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Tell us something about your life.
00:00:04 —
About my life. It's been very long and very wonderful, but it wasn't much fun when I was a child. I was raised in the northeastern part of the United States, in Maine and Massachusetts, which are two states, and I didn't like school very much.
00:00:32 —
And I wasn't very happy at home. But what I did like was a piano and a cat and a dog. So those were the things that I liked most. I didn't play sports, and I didn't play with dolls, but I loved animals, and I loved music, and I liked to paint and draw, and I loved to dance. So I describe myself as a natural artist.
00:01:01 —
I've never been to music school. I still can't read music, and I always encourage parents to bring instruments into the home so that children are not forced into music, but so that they can play with the instruments, which is the natural way for music to grow, like toys.
00:01:26 —
When I finished high school and went to university, my life changed. I met people from other countries, and I could study the things that I really wanted to study. I wanted to study the way that other people knew the Creator. I wasn't very much interested in churches, but I wanted to know how other people felt about the Creator in their hearts.
00:01:55 —
So I studied the religions of the world, and I also got a teaching degree, because I like children and I thought it would be good to be a teacher. But, when I got out of university, the songs that I had been writing since I was very young, people liked them. And all of a sudden, I became a professional musician, even though I hadn't been to any music school.
00:02:28 —
And since that time, I've traveled all over the world, and when I would go to a place like Stockholm or Oslo, as soon as the concert was over, I'd fly up to Lapland and spend time with Indigenous people. And if I'd go to Australia, the same thing. I'd do my fancy concert in the city, and then I'd go out in the bush with Indigenous people.
00:02:54 —
And in North and South America, I'd do my fancy concerts, because I had airplane tickets that brought me for a fancy concert, but then I'd spend time with Indigenous people. So I've had a very nice life of combining the best of the city world and what I was really interested in, in spending time with Indigenous tribal people.
00:03:16 —
It's very nice, unusual though, very unusual.
00:03:24 —
Mostly people we've never heard about, people in grassroots communities, some elders, but sometimes young people too. Some of my role models are cats and dogs, goats and horses, and the stars. I spend a lot of time in the garden with the plants and flowers, and this gives me something that I can't really describe but I but it's it's one of the most beautiful parts of my life.
00:03:59 —
For famous people I love the music of. Edith Piaf the French singer and the flamenco dancer Carmen Amaya from Spain she's a gypsy from Spain, and the jazz musician Miles Davis, and the Dalai Lama, Albert Schweitzer, let's see, Jesus Christ,
00:04:24 —
the Buddha, and sometimes people that I'll just meet on an airplane somewhere that I don't even know very well, but in my life, I'm very fortunate to travel and to spend time with strangers who, when you talk to them, they always have something, you'll always learn something new. And I might see someone when I'm getting on an airplane and I'm wondering who I'm going to sit next to and I'll say, oh, I hope it's not that person.
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But then if it is, by the time the plane has landed, we've found something to talk about. So that's taught me a lot of lessons that anyone in the world, you can be friends with anyone in the world, I think, if you have the time to get to know them just a little bit.
00:05:14 —
How did you become a musician?
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I think I was born a musician. When I first saw a piano, I was about three years old, and I listened to it, I touched it, I played it a little bit, and I didn't want to leave. I fell in love. Like other people love their dolls or their sports, I fell in love with music. And I liked it so much, and it was so much fun and so interesting that I just kept playing and playing what I wanted to play.
00:05:45 —
And I didn't have anybody telling me that I had to. So it was where I went when I wanted to cry or when I wanted to feel real good. So music comes to me naturally. And I think that all children, all young children, I think are artists. And if you take children to the beach, they'll all dance, they'll all make rhythm, they'll all sing, they'll all make stories, use their imaginations and make stories.
00:06:13 —
And I think that all children, just like all children can learn a language, even though they're very young, I think they all can express art. I think, though, as we get older, unless we do it, we forget.
00:06:27 —
How can we help Native children?
00:06:29 —
Well, I think you're on the way because you want to know about the way other people in the world really are. There are so many false stories that we hear about you and that you hear about us that when you find out how real we are, and we do some things a little bit differently, but it's really interesting.
00:06:56 —
Our music is a little different and very special. And I'll show you some of my pretty things, like this that I'm wearing. You know, things that are very special and a little different. But our hearts, we're very much the same as other children, I think. We love to have fun. We all have families, dreams and wishes. So I think that the way that you help native children is by wanting to learn and continuing to want to learn.
00:07:30 —
My favorite song that I wrote is called Starwalker. I don't know how it came into my head, but as soon as I heard it, I loved it, and other people love it too, and it's very inspirational to me. Every time I sing it, I, oh, it's just, it's exciting to me as it is to an audience. Other favorite songs that I've written, Universal Soldier has changed people's lives. They tell me. I get lots and lots of letters about it.
00:07:58 —
But the songs that have made me enough money so that I could continue to be an artist and didn't have to have another job are all love songs. Until it's time for you to go up where we belong, you know. Of other people's music, I like Miles Davis's Sketches of. Spain and Edith Piaf's Je Ne Regrette Rien. I like a lot of different kinds of music though.
00:08:27 —
I think that artists think about things in a different way and I think that we see things a little bit differently and every now and then artists become popular enough so that the world will listen to what they have to say. Not enough I think but hopefully what an What an artist can do is to communicate a different inner vision than what the corporations are selling.
00:09:01 —
Because art is never about selling. Art is not about dollars and euros and yen. Art is about sharing perspectives and points of view, I think.
00:09:14 —
Tell us something about Cradleboard, your project for children.
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Well, it's called the Cradleboard Teaching Project. And a cradleboard is a baby carrier. It's a thing that you make to support a child. And it's a Native American invention, and sometimes that piece of wood has straps so that you can carry it on your own back, but in the front, it's like a pouch, like a pocket. The baby is in there with blankets and nappies and everything that the baby needs and then there are straps around it so that everything is nice and secure.
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But each tribe, each culture group makes their own style so that they don't all look alike. Each one is very special, very specially decorated by the person who makes it with whatever materials the person has. So what we're trying to do with the Cradleboard Teaching Project is we're trying to support children in getting to know other children from other cultures.
00:10:21 —
And we're also trying to, we write curriculum. And curriculum are lessons. We write lessons and we teach teachers how to teach the lessons. And the lessons are about things that most children have to study in school anyway, like science. So we write science through Native American eyes.
00:10:42 —
So that when we study the principles of sound, instead of using pianos and tubas to study sound, we use drums and flutes and stringed instruments and singing and rattles to study the principles of sound so that children are not only learning science, they're also learning culture at the same time. See, this is the first time that it's been done this way.
00:11:10 —
Usually when people study Native American cultures, they think that they're gonna study horses and teepees and feathers and stereotype things. But no, we have children studying geography and government always through a Native American perspective. So they get to know real Native children expressing their culture, whatever that culture might be. So they get both.
00:11:36 —
They get all the pretty stuff about teepees and horses and feathers, But at the same time they're learning things like geography and science and government. I think we have to stop pretty soon.
00:11:47 —
We are a global radio for kids by kids. We connect kids in 100 countries. Advertising free. Do you like this idea?
00:11:56 —
I do like this idea and it's very much like the same idea that I have for cradleboard cradleboard the cradleboard teaching project is free. We don't charge any money for it and I feel as though as soon as money and advertising are involved, it all becomes about the money and the advertising and stops being about what you really want to talk about. So yes, I think it's an excellent idea.