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Andrew Balfour, a Cree composer and a ’60s Scoop survivor, has spent nearly two decades developing the ideas behind Polyphony Meets the Prairies.
The concert tells the story of a young Cree girl, Chepi, who is guided by a trickster through time and place, encountering prophetic music from figures such as Hildegard von Bingen, Portuguese composer Alonso Lobo, and Mexican Indigenous composer Manuel de Zumaya.
The music, both old and new, serves as a bridge between past and present, Indigenous and European traditions, and storytelling and song.
Andrew Balfour is a Cree composer and conductor from Winnipeg, Manitoba. He is the artistic director of the vocal ensemble Dead of Winter.
Balfour was nominated for the 2023 Juno Award for Classical Album of the Year (Small Ensemble) for Nagamo, recorded with Musica Intima vocal ensemble.[1][2]
Early life
Balfour was born in the Fisher River Cree Nation, located north of Winnipeg, in 1967.[3] He was taken from his birth mother at six months old as part of the Sixties Scoop and adopted by a White settler family of Scottish descent.[4]
Balfour's adoptive father was a minister at All Saints’ Anglican Church
in Winnipeg and his mother was a violinist. His adoptive family would
encourage his interest in music which developed through choral singing and playing trumpet and trombone.[4]
Balfour would go on to attend Brandon University, later dropping out. During this period he would develop a dependence on alcohol. Balfour was arrested in 1992 for vandalism and was then placed in Milner Ridge Correctional Centre.[4]
Following his time in prison, he would begin singing in an informal
choir with a group of singers which would later become Camerata Nova
(now Dead of Winter), of which Balfour is artistic director.[4][5][6]
The Blackfoot Confederacy
is today made up of four bands. The traditional lands of three of them,
the Blood (Kainai), Piikani, and Siksika First Nations, are on the
plains of southern Alberta, Canada, while the Blackfeet Tribe’s homeland
is in northern Montana. Many scholars have concluded that the
confederacy is a relative newcomer to the High Plains. Linguists
classify the Blackfoot language as part of the Algonquin family, which
includes many languages spoken by peoples living around the Great Lakes
and on the Eastern Seaboard. Since the nineteenth century, Euro-American
anthropologists have argued that the ancestors of the people of the
Blackfoot Confederacy must have originally lived near the Great Lakes. At some point in the last millennium, they are thought to have migrated
to the High Plains. But the Blackfoot have no collective memory of a
migration from the east. Some of their stories do tell of a migration
from the north that took place long ago, when giant beavers and camels
still existed, but nothing in Blackfoot oral history matches the history
anthropologists have written for them. (I call that BAD HISTORY...)
A
genetic study has now provided support for the Blackfoot people’s
belief that they have lived on their traditional lands from time
immemorial. Working in partnership with the Blood (Kainai) First Nation
and the Blackfeet Tribe, a team led by archaeologist Maria Zedeño of the
University of Arizona and archaeogeneticist Ripan Malhi of the
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign analyzed DNA samples taken from
six living members of the Blackfoot Confederacy and from the remains of
seven ancestral Blackfoot.
To their surprise, the researchers discovered
that the Blackfoot did not share any genetic affinity with Algonquin
groups, or, indeed, with any other Native American peoples. Statistical
analysis showed that the Blackfoot lineage probably broke off from other
Native groups around 18,000 years ago. The Blackfoot likely lived in
relative isolation for millennia before interacting with Algonquin
speakers. These new insights into Blackfoot genetic heritage support
recent linguistic research suggesting that the Blackfoot language has
features that belong to an ancient language spoken by a people who lived
in the Blackfoot Confederacy’s homeland. These features are thought to
have long predated the advent of Algonquin languages.
“This really
confirms what we already knew,” says Gheri Hall, an archaeologist with
the Blackfeet Tribal Historic Preservation Office, who notes that the
genetic evidence could help the tribe in future legal cases involving
land disputes. “Now we can use the new science to fight the old
science.”
'Human Flagpoles': Dark story behind Inuit scene on $2 bill
Musician Lucie Idlout says the discontinued bank note reflects a dark time for Canada's Inuit
Andrew Friesen · CBC News ·
Circulated
between 1974 and 1979, the two-dollar bill features Joseph Idlout and
his relatives preparing their kayaks for a hunt. (Bank of Canada / National Currency Collection)
If you’re a Canadian
of a certain age, you’ve likely seen the Idlout family. In fact, you’ve
probably carried them around in your back pocket.
The reason: they’re featured on the back of the 1974 two-dollar bill.
Part of the Scenes of Canadaseries, the discontinued bank note depicts a group of six Inuit men preparing their kayaks for a hunt.
One of the men is Joseph Idlout, the grandfather of Canadian musician LucieIdlout. On a recent episode of the CBC Radio program DNTO, she revealed how the photograph of her grandfather and his relatives came to be taken.
Photographer Douglas Wilkinson spent years documenting Joseph Idlout and his community. (Douglas Wilkinson / Library and Archives Canada (PA-189095))
“My grandfather was known to be an excellent hunter,” said Idlout.
“He
was one of the first few Inuit to receive the Coronation medal from the
Queen - I kind of view him as a superhero, even though I never met
him.”
Based on a photograph taken by documentarian Douglas Wilkinson, the bill features Joseph Idlout and his relatives hunting nearby the Baffin Island community of Pond Inlet.
On
its surface, the bill appears to reflect nothing more than an innocent
scene of daily Inuit life. But dig a little deeper, and the story behind
the photograph becomes much more complicated.
“We were basically human flagpoles.”
In the 1950s, the Canadian government relocated a number of struggling Inuit families from Inukjuak (Quebec) to the communities of Resolute Bay and GriseFiord - hundreds of kilometres to the north.
