November is Native American Heritage Month in the United States. As someone who did not grow up in North America and does not have any Native American heritage in my family, I have been on a constant learning journey for the last two decades since moving to the United States to learn more about North American Indigenous music, and appropriate ways for me, as an outsider, to share it with my students. One way to do so is by sharing current musicians with my students- here are a few contemporary Native American musicians to explore.
First it's important to note that there is a lot of variation in language preferences within the Indigenous people of the North American continent. I refer to the heritage month by the official name, and try to use a mix of the preferred language I have heard from various culture bearers in my descriptions. When you are referring to specific people or musicians, it's important to do the research to see how they refer to themselves before describing them to your students. For each of the musicians I've compiled here I've listed their name and their tribe if they identify with a specific one(s), and included an example of a song you may want to share with your students.
Elisapie (Inuk)
Quinn Christopherson (Athabascan/ Inupiaq)
Martha Redbone
Mumu Fresh (Choctaw, Creek, Cherokee)
Raye Zaragoza (O'odham)
Rhiannon Giddens
Supaman (Apsáalooke)
*song below contains heavy themes- prayer loop song could be an alternative
This list only begins to scratch the surface of amazing, multifaceted musicians actively making excellent music in a broad range of genres with North American Indigenous heritage! Please share other artists and/or songs you've found in the comments below.
Sharing songs and musicians is just one piece of giving students the opportunity to interact with and learn from Native American music, and it's important for us to do so in appropriate, respectful, and authentic ways, especially as non-native music teachers. I've compiled in this post some of my favorite resources for learning from culture bearers:
To find more strategies, resources, and ideas for incorporating other heritage months in elementary music, check out these posts:
