Indigenous Artist

âpihtawikosisâniskwêw (Métis / nêhiyaw / Norwegian / French / British) multidisciplinary artist Moe Clark is a 2Spirit singing thunderbird. She fuses together vocal improvisation with multilingual lyricism to create meaning that is rooted in personal legacy, ancestral memory and embodied knowledge. Originally from the prairies in Treaty 7, she’s called tio'tiá:ke (Montreal) home for over a decade. Her work as an artist, educator and activist aims to remember and reconnect belonging to territories of land, body and voice through creative continuums of indigenous language immersion, ceremonial practice and song creation.

In collaboration with Katia Makdissi-Warren, Moe co-directed Transcestral: a musical exchange between Indigenous and Sufi musical traditions (2015-present). Following themes of trance as transformation, they connected in a semi-improvised exchange of music, dance and visual projections. An album of the musical production is forthcoming. In 2013 she directed the 10th Annual Canadian Festival of Spoken Word in Montreal, featuring over 100 poets in a five-day gathering that highlighted Indigenous languages. In 2014 she was awarded Poet of Honour at the festival. Together with Cheryl L’Hirondelle and Joseph Naytowhow, their nêhiyawêwin lullaby nitahkôtân won best music video at ImagiNative Film Festival in 2015, and has toured the world at various film festivals. Her last solo album “Within” toured across North America in 2017 at Folk on the Rocks, Lincoln Centre and Planet IndigenUs, among others. “Fire & Sage/ Du sauge et du feu”, her bilingual book of poetry was released through Maelström Editions in Belgium and has been showcased at international literature festivals as far as Book Arsenal, Ukraine and Queensland Poetry Festival, Australia. Moe has six albums of music, both solo and collaboratively and multiple performance videos. Her music and voice have appeared in documentaries, films and theatre performances alike, including “Revolution Moosehide” by Lesley Johnson, 2019 (featuring Malew Nahkeko), Sonia Bonspille Boileau’s “Rustic Oracle”, 2019, Kim O’Bomsawin’s “Ce Silence qui Tue”, 2018, and she was one of three featured indigenous musicians in O’Bomsawin’s 2018 CBC documentary “Du teweikan à l’électro” alongside Shauit and Pakesso Mukash. In 2020, she was the musical director for “kiciweok: les 13 mots autochtones” directed by Onishka Productions, featuring artists Tomson Highway and Josephine Bacon.

Apart from performance, Moe facilitates creative workshops with indigenous youth in lockdown facilities and remote communities and she is a collaborator with Land as Our Teacher project that bridges urban indigenous youth with cultural teachers and inclusive land-based education. In 2016 Moe launched nistamîkwan: a transformational indigenous arts organization with an emphasis on intercultural, interdisciplinary and intergenerational collaboration. The land-based nêhiyawêwin (Cree language) songwriting project with artists and knowledge keepers Cheryl L’Hirondelle and Joseph Naytowhow will be released in a full-length album in 2021. Moe has been featured around the world at the UBUD Writers & Readers Festival (ID), Origins Festival in London (UK), Maelström Poetry Festival (BE) and Skábmagovat Festival in Sapmi (FI).

www.moeclark.ca / www.nistamikwan.com

INDIGENOUS ANCESTRY

Métis

SELF-IDENTIFICATION

Métis Treaty 7 Region 3 with roots from Red River