The North Slave Métis Alliance will offer music, activities and traditional food in Yellowknife’s Somba K’e Park for National Indigenous Peoples Day on June 21.
The event will include live entertainment with a mix of music and dance, Métis jiggers, a fiddler and Dene drummers.
Food includes whitefish, bannock, corn on the cob and beans, with a fish fry starting at noon and activities running until 5pm. Beading, birchbark basket-making, hair tufting, painting and carving will be on show.
Among Saturday’s performers is DerRic Starlight, a puppeteer from the Tsuut’ina Nation, west of Calgary, who traces his ancestry to the Blackfoot Confederacy.
Starlight has created his own cast of Native puppet characters, which he has showcased in APTN productions and toured across North America since 1997.
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Starlight is currently working with the Jim Henson Company to film Apple TV’s reboot of Fraggle Rock.
Starlight told Cabin Radio his show this weekend will feature a segment spoofing the Muppets, including a “Native version” of Kermit the Frog named “Cree-Mit” and his Miss Piggy, renamed “Porkahontas.”
Other characters include the “Bannock monster,” a Blackfoot muppet called the “Great Buffalo Warrior,” and a character named Granny based on Starlight’s own grandmother.
“It’s for the entire family, and I’ve always gotten great reviews on it, so I hope to see a lot of people out there,” said Starlight.
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Also performing in Somba K’e Park is Plains Cree country-rock artist Jarrid Lee.
Lee’s debut album, Up On Stage, earned him multiple nominations from the Saskatchewan Country Music Association and SaskMusic. His second album, It’s Time, reached number eight in the Top 40 Indigenous Music Countdown.
“I like to get people to sing along with my songs if they know them,” Lee told Cabin Radio. “I can also teach them how to sing a few of my songs. I like to engage with the audience, keep it very upbeat.”
“I do have a song about truth and reconciliation that may bring the crowd down a bit,” said Lee, “but we do have to tell our stories and tell the truth about what really happened here in Canada.”
The Edmonton Métis Dancers, led by Lyle Donald, will appear in a celebration of the cultural heritage of their mixed French, Scottish, Irish and First Nations ancestry. Traditional dances include the Duck Dance, Reel of Eight, Drops of Brandy, Reel of Four and the Red River Jig.
Other guests include Métis fiddler James Ross and the Yellowknives Dene Drummers.
