Tag Archives: Red Winter

Module 1- Post 2: Culture Clash? Meet First Nations Hip Hop Artist Drezus

After completing the first week’s readings, I thought about how it was that computers were at least partly to blame for transmitting the messages, images, and values which are incongruent with and degrading to traditional First Nations/Native culture. After last week’s discovery of Idle No More, decided to explore some of the other ways First Nation/Native people have co-opted computer technology and social media for their own purposes. YouTube proved to be an interesting resource for this objective.

I watched several promotional-style videos urging individuals to support the peaceful revolution behind the Idle No More movement, but one video in particular stuck out for me.

https://youtu.be/VEc3ZYqj5Fw

The video is a music video by Drezus for a song called Red Winter. Drezus is a Plains Cree-Saulteaux veteran hip hop artist and he presents quite an enigma with the cultural boundaries he simultaneously blurs and reinforces in this video.

A sample of his lyrics are telling:

My skins red, I bleed red, I‟m seeing red/
I’m praying for my people out there who haven’t seen it yet/
His blood is cold, tellin lies forever told/
By his ancestors 500 years ago/
Yeah I said it, got my people getting restless/
Making money off our land and we aint even on the guest-list/
Carry on traditions of a racist pilgrim/
And I know you really love it when my people play the victim/
Cause it makes it seem like we‟re folding under pressure/
But we’re up to bat now no more playing catcher/
Cause we see the bigger the picture that we have to capture/
See how quick we get together? We out to get ya!

This could be a useful piece of evidence for anyone analyzing cultural influence via computers/the media.