“I'm doing this work because there's only about a hundred Wolastoqey speakers left,” he says. “It's crucial for us to make sure that we're using our language and passing it on to the next generation. If you lose the language, you're not just losing words; you're losing an entire way of seeing and experiencing the world from a distinctly indigenous perspective.”
Performer, composer, activist, musicologist, Jeremy Dutcher, his music, too, transcends boundaries: unapologetically playful in its incorporation of classical influences, full of reverence for the traditional songs of his home, and teeming with the urgency of modern-day struggles of resistance.