Ostensibly
done to improve their standard of living, the realities of life in the
High Arctic proved difficult for families accustomed to the warmer
temperatures and more fertile tundra of Quebec. To ease their
transition, Joseph Idlout was hired to instruct the southern Inuit on life in the unforgiving northern climate.
“His
role in Resolute Bay was to assist with teaching Inuit how to survive
in a much harsher climate than what they were used to,” said Idlout.
As
the transplanted Inuit struggled to adapt to their new surroundings,
the motivation behind their relocation became increasingly clear.
“The
sad story is that we were basically human flagpoles, so the Canadian
government could assert sovereignty over the high arctic.”
Lucie Idlout: "It is another example of how Inuit were part of asserting sovereignty" (Facebook)
In
2010, the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development issued an
apology to Canada’s Inuit people, expressing regret “for the hardship
and suffering caused by the relocation.”
And while adjusting to a new and unfamiliar landscape was challenging, LucieIdlout
said that it was the actually the change in lifestyle that had the
biggest consequences - both for the transplanted communities and for her
grandfather.
“With the amenities and modernness of southern life coming to the north … it really changed the way Inuit lived," said Idlout.
“It was a lot of change that happened really quickly, and it had a lot of negative impacts on the people who lived there.”
And
though he was considered to be an exceptionally skilled and
well-respected man, the move proved to be particularly traumatizing for
Joseph Idlout. Although reports of his death vary, LucieIdlout says that her grandfather’s eventual suicide can be traced back to the relocation.
“The transition of life was just too fast and too much.”
Bills were meant to inspire Canadian pride
The
Scenes of Canada series, which was printed and put into circulation
between 1969 and 1979, was meant to instill pride and reflect Canadian
settlements from sea to sea.
When asked how she feels looking at the bill today, Idlout says she has mixed feelings.
Detail of the 1974 "Scenes of Canada" two-dollar bill (Bank of Canada)
“I don’t think there’s any coincidence the photograph was shot in the 50s, just before the relocation,” said Idlout.
“It is another example of how Inuit were part of asserting sovereignty
over different parts — so Canada could claim it as their own.”
But despite the darkness the bill represents, Idlout still feels a certain pride when she looks at the image of her family on the $2 note.
“It
became less of a photo and more of a piece of our history - that
involved important people from my family and people I love very much.”
South Korea says it sent babies abroad for adoption ‘like luggage’
For most of her life, Mary Bowers had one version of her adoption story.
It
was that she was an orphan — born in South Korea to a single mother
who, unable to take care of her, handed her over to an adoption agency
when she was a baby. In 1982, Bowers was adopted by a family in
Colorado.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, though, she took the time
to examine her past more carefully. She started finding discrepancies
in her adoption documents. That’s when she decided to move to South
Korea and keep digging.
“As I delved further into my adoption
file, I found the name of a father, as well, with his whole background,
description, aunts, uncles, hometown, height, weight, all of that,” she
said. “I was like, ‘well, if he wasn’t in the picture, this seems like a
lot of detail to provide about this man,’ who honestly I had spent a
good portion of my life hating because I thought, ‘well how could you
leave [my birth mother] like that?’”
Bowers also found other
discrepancies in her adoption records. For example, she was listed under
three different names. The details just didn’t add up.
In
2022, Bowers joined more than 350 Korean adoptees — from 11 different
countries — who filed cases with South Korea’s Truth and Reconciliation
Commission alleging all kinds of malpractice in adoptions. Last week,
the commission released a damning report on this — it said South Korean
adoption agencies sent children abroad like “luggage” for decades. The report
includes details about falsified documents, profit-driven
decision-making and children taken from their parents without consent.
“The
commission determined that the state violated the human rights of
adoptees protected under the constitution and international agreements,
by neglecting its duty to ensure basic human rights, including
inadequate legislation, poor management and oversight, and failures in
implementing proper administrative procedures while sending large
numbers of children abroad,” the commission said in a statement.
The
commission’s report corroborates an investigation by The Associated
Press last year, about how Korean birth mothers were pressured or
deceived into giving up their children while adoption agencies bribed
hospitals to route babies their way. The AP also produced a documentary on the subject in collaboration with Frontline (PBS) and compiled resources for adoptees who have questions about their backgrounds here.
Published on Sep 28, 2013 This 40-minute documentary explains the reason for and the process of creating and implementing ...
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You are not alone
To Veronica Brown
Veronica, we adult adoptees are thinking of you today and every day. We will be here when you need us. Your journey in the adopted life has begun, nothing can revoke that now, the damage cannot be undone. Be courageous, you have what no adoptee before you has had; a strong group of adult adoptees who know your story, who are behind you and will always be so.
GO HERE:
https://www.gluckstein.com/sixties-scoop-survivors
Lost Birds on Al Jazeera Fault Lines
click to read and listen about Trace, Diane, Julie and Suzie
We conclude this series & continue the conversation by naming that adoption is genocide. This naming refers to the process of genocide that breaks kinship ties through adoption & other forms of family separation & policing 🧵#NAAM2022#AdoptionIsTraumaAND#AdopteeTwitter#FFY 1/6 pic.twitter.com/46v0mWISZ1
As the single largest unregulated industry in the United States, adoption is viewed as a benevolent action that results in the formation of “forever families.” The truth is that it is a very lucrative business with a known sales pitch. With profits last estimated at over $1.44 billion dollars a year, mothers who consider adoption for their babies need to be very aware that all of this promotion clouds the facts and only though independent research can they get an accurate account of what life might be like for both them and their child after signing the adoption paperwork.
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