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We are the tribe that they cannot see. We live on an industrial reservation. We are the Halluci Nation ... Our DNA is of the earth and sky. Our DNA is of past and future. We are the Halluci Nation. We are the evolution, the continuation.
These words from Santee Dakota activist and poet John Trudell (1946-2015) inspired the latest album by Ottawa-based Indigenous DJ-producer collective A Tribe Called Red (ATCR) and frame its pan-Indigenous, transcultural message. Trudell was a leader in a long history of pan-Indigenous solidarity and resistance through, mostly notably, the Indians of All Tribes, which occupied Alcatraz for fourteen months in 1969-71, and the American Indian Movement.1
This article argues that ATCR's album We Are the Halluci Nation sonifies a decolonization that establishes an embodied network of global allies. I trace the development of ATCR's music from its original focus on the Ottawa Indigenous community and its non-Indigenous allies to a call for nation-to-nation relationships with the Juno Award-winning album Nation II Nation (2013), to a concept album that seeks to manifest a real "Halluci Nation" with members from around the world.
ATCR is an Ottawa-based Indigenous DJ collective, with members DJ NDN (Ian Campeau2-Anishnabe from Nipissing First Nation), 20olman (Tim Hill-Mohawk, of the Six Nations of the Grand River), and Bear Witness (Thomas Ehren Ramon-Cayuga Six Nations). The group is most known for developing "powwow step," a genre that blends samples of powwow drumming and singing with dubstep, though they incorporate many other styles. The central role of the drum in powwow music is a natural parallel to the primacy of the beat in electronic dance music. A Tribe Called Red's Electric Pow Wow creates a "decolonizing space" (Simpson 2011, 97) for both the musicians and listeners, an embodied sonification that has implications for urban Indigenous populations.
While powwows are a celebratory inter-tribal gathering with music, dance, vendors, and yummy food, the drum circle is the centre (Browner 2009; Scales 2012). The sound of the steady beating drum supporting the high, tense, male, Northern-style singing is now an easily recognizable sound of powwow. Powwow music is a kind of storytelling. According to Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg writer Leanne Simpson, "Storytelling is at its core decolonizing" (Simpson 2011, 33). Indeed, it is...