New centre at Casino Rama hosts Canada's Aboriginal music awards

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Organizers for the Canadian Aboriginal Music Awards held on Nov. 23 tried a change of venue this year. Instead of holding the ceremonies at Toronto's SkyDome, as was done for the past two years, this year's event was held at the new Casino Rama entertainment centre on the Mnjikaning First Nation in Ontario. Located about two hours at rush hour north of Toronto, this facility opened in July 2001.

The Canadian Aboriginal Music Awards show is part of a larger event, the Canadian Aboriginal Festival, created, organized and co-ordinated by Indian Art-I-Crafts of Ontario and held annually for the past eight years.

This year's presentation of the awards show saw the addition of the Award Ceremony Orchestra directed by Donald Quan and featuring the vocals of Faron Johns of the Pappy Johns Band, along with Juno nominee ElizaBeth Hill.

Many of the award presenters came from Aboriginal business, as well as corporate sponsors of the awards and Aboriginal people representing Native governing bodies and agencies. Master of Ceremonies was Native American singer Joanne Shenandoah.

"We have to remember that there is no border," Shenandoah said. "We are related. We are brothers and sisters. We are invested no matter what age in our cultures to keep our songs and music alive. Now more than ever is the perfect time to bring music that is healing to the world. Our music is healing. Now is the time to let our music be heard. No more boundaries. Boundaries are walls. Our music is what has kept our people alive and now I'm happy to be sharing that with the world."

Although the show ran within 10 minutes of the slated two-hour time allotted, one of the disappointments was that there were only six performances. Last year there were nearly twice that number. Also disappointing was that many of the winners were not present to accept their awards.

It was good to see that the category of Best Rap or Hip Hop had enough nominees this year to be able to grant an award; last year there were not enough submissions to develop this category. Unfortunately, this year there were not enough submissions to name a winner in the Best Female Artist category.

Ron Robert, co-ordinator of Indian Art-I-Crafts of Ontario, said "we did not have enough submissions from female artists. All we can tell you for next year is-submit, submit, submit."

There are already changes in the works for next year's awards.

"Next year we will have implemented a new and distinctly Aboriginal flavor to the show. We are also making changes to our entry and juror information forms, and we have a new submission deadline for next year. June 30, 2002 is the deadline for recordings released between Jan. 1 through Dec. 31, 2001," explained Sadie Buck, director for the 2001 Canadian Aboriginal Music Awards show.

There seemed to be a much repeated, though unofficial, theme to this year's awards event-language. Several of the winners gave speeches in their traditional languages, as well as in English, and many of the winners made a point to mention the importance of knowing, using and preserving Aboriginal language.

This message was brought home by Marty Ballentyne, articulate lead singer with Breach of Trust, in one of his three award acceptance speeches.

"I want to thank Ted Whitecalf for speaking Cree at the show tonight, because one of the most beautiful forms of music we have left, and we have to treat this as a very precious commodity, is our languages and listening to the sounds of those."

This year's awards left the impression that there is indeed a great deal of maturing Aboriginal musical talent across Canada. Consensus, however, seemed to be that moving the awards back to Toronto would be a good idea.

Many people had to rely on the shuttle bus service provided between Toronto and Casino Rama to get to and from the awards show.

Also, by holding the awards in Toronto, many people suggested they would be more able to attend other events held at the same time in cnjunction with the Canadian Aboriginal Festival. For example, also on Nov. 23, Elaine Bomberry was hosting a CD release party for the Pappy Johns Band, the house band on APTN's Buffalo Tracks. There was also a large Aboriginal multimedia conference held on the same weekend in Ontario's capital city.