Red Lake Skate Park

Here are some pictures of the Red Lake Skate Park that Keith wanted to share. It was the location for the NDN Kars Punk Version video which you can watch here. Keith wanted to give a big shout out to everyone who got behind the project and brought it together for the youth-- the youth are our future. A big thanks to Margarite Secola (Keith's daughter), Sam Strong, Buck Jordain, the Red Lake Tribal Council, and tribal members and to everyone else who helped make this happen. 

Have an exciting youth initiative going on in your community? Let us know about it. 

F* the System Friday: Open the Door

Open the Door I’m all_______ Up

Being on the road with Floyd Red Crow Westerman was always an adventure. We were doing a gig in New Town, North Dakota, performing at a rodeo. Floyd and Carla, (Floyd’s personal assistant) picked me up at the airport in Bismark and we made the drive to Newtown.   

We did our gig (two songs) at the rodeo early in the evening. Then, we set up a little impromptu gig at a local Indian bar, The Buffalo Nickel. It was a Saturday night and the bar was a real loins’ den. Jackie Bird sat in on drums for a few songs. We played one long set, but it quickly became too crowded and people were getting over enthusiastic. We had to stop before midnight, though we weren’t ready to turn in. So, Floyd and I left the bar and went and jammed at a friend’s house. Jamming afterwards with Floyd was always fun. He would sing all kinds of songs: Cash, Kristofferson and Dylan were his favorite to cover.

Finally, I hit the sack at the Four Bears Casino and Hotel. Floyd’s room was right across the hall from mine.  About an hour and a half later something wakes me up. I look through the peep hole and it’s some drunken cowboy pounding on the door next to Floyd’s. “Frankie, open the Door. I’m all f’d up…Frankie, open the door. I’m all F’d up.” He repeats it twenty times, using every voice inflection imaginable, from angry and loud, “FRANKIE! OPEN THE DOOR! I’M ALL F’D UP!” to whimpering very sympathetically, “Frankie…open the door…I’m all f’d up.” That’s all he says. He staggers his pounding and rants. Just when you think he’s gone, or fallen back to sleep…BAM BAM BAM, “Frankie, open the door. I’m all f’d up!” The cowboy was so drunk he would pass out between episodes.

Floyd and I meet for coffee the next morning and the first thing we say to each other in unison is, ‘Frankie, open the door. I’m all f’d up”.  I told Floyd I was going to write a song about it.

A few weeks later, back in LA, Floyd calls John Trudell on his cell phone. “John, come on down to the studio. We got a protest song going on.” We did the demo at a Hen House Studio in Venice, CA. John Densmore of the Doors set up. I’d done a little work there before with him. Floyd eventually recorded his tribute to Jonny Cash at the studio.  

Floyd and I had many talks about protest music. He liked the way I would lead people gently to a brutal truth. He would just kick them in the shins. Floyd and Bob Dylan would always say, “America won’t get right, until we get right with the American Indian.”  Here are a few brutal dates in American history I used in the song.

Listen to Open the Door by clicking here

Open the Door

Open the door I’m all _______ up

1519 Cortez/Montezuma 1531 Inca Empire

1540 Coronado 1565 St. Augustine 1607 Jamestown

1619 Slave Ships 1620 Plymouth Rock

1622 Powhatan Indians vs. settlers 1637 Pequot Wars

1675 King Phillip 1680 Pueblo revolt

1754 French and Indian Wars 1756 Indian Wars

1763 Pontiac’s Rebellion 1775 Revolutionary War

1779 Scorched Earth 1780 Dragging Canoe

1787 Northwest Ordinance 1794 Fallen Timbers

1803 Louisiana Purchase 1811 Tippecanoe

1812 War of 1812 1819 Florida Land Transfer

1824 Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) 1830 Indian Removal Act

1831 Trail of Tears1832 Black Hawk 1832 Bad Axe 1837 Small Pox

1837 Chippewa Treaty 1848  California atrocities began

1851 Fort Laramie

1852 Eat Grass 1854 Lake Superior 1861 Civil War

1862 Sioux Uprising/ 38 Sioux 1864 Sand Creek Massacre

1866 Fetterman’s Massacre 1876 Battle of Little Bighorn/ Custer

1887 Dawes Allotment Act 1889 Nelson Act 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre

1890 Census Bureau declared the frontier ended

1902 more timber 1918/1975 Wounded Knee 1620 Plymouth Rock

1637 Pequot Connecticut settlers 1619 Slave ships 1518 Cortez 1519 Montezuma

1511 help Cuba conquer 1540 Coronado Seven cities 1531 Inca Empire

1492 first voyage 1493 second 1498 third 1502 fourth

1565 St. Augustine 1607 Jamestown 1638 first rez

Throwback Thursday

Here's a good video of Keith from 1985. A song for spring, and a song for those little seeds who are our future. Have a blessed day all. Mobile users watch here

NDN Kars

My first NDN Kar was called, The Spy Car. I bought it from a teacher for one hundred dollars. It was a blue 67 Newport Chrysler; complete with its own bear dent (bear wasn’t hurt), and an eight-track tape player that was easily worth two hundred.  

