Yellowknife youth feature in APTN series Warrior Up!

Two young Yellowknife residents star in an APTN TV show that has its premiere next month.

The show – Warrior Up! – “follows Indigenous teens across Turtle Island who are inspiring change through community projects,” APTN says.

The first episode airs at 10:30am on Saturday, May 11. You can watch on APTN or stream online using APTN Lumi.

Episode four involves a glimpse into the lives of Cole Clark and Dylan Hope, who use sports and music to inspire Yellowknife’s youth.

“It was kind-of my first insight into acting, as well as other fields that aren’t just behind the camera. I thought it was really cool for me to be able to understand the full environment,” Clark told Cabin Radio on Friday.

A TV show on APTN isn’t too much of a leap for Clark. From a full-time job at the NWT’s Artless Collective production house to running his own multimedia production company, STLN LNDS, Clark has already built a résumé in the creative arts.

“For the last year, I’ve been working with various different northern artists, building up an abundance of media content for some of these people that I’ll be really excited to start sharing over the next year,” he said.

Last year, as a finalist in Indigenous entrepreneurial contest Pow Wow Pitch, Clark set out his plan to launch a clothing brand. Wildfires delayed the manufacturing process for a few months, he said, but he’s anticipating the launch of his fashion line at the end of this year.

“I can spend a lot of my time just manoeuvring around, making a bunch of videos. But to me, that doesn’t really inspire or connect with me,” he said.

“Being able to align myself with creative projects, that’s kind-of what I’ve been doing with STLN LNDS personally for the last year – building a portfolio and clientele that encompasses that area.”

For Clark, being “as true as possible” to himself has helped advance his career. He hopes to help other young people understand the independence that comes with working in the North.

“You don’t need to have a giant production team behind you. You can have an iPhone in your pocket and make music at home,” he said.

“You don’t need a professional recording studio any more. You don’t need to be in a production studio any more. There’s so much social media content out there that you could just do yourself.

“That’s what I think is important to know: that there’s so much they can do themselves.”

Hope, who goes by the stage name DYLN, has been writing music since he was in elementary school and started recording songs in 2019. He says his father inspired him by introducing him to his favourite bands.

“Eevery single inspiration in terms of music – and my craving for a depth of knowledge into the making of the music – came from my father, in the way that he collects music and he listens to music,” Hope said.

“I picked up on his music in an interesting way because I found a really deep connection with that.”

Growing up, Hope said he would attend his parents’ on-the-land workshops, parts of which he tries to incorporate in his music. To him, music is a deeply personal experience, a form of expression in which you “constantly weigh different emotions and thoughts and feelings and ideas.”

“I’ve been exposed in a lot of different ways to think about our experience as Indigenous people. As I’ve grown up, I’ve learned to process more things and understand the ramifications of things that happened in the past,” he said.

“I write my music solely for the purpose that I can process these things in a way that can’t be said in normal language – the way you use words in a specific rhyming style, or the way you can really change the meaning of what you’re saying. I have found myself lost in the world of always finding new ways of saying something,

“Music is everything to me. The work I do in my music is no different than what my parents do, [helping] other people to simply process the exact same stuff.”