’re already born as a statistic, it was something that I felt was important. I needed to gain the love of my family again. A lot of youth looked up to us as role models, we wrote a lot of songs about healing.”
Jaaji says he felt like he was lying. Their song, Without Tears, is about self-introspection.
His ah-ha moment was when he was singing his own song, inebriated on stage somewhere while people sang his song word for word, he would yell the wrong town name.
“That’s when I decided to stop.”
Grace Too
When Twin Flames thinks of excellent allies in Canada, they think of Gord Downie. Downie, the lead singer of the Tragically Hip, dedicated everything to helping amplify Indigenous voices and help Canadians understand the lasting effect of residential schools at the end of his life.
“A few years ago, Jaaji and I were asked to be a part of the legacy tribute concert (for Gord Downie) ... and although we grew up with a lot of great music, Tragically Hip was not played in the house all that often, which was tragic in itself.”
They were asked to cover one of the band’s songs, and after picking their song, they were forced to change their choice on the five-hour drive to the event.
“We had to perform that night in front of 2,000 people. No pressure,” says Jaaji.
They chose Grace Too on the drive and performed it that night at soundcheck.
“(Grace Too) has just been such a complete gift to us. Whether or not you believe in something after this life that’s a personal choice. Still, it feels like that love that Gord had for our people lives on through that song.”
Grace Too went on to be played on commercial rock radio across Canada, despite struggles for Indigenous songwriters to be played on commercial radio.
“We feel like it’s a huge testament to what Gord did and the legacy he led.”
