Fort Albany member Mike Metatawabin never imagined his poetry would be heard and read by people overseas.
A former chief and residential school survivor, Metatawabin has partnered with Swiss musician and author Manuel Menrath for a spoken word project called Songs of the Land.
The project consists of nine poems written by Metatawabin that are set to music composed by Menrath and Simon Ambühl. The music was recorded in the canton of Grisons, Switzerland.
“I went to Toronto to record my voice. After that, they laid down the tracks,” he said.
Monday night, Metatawabin presented a video of the songs to a small group of people gathered at Northern College.
The video was accompanied by various visuals and lyrics in German, Italian and Romansh.
This was the first time Metatawabin, who started writing poetry over a decade ago, took part in a creative project like this. He said he was emotional when he first heard the music set to his poetry.
“I never imagined it would be international. I just wrote what I felt, what I experienced and what I lived,” he said.
The poems provide insight into Metatawabin’s life journey, people he’s come across and issues facing First Nations communities.
In his poems, he spoke about St. Anne’s residential school, land development, addictions, the lack of justice toward Indigenous peoples, and the need to preserve and pass down the knowledge to the youth.
Metatawabin said he wants his poems to inspire and educate people.
A live performance of Metatawabin’s poetry accompanied by music was held at the Theater Chur in Switzerland in September.
“It was a theatre production. Over there, it was kind of like a 3D production that had a more visual effect,” Metatawabin said.
Metatawabin, who originally planned to travel to Switzerland to perform in-person, said all five shows were sold out. He couldn’t join due to travel restrictions.
"I did the introductions by Zoom. I did them from my home," he said.
Metatawabin met Menrath three years ago when the latter was in Canada to do research for his book about Treaty 9. The book is called Under the Northern Lights or Unter dem Nordlicht: Indianer aus Kanada erzählen von ihrem Land in German.
Metatawabin helped Menrath choose people to talk to for his book.
“As we got to know each other well, I started showing him some of my writings. When he read the poetry, he said music was jumping out of it,” Metatawabin said. “I didn’t expect it to turn it this way. Manuel and his friends did a good job, I’m very pleased.”
Out of over 50 poems written by Metatawabin, Menrath chose nine.
“It has always been a concern of mine not to talk about Indigenous people but with Indigenous people and, above all, to listen to them telling the truth,” Menrath said in a statement. “That is why this project, in which an Indigenous representative speaks his poems himself and tells about his life, is so important to me.”
Mayor George Pirie and Northern College president Audrey Penner were on hand Monday.
After the event, Penner said she found the presentation very powerful and moving.
“It told the story in a way that needed to be told but yet, it brought light out of the darkness. Hearing a story, which is a bleak story, but brought with a sense of hope was very powerful,” Penner said. “The music was almost hypnotic.”
