“OUR LANGUAGE TEACHES US OUR WAY OF LIFE AND HOLDS US STRONG TO WORK ON OUR PATH.”

13.10.2020

Christie Lee Charles or “Miss Christie Lee” is a Musqueam rap musician from the city of Vancouver with lineages to surrounding Coast Salish Nations. She is an artist who expresses her gifts in many forms: as a story teller, singer, filmmaker, and a speaker for her ancestors. Growing up in a world full of music, Christie Lee Charles favours hip hop or rap, which in the meantime has also become internationally known. As Master of Ceremonies (emcee) she brings her traditional knowledge, myths and the old Musqueam language into play. Christie is currently Vancouver’s Poet Laureate. She and the team will be hosting the 1st International Indigenous Hip Hop Awards Show in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

The film accompanying the exhibition “Let Them Speak! Comments from British Columbia, Canada” shows how Miss Christie Lee transfers traditional, indigenous forms of literature and indigenous knowledge into a modern music like hip-hop. Miss Christie Lee raps on Hul’q’umi’num, and that has an impact on the music itself. For her, this transformation of rap music through her own language is a form of empowerment.

This project has been developed as a cooperation between Markus Lindner (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main) and Mona Suhrbier (Weltkulturen Museum). It is part of the culture program related to Canada’s Guest of Honour presentation at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2020/2021 and is supported by Canada Council for the Arts and the Government of Canada.