This is how I wrote the song NDN Kars: 

I was 21 years old, the year was 1978, and I was headed on a canoe trip into the Boundary Waters Canoe Area (BWCA) of northern Minnesota. We stopped in Winton, MN at the municipal liquor store. It was last stop at the end of the line where the pavement becomes dirt on US 169. The Muni had a great juke box and pool table and was the last chance to get a cold one before entering the BWCA. In the restroom someone carved Indian Cars on the wall. I remember telling my friend Chuck Rikala, “When I get back, I am going to write a song about Indian Cars.” At that time the connotation of an Indian Car was negative. To me, it’s about the richness of being poor.

The Spy Car looked like it had a Mohawk with the canoe tied down on top. We travelled by water from Fall Lake, to Basswood, through Pipestone, and Jackfish Bay. Straddled the international border, fished some walleye and turned around.  Our motto was: if you want to paddle through rock you must use a stone canoe. Etched in my mind on a granite tablet carved from the Canadian Shield was NDN Kars. When I returned home from the canoe trip it took a few months for my thoughts to ripen.

I was living in the Mountain Ash Berry district of Virginia, MN. In the fall the birds outside my kitchen window would become inebriated eating the fermented mountain ash berries. They would sing boisterous melodies. Sometime they would fall from the tree to the ground. If they were un-lucky the neighborhood cat would pounce on them. One morning after watching this drama play out, I started writing NDN KARS.  It took me fifteen minutes to write the song. I took me fifteen years to learn how to perform it.

I was in a band. We called ourselves, The Swartz Bros. We were the Black sheep of the Iron Range, MN. One of our first gigs was at a little bar on Main Street in Virginia, the Pick Wick. I sang NDN Kars and another song I had written called Lord Help Us Sinners.  At the end of the night I remember the bar owner telling Sharon Rowbottom (singer) that the only two songs she did not like were the religious song and the song about Indians— both were mine.  She said she did not want her bar turning into an “Indian Bar”. Sharon told her to, “F off!” Well, not in those exact words. She said it with much more grace, but she had my back.We never played there again. I was proud of Sharon. We were punks, but mostly we were for the people, and I knew the song had meaning for the people. I didn't even bother to say anything to the bar owner.  

In 1983, I had moved (hitch hiked) from the Iron Range, with one hundred dollars, twenty pounds of manomin (wild rice), an acoustic guitar and a backpack. I got let off on route 66 in Albuquerque, NM the day before Thanksgiving. There was a little café there called the Morning Glory. I got a gig at the café on Thanksgiving Day for twenty dollars, a Thanksgiving meal, plus tips. I performed there a few more times after that. I remember the positive response people had when I sang my new song NDN Kars.  

In 1987, I played in Esthete, WO with the Sand Creek Band made up of the Ridgley brothers, Eugene, Ben, and Gail from the Arapaho Nation. We did a gig over in Rapid City, SD and it was Eugene Ridgley who showed me the art of playing 49 on an electric guitar. That was it.  Put a 49 melody in the chorus of NDN Kars and sang it along with the guitar. It worked from the very first time. Later that year, The Sand Creek Band came down and we recorded NDN Kars at Radical Recording studio in Tempe, AZ. We did it in one afternoon—tracking, overdubs and lead vocals.  

The first Indian radio station to play NDN Kars, was Kili,  in Porcupine, SD.  I sent a cassette tape up with my friend Russ Zephyr to drop off. He said that by the time he reached the end of the driveway it was blasting over the airwaves. When something catches on in the underground it sticks. The song went on to become a cult classic and an anthem for our people.   Many bands add it to their live set lists and other artists have recorded their own versions of NDN Kars. 

The essence of the song is in the line, “I got a sticker says ‘NDN Power’. I stuck it on my bumper. That’s what holds my car together.” Belief in a higher power.   

