Northern musician Leela Gilday channeled her voice into uplifting her Dene community through mental health advocacy at the Įdaà Ts’ade gathering earlier this year.
During the youth gathering in Behchokò, we discussed how her authenticity towards her Dene heritage within her music and advocacy work is helping to shift the narrative around mental health awareness for youth in the N.W.T.
The Juno Award-winning Dene music artist shared that she’s “fallen back in love” with her song Northstar Calling after it helped her feature local Northern youth on the anthem for the ‘Feel Out Loud’ campaign launched by Kids Help Phone.
“Mental health and youth mental health has always been a focus of mine as an Indigenous artist. Our rates of suicide in the North with our people are very high, and especially amongst our youth, so that’s been something that I speak out about as an artist,” she explained.
The music video “What I Wouldn’t Do (Northstar Calling)”, which features scenes of Behchokò students by Stagg River, has reached more than 1 million views on YouTube since it was released in March. It was a project for the Kids Help Phone campaign that was recorded with more than 50 music artists from across Canada.
“I was really happy to be able to represent the North and also shine a light on some of our Indigenous youth,” added Gilday. “Our stories and our point of views are so unique. It just makes the world a better place to have our stories told on a larger level.”
On the topic of Indigenous artists rising within the media and music industries, Gilday spoke about how her own journey as a musician stemmed from her roots in the NWT. She explains that her dad is a musician and her mom is a great lover of music, adding they’ve always encouraged her and her brother and sister to sing.
That contributed to her first music performance being at Folk on the Rocks when she was eight years old.
“That was a big audience for me at the time, and I was totally nervous, but I loved it,” she said. “I love the feeling I get when I’m singing and I can be in that channel. I really feel like music and singing is a gift from the creator and I just become the channel.
“Now I’m working on my sixth record. I always like to push my boundaries because as a person, we’re always growing, we’re always changing, so for me, my journey right now is about reclaiming my language. As an adult that’s a really challenging thing for me. This next record is all gonna be in Dene languages.”
Gilday said that the newest project she’s working on is an album that features three different Dene languages.
“So we’re in the middle of working on that,” she said.
Her dedication to embracing her Dene culture is a quality that’s deeply entwined within her career. She offers insight on this by describing how she hopes to continue reaching as many people as possible through her music as a way to ‘tell people about us, about the North, about Dene, and just how proud we are, how unique we are’.
“We’re still here, we’re still strong, and we’re still healthy despite hundreds of years of the colonial agenda,” she said. “And the other thing that I like to talk about is that really important connection with the land and the water, like I said in my speech (at the gathering). I think it’s a futuristic world view because we’re into a climate crisis. The world needs to rediscover these ways of living in sustainable balance with the Earth, and that’s embodied in the Dene worldview.”
She reflected on the resilient spirit of Dene and their culture in the NWT, adding, “It’s only just like one or two generations that we had family who were born on the land, born in a tent, or born and raised on the land. Whereas for other Indigenous people or other people around the world, it’s been many more generations removed. So that connection is really strong, really beautiful. I find it unique.
“I’ve done a lot of work in Indigenous communities, and specifically in Dene communities with young people, on finding and valuing their own voice. So much of what we see in social media and popular culture doesn’t center our voices, like what we consider to be the most important voices aren’t necessarily our own as Indigenous people.
“It’s hard when you’re a young person and you’re trying to find out what to do for money, what to do for a career, because this whole system kind of gears you towards that. But really what’s more important is, what do you love to do? What will improve your community, make yourself and other people more rich? Not monetarily rich, but like how could you help? I think that’s sort of been the determining factor for why I move forward with music as a career because I feel like my voice is important and it contributes to the health and the wealth of our whole global society.
“If you’re a young person just trying to figure out what to do with your life, I think it’s important to look inside and really see what’s important to you. What are your strengths and skills? What role do you play in your community? And I think the answer is really inside.”