1, 2, 3, 4, 500 YEARS EP OUT MAY 28 VIA YOU’VE CHANGED RECORDS AND THE GRIZZLAR
WATCH AND SHARE “FIND A HOME” HERE
BUY / STREAM “FIND A HOME” HERE
READ ADAM STURGEON’S ESSAY ON THE NEW NAME, STATUS/NON-STATUS
PRE-ORDER 1, 2, 3, 4, 500 YEARS HERE
Photo Credit : Olde Nightrifter // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES
Status/Non-Status is the new name for the ongoing musical work of Anishinaabe community worker Adam Sturgeon (Nme’) and his longtime collaborators (fka Whoop-Szo). The band spent a decade carving a path through Canada’s DIY scene before leveling up thanks to 2019’s acclaimed long player Warrior Down (You’ve Changed Records). This album confronted Sturgeon’s complex family history and identity and was long listed for the Polaris Music Prize among numerous other accolades. Today, the band emerges renewed, with more stories to share …
Adam is ‘non-status’ as defined by the Canadian government. Adam’s grandfather Ralph made the difficult decision to enfranchise in order to support himself and his family by joining the Armed Forces. Enfranchisement was the government’s term for the legal process of turning in one’s Status Card, terminating one’s Indian Status, and becoming instead a Canadian citizen. It was a pillar of the government’s assimilation policy and a requirement for any Indigenous person who wished to enlist.
In the name of providing a better life for himself and his family, Ralph was required to forsake his Anishinaabe roots, an all-too-common experience for Indigenous peoples across Turtle Island. Acts of colonial violence such as enfranchisement, the residential school system, and the Indian Act have resulted in disconnection amongst generations of Indigenous people from their communities, languages, land, and identities. Today, new voices are rising up and — through acts of reclamation via art, language, music, and community — taking back spaces that have been dominated by settler culture for so many years.
Who is native enough? Who ‘counts’ as Indigenous, and who does not? These questions swirl through the Canadian arts discourse today, impacting every medium and revealing fundamental inadequacies within our current identity-defining systems. For Adam, the proof is in the work; his commitment to telling his family’s story with integrity and truth informs every aspect of his music and his life. Now a father to his own young son, it is the future that allows Adam to dig further into his roots.
“When we tell stories, we have a responsibility to tell the truth. Do the necessary work to earn trust. Share your experience as one voice within a greater circle … and find a home.”
READ ADAM STURGEON’S ESSAY ON THE NEW NAME, STATUS/NON-STATUS
Status/Non-Status are sharing the first single from the upcoming 1, 2, 3, 4, 500 Years EP, “Find A Home”, which arrives with a video directed remotely by the Olde Nightrifter (aka Eiyn Sof, recent collaborator of Rick White). On “Find A Home”, Sturgeon says:
“It is within the small and simple things that we find ourselves. On a long drive, a quick walk down to the river, or cooped up in silence at home. It is in our language and in our names. When I started making this music, I didn’t know a whole lot about myself or who I was. Métis, they would call me. Part Ojibwe. Part this or that. Which part? Same old story for the mixed breeds. Never saw my true reflection staring back at me.
On those long and lonely drives between tour stops, you can see life move but you only get a dusty windshield of a view. The occasional flat lets ya stop to peak the landscape. A snowstorm lets you know its history. These things shape you, give you ‘experience’. I’ve seen a lot of gas stations, no doubts there: informed.
Giving the time and reflection to do my best is what it comes down to. That, and driving overnight. Sometimes our best hurts. Hurts ourselves, hurts others. It always hurts you when it hurts someone else by the way. And so at night, out there ... nowhere, I’ve touched down and untangled the black roots of this strawberry heart. There were things I couldn’t see around the corner, not on this dark road. Not even on the brightest prairie day. At night, on the road, on and off stage I fill myself. Wake up new, on a floor, on the move, anywhere.
Music has helped me when I can’t find answers. For a long time I didn’t know where we were driving, and I mean all of us. This road put my mind together and maybe we all can too. Find a new way. Until then, I keep filling the tank. Reclaimed …”
WATCH AND SHARE “FIND A HOME” HERE
BUY / STREAM “FIND A HOME” HERE
ABOUT 1, 2, 3, 4, 500 YEARS EP
Set to the resonance of an unearthed whistle in the Jalisco province of Guadalajara, Mexico.
While the plastic grocery bag that housed these ancient artifacts would suggest otherwise, we could not in a good way nor in superstition employ such a spiritual apparatus that had been gifted many centuries ago to the lands we were visiting. The cracked and phallic fragments accompanying the whistles were other worldly in their own right, sitting atop a dresser turned Altar by our guide Alvaro Moreno in his tiny apartment upon our arrival; some cannabis, an old band photo, a favourite record, and a bag of clay objects older than anything we’d ever touched.
For two weeks, the band held up in a van and studio before finally being guided to the original home place known now as Guatchimontones to deliberate our own place within the mess of time. Life is messy but on paper it all looked so real and yes, a circular pyramid (La Iguana) on the foothills of deities, community and freshwater was where we in fact stood. That was real, but only in that today it resembles a pillaged and half assed attempt at honouring a long forgotten and desecrated people. That story doesn’t belong to us, but we wanted to ensure that we could come pay our respects and learn about the place we travelled.
As our guide Alvaro walked us, drove us and educated us of his life and city, we ourselves felt like the Lost Ones. Children, not warriors, unaware of every crack at our feet and every hole in our understanding. Unlike that of the local artists, professors and activists, silenced and disappeared from the walls of their own institutions.
Generally a safe city; divided in half by class, colour, and an old river turned stink pipe; staying, wandering through the streets and monuments like the strip malls and theme parks of our Canadian youth. New parents calling home to loved and little ones.
And so after 500 years……
For what?
PRE-ORDER 1, 2, 3, 4, 500 YEARS EP HERE
1, 2, 3, 4, 500 YEARS TRACKLIST
01 Find A Home
02 Genocidio
03 Untitled Travelogue
04 Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy
05 500 Years