In 2010, we recorded the Punk (Skate) version. My son Keith is on drums, his friend Joey Dougherty is on guitar and vocals and Jimmy Vickers is on bass.  Two old punks and two young punks, one great song, really fast. (2:06)

SAY YOUR NAME

With the final Truth and Reconciliation National event coming up in Edmonton March 27th-30th, I thought it was a good time to share these words from Keith on how he came to write SAY YOUR NAME for the residential school survivors. If you haven't heard the song, the video appears just below this post. Prayers and blessings for all who will be travelling to Edmonton for the event, and for all who are undertaking their own journeys of healing.    -C

Winnipeg is the most central spot in North America. It is at the confluence of two rivers, the Assiniboine and the Red River. For centuries it was a gathering spot for medicine people and mystics. This is where I learned about the silence in music.  They say the pause in music is for the sorrow of the earth, and that when we are happy we have memories of sadness. Songs come fast like a hummingbird brings blessings. Spirits speak extremely fast. Ten seconds equals a two day story

I was walking early the day before a show and it was pouring rain.  A crowd was gathered at some buildings near where the performers were staying. I was curious and when I asked, I was informed that it was a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) National Event and that testimony was being given. It was a public forum where victims of Indian Residential Schools could describe in horrific details their abuse. The only detail they could not give was the most significant, the perpetrators’ names. At first I did not want to hear it—too much pain. How could I not be angry? I walked away. And then I stopped. I reminded myself that we are all part of the healing. I could help. I wanted to help. I turned around and went back to listen.

A survivor got up to speak. The first words she said were, “It would happen late at night, down the hall in the bathroom,” Her painful words and the way she said them made me cry.  She said that the same person who abused her later conducted the marriage ceremony for her and her husband. This made me angry.  She had so much courage to have been able to come forward to show the people they are not alone. 

Survivor after survivor gave testimony, each story as hideous as the one before. Stories like how a perpetrator used to scare the children with a snake, “Don’t tell no one or I’ll let the serpent crawl in the darkness of the night. “  It took me awhile to gather myself. I felt sickened by sorrow. How could you not be? I was upset, but I could feel something coming. I think it was a quantum dream that came in the form of two notes. It came from the children.

I made my way over to rehearsal. I was collaborating with the Duhks: Leonard Podolak, Jordan McConnell, Christian, and Sara Dugas. My son, Keith was working with a local First Nations skate team and filmed some skateboard footage which was shown during our performance. We were part of the Aboriginal Day celebrations that were being televised nationally on June 21, 2010.  We dedicated our performance to the healing of all nations. It was a powerful show with great musicians. 

Later that night, Sara and Christian sat in at a local bar with some other musicians and treated us to some spectacular late night underground jazz.  After we all went out and ate. It was a late night gathering of nations at a Chinese restaurant. What a suitable ending to an ironic day.

Early the next morning, as I made my way to offer tobacco, I heard the most violent heaving. I thought to myself that someone really must have partied hard the night before. But when I looked, it was a medicine man taking the sickness from people. He would have them put their hands on a tree and then he would put one hand on their back near the heart and one hand on the head, and pray for them. After he prayed for them he would put his hand on the tree and would throw up violently. He was taking the sickness from the people and before it could make him sick, he would get rid of it using the power of the tree.

Healing means to cast off the sickness. 

Down by the river the song came to me.  “Say your name,” very simple, “prayers of our children.”  Two notes, five chords and truth.

The blessings from a hummingbird have to unravel.  After returning home to Arizona, I called up Jeff Merkel at Aum Studio in Mesa and booked some studio time. I recorded the song the same week I wrote it. As Johnny Cash would always say, “Are we going to record the song before we learn it?”

A year later the blessings came once again. Artist Liz Amini-Holmes created a stunning video for “Say Your Name” using her art and Inuvialuit elder Margaret Pokiak-Fenton’s photographs, both from Margaret’s residential school memoirs Fatty Legs and A Stranger at Home (written by Christy Jordan-Fenton). Liz’s husband, Mark Holmes also leant his technical experience to the video’s creation. “Say Your Name” was first screened at the second Truth and Reconciliation Commission National event in Inuvik for the survivors for whom it was dedicated.

In their honor we can only live a good life.

SAY YOUR NAME

SAY YOUR NAME from Keith Secola's LIFE IS GRAND album, featuring the artwork of Liz Amini-Holmes from the books FATTY LEGS (Annick Press 2010) and A STRANGER AT HOME (Annick Press 2011) about residential school survivor Margert Pokiak-Fenton, written by Christy Jordan-Fenton. Video by Liz Amini-Holmes and Mark Holmes. SAY YOUR NAME and LIFE IS GRAND available through www.secola.com, Reverbnation, CD Baby, and iTunes. FATTY LEGS and A STRANGER AT HOME available through Firefly Books, Annick Press and most book sellers. 

NDN Kars Skate/Punk version filmed at Red Lake Skate Park. Keith's son Keith David Secola plays drums on this track.