Music Counts is a Canadian charitable organization associated with the JUNO Awards who create educational resources, sponsor scholarships, and help create music education across the country. Their Kanata: Contemporary Indigenous Artists and their Music program is the creation of several Indigenous educators, advisors, and artists. This free program consists of a wealth of tools and resources for grades 7-12 which amplify Indigenous voices in music. I find this resource to be refreshing compared to the often tokenized Indigenous “lesson plans” in the past. The artists and stories within Kanata are authentic and contrast the all-too-common narrative that Indigenous peoples live in our history books. Modern pop-culture driven content such as Kanata helps to challenge the status quo and bring Indigenous peoples into mainstream media as other BIPOC communities have been trying to do so for so long.
