The Kim Wheeler Show Week of July 23rd

Kim Wheeler
July 23, 2021

It’s been an interesting summer so far. The Assembly of First Nations elected its first National Chief — Roseanne Archibald. Hopefully, she’ll shake up that old boy’s club and inject fresh and new ideas. Especially when it comes to the relations with the grassroots.

Jody Wilson-Raybould announced she will not be seeking re-election. Her memoir which was scheduled for October has now been bumped up a month and will be released in September. Ahead of a fall election perhaps?

The new Governor-General Mary Simon, an Inuk woman who is fluent in her language of Inuktitut, is receiving hate because she doesn’t speak French. What’s the big deal though really? We should be glad she speaks her language considering this country tried to drive our languages out of Indigenous peoples.

I want to give a shout-out to Wab Kinew — the leader of the NDP Party in Manitoba. Last week he stood up and interrupted the newly appointed Indigenous “reconciliation” minister Alan Lagimodiere. In the minister’s first news conference he said: “From my knowledge of it, the residential school system was designed to take Indigenous children and give them the skills and abilities they would need to fit into society as it moved forward.”

Then Wab interrupted him and as an Honourary Witness for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, set the record straight. Residential schools were established to “kill the Indian in the child.”

I’ve worked with Wab back in his broadcasting days and he’s always made a stand for residential school survivors, so I am very glad he spoke up despite being called a bully and being accused of political grandstanding. If we are silent, then we are complacent. So thank you Wab for speaking up.

This week on the show, we have the aptly named rock duo — Crown Lands.

Crown Lands is rock duo Cody Bowles and Kevin Comeau, who took home the Breakthrough Group of the Year award at the Junos. Their music is inspired by their mutual love of Rush but I also think there is some Triumph and a bit of Led Zepplin in the mix.

They have these sweeping epic songs and music videos to match and they are just getting started! The conversation with Crown Lands comes easy and I hope you take a listen as we talk about introducing audiences to Indigenous issues, how the two met when one of them crashed an audition, and where they get such incredible personal style.